Category: Heartbreak & Loss

Personal essays on the experience of moving forward from heartbreak, grief and loss.

Heartbreak & Loss

The Choices We Make.

Posted on

I fell asleep outside last night. I am someone who falls asleep outside now.

Not for very long though. I was looking at the stars, sitting in a reclining chair at the bottom of one of the small dips in my yard. The sun had barely set but it’s dark out here, they pop up quickly. It’s like your own personal planetarium.

Sometimes when I see something so beautiful that I can’t even believe it’s real, I have this twinge of sadness. I usually ignore it and hope that one day it goes away.

When I woke up outside, I had that same twinge but it brought with it the memory of the last time I could see so many stars, the last time I fell asleep under them.

We were in Joshua Tree. 

The first time I saw the desert was on the back of a motorcycle, riding from Prescott to California. We spent time with my Mamaw in Santa Monica. We saw Tyler Childers in Inglewood. We spent three days in Joshua Tree at the end. 

When we were in Santa Monica, I thought back to the last time I was there. I wrote about it, even. It was when I was looking at the ocean and thought about how nice it would be to walk in and let the waves take me. I was, obviously, so fucking miserable at that time in my life.

When we rode by, when we went to that same beach, I couldn’t believe how lucky I was to see it all again from these eyes. It was so healing that it was borderline overwhelming. 

We went to the national park. I had seen the desert landscape from the back of the bike but seeing it up close was something else. It was just so fucking funny. I don’t know if you’ve ever looked at anything in the desert up close but I would absolutely recommend it. I couldn’t stop pointing at things, dying laughing and saying, “What is that? What is this? Look at that guy!”

I hadn’t laughed, really laughed, in months. But I couldn’t stop. In between my gales of laughter, he told me the names of the plants and animals. He showed me how to climb up a rock face and he scaled up a tower of them. I was too nervous to try after I slipped at the bottom.

Later that night, we laughed even more. I laughed so hard that I couldn’t get any words out. Everything was just so fucking funny. 

That night was the first time I had ever really seen the stars. Laying on our backs, he pointed them all out to me, he told me their names and we counted the ones that shot by. He showed me how to identify satellites and planes by their lights. He showed me how a few stars can become a whole constellation.

It was the first moment, the first place, that I felt like everything could be okay again. 

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with nature. I had old science textbooks I would spend hours looking at, realistic stickers of bugs all over my desk. I lived in the city so I had a small backyard but I was always out there poking around and trying to identify the different bugs and animals. I collected worms and threw a fit when I had to wear a dress that couldn’t get covered in dirt. I was usually by myself but I was always on an adventure. 

The best times were with my Dad. He knew so much about the woods and he showed me it all. He knew how to bait the hook, where to cast and he knew how to follow the creek bed. If I was an adventurer, he was the tour guide. I was just happy to be traipsing around at my dad’s side in the underbrush. I liked to be taught things just as much as I loved learning them.

When I was in Joshua Tree, he knew everything about the desert. He knew his way around, it was all familiar to him. As he showed me all of it, I was just happy to be traipsing around at his side. I liked to be taught things just as much as I loved learning them. 

You can see the parallel I’m making here. I didn’t see it until I started typing it out, to be quite honest. 

I always loved to learn and adventure by myself. But it was my Dad who really knew how too. He was the one who paved the way, the one who knew where to go and how to do it. He was the brave one, I just tried to be.

One night, we were riding bikes. He was doing tricks and I followed him trying to do the same. It was fun until my tire hit the curb and I fell face first into the pavement, scraping off quite a bit of the left side of my face in the process. I cried until I went back to my mom’s house. Trying to follow in my Dad’s footsteps, trying to embody his fearlessness, ended in my own pain.

I feel like I can feel that scrape on my face. 

When I was looking up at the stars last night, I remembered being too nervous to follow my partner up the rocks in Joshua Tree. I thought about how I got bolder once we got home, following in his footsteps, climbing trees and sitting on our roof.

I forgot how pure I felt back then, how I felt like the best version of myself. Being with him, living in our house in the country and going on all of our adventures brought me back to that sense of childlike wonder. It brought me back to how it felt to be stomping around in creeks with my Dad, nothing to fear, as long as he led the way. It felt like coming home.

It felt like everything could be okay again. 

Until I fell off my bike. Until he tried to go out the same way my Dad did. Until all those same wounds got ripped right back open.

I spent a summer remembering how it felt to be walking in the sun, nothing to fear, with my Dad by my side.

Somehow, I had forgotten how the story ended.

It took a few years after my Dad’s suicide for me to really grasp the fact that he had died. I didn’t really understand the true pain it left me with until I almost experienced it again with my partner. I understood it even more when I found out I was pregnant a week later. Carrying my own child, I couldn’t escape the gravity of it. 

The summer didn’t last long. It was always brief back then too.

The winter my Dad died, I didn’t try to be brave. I didn’t think I could do it by myself. I was too afraid to do it without him showing me how. I let my face heal and then I packed up all of my adventures into a box and I put it away in a spot where I could act like it, and my Dad, had never existed.

This spring, I wanted us to move out west. I begged him. We were dying in Indiana, it was sucking the life out of us. I thought it was our only chance, the only way we could get ourselves out of the deep dark hole we had found ourselves in. I thought if we just moved, everything could be okay again.

I am embarrassed to say that I begged him to come with me even after everything blew up. 

But when it did, I had to make a choice. I knew after everything that happened, I couldn’t stay in Indiana. I couldn’t pack it all up in a box and pretend it never existed. 

So I didn’t.

I went to the first place I could remember feeling like everything would be okay, the first place I could see the stars. I went where he showed me.

I went out west.

This summer, I built the life I had begged for.

I was my own tour guide and my own adventurer. I kept climbing rocks after I slipped on them. I learned the names of all the plants and animals. I caught the scorpions in my house. I found my own place to sit and watch the stars. I cried when I scraped my knees, I cleaned my own wounds and I watched them as they healed.

I can tell you quite a bit about the desert. I can tell you when the prickly pears produce fruit, when the saguaros bloom. I can tell you which holes have tarantulas in them and which ones have kangaroo rats. I can tell you about how calcite comes up to the surface after it rains and why. I can tell you which feathers in my collection came from what bird, which shed came from what snake. 

I am walking in my own footsteps, paving my own way. I have become who that little girl, happy at her Dad’s side, always wanted to be. But this time, I’m the brave one, not just trying to be. It’s an inspiring story, of course, it’s my story and it is all true.

Sometimes it just feels like something is missing.

When I am traipsing around, there’s no one happy to be by my side. When I learn something new, there’s no one here to share it with. There’s no one here to laugh with when I say, “What is that? Look at that guy!” 

When I see something so beautiful that I can’t even believe it’s real, there’s no one here to look over and know they’re seeing it too. 

I built the life I begged for. I built the life I chose.

Being brave just doesn’t always feel the way you thought it would. 

Heartbreak & Loss

The Men We Weep For.

Posted on

When I was 9, I peeked around a wall and watched my Mamaw silently cry as she sat on the steps in her home. I stood, frozen, as I observed a mother’s quiet defeat from the addictions her son was wrestling with. Overwhelmed by her fears for him and her fears for me, she took a moment and she wept. 

When I was 16, I came home from school in a hurry to go somewhere I thought was really important. My mom followed me around the house trying to get me to stop, to listen. When I turned around, exasperated, she sat me down and told me my dad had died. He had committed suicide. In my room alone after the funeral, I wept. 

When I was 27, my brother, the son of my stepdad, died. Two days after his mother, both from a drug overdose. At the end of his funeral, my mom laid her head in my lap and wept. She wept for him and she wept for my stepfather, who couldn’t bring himself to face the day. 

When I was 28, I stood by my stepfather’s side as he took his last breath. Surrounded by his mother, my mother, my sisters and my aunts, his addiction defeated him once and for all. Collectively, we wept.

When I was 29, I experienced first hand how unresolved childhood and war trauma could manifest as violence, addiction and infidelity. Over and over again, I wept.

