A year
ago Thursday, I stood in the calf-deep snow and cried gigantic tears on
the side of the road. The snow was falling around me like I was starring
in a cinematic masterpiece as the heartbroken heroine who's life was
falling apart right there in front of my house, and I bawled in the
freezing cold for fifteen minutes, surrounded by glittery fluff and
freezing cold air.
A year ago Thursday, I
started my new life by myself and thought that I would never survive it.
I spent so many weeks completely allowing myself to deteriorate. I
drank until I couldn't think anymore and let my life fall apart to the
point that the people closest to me were terrified I was going to do
something awful to myself. I let myself fall into a depression whose
depth I had no concept of. I just dropped myself in like a rusty penny
into an endless wishing well and went with whatever was going to happen,
hoping something would catch me and I wouldn't have to do any of the
work. I didn't work to fix things, I didn't push myself to look at what
had brought me to this hideous place, I just plummeted and decided not
to put any safeguards into place that would allow me to rescue myself
were I to have the desire to stop my descent.
And
then I met someone, many someones, who saw me, maybe didn't realize I
was falling, but rescued me anyway. They scooped a girl up and
unknowingly saved her. I had my airs of sassy drunk sadness that made
people laugh and want to spend time with me, despite the serious
undertones that existed in what they perceived as jokes about
self-hatred and suicide. We drank and giggled about how much we hated
people and became a safety net for each other and all the hatred soon
faded and turned into laughter. I found myself crying much less
frequently than I laughed and felt grateful, so genuinely grateful for
these people that had stumbled into my life.
I
had a depressed beauty that drew a fellow sad human to me late one
Friday night in April. A fellow sad human that I immediately felt a
kinship with because his self-created purgatory of misery seemed almost
identical to mine. We became almost instantly inseparable and I fell
madly in love with his gentle kindness and the way he held me like it
was literally keeping him alive. I allowed myself to forget that I had
things that needed fixing in my heart in lieu of his nasaly voice
singing Conor Oberst to me late into the night as the hot summer heat
rolled in. I forgot that I had work to do in my head because I was so
distracted by his stupid blue eyes and the way his long ginger eyelashes caught his
tears when he unashamedly got too excited about something he felt so
passionately about that he couldn't stop himself from falling to pieces. I couldn't
help but forget that I needed to fix me because the way his hand
clutched onto mine whilst we were together felt so completely like home.
We
spent all of our time reveling in our brokenness by drinking as much as
we could and making so many poor decisions that it is almost staggering
to think about now. It all seemed so beautiful, and even today, as I
sit here and type this, I look back at those nights, windows open, empty beer cans
surrounding our tangled limbs, I smile so sincerely for the love that I
was so, so fortunate to have been able to feel. It felt so completely
simple and raw and real that I never once questioned even a single
moment of it. I only allowed myself to fall entirely into that feeling
so I didn't have to think about anything else. I fell so hard and so suddenly that I had no idea what was happening until it was nearly over.
But
now? A year on from that crying girl on the side of the snowy road? I'm
just a sad girl in a different place and I am completely furious with
myself. Those blue eyes have left, those hands don't reach out and
tickle mine until I lock fingers with them anymore, and that voice hasn't sung to me in many moons. I have suffered a
series of losses that I hate myself for allowing, and I have spent the past
month reflecting on the work I did and didn't do during my divorce and
have realized that I fucked up and robbed myself of the valuable time
that I so badly needed to make my heart whole again by myself because falling for
someone else made everything so much easier. It was so much more simple
for me to focus my energy on loving someone else than to have to learn
how to love myself genuinely and entirely.
So
this year, I have decided is mine. I went into last year with the
intention of living for myself and fixing every broken piece that my
exes and friends and I created within myself, but I let that promise
that I had made to myself, that promise that was so desperately important, fall apart with the flash of that
crooked smile and the promise of a case of cheap beer.
I'm not going to let that happen again. I need to re-learn how to love myself again with the ferocity that I love everyone and everything that I encounter with. I need to stop focusing all of my attention on everything else because it's easier than looking inward and learning to love my broken pieces and fix the ones that are hardest for me to love. I am going to choose to pick myself back up and remember why I am valuable for me, not for anybody else, just for me. I am going to stop putting everything I have into the wrong humans, and cultivate beautiful things that make my heart feel happier. I am going to stop making decisions that are going to hurt and clutching onto hideous things because my romantic heart is so addicted to the idea of holding on. I am going to finally, for once, do this for me and only me and become the strong, fully capable, not-always-crying girl that I know I am worth pushing to be.
I'm going to drop myself down again, but this time, it's going to be down a well lined with as many stunning, amazing, worthwhile things as I can get my paws on. I'm going to plummet until I am whole again.
I'm going to save my own dang self.
