I have been awful about writing lately. I usually sit down and feel like I have so many thoughts just waiting to spill out of my fingertips. Not lately.
I was thinking about how when I was really in the thick of my feelings Sean asked me if I was still painting. (Sort of like how I’m checking in with myself now about if I’m still writing.) Painting was a part of me that most people today don’t even know used to exist so heavily in my day to day life. I told him I didn’t even have the capacity to think about that. He joked saying something along the lines of, “but you’re an artist, isn’t that how your greatest masterpieces are supposed to be born? Through all of this pain and struggling?” The next day he asked me to repaint a sign to hang outside of the building. I was hesitant but it was basic enough as far as the project went. I didn’t see it at the time, but it was also a lifeline he was tossing me, not tossing, but forcing me to take.
When I was in high school I didn’t have many friends, I was shy and I had transitioned to a small school my junior year. I spent most of my lunch hour and any free time I had in the art room. (art teachers should be more acknowledged for saving a kids life) after graduating painting was nothing but a luxury. Years later I was falling in love with someone who spent their evenings with me, making dinner, playing pool, and then we’d sit in the living room painting and alternating who got to play the music. This little pocket of a life was what love felt like for the first time in my life. Little did I know at that time it wasn’t him I was falling in love with, it was a part of myself that I hadn’t seen in a long time. I was falling in love with my own life. I had mistaken him for my source of happiness, forgetting that art and expression was really what was comforting me. When the house burned down I lost so many canvases, both complete and unfinished. I don’t really care about those, what I miss most are all of my journals.
Now I’m here, I’m feeling better, I’m finally living my life like I want to be alive, and because of that I feel like everything I write is fairly mindless and far from thought provoking. I was looking back on some of my emails recently and realized yesterday marked one year of me seeing my current therapist. Many, many years ago a friend of mine sent me a screenshot of someone's facebook status. It was about all of the goals and milestones they had reached by seeing a therapist. I wanted that, I wanted to check those boxes and be able to claim that as my life. I didn’t know where to start, it took some trial and error, and eventually I learned that therapy doesn’t magically fix you, you really have to put in a lot of work. That work is uncomfortable and it gets much worse before it gets better. My purpose here isn’t to convince anyone to see a therapist, because if I’ve learned anything so far it’s that it doesn’t do anything until you’re really ready to put in the work. Last year around this time I ended up in an emergency room with someone I loved, in the same room I sat with my dad, dealing with the exact same problem. I needed this cycle to end, I needed to stop feeling the hurt and the trauma of everything reminding me of my dad. I learned about a therapy process called EMDR. I heard so many mixed reviews and wasn’t sure if it would help me or just break the dam with no way to repair it. I took a shot, I scheduled a phone consultation with my current therapist whom I now admire and trust wholeheartedly.
I want to acknowledge how far I have come in the past year with her. I want to recognize both the milestones and setbacks I have taken, entangled together to create this bizarre and beautiful human experience. I have never cried so much in front of someone, let alone a complete stranger. These past few years will hopefully be the most extensive parts of my trauma that I will have to face without the proper tools. Now I feel equipped, in many ways I think if I have survived these last five years of my life I can truly do anything. I used to want to heal and go to therapy because I wanted to be happy, but I wasn't really putting in the work, I was waiting for my magical potion to make it all better. Eventually my pain from trauma consumed me. It began ruling my life, it morphed into this form of isolation that I never knew had existed when you could simultaneously be surrounded by so many people. I had nobody to relate to, I had faced these difficulties in the span of a few years when most people won’t experience them in a lifetime. I was existing in constant survival mode, I couldn’t relate to the mundane struggle, I couldn’t relate to joy or optimism of the future, I felt as though I had fallen so far behind there was no point in trying to catch up. I wanted that, I wanted to focus on anything else besides taking it one second at a time, no matter how hard I tried to muster an inkling of that, it didn’t exist anywhere inside of me. I said things people expected as responses, but I didn’t feel the emotion behind most of them. I began putting the work in because I simply couldn’t take the hurt any longer, I couldn’t continue on in a life that I felt as though wasn’t supposed to exist any longer, like I cheated and for doing so my existence was a cruel mistake. It wasn’t brave, it wasn’t being strong willed, it was reaching a bottom that I would finally do anything to feel some relief. I started to change, but parts around me weren’t changing with me, and you can’t ask it of them, that’s why healing can be so lonely. To ever feel unloved in your own journey of healing is the truest form of heartbreak. For so many years I thought if maybe I just tried a little harder, did things a little differently, if I could just make myself a little more lovable, things would change. This is called codependency. Codependency has brainwashed me my entire life. From watching it as a kid to living it. It tricked me into thinking any part of my own self care or setting boundaries was selfish and a disservice to the people I loved. The people I loved who didn’t know how to love me back. I thought codependency was just two people leaning on each other. My understanding of the word has greatly shifted, and in identifying parts of my past this way is like finally remembering the name of something that had been on the tip of my tongue all day, finally placing a name to a face, causing a “boop” to the system to interrupt the process and deter it from the same track. It’s a conclusion, it’s sewing up the loose ends, it’s closing a chapter. I’m learning to recreate my own future by avoiding repeating my past.