When I was 31, I almost lost my parter to suicide. After, I watched as he tried to advocate for himself only to be denied, cast off and failed over and over again by the system that was supposed to help him. I watched as he became a shell of himself. Still, I weep.

This could be seen as a collection of stories about the men who are selfish and undeserving of the women who love them so deeply. The women who begged and bargained with the universe, that did everything they could to save the men who didn’t or couldn’t save themselves. The women who left and came back, the ones you think should have had the backbone to walk away for good.

But it’s not. These women are strong, admirable women. They love deeply and unconditionally. I know because I am one.

This is about the men in my life I have watched dissolve into disease. The men whose light I’ve watched slowly fade from their eyes. The ones I’ve seen do horrible things that no one should be capable of. The men who drank themselves to death and the one’s who couldn’t find a reason to keep going.

This is about the moment I looked into my partners eyes and realized that I no longer recognized the man I loved.

All of the men in these stories were deeply affected by their childhood trauma, their mental health struggles and their addictions. They were ultimately defined by them. All of these men deserved better.

This is about our our fathers, our sons, partners and friends.

This is about how we talk about men.

When I scroll social media, I can see millions of posts, without even trying, about how beautiful and amazing I am for being a woman. I see post after post telling me how much I’m worth, how well I should be treated.

I also see millions of posts saying that degrading men as whole should be an acceptable part of my healing process. That I am better than men, I am worth more than men. I’ve even seen violence towards men portrayed a joke, going as far as saying they deserve it.

Can you imagine if you saw a post saying that degrading women is an acceptable part of a man’s healing process, that they were worth more than women? Joking that the women who hurt them deserve violence?

There are a lot of posts dedicated to the narratives of, “Men aren’t shit, men are worthless, men will never change.”

I haven’t seen many posts that focus on how much men deserve to know their worth, how they deserve to be treated, or how amazing they are. When I do, there are quite a few comments arguing that this isn’t true.

Positive posts about men are often geared towards finding the ‘one good one’ in the never ending sea of trash. A good man is seen as an exception to the rule.

Can you fucking imagine if thats what you saw all day?

How would you feel about your odds of being the one good one?

If you had made some bad choices in relationships in the past, would you think you could be any better? That you could become one of the good ones? Or would you feel you had lost your chance?

Why do we believe so deeply in our own inherent worth as women but men don’t deserve the same? Why do we think we can consistently grow and change but somehow men are unable to do the same?

I am well aware that a lot of the comments on these posts are about people’s individual experiences and I will never discount them. I will never say that someone shouldn’t have negative feelings towards the people who hurt them. I will never say someone say someone should have to stand by the side of someone who has treated them badly.

I have talked a lot about my experiences with men on this blog, I have talked about a lot of the men in those stories.

I’ve talked about how much I loved them. I have talked about how much I hated them.

I have made the mistake many times of having so much empathy for the men in my life that I sacrificed myself and my own well being in the process.

But I will never become so angry and short sighted by what I have experienced that I believe any man, even the ones I have wrote about, deserves to believe they are worthless. That they deserve to be defined solely by their past actions and cannot change. That they aren’t worth enough to try.

They are not worthless. They never will be.

The feelings we have are still valid. Our experiences will never be discounted. But I’m not talking about toxic relationships right now.

This is about the bigger picture.

This is about men’s individual experiences and feelings being valid too. This is about seeing them as people. This is about giving them the same space we do.

This is about how we talk about men.

Just like us, a lot of men have been hurt, they have been cheated on, they have been left. They have experienced being abused, humiliated, and frightened. I have seen that a lot of them are too embarrassed or ashamed to even admit it.

They’ve been conditioned to think it doesn’t matter. That if they do talk about it, their vulnerability could be equated to weakness. Some, even when they have tried, have been ridiculed or emasculated for it.

My entire blog is about my life experiences, relationships and hurts. I am honest about the mistakes I’ve made and how I have grown from them. I receive nothing but support and kindness.

How many men are writing blogs about their childhood wounds, their growth, and their toxic relationships? How many men are being vulnerable on the internet?

How many would feel like they were even allowed to?

Unprocessed trauma, from childhood or adulthood, often comes out in destructive ways. Anger, violence, infidelity, addiction. There are so many ways someone can hurt themselves and others when something lies under the surface unhealed and unacknowledged. This is not an excuse, it does not make these choices and reactions acceptable, it absolutely does not.

I have made these choices, I have wrote about them. If my blog was authored by a man, would it be taken seriously? Or would you condemn me and define me by my worst choices?

Would you think I couldn’t change?

When men have been hurt, they are often pressured to fight back, fuck off or forget about it. They’re not usually given the tools to actually deal with it, they’re expected to already know how. They’re expected to deal with it on their own. They’re not given a lot of sympathy.

Half the time, people don’t even believe they were actually hurt. I’ve even seen people say they deserved it.

If you thought your hurt didn’t matter, would you even be able to recognize it?

Would you even know what to do about it?

They’re not championed when they’re knocked down and get back up. They’re not usually told how proud someone is of them when they do.

They’re not really exalted for the changes they do make. It’s both expected and not expected of them. Really, it’s a lose, lose.

We seem to think that a man’s worth is defined strictly by what they do. Or what they don’t. Their worth is measured by what they can provide. It’s, honestly, usually tied to what we think of them and the quality of what we receive. It’s tied to what we think we deserve, not necessarily what they do.

Are they not inherently worthy for just being a human being? Could you look at your newborn son and think anything else?

At what age are they no longer allowed to cry? At what age do they no longer deserve respect, they no longer deserve anything, without earning it?

Their worth is not measured by what they can provide. Their worth is not measured by how we feel about them.

Noone ever deserves to feel like they are worthless.

In my career field, I talk to men every single day. The amount of times I have been told, ‘I have never shared this with someone before’ breaks my fucking heart.

Men deserve to feel that when they talk, someone will listen. They deserve to feel like they don’t always have to be the strongest person in the room. They deserve to know they matter. They deserve to feel cared for. They deserve to feel safe.

If men take the chance on opening up, they deserve the respect of actually being heard. If they are vulnerable, we can give them the space to do so without the fear of being shamed.

They have just as many emotional needs as we do. They should never be reduced down to simple minded morons driven by sex, food, sleep. They’re not animals, for fucks sake.

There is not much we can do in a world where resources for mental health are few and far between, we can’t overhaul the entire system in a day. Everyone is stretched thin, there’s not enough help to go around.

We can’t force the men in our individual lives to change and we can’t save them by our own willpower alone. That responsibility is still on them.

But we can change the way we talk about men. We can change the way we talk to men. We can change the way we look at them. We can believe they can change. We can be willing to have more compassion and love for men as a bigger picture.

This is about trying to break the cycle before it even starts.

Men are killing themselves, literally and figuratively, at alarming rates.

No one deserves to feel like they are so inherently defective that their only options are to continue to make the same mistakes, find solace in a bottle, or suffer alone in silence. If someone reading this needs to hear this, you are worth more than that and you deserve more than that.

I have lost almost every man I have ever loved in my life to addiction, suicide, or to the demons they couldn’t shake. They deserved better.

They were human beings. They were fathers, sons, partners, and friends.

We have to change the way we talk about men.

Heartbreak & Loss

just a moment in time.

Posted on

On May 22nd 2025, I arrived at my new home in a state almost 2,000 miles away from where I had lived my whole life. I packed up whatever I could fit into my car, strapped in my dog and left like a bat out of hell. 

I have not once regretted that decision but I wont lie, I’m fucking broke. The one thing I had going for me back in my home state was the solid foundation of financial security I had built over the years. I have no doubt in my mind that I will build it again. That isn’t the point.

The point is that I decided not to reinvest in my web domain hosting. I decided I was okay with leaving this blog in the past. In fact, I didn’t want the last few years of my life to be blasted on the internet for anyone new I could meet to see anyway. It was a fresh start after all. 

