I write about love and hope and dreams and I write those things with conviction. I also write about all of my faults and my regrets which are in plenty. I have spent the last 10 years of my life slowly losing parts of myself and am only now learning to reclaim them. I was married and while it was to a wonderful man, neither one of us were truly being ourselves and so in the end, we got divorced. The hardest part is that we have a beautiful little girl and so the damage was not forgone. And then I fell madly in love. I began a relationship with someone I had known for 8 years (7 at the time). In the beginning it was so beautiful but eventually, as happens when you go through a divorce and try to love, the pieces begin falling apart.
I lost everything about who I was. Over this last year I have literally been in an emotional war. The failure of marriage is why they say --- every expert, everyone who has gone through it --- that you should wait a year before dating. I didn't. Instead I got involved with someone and we had exceptionally beautiful moments but when we fought, we fought horribly. We both got together at quite possibly the worst time in our lives. It didn't bring us closer together, it just ripped up apart. I knew better but my heart wouldn't listen. And so now, now all that is left are remnants of war. Every single wound exposed or patched together with shotty materials and there is nothing left but a shell of a person. My heart. My heart wants to love so much but can't anymore. Not really. The hurt I have goes way deeper than just a breakup. Everything I believed in about love, about myself, was shattered.
So now I'm taking the steps to heal. I started going to therapy and while some will cringe at the thought, it's been the hardest thing I have ever done. I found therapists that actually found a way to open up my soul and let every hurtful and painful thing seep to the surface. It's haunting, honestly. But I'm completely fragile. I feel lost and everything we discuss tears into me a little deeper each time. And so the past month has been a cry-fest. I realize this might seem odd or uncomfortable for some of you but I have. At night, I think about my previous relationship, I think about why I loved him so much and why we were so unwilling to fix ourselves first. So here I am. I have someone that loves me and I can't even allow anything to happen because no matter what I do, no matter what I tell myself, my heart is still with S. It doesn't make for a very uplifting tale, I agree, but the honest to god truth is I've never experienced more pain than this. I also can't make my heart do what it doesn't want.
And so I'm stepping back from everything. I'm not ready. I can't handle even a tiny disappointment because it only cuts into me like someone took a medieval dagger and began sawing through my chest. My last relationship was so unhealthy but it's not because it wasn't worth saving or wasn't real, it was because the two people in it were extremely unhealthy on their own and so there was no chance it could work until they both got healthy. Now there is no hope. Now it's just a painful chapter in my book. A love I will always hurt from. At least until my therapy works. I'm doing this therapy that allows my mind to start forgetting painful memories. I have memories from as early as 6 months old that I need to be erased. I say erased because the type of therapy I'm doing will allow painful memories to fade away indefinitely. I have learned that the road I've been on has been fraught with violence and death and cruelty and negligence and self doubt and as a result, it's not possible to be the woman I should be until I can take those painful memories away. And so I'm going to be "healthy". Now let's not get carried away and misunderstand what "healthy" actually means. It's about accepting and confronting the painful events of one's life and not letting them take you over. It's not about sanity. It's about healing.
I have made so many mistakes. This last year I became someone I didn't recognize. I was like a soldier coming back from war. My war was a lifetime of a culmination of things and it only just flashed back to me last August. And my emotional pain, my fears, my faults, all just rose to the surface. Maybe some of you know what I mean. But I can't erase my own actions. Can't erase the things I did wrong. That part is really painful. But I can say I wish I would have done things differently. I can say I'm sorry. And mean it. As in "I'm sorry, I will never do that again". No one gets here on their own. The pain isn't self-inflicted, it's a reaction to pain done to me (though I hate saying that because I don't like the idea of playing a "victim". I'm not a victim, just a product of things others found necessary to do to cause pain and harm) and so my mechanism is I put on my armor and I defend myself. As my therapist said, I am very resilient. I'm great in survival mode --- but no can survive in survival mode all of the time.
And so I sit here in the rain and have yet another good cry and I miss who I miss and know what my heart wants and doesn't want. I can't fathom disappointment or any more hurt. So the only recourse is to do precisely what I'm doing. Go "talk it out" and get back to simple. Just do the basics: Raise and love and enjoy this perfectly wonderful little girl of mine and know we'll be okay if it is just the two of us forever (well until she's all grown up and has love, which I hope and pray for every day. I never want her to be alone or unloved or not loving. It's the only reason we're here on this earth). I will focus on work and my art because it's the one safe place I've got and I can be totally free. Know what is true and what is not. I have made tremendous mistakes but I am all too hard on myself. (Another lesson I've learned in therapy) And when you're hard on yourself, somehow, people pick up on that and they are all too happy to watch it happen. Sometimes they'll even contribute to it because it's a lot easier to blame someone else than to realize you too did a lot of bad things. This week I hope to forget more. I hope that the light therapy will begin to heal the wounded girl and bring back the strength and belief in myself I let seep through the cracks.
I may never repair the damage that has been done but at least I know I exhausted all possible resources and tried. I may not be able to accept love or give love for a long while and as much as that scares me, I have to accept it. Why? Because I'm not one to lie to myself. If I'm not honest with myself, who will be? I can't expect any of you to understand nor am I asking that of you. But as you know, I'm not a writer that hides behind fluffy words or cutesy expression. I'm real. That means I'm exposed and you may think I suck or I'm a whiner or I've got issues or maybe you see that I'm strong and I'm smart and I'm remarkably optimistic. I can't get to the better - second chance - part of my life until I repair the mounting damage so I will. I'm starting back at the bottom. My foundation is shaky at best, I have no idea what materials to use to rebuild but I'm sure they'll present themselves in time. So that's that.
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