Every Time

Every time I tell myself it's the last time. Every time I feel like I can't survive it again. 

Eventually though, my relentless heart yearns. Somehow it keeps believing that something good is out there for me, even though time and time again, being hopeful only gets me hurt. And each time it makes it harder to continue to hope. 

People will say kind things, like they believe that a good heart won't go to waste...but I don't. Because I have given everything they could want, they'll say, and still toss me aside, let me go, push me away. I find myself more afraid to keep hoping that my heart – that I could be chosen, than I am of the pain of being unwanted. 

Because it's not about not being good enough or believing I'm unlovable. If I'm honest, it seems entirely random. Coincidental. I don't believe in fate or destiny, or things being meant to be. I think we all just collide. And I'm increasingly unsure, each time, if I can keep trying to collide with someone in hopes that maybe they will choose me. 

All Sorts of Confused

It's coming up on a year and I feel all sorts of confused.  I continue to be in this strange, disorienting limbo.  I openly talk about and make light of all the woes of dating because I don't really want to be doing it.  I know that I don't want to be alone for the rest of my life just because what I thought was the big love of my life actually destroyed me.  But as it turns out, it's incredibly difficult to heal from that destruction.  And it's incredibly terrifying to think of letting anyone try for that with me again.  I can't fathom trusting someone.  I'm in disbelief that anyone will make the memories fade to the background. 

I've always prided myself on knowing how to sift through it all in dating.  Sure, there are awkward moments or things that are hard to say, but I've always been able to tell when someone isn't for me.  Aside from intentional questions and keen observation, usually there's this undeniable sense in my gut.  I can't feel that anymore.  Some men seem kind, smart, funny, are attractive, and have it together, but I feel nothing at all.  I find myself lost in not knowing what to do.  For the first time in my life, I know without a doubt I am scared to be vulnerable.  Not even just scared, I don't want to and I don't feel it.  I'm scared in general.  It's almost like I don't even know how to take dating seriously because I'm just...broken.  I was the most vulnerable I've ever been toward someone and it broke me. 

Yet, I try because I'm lonely and because I think, maybe somehow someday I'll find a way to be open.  Maybe I'll strike luck and someone truly good will find me.  But I don't really believe that.  And I don't know anymore how I'd recognize that.  Even the kindest are capable of changing you with their hurt.  Then I think, maybe I'll just wait for someone to fall for me, then I'll see if I want them too.  Though my integrity would never let me do that!  

My feelings feel the same as they did a year ago and I don't really want to wait for them to change if they haven't in that long.  Yet I don't know if or when my gut will speak to me again.  Maybe it's still in shock, too.  I'm confused, lonely, exhausted, and scared, nearly a year later. 

Sometimes

Sometimes I really wish I could just have a realization that he didn't love me. Sometimes that's the subtext and it fits, but then I rewind the tape further and find myself more confused - if that wasn't love, then what is? And then I find myself scared because I don't know what the fuck love is. I know that I think I still have it for someone who I think didn't have it for me. At best, liked some aspect of my company, but not my heart. Couldn't have liked my heart, or he would've been careful in how he let it down.

Sometimes that all feels very true to me. Then I get scared if I believe it, I won't know how to move forward. I already don't know how to move forward. My heart is frozen in place. Memories playing as a montage, interrupting my thought. I'm constantly asking myself: how did he just let that all go? How did every one of these million little moments just disappear from him while they haunt me? 

Sometimes I get so confused, reconciling the truest moments of him, to the ending; the kindness of the person I knew, with the cruelty of how he treated me after. Which one is true? Because they're incongruent, they can't both be true. I see these little flashes of who I thought I knew as him; the deepest place in him, the core shining through the cracks at the surface. I loved that core. I've truly never loved someone like that. And it was found worthless. Disposable. Meaningless.

No wonder my depression morphed:  The very best thing I thought one could offer to another in this life, didn't actually matter. And I didn't know it, I thought it was all that truly mattered, to love and be loved deeply. It's terrifying that I thought I was loved and thought the love I gave was significant, but neither seem true anymore. As time passes and I'm still trapped in the mystery, the cognitive dissonance is too strong – I can't believe that it was ever real. It feels like it was a dream I had. 