But there are some things you can’t leave behind. Things you don’t even want to. I hadn’t processed, or even accepted, that I had really lost my baby. I had tried to take it on a few times, sure, and there was even a small period of time this seemed possible. On her due date, I spent the day with Perfect on Paper Guy, her father. It felt healing. I thought we were healing. 

Blah, blah, blah. We don’t need to get into the specifics of that shit show. I don’t feel the need to tell that story.

But here, six months later, I am still rocked by waves of grief over and over and over again. I will think that I have come to a point of peace with it all and then something new will happen and drag me back into the trenches. 

I took my head out of the sand tonight and decided to see what would happen if I logged back into my blog account. I couldn’t. It was gone. It was all gone.

I don’t care about any other post on this blog other than a soul as big as my own. I rarely reread them. But that post is a handful of paragraphs that painstakingly and lovingly encapsulated the worst and purest moments of my entire life. I wrote it less than a week after the surgery feeling like I was going to bleed out physically and emotionally. I’ve reread it a million times and I’ve avoided it just as many too.

I have a rough draft of it but it wasn’t the final one I put out into the world. The only record of her being real. The only tangible thing that I have. They asked me if I wanted an ultrasound picture and I refused it. He didn’t, I wonder if he still has it. I don’t know if I would want to see it if he did. 

She was mine. She was his. But she was mine. 

And now I have nothing. That’s not really true, I actually have a lot. But there are so many moments that all I can see is that I don’t have her. 

I can’t even make the words come out of my mouth to share this experience with anyone I’ve met here. I physically cannot make myself. I can write it on the internet and share it with strangers. But to verbally say it? I just can’t. It’s my Achilles heel. I’m afraid they won’t understand or they’ll act like it shouldn’t be this hard. I never understood it either until it happened to me. So maybe they’ll say I should just move on. Didn’t I move away to start a new life?

When someone dies, you grieve. You grieve them not being present in your life any longer. You celebrate the life they lived. All of the up’s and downs, triumphs and losses. It’s devastating and painful and it can take years and years to move on from. But they lived, they were there. 

How do you grieve someone who never lived? Someone you never got to see. An idea, even. 

I hoard my grief. I carry it with me every day, I sleep next to it at night. I let it roam a little ways away sometimes but I always pull it back. I’m afraid to let it go. 

It’s hard to start a new life when you’re aching for the one that never got to. 

When I was pregnant, I would lay on my back and try to feel if my body had changed, if I could feel her in there. I couldn’t. But I still did, in some way. She consumed my thoughts, all of my energy seemed to be concentrated in my abdomen. Everything from that moment forward was focused solely on her. I was ready to destroy anything in my path that threatened her. 

And then there was nothing.

When I saw that I couldn’t retrieve that one single blog entry, I pulled out my credit card and immediately charged it. I didn’t care about the cost, I didn’t even hesitate. I was sick, nauseated and sweating. I frantically did whatever I could to bring it back. I immediately copied and pasted it into a new document to ensure I’d never lose it again.

But why? Why do I hoard it when it hurts me so deeply? 

It feels wrong. It feels like if I let go of my grief that will be when she truly no longer exists.

Despite my feelings I have now towards the man I shared her with, that was our baby and that second chance is gone forever, we don’t have any more time. Two for one special, him and her.

I have been gripped with fear recently that if I ever found someone new and fell in love again, if I was to have another chance at having a child, it wouldn’t feel like my baby.

I know this is ludicrous. Truly insane person levels of thinking. There is a neverending list of why I should be grateful that I did not have a baby with him. And I am. But sometimes even just the knowledge that I will always be connected to him, that the grief of her will always be intertwined with the threads of him, makes me want to climb all the way up the mountain in my back yard just to fling myself off of it. There are times I am filled with so much rage that I feel I could burn all of them to the ground.

There will never be her without me. There will never be her without him. She fully encompasses both the absolute best and the absolute worst of us. I worry I’ll never truly be free of it, that it will drive me into madness one day. There are times I have truly considered ending my own life over it. Two for one special, me and her.

I wonder if I will ever really understand why this had to happen. Sometimes I feel like I do and then I don’t all over again. All I can do is continue to see the value of my own life and continue to keep living it. It really is good most days. 

I keep stringing those good days together, I have more moments of peace than agony. It’s getting better. This is just a moment in time.

I guess for now I will just write about it and cry and shake until it passes. And then I guess I’ll go eat a bowl of fucking spaghetti or something and go the fuck to sleep.

But at least I get to wake up tomorrow and if I feel like shit, I get to feel like shit looking at a mountain and a shit ton of cactus in perfect weather. Maybe I will post this to my Blog of Seemingly Neverending Pain that I couldn’t afford so I at least get my money’s worth. Maybe I won’t. Maybe I will do one of the new hobbies I have picked up or study the things I have liked a lot recently instead. 

I really have discovered a lot of things that give me purpose in my life. It might not be what I thought it was going to be. But it’s still pretty good. I really only write about my life when it sucks ass. Maybe I will try to write about it when it doesn’t. I do want to get my money’s worth.

Anyway, no two for one special today. Just a party of one. And thats okay.

Heartbreak & Loss

Evil.

Posted on

Once you’ve looked true evil in the face, you’ll never forget it. 

Three years ago, I thought I had seen it on the streets of New York. But there is a difference. Alcohol can bring out evil things in a person. It can turn them into monsters. Drugs can too. They can turn someone into a shell of themselves, lowering their moral compass inch by inch until they look around only to find themselves mired in the filth of their own creation. 

You can pull yourself out of filth. I know because I’ve done it. Dusted myself off, bit by bit, until I recognized myself again. 

The man in New York: I knew and loved him long enough that both his darkness and his light were just as familiar to me as my own. I was never surprised, as sad as that is.

Last year, I met someone new. He seemed kind, loving, sincere. But then he wasn’t. I could never tell which side of him I saw was real. I convinced myself it had to be the good one. The one he presented to everyone else. Evil lurks, insidiously. It can dress itself up. A wolf in sheep’s clothing. 

Today, I’m sitting on my couch. I’ve been reading. My phone is off, my IPad on airplane mode. I have no direction for my day. I was exhausted when I woke up, I need to rest. 

I feel a moment of shame for thinking I need to rest. I never feel like I’m doing enough. He always did too much, I felt lazy in comparison. Judged for being able to sit still. 

I debate on going back to my novel. My sixth in a week. 

Four months ago, I was moving things into his house when I found the other woman’s clothing. I checked out four books from the library in a daze. I read three in less than twelve hours. I couldn’t keep the questions and fears fully at bay, I had signed out of my lease. I would be homeless in a matter of weeks. I couldn’t move into this house with him. My skin crawled.

Here, on my couch, I shake my head, squeezing my eyes tight to empty my brain. 

I play with my dog. I zone out as she runs after her toy. She hesitates before dropping it nearby for me to throw again. I can feel my eyes have glazed over. She can tell I’m not really there.

‘Fuck you eat shit you fucking skank cunt bitch.’ ‘I wish you were thirty minutes away so I could slice you ear to ear.’ ‘You do the right thing, fucking hang.’

I squeeze my eyes tight and shake my head again. Like if I try hard enough I can rattle these words and all the others out of my head through my ears. I won’t allow them to fester and rot in my brain, sowing themselves so deeply that they play in my own voice instead of his.

It takes me a second to come back. The last bully I need is me. I pick up her toy and throw it again and again until she gets tired.

I feel off today, like my thoughts can’t form themselves fully in my brain. It’s disorienting. Sitting on my floor, I try to make sense of the past year. So much of it was an illusion, some months I don’t remember at all. My brain threw them out with the bathwater.

I’m spiraling. I focus on getting through this second, then this one, this one, this one. I want to lay down and stare at the ceiling until my life is finally over. 

I don’t. I get up off the floor and pull a folding chair out into my yard. I try to read more of my novel. I am confusing the story line with another book I read the day before. I look up at the desert landscape of my new home instead. The hot air blows across my cheeks. A small part of my brain registers that I should be wearing sunscreen.

