Wonderwall

I met someone. Actually, I met someone before I even knew that I had met someone. It took me awhile to notice him but after I did, I couldn’t stop noticing him. He was one of those people that I didn’t take the time to get to know right away but I found one of my greatest friends in him once I let him close. I cannot express my gratitude for finding this amazing person in my life at a time when I really needed a friend.

We have this synergy, this compatibility, this same wavelength that we function on that makes him one of those people that I think will always know me better than even my best friends. It takes a long time for people to get to know the real me because I put up a lot of walls to protect myself…barriers like humor, self-mockery, diversion and avoidance that keep people at arm’s length rather than near my heart where I sometimes desperately want someone to be. I don’t know that people can tell that these are walls that protect my true self because I maintain that facade so wholly that I think people accept that as my true self after a long time. He saw through it in weeks.

Not having to hide myself, or knowing that I can’t hide myself, is such a freeing notion. I know that he will pick up on even my subtlest moods or thoughts so there is not much efficacy in trying to hide my thoughts and emotions from him because he reads me so easily. I have never had someone so in tune with what I was thinking and feeling (and that includes the man that I spent six and a half years with) and it’s unnerving at first but almost freeing in the end because I feel like he knows who I am as a real person rather than the person that I want to convince others that I am. It’s frightening to know that he knows me so well…but comforting because he is drawn to be despite my flaws and shortcomings.

He doesn’t judge me (and let’s be honest…he has seen me in some of the darkest moments I have ever had and he knew and liked me before I knew so he knew me as a real person when I’m not trying to be pretty or flirtatious or fun). He’s balanced, calm, stable, mature and patient. He is so patient with me and the whole can of crazy that I can be at times…he has seen all of that and he doesn’t get tired of it. There’s a sense of acceptance when I am with him that I don’t feel like I experience genuinely with many other friends…he’s just one of the most supportive people I have ever met in my life and I am really glad that I can call him one of my closest friends.

The great thing about being friends with him is the laughter. There were so many moments when I doubted whether I would ever truly laugh again and he slowly brought me back to a place where I don’t feel guilty for laughing or like I am so fragile that if I laugh I will shatter into a thousand pieces. I will always thank him for giving me laughter and happiness and moments when I feel like he took some of that huge all-consuming sadness from me and put it aside.

The gifts that he gave to me are mainly that he gave me back my sense of self and made me beautiful for being the person I am. He sees me in the way that I wish everyone could see me (and yet it’s special because he is the only one who sees me this way) because I never feel more capable, more confident, more beautiful, more magnetic than when I am near him. It’s like he magnifies the positive things that he sees in me so that I can see them myself and recognize them in myself. He isn’t the reason for my sense of self…he is the reason that I can finally have the courage to look at my sense of self. I feel more like myself in the last four months than I have felt in the last four years and that is a wonderful gift for a friend to give to someone.

I’ll always be grateful for my friend, my confidante, the man who made me think that maybe I could love again. He’s my wonderwall.

Part of Me

I know it’s been a long time since I updated this site and I wont deny that part of my trepidation about writing stemmed from the fact that I employ a lot of emotion when writing and I was scared of the depths of emotion that I developed post-breakup. There was a sense of plunging into fathomless depths of feeling if I started writing again so I allowed myself a respite from all that emotion and stopped writing. I knew that I would be coming back to myself when I started writing again and although I had a few false beginnings…I really started to feel a desire to write again in the last week or so.

Part of this return to writing came when I went to our family condo in Islamorada, FL for Christmas with my dad and stepmom because I began writing and editing a line of books with her that she is releasing this year. Working that closely with the texture and nuance of words kindled a fire that was smoldering beneath a lot of pain…and even though it meant writing with tears in my eyes many nights, I began to write and love words again. 

Writing has always been a constant in my life and words have always been a place of safety and consistency for me as I have grown. My vocabulary has grown and changed but the texture and feel of words has not changed no matter how much I have. I will always love the way I can roll words around in my head or my mouth and sense whether the word has the right shape, texture and residual correctness for a blank that needs filled. That satisfaction of finding the right word is better than almost anything else I can think of (which might tell you how satisfying my life is right now).

