Well it’s a Sunday morning a few days before my birthday and I’m doing what many people do on their birthdays before the parties are done and the cake is all eaten, I’m wondering exactly where I am in my life? Well, I just ordered a home blood pressure kit (feeling old, check). I haven’t dated or had sex in over a year and I’m afraid I’ll die all alone.  I’m in a new city that I’m still not sure I even like, and by all accounts looks like I’ll be alone on my birthday.

Me: “Alexa, buy a shitload of band-aids and wine to be delivered ASAP.”

Alexa: “Should I find a therapist in the area?”

Me: “No bitch mind your own business.”

She’s not wrong though. I have to say that my life the past couple of years has felt like I’m being tortured and will die a slow painful death by a thousand paper cuts. Just putting all this out there horrifies me a bit because it is clear I don’t have my shit together.

I know it’s been ages since I’ve written and that’s because I’ve been deep in a well of pure unadulterated grief. I think it’s safe to say that I’ve done my best to outrun it and now it is staring me in the face. I took a job that was an impossibility but I thought, “Hey I can work myself to death and distract myself from all this pain.” That worked for a little while and then I thought a location change would make things better. It did and it didn’t. I love my new apartment as I have way more space and the ghost of my ex isn’t here. No dried chocolate stains on the bedroom walls to remind me of fabulously sensual nights. However, I’m far from all my ride or die friends and the isolation I find myself in is debilitating most days. I start most of my days crying before I even get out of bed. The pain of loss still stings and after trying to avoid it, I’m just allowing myself to feel it, ALL OF IT! I have quite the active imagination so my mind comes up with all sorts of horrible ways to torture me. I’m sure I’m not alone in any of that.

My ex, is living happily elsewhere with someone new, giving her everything I begged him for and I feel insignificant, unworthy and unlovable because this of course just proves my unworthiness. Clearly he IS able to take action and move things forward in his life, and not be paralyzed with fear, he just couldn’t do it for me.  That was a real kick in the gut. Because if I was truly worthy and lovable, he would have picked me. Right!  I mean who wouldn’t feel this way, he didn’t pick me and it proves I’m right, and being right means I’m worthless. At least that’s the narrative I’ve gone with for the past year. It’s a tape that runs in the back of mind always! Trust me, no amount of wine or vodka will shut it the fuck up.

However, I can’t focus on what was or what I think it is. My question to myself every day is “Can you pick yourself up yet again and move forward? Can you trust and love again?” One thing I’ve learned over the past year is that I have to focus on me. I have to dig deep and ask myself the truly painful questions? Because the shame I feel for staying so long when it was clear ages ago that he really wasn’t ever going to do anything is horrible, I’m saturated in it and at times I feel myself drowning in it. I felt the resistance, but I fell for the bullshit and I decided to ignore my gut. I listened to every lie, accepted every single lack of action and excused it away because I didn’t want to see what was right in front of me. I gave him opportunity after opportunity to tell me the truth and ignored the fact that his unwillingness to even to talk about it was his answer.

And now, I’m here alone with nothing and I’m forced to stand face to face with what was in front of me.  I now have to confront my own feelings of self-worth or lack thereof.  I keep finding new ways that the abuse I lived with in my childhood has fucked me up and I keep finding holes that need repair. I’m now at another level of healing. All the things I’ve experienced thus far have given me the tools I need to heal myself further. Abuse takes a long time to repair and it can’t be done all at once. Healing is much like scuba diving. You can’t jump in and dive down 200 m straight away. You have to go down slowly and let your body acclimate to the pressure.

I was always really comfortable with my casual “friends with benefits” arrangements and had convinced myself that my relationship with him was different, it was love, at least it was for me. He said he loved me, he said I was the love of his life.  He wanted me to be all his, not in a true commitment way but like a spoiled child who doesn’t want to share his toy with anyone.  It was a love that allowed me some space but really it wasn’t different from the “situationships” of my recent past.  In a way it was worse, I was made to feel that this was all real.  It was my Pretty Woman moment when she realizes she was still a prostitute just in a more expensive bathtub. Instead of quick and dirty sex, he wanted that “relationship feel” that girlfriend experience but still wanted the freedom to just walk away when something more promising came along.

The reality was I was invisible in his life, there wasn’t that honestly or accountability just empty promises and the mental masturbation of a life we could have that would never be: promises of forever, holidays together, long vacations, dinner parties at our house with friends, growing old and even marriage. All of that in the end were just anchors to keep me firmly in place and keep me from wandering away until he found someone he really wanted.  And I was happy to ignore the signs and the red flags when his actions wouldn’t hold up to these empty promises but would smack of the harsh reality I knew deep in my gut to be true.

It sucks to have to look at yourself without the masks. It’s so much easier to blame someone else. It’s much easier to be the victim but that’s not going to get me where I want to be, who I want to be or whom I want to be with.  I’m doing the hard work now so when I do meet that man that truly wants to give me all I desire and loves me, all of me, I’ll feel worthy of it and will soak it all in like sunshine. I know there are so many people out there who feel the same. Your mind goes into these dangerous patterns of thought and it’s exhausting to try and stop them, sometimes it just feels easier to let them go where they want, to let them decide the course. It’s easy to give up and I know that all too well.

There are so many days over the past year with this grief and the current political climate that I honestly wished I’d just die. Be on the receiving end of some terrorist plot, be on a plane with a suicidal pilot, get hit by a runaway car, get diagnosed with any terminal illness, anything. Anything to make the pain stop. My suicidal fantasies have been quite strong and I’ve had to learn to reach out to those close to me and allow myself to be seen in my all my pain, be vulnerable and tell them truly how I’m feeling. And it’s been even harder to let them love me and let them care for me. I’ve spent so much of my life trying to be that rock, be that fiercely independent woman and the thought of letting people in has been truly frightening but I had to. It was literally life or death. The dark thoughts were overwhelming me. I could barely keep my head above water. Learning to receive has been so hard. I know it was a mistake I made with my ex. I wanted to dictate to him what was an acceptable give instead of letting him give me a gift. Part of it was I wanted him to know that I truly loved him and not the money or gifts. I asked for things that were personal instead trying to prove a point. I know I made mistakes, I’m not perfect.

I can’t blame my ex for the years I wasted waiting for him to act. I could have left at any time. I had a choice. I could have said “No this is not acceptable this isn’t what I want” and walked away. I didn’t have to wait for him to kick me in the face. I didn’t have to feel the pain of him parading his new love in front of me at an event, while he acted like I was no one to him, like the 7 years we had together didn’t exist. I fooled myself because I felt that deep down, I didn’t deserve better. I didn’t deserve someone whose words and actions matched. But I’m happy to say that I think I was wrong. I am worth it. I’m real clear on what I want from someone and I’ve learned how to articulate that and I’m now able to ask for what I want and what I need and if someone doesn’t want to give it to me or wants to talk and show no real action, I know I can walk away and be o.k.

Even through all the pain, I still love him deeply and I always will. I encountered so many firsts with him and for me it was real and that’s all the validation I need. I’m no longer trying to figure out how to turn the love off. It just is. It will always be a part of me but I will use that love for him now towards myself. I’ll romance myself. I’ll say to myself what I wanted to hear from him. I’ll write myself love letters. I’ll pour it all into me. Maybe one day I’ll not feel the pain so acutely and it will just be another thread in my glorious jacket of experience. I get closer with each step forward I take.

If you’re going through something similar please feel free to share with me. You are not alone, none of us are. Stay tuned.

Peace,

Wellsie