I feel a fly buzzing by my ear. I must be in the present enough to be annoyed by it. 

I pull the chair back inside and sit back on the couch. I stare at my book and my throat starts to ache, I know what’s coming. I sob, hot fat tears rolling down my face. 

These emotions are confusing. I know I am going to be okay, I know time will heal. I cry so hard and my throat aches so much that, for a moment, I worry that this isn’t true. 

I feel haunted. Like I am looking over my shoulder. I don’t know for what. 

After a few minutes, I blow my nose and take a few deep breaths. I look at myself in the mirror. I take my dog outside. She sniffs around. 

I think back to the day I left. I watch myself sit at the kitchen table as the house gets destroyed. Flipping through the lies, the masks, the roles he played. I think back to how pathetic I was to keep going back. I wonder how I had managed to convince myself this wasn’t who he was. 

It was exactly who he was. I’m the only person who isn’t fooled. Anymore, at least. 

My dog is pulling on her leash, she looks at me. We walk up the steps to go back inside. I don’t bring those thoughts in with me, I shut the front door and lock it. I feel better with them out there, they’ve got more space to roam. 

Today, my boobs hurt, a symptom I haven’t felt since I was pregnant. My body has been cruel to me this month, there is so much it won’t let me forget. On the year anniversary of the first positive test, my stomach bloated and swelled like it had before. I sobbed that day too. Then I sat on my kitchen floor and stared into space for half an hour. 

I felt better after. I always do.

I take note that my period is coming up. I brace myself and then relax. The tape of the operating room doesn’t play, neither does the one from the weeks prior. I am right here. 

Today is going to be a good day. I vacuum, I wipe down the counters. I take a second to watch the horse outside of my window. I smile. What a wonderful place to live. I enjoy my own company immensely. I am lucky.

I am not hungry but I make myself something to eat. If I take care of myself, I am more likely to have good days. While I am doing dishes, I wonder to myself if he thinks I think good things about him. I don’t. I loathe him with every fiber of my being. More than I could ever hate myself.

I let these feelings wash down the drain. I lather my hands with soap. 

My hands are clean.

Heartbreak & Loss

a soul as big as my own.

Posted on

It’s been seven months since I published a blog post. It’s been four months since I wrote on my thought processes and coping skills I had been working on, two months since I posted a video. For so much of this time, my mind was consumed by inspecting and rewiring all of my previous patterns and mentally cleaning house. I was laser focused on creating a healthy relationship with my new partner and I was over the moon for 90% of it. 

I went back and read some of the drafts I wrote during the spring and early summer that I had decided not to post. In the end, joy is just not that interesting to write about. It was more interesting to be out there living it and experiencing everything this new life I found had to offer. The majority of writing I did in this time was personal, private poems and love letters to my partner. I have a notebook that’s filled with them, it would probably make a cynic vomit. 

Of course, there were hard times as we both tried to work through our pasts together. There were even harder ones when we took on things outside of our control like mental health and legal issues I was still dealing with from before. We would come back stronger, more iron clad each time. Until we didn’t. 

There used to be times I would be driving to work and I would weep because I was so grateful for what we created. 

On August 11th, we found out we had created even more. Two lines on the seventh test I took (I had convinced myself I was taking them wrong) confirmed that I was pregnant. My boyfriend was at the track racing and since patience has never been my virtue, I rushed over and said, “So guess who’s going to be a dad?” 

Pregnancy is bizarre. The next morning, after the news had set in, it was like a switch had flipped. I felt like an entirely different person, I was consumed by this little thing that had taken up residence in me. My baby. I honestly just couldnt fucking believe it. I was going to be someone’s Mom? Me? Who the fuck decided that? (Me and my boyfriend, but I digress.)

But it was true, and I knew it because I kept taking tests much to my boyfriend’s amusement. We tentatively told my mom, his dad and his sister. My best friend. My aunt. I was nervous at first, I prefaced it with “I know it’s early.. but I just know it’ll be okay. It has to be.” I had decided, if it went wrong, I would rather tell people that I had miscarried than have to tell the people closest to me about how I was pregnant.. but then I wasn’t. I knew myself well enough that I wouldn’t, I would isolate and not tell anyone at all. 

There’s so much weird stigma around telling people you’re pregnant early. It’s bizarrely taboo, even though miscarriages are so common. One in four they constantly remind you. I tried not to get too excited because of this. But the second week after I found out, I said to hell with it. I was going to be a Mom! Me! I deserved it, I had worked so hard. I had put so much effort into my healing and to get where I was and there was nobody better suited to be parents than my partner and I. 

I downloaded every app, I tracked my little tiny baby’s growth every day. I drew pictures on the dry erase board on our fridge of a ladybug, then a bee. I marveled at the size of blueberries, raspberries. I made a list of baby names, I researched parenting styles, I made a registry. I spent hours trying to decide how we would rearrange our house to make everything fit. I bought a crib. I remember my boyfriend asking, “I hate to say this, but do you think it’s to soon?” And I assured him there was no way it would go that way but even if it did, there was a large return window.

My partner and I were struggling during this time, it seems inauthentic not to mention it. We had been struggling largely with mental health issues right before we found out and that hadn’t magically gone away. But my entire mindset had changed, I was focused on the big picture. I knew we had nine months to process what we needed to and I felt like the universe had front loaded that in the beginning. Events that had happened forced me to confront emotions I had buried deep towards my fathers and their deaths way deeper than I ever had before. It was excruciating but it was necessary. He was forced to confront his mental health issues even deeper. ‘We have time,’ I kept repeating to myself in the harder moments, “We have time.”

I said to my boyfriend on the day of the ultrasound (the day I had been counting down to for four weeks and one day!) ‘I have full confidence that everything happens as it should. We are healing what we need to heal before the baby comes, we have time.’

Before we got out of the car, I took his hand and I said, ‘Let’s go see our baby.’

I remember laying back on the ultrasound table and feeling oddly numb for a moment I was so excited for. I remember the tech saying, “There’s the yolk sac” and then she didn’t say anything else. I remember the screen flashing ‘6 wks 2 days’. I remember thinking, “There should be more than that there.. it should be measuring bigger than that.’ I remember the tech finishing the ultrasound and saying, ‘We didn’t see any cardiac activity, you’ll have to come back next week to recheck.’

We left the doctor’s office in silence. I know we talked about other things, did other things, but I don’t remember what. I remember researching any possible outcome from what he had seen. It all pointed to the same thing, this pregnancy was not viable. I remember waking up that night at two am, the shock finally wearing off, clutching my stomach sobbing and begging the baby to grow, willing it’s heart to beat with all of my energy. I remember begging it to come back, ‘Please, please, don’t leave me.’

’Everything happens as it should,’ I had said that day. Fuck you! I don’t know shit about fuck, obviously! I desperately tried to take it back. This is not how it should happen!

We went for a second opinion at a different office. The baby measured even smaller. I knew then, it was over. I didn’t need the next appointment to know where it was headed. I never started bleeding but I woke up that Thursday and I just didnt feel pregnant anymore. It felt like a fever dream, a cruel trick my brain and hormones had played on me. A mean spirited joke that the universe gave me just to rip it away to prove that I was unworthy of ever truly getting what I desperately wanted. 

My boyfriend and I’s relationship deteriorated even further. The loss of the baby ripped us apart at the seams, revealing our ugliest selves. He lashed out and I retreated inward, we had become unrecognizable from the people we started as. We destroyed everything we had worked so hard on in a matter of days. Even so, the night before the surgery, I sat in our garage and I told the baby everything about him, how good and kind he was. How he wrote ‘daddy loves you’ next to every dry erase doodle on our fridge.

I started sobbing as I was wheeled back, I sobbed as they put the oxygen mask on me and told me to take deep breaths, the woman who was with me trying to soothe me with kind eyes and rubbing my arm. Right before I went under I thought to my baby in the last moment it was with me, ‘I am so so sorry.’