My return to writing comes with the caveat that I do it for myself. Not for my readers, my friends, my family or the man that has recently made me come to love words and my skills with them. I made the promise to myself that when I picked this back up it would be for myself, my reasons and my desires and no one else’s. I knew that it would hurt to write, to explore my mind and find things that inspired me again but it hurts less every time I write. It’s refreshing to find things that inspire me to write, it’s bolstering to do something I am really good at.

It reminds me that no matter how much I have lost, I have not lost this. This is a part of me that no one can take away from me.

Filling the Spaces

I was so exhausted yesterday. The week was filled with moving, lots of goodbyes and sad moments, tons of work and stress and not nearly enough sleep. The result of all that stress was a final meltdown after work on Friday where I fell asleep around 8pm and slept off and on until 9am the next day. I did wake up a few times when the roommates came home and left and I blogged around 3am but otherwise I caught up on some much needed sleep. I realize that the times that I am the most vulnerable emotionally are when I am sick, tired and not feeling well…so I need to take care of myself to avoid getting so run down that emotional meltdowns like yesterday occur.

The plan for today was to run some errands and to unpack most of the boxes in my room. I moved in and just piled boxes all over since I had limited time and that resulted in an interesting wardrobe situation all week since I couldn’t find most of my clothes, shoes or makeup. I hung a curtain (yes, one) and got most of my clothes hung and sorted through so I know that I definitely need to do laundry tomorrow. The boxes have been emptied almost all the way and are stacked against one wall, the sheets are on the bed rather than sitting in a box next to the bed and I can walk around the room safely without adding bruises to my already battered legs. It was a successful day.

I also had a good talk to my bestie, Chili Pepper, and it was amazing to laugh and talk to her and remember that no matter how bad things are in my heart…there are always people that can make me laugh. Thanks to the besties that have been there for me as I go through this ordeal. Mel, Chili Pepper, Shanny Pants, and my step mom have all been wonderful shoulders to cry on as I heal my heart and try to find new love. Doom, Ogre, Marti, Uppers, Ryan, Lil Nazi and Narm have all been awesome guys as I get my shit back together and vacillate between slutsauce drunkenness and crying alone while curling my hair before I go out. Thanks to all of you for taking care of me and showing me who my real friends are and how much you guys care about me! It has been really rough and I know that I have spent most of the time… ahem…drinking self medicating but it has been a process to get over this breakup.

Hopefully, we are turning a corner? A corner where there is less Patron and more productivity?

The “Divorce”

I wonder what you are thinking right now…whether I ever cross your mind, whether you see something and think of me or catch your breath when you see someone on the street and think that it’s me for a split second. I wonder whether you think about the last six and a half years and ask yourself where we went wrong, how we ruined our relationship so badly. I think about your hands, your eyes, your lips and I miss the closeness of having someone in my life who knew me better than anyone else in the world…someone who could anticipate what I was thinking, what I wanted, what I would say just because they knew me so well. I miss lying on your chest and hearing your heart beat and knowing that your heart belonged to me and only me. I miss belonging to someone.

It’s surreal being back in this house since this is the last place I lived on my own before I lived with your family and then with you. I have this strange sense that you are just about to call me or walk in the door and then I remember that we aren’t together anymore and that you’ll never call or walk in the door again. It’s nice to be around people and have friends close again but I feel like the trade off of gaining friends and losing you was unfair. I keep reminding myself that love isn’t always enough and that even though I loved you with my entire being…we just were not meant to be together for the rest of our lives and it would have been unfair to try to keep each other tied down to an unhappy relationship. It was so hard to walk away from you when I knew that you would have spent the rest of your life with me but I thought we both deserved the chance to be with someone who we were perfectly paired with instead of fighting tooth and nail to make it work between two people that were incompatible as we were. I thought I was doing the right thing but I didn’t know that doing the right thing would be so heart breaking.

I pray that you find someone that can love you in all the ways that I couldn’t. I pray that I find someone like that, too. I pray that the pain of not having you in my life subsides soon.

This has been my beautiful broken time. My heart is broken, my body is broken. My mind keeps breaking as I push thoughts and memories of you away time and again. I feel like I have been through a divorce since I felt like we were husband and wife except for the ceremony and I feel like I lost all of that when I realized that neither of us were happy but that you would never leave me. This beautiful broken time after the “divorce” as we refer to it has tested me, strengthened me, broken me and will hopefully purify me…I’m so sorry I did this to us.