Just last week I was telling my therapist about a relationship I once had with a guy who would get drunk and angry, accusing me of doing things I had never done. I would want to leave, to go anywhere but be stuck there. He would prevent me from leaving the house. We lived in a space that only allowed for one way to enter or exit. He laid on the ground in front of the door, preventing me from opening it. Another time he stole my keys so I couldn’t drive away. He locked me out and I fell asleep in the lawn. I had been distant, I told my therapist, and he was drunk, so wasn’t thinking clearly, and… She interrupted me. She first asked me why I was still defending someone I hadn’t been in a relationship with for years? I had no idea. She booped my system. She then asked me if I was aware that if I had called the police he would be facing DV charges, that this was a form of abuse and manipulation. I had no idea, I knew that it wasn’t right but I didn’t realize how much I was really abandoning myself for people who didn’t care about me. Life is weird like that, when you’re just trying to survive, sometimes the best possible environment for yourself isn’t even a healthy one. At that time in my life it was still the lesser of all the evils, I couldn’t afford to live alone, and I so often felt like I never had a safe space to be, to be present as something other than a burden.
Growing up my dad had been my rock, he was honest to a fault and he was the only person on the planet I trusted wholeheartedly, this was partially due to his convincing me that I should never, never trust other people. Once he started drinking he began lying about everything. It was hard for me to recognize what was real for all of those years, mostly in my relationship with him, but that rippled into all of the other parts and relationships in my life. It left a wound that I think I will spend a lifetime trying to heal. The man I trusted didn’t exist in there anymore. He had so many medical issues in the last few years of his life, he didn’t have a car, and I was the only person left who didn’t push him out of their life. He used to call me claiming he was having a heart attack, I’d rush to pick him up only to be told he really just needed a ride to the liquor store. One year I spent 2 hours on the phone with him outside of my own birthday party on a curb convincing him that his life was still worth living, if not for him but for me. Once I witnessed him having a seizure from alcohol withdrawal, it was one of the most terrifying moments of my entire life. That then became his next wolf cry. How was I ever supposed to trust anyone again? He continuously lied, altered his stories, and withheld information from me. This was manipulation, and this was still abuse. (BOOP I’m learning the names for the faces.) He avoided addressing any issues or admitting to any of his faults because he knew he was barely clinging on to me, he did whatever he needed to do to alter my perception of reality enough that I would never leave. He did this selfishly and thoughtlessly. All I ever wanted from him was recognition of the things he had done to me, and for him to apologize, to mean it, and to convince me that I hadn’t been crazy this whole time, that never came. The day he died he called me eight times, voicemail after voicemail claiming to need a ride to the hospital. I didn’t believe him, I blocked his number with the intention to take a few days before reaching back out to him. The worst possible outcome emerged from the one time I set a boundary to protect myself, and despite the work I do I will forever carry that weight with me, no matter how many times I remind myself that his death wasn’t my fault. This is what makes setting any boundary with someone I love so difficult. The worst has already happened, but I can’t bear knowing someone I love could be hurting and I’m not doing anything about it. I’m working to rewrite this, I’m working to learn to do this in a healthier way. To stand up for myself, to be the person for myself that I needed for so much of my life.
For so many years I have played this puppet to people, constantly wondering, “What is wrong with me? Why am I repeating this cycle over and over?” It was never me, there wasn’t something fundamentally wrong with me, I just grew up in an environment where I was never allowed to look out for myself, I was never able to trust myself. So when the one person I loved the most, my own dad, used that against me, it was something I thought I’d never be able to recover from. This is just the tip of the iceberg to so much of my heartbreak. People make their choices, they are in charge of their own lives and the way they grow and learn from the hard parts. I am not responsible for anybody but myself anymore.
I’ve been busy though, I’ve been pursuing a new love story. I sort of feel like my writing is becoming repetitive? But I don’t care anymore. I’m twisting and turning and reshaping my brain, and this is how I do it! I am working on following the breadcrumbs back to myself, back to my own life. Walking back to all of those parts of myself I continually abandoned for other people. I’m returning to someone, but it’s somehow someone I’ve never met. I’ve been in here somewhere all along. I’m walking through this next door kinder and softer, with more love and compassion and wiping the judgment off on the welcome mat. Everyday I’m waking up with a brand new sense of self, in fact I began this entry by writing about how I no longer had anything to write about and here I am surprising myself. I’m shaking hands with my past selves, thanking them for showing up when they didn’t want to, and I’m creating new deals with the future. Last week I laughed a lot, I went home alone and I stayed up until four in the morning making cupcakes. I was blasting my music and singing and dancing and crying and laughing at the dog. I never used to dance, not even alone. I think I feel a little lighter, like I can finally move my body, shaking off the build up of years of hurt I’ve been clinging to. I was baking and falling in love with my little life. I am romanticizing my own life, I am re-writing the greatest love story of all time.