I woke up in the dark, alone, curled into myself on my side and my first thought was how the baby, although no longer living or growing, was gone. It was no longer with me and I felt like it had taken everything with it. The life we had built, our dreams and hopes for the future. The shiny new life I had rebuilt out of the ashes of before, it all smoldered again. It was packed up in boxes in the house I had called our home. I left with less than I came with. 

I used to feel like my new life was surreal, technicolor and bright. Exciting and healing, the safety I felt in it was invaluable. It had all happened as it should. Now, in a different house and alone, how could I have ever believed that? How could I have let myself fall so far? How could I have been so stupid? How could I have let myself live so big knowing that it could still crash and burn?

I feel like Icarus. I flew too close to the sun. 

But why shouldn’t we fly as close to the sun as we can? That’s what I had fought for before, right? Before it all went wrong? A life where I could live as big as I wanted, give and receive love without fear, without withholding. A life where I could laugh and be present in in that moment, not feel separate and foreign. A life where I could trust my partner with my joy and my tears, especially the tears. I had almost gotten there, I had! It just went sideways. But why? How? How do I ever get back up again? I already cataloged my story of getting back up, god damnit! Why the fuck did I have to do it again? 

I swear there was a moment I wanted to burn the whole world to the ground and scream, “When the fuck do I get a win, for fucks sake?!”

I returned the crib, the clothes I had bought to accommodate my body that changed overnight. I did it silently without letting any thoughts creep in. I unpacked and hid the books I bought on child development in a cabinet I will never have to open. I hid the little baby shoes my best friend brought me in another. I scrolled my phone endlessly, deleting apps and unsubscribing from promotional baby emails. If I stop moving and am unoccupied, I am back in the operating room with tears streaming down my face.

I loved that baby more than I could have ever imagined and it was gone six weeks later. They tell you not to get too invested, to guard your heart. They borderline shame you for it and I guess this is the reason why. 

But you know what, fuck that. Fly too close to the sun. There was no cushioning that grief from the second I saw those two lines. There was no going back, just as there’s no going back now. I am grateful, I suppose, that we got the time we did. 

It may not seem real now, but it was. It was real to me as I sat in what was my back yard at the time during the golden hour in the morning and dreamed of sitting in the same spot a year later with a chubby little four month old baby. It was real when I tilted my face up to the warmth, one hand on my belly, and thought, “This is what it was all for.” It was real when I dreamed of seeing my boyfriend become a dad, something I couldn’t imagine loving him more for. It was real when it brought us together and it was real when it tore us apart, choking on our own grief and too far gone to save the other.

I said when I started this blog I would write about my experiences so that someone out there might read them and feel less alone. I will say, not much has made me feel less alone through this and statistically one in four of you has felt the same. I hope that if you are reading this and you have been here or currently are, that you get a second chance, if you want it. I know that the next time will not be as innocent and that there will be an undercurrent of fear. I have faith in you, for what it’s worth. We are always stronger than we think. 

In the throes of it all now, I write this simply as a cathartic release. A love letter to a life that was very real to me, to us. I hope that soul I carried for nine weeks, as big and as real as my own, comes back one day. When they are ready and so are we.

I have written most of this blog on love in all forms, mainly on the pain that comes with it. This love was different from anything I’d ever known and losing it was even more so. It’s wild, isn’t it, the spectrum of joy and grief that comes from allowing yourself to love and experience love in all forms? 

But as they say, I’d rather have loved and lost than never have loved at all. 

I’ll keep flying too close to the sun. We have time.

Self Reflection

The Repressed Loathing.

Posted on

I’ve been on a slight hiatus. To be quite honest, I have an article written that I have sat on for over a week where I dove into a traumatic situation I experienced two years ago that I, quite simply, just wasn’t ready to post. I have made myself very vulnerable on this blog but it was a level I am not ready to release at this time. Maybe soon, I will be. The article is on the levels that the body holds onto trauma that we might not recognize. The body does, indeed, keep the score.

As I am typing this, my left wrist aches. It does that sometimes. It was sprained once, just sprained. An X-ray showed no broken bones. It only needed to be wrapped in an ace bandage. 

The last time there was deep emotional turmoil between my ex partner and I, this wrist swelled up with a golfball size lump after I had been shuffling cards. It didn’t go down until I had slept in a brace or kept one on during my off days for a month. It quit hurting at the end of my trip, which in my mind, confirmed it was probably just tendonitis. Maybe it is. It started to ache again three days ago.

I have been reflecting, unwillingly at times, on certain events that happened recently. Many different ones but sometimes on the emotional outbursts, the rage, and the insults I had hurled at my ex partner. I have felt guilt and shame. If I am changing so much, why would these reactions have come back up? I didn’t even recognize myself in those moments. Except I did, a very old version of myself. If you asked my ex partner, he probably recognizes them from when I would be so drunk that my consciousness wasn’t even present anymore.

I was changing, but in the process I was pulling out the old. The well hidden, but extremely influential, integrated beliefs I had from my core memories. Unworthiness, unimportance, being unloveable. It showed out in rage but its core is unbridled, desperate fear of those beliefs being affirmed. It is self loathing for who I felt like I was at my core. I disguised my disgust for this vulnerability in anger. It felt like a clawing tool to bring back control and power when I felt I was at my weakest. I’m not the victim if I make you the victim.

Since I was a small child, I have repressed these feelings to the point we discovered that I didn’t even know why I had them. Since I repeatedly dissociated from them, I didn’t know how to express them. When they did come out, it was unhinged and feral. I was being Dramatic. I was too needy, too vulnerable. Pathetic. Shameful.

When you don’t dive into the big, it comes out in the small. Perceived slights become tantrums, fits of rage, venom spit at the people you love. If I wasn’t comfortable enough to rage at you like I was with my partner, I would isolate myself completely instead. I can’t be unimportant if I never make myself important. When I felt like this I had an extreme lack of self control, my worst fear of all. I could not continue this way. I feared the outcome if I did. It was only getting darker and more persistent, the depths of my soul were calling for my attention and I was absolutely fucking drowning in the currents.

It started with sitting on a beach in Santa Monica, California watching the tide go in and out and thinking about how every cell of my being wanted to walk into the waves and drown. The cool rush of the water over my face and the salt on my tongue as I would let the water take me was an intoxicating idea. I could feel the need for it bubbling up in my throat and my vision was turning red. After agonizing for a long while, I picked up the phone and reached out to my dear friend. I didn’t hold back with my vulnerability in pages of messages and when words of comfort were given freely and with no judgement, when I could feel her love and care for me from thousands of miles away: I could breathe again.

Another time was soon after I got home when I wanted to lash out at my ex partner. I could feel the rage coursing through my veins and I could feel my pupils start to shake. I stopped. Right in my living room as I was pacing, ready to start frothing at the mouth, I stopped. I stopped and breathed and I mentally whipped my head around and stared it down. I looked that rage in the face and we locked eyes. It wasn’t rage at all. Chest heaving, we sat together. We got comfortable. Eventually, I sent it all my love. I accepted it for being there and integrated my insecurity, my self loathing, and my fears into being. Only as they were integrated, not repressed, could they then begin to be released.

With practice this each time, I have gotten good at staring down the big. But I still struggle with the small. The thought patterns, the longing, the sadness. Constant what if’s, how’s, what’s and why’s buzz around in my mind. The miniature are sneaky. I still push them down and swat them away out of habit. I tell them to knock it off, to leave me alone. Realizing the problem in this, I have tried accepting them and grounding myself constantly in the present moment. Switching tactics, I pictured them scattering like cockroaches when I switched the light on in my mind. Nothing has been successful for long, it has been hard work with little success, I’m fucking exhausted.

The other day, while finding myself again in a never ending loop of ruminating on a situation, I had a random moment of insight. “What am I seeking from this? What need am I looking to get met in these situations that won’t leave my mind?” I started to talk to myself like I was someone else.

“You are kind, you are interesting, you work hard. I can see it. I can see how hard you’re trying. You care so deeply, you love so passionately. You take good care of yourself, you take such good care of your home! I love the little star clips you put in your hair. You are funny, you are creative. I appreciate you.”