Dreaming

I keep having dreams about him. I fell asleep early because I was really short on sleep this week and that can make me emotional so I figured that going to bed was a good choice. Little did I know that my subconscious would have plans of its own. I dreamt about our breakup, packing stuff up, dividing stuff again and essentially finding out through his phone that he was dating a skinny blonde. I felt happy for him buy jealous in the dream and I know that it will be devastating to be replaced by each other when we get to that point. We went from thinking we would spend the rest of our lives together to being apart in the same town, just blocks apart geographically but great spans of space apart emotionally. I just want to stop thinking about him, to stop missing him. I know I’ll always love him but I want the longing to end.

Staying Behind

I became so accustomed to sleeping next to you and feeling you breathe and move that waking up in an empty bed feels strange. The safety of your arms around me kept me calmed and relaxed and the slow, deep breaths that you took as you drifted off to sleep often lulled me into dreams myself. The intimacy of knowing your sleeping breaths, holding your hand and being familiar with every inch of your body has been ripped from me and other people feel wrong. I catch myself comparing them to you and rejecting the differences because they simply aren’t what I have spent the last six and a half years with and they feel foreign. I don’t know that I can grow accustomed to another person and their habits, smells, touches, looks…I don’t know that I want to after the pain of losing you. Every day, I begin a love letter to you in my head and rip it up a thousand times til the tiny pieces scatter in my mind…I know that I was the one that left but you are the one that stayed in my heart and head.

 

My Beautiful Broken Time

I miss you.

My mind drifts back to you and I can’t focus on all the bad things that made me leave you. All I can see are the moments when I loved you so much that I felt like my world would collapse if you weren’t in my life. The memories of what it felt like to be loved by you keep flooding back and they crash down on me over and over until it feels like I can’t move or breathe or speak. I can’t remember the last time we kissed. I can’t remember the last time you told me you loved me. I can’t remember the last time that you looked at me with all of that love in your eyes and I felt safe. All I feel is alone.

I know that we weren’t meant to be together but I never thought that being apart from you would hurt this much. I thought that my heart had been shattered into too many pieces to even feel this pain but the pain is magnified and reflected in each broken shard of my heart. It feels like I lost my best friend, my lover, my roommate and my future all in one moment…it feels like I didn’t get the chance to say goodbye to you or the last six and a half years. It feels like there was so much left to say to one another and we never had the chance.

The only thing I can wish for is a chance to heal. I want time to erase this pain or at least dull it. I wanted a chance to be myself again but I didn’t realize that you defined so much of who I am. This breakup has been devastating but I don’t have anyone to talk to about it since everyone keeps telling me that I am better off now without you. I try to hear them and the logic in their arguments but they didn’t know you the way I did…they didn’t see the horror of our fights or hear the cutting words that could crush me but they also didn’t see the way you loved me so well and so fiercely when I needed love the most.

You loved me in ways that I don’t think I will ever find again and the thought of starting over with someone else is so daunting. I keep seeing you in other people and turning away from the pain of recognition because I fear that if I let myself grieve the loss of you, I’ll never be able to stop mourning you.

It never occurred to me that I would lose my first love. I hope that you aren’t my last.

Stay

 

My favorite song of the moment; literally has been on repeat nonstop for the last three work days…I can’t turn it off. It’s haunting, emotional, full of mourning, yearning, longing and regret. I have always loved Blue October but I think that this is one of those albums that came at a time when I could connect to it on a level that almost frightens me because there is so much raw power, anger, pain in the lyrics and sounds.

 

The Feel (Stay) is one of the best songs of the summer for me.

 

I know the music video is a little intense but I have listened to Blue October’s music long enough that it is tempered enough for me to see the beauty and art within it rather than be off put by its rawness and honesty. I think that it is freeing for someone else to feel some of the emotions I am dealing with and to express them; it’s liberating for me to hear that and experience it through someone else’s eyes.

 

I see the sun go down on the river

I feel the wind blow out, would’ve stayed to grey

I feel the air around you, it’s kind of closing in

Do you feel it fall, or do you feel at all? I can

I see the world keep moving as I stumble

They seem to move much faster than me

And while I sit in my four-cornered room dividing hearts for a little girl

Well I can’t be anything but who I am

And I wish you’d stay

That was the beginning of the two of us, the start of our show

Stay, stay, stay.