Funnily enough, these made me smile. I also felt kind of stupid doing it but sometimes you just have to feel a little stupid, I guess. I don’t know who I think is judging me in my own mind. (Me) But they were meeting the need I was seeking. I wanted to be seen, to be heard, to be admired and cared for. This isn’t vain or attention seeking, it was natural. It’s natural to want to be loved and seen for who you are.

“I am so sorry that happened to you. I am so sorry you had to go through that. You did deserve more than that.”

At this point, I stopped where I was doing laundry, put my hands on my knees and I wept. I don’t think I have ever actually shown myself empathy. I acknowledge and I accept the things that happened. “It’s okay! I make the best out of them! Look how far I’ve come! Look at all my fucking life lessons!” I would say to you if you said these things to me, with my eyes wide and my teeth bared in a frantic smile to hide any and all emotional reaction.

It’s never: “I am so sorry you had to endure this at all.” It’s always: “Okay, this emotion is called ‘sad.’ You got yourself into this situation. How are you going to get yourself out?” To do anything else felt like a pity party. A victim mindset. Being a victim, to me, is the most shameful thing of all. You conquer your shit and you do it valiantly.

When you’re kicked in the face, you sit back up.

I have never allowed myself to have any empathy for myself. Deep down, I always thought I had deserved these things. I should have known better. He showed you who he was. Also, I was cruel, cold, unloving at times. “I would leave you too. You were awful to him too.” Is more often the words I would say to myself.

But it goes deeper than him, doesn’t it? These issues weren’t born from him: they were triggered by him. Just as they have been by everyone before him. Just as they have led to me to keep friends at arms length and not feel like I should lean on them. Somewhere, in my core memories, is a deep feeling that I am not important, lovable, or worthy.

Before all these moments, I would have told you that I loved myself. And maybe I did, in the capacity I was ready for. More so, I think I was so afraid of looking weak (even to myself) to admit that I, in fact, did not and didn’t even really understand what loving myself meant.

As I open my mind and I open my heart to healing, I have found a more accurate idea of what it really means. I can see the value in changing my mindset, my coping skills, my internal monologue. I have learned to shine a light and peer down at the core values hidden away and search for a way to truly change them so I can. It started with admitting they were even there. It continues with asking myself the hard questions and being brave enough to still listen when I don’t like the answers.

I am patient with myself to grow at the rate I need to. But I am changing every day. I said yesterday, “I am not even remotely the person I was a month ago.”

Funny enough as I’m editing this: my wrist no longer hurts. The reasons for this, I’m sure, will reveal themselves in time.

This doesn’t look like much from the outside. I often joke that if you looked through my windows it would just be me, sitting and staring into space. Me, reading. Me, crying into a bowl of cereal. Sometimes it’s me laughing at my phone, enjoying the new friendships I have invested in. Sometimes I even leave my house and see them! Most importantly, it’s me reaching out to them when I need someone. I’ve learned when to stop isolating myself from those I love and who love me. Soon, maybe I’ll allow myself to be comforted by friends instead of crying alone. I’m happy that I’m crying at all. There was a time when I could not.

Sometimes a hiatus is needed, a time to reset, reflect, evaluate, and accept. I know now that having and showing pride, love, and care for myself does not have a checklist I must complete to deserve it. It’s right here, right now on this journey. It starts with accepting it right this very second and then every one that follows. Nothing else would fall in place if I did not. It would all be wasted effort. This is all paramount. This cannot be taken away from me. It’s a core belief.

Today was the day I whipped around, stared myself in the face and said, “I love you unconditionally too.”

I am excited to see what tomorrow will be for.

Self Reflection

The Past, Present, Future, Now.

Posted on

After I decided that I was, indeed, going to stick around on this ol’ earth to see what the fuck was going to happen next I woke up the next morning with what I can only think to describe as an ‘emotional hangover’. I drug myself out of bed and started my coffee, let the dog out, and found myself staring into space on my couch. My head hurt, I felt dehydrated, my stomach was in knots, I wanted to vomit. I still felt my mind plagued with thoughts on distaste for my current situation, anger, and loneliness. You might say that I was only choosing to focus on the negatives.

I’ve been studying a lot recently on how the brain works to process emotions and how it creates thought patterns. Essentially if you consistently live in a certain state, the neural pathways will exist to keep you in that state as it is familiar and what it craves. The whole concept reminds me a lot of addiction, was I addicted to being miserable? I didn’t think so as I could tell you what made me miserable. But was I choosing to be miserable about those things? 

I have also been studying on the idea of ego and the most intriguing to me was emotional ego. As I sat on my couch feeling like shit, I took a mental step back. I observed those feelings I described in my body, my body’s reactions to the emotions. I let them be for a minute and then consciously removed myself from them. My consciousness is both entwined and seperate from my body. I felt the part of it that was observing the body and the other part that could see the thoughts and the subsequent reactions only for what they were, thoughts on a situation from the past. It is no longer my present moment.

My present moment was here, on my couch, drinking coffee. I looked around at the different colors in my home, the environment I had so painstakingly crafted. I like it here. The art is meaningful. In fact, how can I forget how loved I am when so much of the things in my home remind me that I am? 

I choose to ignore it. I choose misery.

What happens if I choose to only live in the present moment? The right here right now which consistently unfolds into the future? The concept of past, present, and future is truly a perplexing one to think on as neither truly exists. But if the present only exists second to second does it exist either? Even as I typed that present moment is already gone. Are we living in a constant state of both past, present, and future as our seconds unfold into all three states simultaneously?

I meditated on this concept for a part of my afternoon, probing my memories and my present moments. Trying to truly expand and experience the layers of my own consciousness and how far it went. What were its limits? Where did these thoughts come from? What was the source? Why could I think on all of this and also still have a song from earlier playing in the background of my thoughts?

I actually fell asleep for a few moments and when I woke up, I felt a very strong sense of peace. Here I was, in the now. The past was not now. It could only affect me if I chose to ruminate on it. The unknown of the future can only affect me if I choose to ruminate on it. But in the present now, what was there to experience other than contentment of my own company?

I poured myself a nice little glass of soda water and continued a book by Elkhart Tolle that I had been reading off and on on my vacation and very soon it dived into this very concept that I had been exploring in the afternoon. The synchronicities of the universe make no mistakes.

I spoke with my sister before I left about the idea of ‘letting go of the rope’ in life. There’s a common mindset I find myself in where I feel as if I am on a dock holding onto a rope with all my might that is attached to a ship in the water. As the current tries to take it, I sweat and struggle. I get pulled along inch by inch even as I turn around and heave to continue pulling it backwards. But it keeps forcing me forward. In my own fear, I want to keep it with me and docked where I can see it. But there’s no bigger sense of relief than when you let go of the rope, feel it whip through your hands, stand back, and watch it set sail.

The letting go of the rope is truly the only time life can set sail. There is no true control but only an ego’s desire to arrogantly decide its and others path. There is no story to unfold but instead a series of just right nows to continuously choose to experience and how.

I like it, Picasso!

Self Reflection

The Love of a Father.

Posted on

Today is my first full day home from a week-long trip from Portland to Santa Monica. As I arrived at LAX at 7:00 am Friday morning I could feel a sense of anxiety and dread building in the background of my mind and as I continued onto the flight it began to churn bringing with it a sense of deep irritability and discontent. My thoughts were starting to race, my jaw was clenched, and as we touched down in Indianapolis I felt nothing but a deep pit of unhappiness in my soul.

While I was sad on my trip, I could meditate on my feelings and view them from the outside. I could evaluate my situation and past experiences with an objective lens and think and behave rationally. I could feel the deep peace of my overall self outside of the turmoil.

Here, it’s all consuming. I’m drowning in it. I hate it here.

I can’t escape my misery, I’m fully sober. There’s no soothing and numbing from an outside substance. Honestly, it was the most I’ve struggled in a long time. How nice would it be to go to a bar and have a drink and lose myself in a crowd of people talking and laughing? Even just go and not have a drink, just to prey on the energy? But I do have the awareness at least that that would be dangerous territory at the present moment and not worth the risk.