Now I would never have let go

And I see the sun go up as your image

And I feel the weight of your eyes as you stare

I feel it all when you, when you first, when you kissed my lips

You used to make me feel at home, you made me feel at home

You made me feel again

Oh and that’s when you used to say, “Will you stay, and not let go?”

That was just the two of us to think about, the stars of our show

And you would say, “I wish you’d stay and I’d never let go”

Oh I would never have let go

So take this heart of mine

You’ve taken it a hundred thousand times

But this time, this time, I’m gonna take it with me

I see the door close down behind you

I watch your face turn from glow to straight grey

I see the moon go up and it shines this glory on my face

Who would know? Who would know? Who would know?

How we would stay, and we should stay and never let go, oh hell no

There’s just three of us to think about now, in our show,

our show, our show

I think we’d stay, we’d just stay, and then we’d know

That we should never let go

Something to think about, her heart

Just look into those big brown eyes, and you’d just fall apart

We should stay, at least we’d stay, at least she’d know

That we should never let go

No, no, let go, go, oh.

I wish you’d stay

I wish you’d stay…

The Feel (Stay)

Half a Life

I know I can’t take one more step towards you

Cause all that’s waiting is regret

And don’t you know that I’m not your ghost anymore

You lost the love I loved the most.

 

I learned to live half a life

And now you want me one more time.

 

-Note: I have so many feelings inside that sometimes I don’t think that there are enough words to express what I am going through. I left someone that would have spent the rest of his life with me and I am rediscovering what it means to be on my own. I am battling a multitude of emotions so pardon the intermittent song lyrics as I struggle to find my voice again.

The Reason Why

People keep asking me why I decided to leave my almost-six-and-a-half-year relationship and I find myself unable to put my finger on just one reason. I think that I found my breaking point after six years of being told to change, being told that I was not enough and feeling as though I had to jump through hoops to be loved. I understand that relationships are not based on unconditional love because people are human and cannot love unconditionally, but I didn’t like that feeling that I had to earn someone’s love. The breaking point came after years of feeling dissatisfied and miserable and staying with something because of the time invested in it rather than as a result of deep love and compatibility. It was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do but ultimately a choice that I think will benefit me in the grand scheme.

It has been disconcerting to realize that my entire future has been wiped clean and all those well-laid plans have become obsolete. All my plans for the family, kids and eternity of love have disappeared with the words, “I can’t do this anymore” and I find myself untethered for the first time in six years. For the first time in a long time, I can make plans and not consider someone else’s feelings and plans. I put my life on hold for a long time to accommodate my boyfriend and I feel like I might have lost a little too much of myself in trying to please him and keep our relationship going. I need to remember to take care of myself and rediscover the things that make me happy rather than constantly be planning for someone else’s life.

Unfortunately, I am slightly daunted and terrified by all this empty space and time. I have spent the last six years with another person next to me in bed, another person to tell the ins and outs of my days and to be the support network that I needed in some of the toughest times of my life. In an instant, that support and comfort is gone and I am learning what it means to be on my own. I think that I have never really been on my own as an adult because I have never been single and on my own since I moved out of my dad’s house. I know that a lot of people think that it is an essential experience to live on your own and learn what it is like to be independent but I am so scared at the thought that it really is just me now. I rely pretty heavily on my friends in times like these and I am blessed to have some really special people in my life but it still isn’t the same as having D there to hold me, hug me and tell me that it will be ok.

I know I didn’t make a mistake but I feel bereft. I feel as though I lost my best friend, my boyfriend and a piece of myself in one swoop.

Sometimes the pain is staggering.

Sometimes I have to stand still a moment to let the pain pass before I can take a breath.

Sometimes, I feel as though my entire world is falling apart and I am not strong enough to catch and carry all the pieces.

So for now, I don’t know the reason why I left a man that I know would have spent the rest of his life with me. I just know that I did and I have to put my life back together on my own. I just know that I am beyond happy and free while mourning a deep loss at the same time and that dichotomy is mind boggling. I just know that I have to exist breath to breath because even breathing hurts right now.