So how do I incorporate that feeling I had when I was away to when I’m here and all of my issues are presented to face once again?

I visited these places to see my best friend and my Mamaw. I spent time with more family as well and found it extremely enjoyable. As my Mamaw said during one of our deep conversations on my childhood,

“I never want you to doubt that you were loved.”

I think a key I need to focus on is the unconditional love I feel from these people, though far, is still with me. I am still loved.

My first night home after unpacking and cleaning I was enraged, miserable and I did what I do best: I took to my car and drove. As I was driving I contemplated, if I will be extremely honest, the abstract concept of ending my life. But then I became aware of the distinct feeling that my Real Dad was with me. He was with me and he understood. He ended his life too. He regretted it. He knew the emotions I was feeling, the overwhelmingness of them and he was here to bring comfort and comfort alone.

I always sought out the presence of my Dad but it makes complete sense that he would step back and allow my Real Dad to be the one to be here for me. He understood better, I was so much like him. The time with my Mamaw opened the door to understand him better and to see him again. I could find the deep down wound in my soul that was missing and grieving him all this time.

I realized then that he had always been here, he’d just been waiting. He understood why I pushed him away. But the unconditional love a father has for his daughter has never faltered.

I am loved. Though I feel very alone at this present moment, so much of it is my own making. I fear connection with others because I fear it being taken away. My past experiences have made me very wary of care and love being shown to me. When will they leave? When will they prove that they don’t actually care?

I cannot become jaded. I have to open my heart to feel loved and to love others in the way I spoke on in ‘The New Way to See’. There’s so much love to be had, to give still. The defense mechanisms I have set up so defiantly over time don’t make that less so or make me less worthy of it. 

I am ready to give and receive love. I am ready to give and receive joy. I am ready to open myself up to people outside of a blog on the internet or superficial conversations. I am ready to see others in person and experience new things. I am ready to no longer isolate myself from others because I don’t feel, deep down, I’m worthy of them.

I took a cross stitch from my Mamaw’s house that says, “Give Thanks”. I am thankful for my experiences and the feeling of true unconditional love I experienced on my trip. I’ll think of it when I see it every day.

I’ll carry that love with me, my father with me, as I face a new day even though I truly don’t want to. He didn’t but I can.

Heartbreak & Loss

The Mirror.

Posted on

One full week after Affair Day, my ex partner and I lost our shit.

We faced off, chest to chest. I grabbed him by his chin with the tightest grip I could, forced him to look me in my eyes, and then I struck him.

I hit my partner. I bloodied his lip. I had lost control and the rage had spilled into a place I couldn’t contain anymore. I am extremely ashamed of this. I didn’t know that was inside of me.

This moment struck a chord. Mirroring each other, we sat and stared for a long while. And then he broke, the words came tumbling out of him. I sat across from him as he bared his soul and began to sob. All of the deep rooted issues, fears, and insecurities finally came to the surface.

Eventually, I crossed the room and I held him. I held him until he calmed down and then we went our separate ways for the night.

After this, I could really see him. As a child, a teenager, a young man at war. I could see everything that had hurt him and how it shaped him into who he is today. I could see what motivated him to do what he did. I understood it as it struck a chord with me. I didn’t ask myself why.

I will not share what he told me as it is indeed his story to tell. These are mine.

This new feeling of understanding and empathy inspired me to try again so we went to couples counseling. We tried to make it work. This ignited a lot of my introspection. My codependent tendencies would have never been challenged if he was not there to display them in real time. I would have never been shown how I could be toxic too. It took a second to sink in. He was supposed to be the one who was wrong. My perception was skewed, I couldn’t see how we were similar.

I do strongly believe in peoples ability to change. I believe in my own. I think every single person has the capacity. In him, I had seen it when he got sober shortly after I did. I thought he could do anything he set his mind too but his recent behavior had seeded me with doubt. Even as I tried to make it work, I was living in fear that he would disappoint me again as I shakily tried to recenter my view of him.

A week or so ago, I came to a place where I had to acknowledge that our paths couldn’t move forward together. Even as I saw the efforts we were making, there was too much of us that had been destroyed along the way. I didn’t trust him to be careful with my heart while also keeping a part for myself, it was all or nothing. My own hurt was suffocating me and the growth I was trying to make. My intuition was telling me to go deeper into myself but I was still looking at him. I was always going to be looking at him.

So you can imagine it stung when I saw him soothing his hurts in the same old ways just days after I left him. I fled to my car and listened to songs about heartbreak and mentally screamed at him, “I believed in you! You deserve so much better than that!’

But let’s be real here: It also just outright bottomed me out emotionally to feel like I wasn’t good enough, I had been replaced, and I was way too easy to forget.

I was moving forward, I was trying to heal. I wanted him to do it too! But if I am really real with myself (as this stupid blog often pushes me to be) I didn’t want him to be with someone else. That wasn’t the plan. I wanted him to do it, and do it alone, so that we could finally have time to heal separately. We could be made pure by our transformations. In the end, we could make our way back home.

I have to let that go. One, it’s unrealistic and unfair. Two, I had been trying to convince myself I was blazing on a hero’s journey but after experiencing this past week, without seeing him moving on, I probably would have gone back to him. I would have eventually soothed myself with him as he did with others. I am no better. I don’t think I would have made it many days past The Numbing. Removing the option of his comfort forced me to push forward and find comfort in myself, I can’t act like I chose it freely.

Nevertheless, I had to sit here in my misery for more than a day to be comfortable enough to explore what it was and, in turn, to finally look at myself.

Believe me, I’ve hated every single second of it. I feel like I’m missing a god damn limb. I look and feel like a shell of who I was. I can’t stand the idea of him getting the comfort I crave from being on someone’s pedestal while I feel like I am going to literally die here in the cold trying to heal myself. I hope you read that in the bratty tone it’s supposed to be.

But we have chosen our journeys. As I began mine I finally had to ask myself: Why wouldn’t I just give up? He’d hurt me so badly, why do I still want to understand him? Why do I still want his approval if I think I am so much better than him?

After finishing The Roots., I gained clarity on the patterns and the whys of my own internal monologues and actions. As I uncovered this about myself, it all felt extremely familiar to me. I had heard it before. Then I realized: Of course I could never give up on him! It would have felt like I was giving up on myself because were the same fucking person!

But Savannah, you were faithful! You never cheated! That’s worse!

Yeah, and you bet your ass that was my first rebuttal to this realization too. I didn’t cope with things from my past the way he did! I’m not bad like him! But in reality, that only gave me the leg up to be self righteous. I always got to be the wronged party, the worthy and good one, if his attacks were so much worse. As much as it hurt, I enjoyed the power his more obvious hurts gave. If he felt unworthy of me, he would never leave me.

He went for the kill, but I went for a death by a thousand cuts. I may have not been unfaithful but I was emotionally manipulative. In my constant desire to isolate myself from any perceived threats, I withdrew and hoarded everything he needed to feel safe, loved, and needed.

To me, sometimes he is the Two of Cups radiating with everything good I see in him. We are unified, we are soulmates. I’ve never loved another more. Reversed, I feel that he has fooled me and is actually a snake, coiled and waiting to strike! He must be the reason for all my disharmony! I run, frightened, until I find myself again where I started: the me who sees him as the Two of Cups.

I would attach myself to his side, I would glow with the sheer love and desire to be around him. I would shower him with love, praise, and affection. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, I would shrink back with no explanation, leaving him cold and rejected. As he mentally spiraled, barely any reassurance or warmth could be given until I brought myself back full circle.

To him, I was the Queen of Swords. He thought we could take on the world together. I could make everything around him make sense, pointing out the joy around us, remembering the things he could not. He was motivated and inspired by the standard I held us too. Nobody could hold a candle to me, he crowned me as the one he wanted to be by his side when we conquered it all.

Reversed: We couldn’t. It didn’t make sense. I didn’t remember it right. My standards were destroying him. The flame extinguished, my crown was taken off and thrown carelessly to the side.

Soon, he’d cradle my tear streaked face, pick it back up and replace it.

We weren’t getting anywhere. We were always going to be two damaged bozos looking around and shrugging our shoulders while randomly stabbing at each other.

I have spent years telling him that is is how he thought. Pointing out the patterns in his moods, his relationships prior, trying to get him to just see so he could stop hurting himself, hurting me. Probably should have looked at yourself, bitch.

That’s the thing, I did question myself, I knew this turmoil inside of me couldn’t be right. But his childhood was so traumatic, mine paled in comparison. I should be mentally sound and able to lead the way, you know, like he told me I was. It was how he saw me. But we both just rambled off the version of our childhood that we had rehearsed, the version with no feelings to it. It was not until his true feelings were revealed that I could identify with him and see my own.

As we found in The Roots., It only takes one moment to completely augment a child’s perception of their limited reality. It only takes one moment to send their emotions into hiding, to make them see the world as only good and evil, and to base their identity on how others see them so they never feel less than again.

To dig deeper into the roots: remember that seeing my Real Dad’s girlfriend looking for pity disgusted me. Since being looked at with pity is what had just caused me so much shame, I was revolted by her neediness for it. I internalized that letting my insecurities show made me weak and pathetic. I found comfort in feeling like I was better than her, she couldn’t hurt me as I looked down on her.

His story is not the same as mine but the themes are similar. Driven by a need to feel better than others, to feel loved and desirable: he looks outward to affirm himself. He seeks out those who will worship him, but he has no connection too so that if rejected, it does not matter. Driven by my need to feel better than others, to feel loved and desirable: I put myself on a pedestal of my own creation. To be looked at and admired, but not touched. My attention is a reward. I do not risk the vulnerability of someone thinking they have a claim to me or to reject it if its offered.

These absolute shit coping skills, as well as the never ending love/hate cycle, are just defenses we’ve used to protect that child inside of us from ever feeling like they aren’t good enough again. We cannot be hurt if we are emotionally detached or destroying anything that could make us feel small.

The point I’ve always missed is: It does not matter that I never did any of this intentionally, the resulting damage to him is the same as it was to me.

We love each other so deeply because we desperately see everything in the other that we want to heal in ourselves. It’s heartbreaking, honestly. No matter how badly we wanted it or how inspired we were by each other, we couldn’t release the defenses around our deepest fears. We couldn’t break the cycles of the extremes we saw each other in. When we were in a position to try, too much had happened. I retreated again.

In the roots of it all, we were just scared and we just wanted to be loved.

I cannot go back in time. I cannot fix it. Instead, I have to recognize that I loved him so much despite of the fact that he was a direct mirror of myself. I can love myself the same way. I can forgive myself for hurting him as I forgave him for hurting me.

I have to integrate the Two of Cups with the fallen crown, the snake with the Queen of Swords. I have to accept them as all parts of a single image. I have to move forward to find a world of balance, a world where good and bad exists in harmony and vulnerability builds trust. After all, this does not just affect our relationship, this is the lens in which we see our entire lives.

We have said before that I’m the usually the one to start the next phase of our lives. He often follows my lead.

In my mirror image, I found myself searching to find the meaning behind it all. I dug deep, I labored, I meticulously excavated and turned over every thing I could. I took my time to linger as he is where I felt safe. I examined every memory of him, every touch, every lie. How did we become this? How do we fix it?

I neared the end of my search, it was time to go home. But then, in darkest parts of the roots, I stumbled upon the child he had hidden away. The child who was scared, the child who reached out only to be slapped away, the child he’s been so valiantly defending. Next to him, was my own. They had been waiting.

As I pull her out, I hope he follows soon.

Self Reflection

The Numbing.

Posted on

I think as an addict it is basically in the DNA to run from your emotions.

Numbing, I guess they’d call it. I used to drink to numb.

Well, I used to drink for anything. I used it as a one size fits all emotional stimulant and suppressor. Obviously that didn’t work. But that’s not what I’m writing about today.

Today (as I write this) I am One Year, Three Months, and Twenty Days sober.

Today I feel like a bucket of fucking swamp mud.

I think my new numbing agent has become Doing. I’m always bopping around doing something. Cleaning, studying, decorating, rearranging, shopping online. I will start one task and snowball into three others. I stop to meditate which should be considered restful but is honestly just Constructive Rest. Everything I do must have a Purpose.

I dont think this is necessarily bad. I think it becomes bad when my body and mind is screaming at me to STOP. REST. And I can’t make myself do it. Even at night before bed it seems like a crescendo until I command myself ‘and now……Sleep!’

My affirmations for my days off with no plans are consistently ‘Don’t rush.’ ‘You are not on a schedule.’ ‘You can do whatever you want when you want.’

Today, after a full pot of coffee, I decided to put up some shelves that my ex partner was supposed to put up for me. I don’t know if you have ever tried to use a drill but in my experience it is a device engineered to make everything look like it would be easy but actually fucks it all up almost instantly. After my fifteenth attempt at drilling the screws to mount the hardware the drill slipped and I rammed my hand painfully into the brass. I threw it down and screamed, ‘You were supposed to do this, you stupid mother fucker!’

I sat back in tears and took a few heaving breaths, picked up the drill, and then with a Valkyrie cry drilled the screw into the wood with my entire life force behind it. 

Then I finished the other shelf. Then I did laundry. Then I did more website work. Then I contemplated the exact placement of the shelves. I didn’t know which drill bit was 6mm for the drywall anchors. So I did more laundry. Checked off more to dos. Googled “what does a 6mm drill bit look like”. Back to the website. Inspected the wall to see if I even needed drywall anchors. Laundry. Stared at the wall. Inspected the drill bits. Stared at the wall. Stared at the shelves. The wall. The bits. The shelves. The wall.

I was getting frantic. I moved my tarot set up to the living room and started looking for a spread to read. I didn’t even know what I wanted but I needed something. I was starting to emotionally capsize as I desperately searched for anything to hold onto.

And then finally, I just stopped. I just stopped and sat there. I didn’t meditate. I didn’t write. I just sat on my couch and let those emotions finally roll over.

It was un-fucking-comfortable. I am so… sad. I’m sad. I’m sad that my relationship with my ex partner breathed its final death rattle. I’m sad for everything I had to endure to get there. I’m sad I’m building the life we dreamed of alone. I’m sad for the future I could have had. I’m sad that I’ll never reach out in bed next to me to find him there again. I’m sad that I’m even sad about it. I’m sad that I don’t know what a 6mm drill bit looks like so I can’t finish installing my shelves. He knew.

This is absolutely a bad case of break up goggles. I am aware that there is a large difference in what you feel and what you know. I know that choosing to let him go was the best choice for me. I know that the path that I am on now is the right one. I know that future would have always had an undercurrent of mistrust and insecurity. I know that I would have reached out at night and wondered if he was thinking of someone else. I know I deserve someone to love me the way I love them. I know I’ll figure out how to put up the shelves on my own.

But I’m still sad. As I sat there in the uncomfortable, I also know it’s okay for me to sit in the sad. Sit and really feel it spread through my body and my mind. To let it weigh me down. I’m not wallowing in it just because I’m not ‘doing something about it’. This is doing something about it. After all, putting on the breakup goggles for a second is fine as long as I have the ability to take them off just as quickly.

Plus, the mental image of me sobbing while smiling hysterically saying, “Don’t worry! I know good days are coming! My future is bright!” is decent comedic relief.

I live in such fear that if I sit and really feel it that I will be dragged into a pit of despair and then I’ll never do anything ever again! I fear that if I have these thoughts I will go backwards straight to him. But that’s simply not true. If I don’t sit with it, I wont heal it. If I don’t allow the thoughts to walk through, I wont let them walk out. There’s no escaping it and I don’t want to. I don’t want to be numb.

I want to be alive. And this is part of it.