Now I hold myself in without even trying. I keep me from being touched. I have no desire to be open. It feels as though I might disintegrate, if I ever dare to love again and still only lose; if I let myself be seen to my depths, only to be unwanted. The pain of that is still so heavy, I find myself amazed I've survived it this long. 

Far From Through

It dawned on me, this isn't going away. I've never loved someone that way. And like the drop on your stomach on a rollercoaster or driving down a steep hill, it hit me: I might always feel this. I don't doubt that I can love again, if that's where my life and path leads. But I have this anchored feeling; grounded in me heavy and settled, like gravity of a thing - that this love will persist in me. It brought me to tears writing that, because the missing is so heavy, too, and I don't want to feel it. The weight of carrying a care that is severed and knowing it will be my companion for a long time, maybe even indefinitely. It's another facet of grief. 

I realized recently I'm in another wave of grief. I didn't really feel it for a while, at least not often, and my life went on fairly normally. Perhaps I even distracted myself from it. But you can never do that for long with grief and longing. They make themselves known; demand your attention when you've turned away from or lost sight of them. They remind you that they are far from through here. 

Though I've never done *this* before, I do remember feeling like I'd never not feel it. I've loved someone in a romantic relationship before, but this was different, deeper. This was past the infatuation, to the part where you've examined it and you choose it. I knew this was what I wanted, because it was like the way that coming home feels or the way you know your own name. It's a strange and confusing feeling to reconcile now with the fact that he's not in my life. To find yourself in a mix of certainty and want for something that no longer exists. Yet the knowing presses on as if bent on torturing me, while my grief attempts to chip away at it. As it turns out, when you know and you choose like that, it's an arduous process to break down. 

While I know I end up sounding mellow dramatic, I try to explain that this wasn't like any old breakup. This is removing from me the fragments of it all. This is coming apart from a whole lived and envisioned life that was based on a togetherness that isn't anymore. For some reason others can be quick to dismiss its significance, but I'm still here, one half of the togetherness, living with still open wounds it left on me.

There is a gaping hole in my life that I'm forced to become familiar with. In spite of my loneliness, as I succumb to it, I'm finding right now I need to be single. I'm finding my heart needs indefinite time to sort through how such certainty became such uncertainty, calling my intuition into question. I don't know if I know how to choose someone. I don't know if I know how to receive love or what it even actually is. I don't know if I know how to love someone else. I don't know how my heart will heal from this ... but I know it's far from through. 

Love and the Grief of Vacancy

I miss him in such a deep way, it's almost become subtle. It's not in my face every day anymore, it's just down in my gut, just there. It's something I live with now, a perpetual sense of loss. My new companion is the void left by my old one. Yet, I can't count how many times lately that I've felt happy or okay and then felt guilty, realizing it feels like continuing on after someone's died. It feels truly like that kind of grief. And sometimes still like I'm crazy and the whole thing probably never happened. That seems more like my mind still trying to make sense of it, whereas my body, my gut knows that I had someone close and I lost them. 

I've had and lost love before, and that hurt, but not like this. The love wasn't like this, neither was the pain. At first, in the weeks following the end of the relationship, I had the sense that it had changed me and that it was in a way that no loss had before. It broke me down to a degree I can only remember one other time in my life coming close but it still misses. More stable now but still living with it all in my gut, I know that it changed me. 

For a while in the relationship I'd get flashes of anxiety about losing him someday, to the end of life – I was that kind of in love. I was already predicting how painful it would be to have loved long and deep, then lose. And I experienced that, yet, I don't regret it. I thought I did, in the heaviest of the pain. But when you do love long and deep, it's not something that can simply be undone. Even after incomprehensible hurt, it did not go away. Days, weeks, and months have passed without a word, since we last touched, since I said goodbye not even knowing it was going to be the last goodbye; he chose to die to me, and still love persists in me. I suppose that's why I also felt anger: in spite of it all, I longed for him.

The strange thing is that lately I feel mostly okay. I also often feel a pit in my stomach and heavy tears overtake me. But a lot of my life feels okay. Only there's this big, vacant space in it, where something is undoubtedly missing. It's as if standing in your home, but there's no furniture or belongings. Everything sounds different and you feel peculiar wandering about in it. It's both foreign and familiar; it's a little normal and yet completely wrong. Disorienting. Yet it's reality.

It wasn't my choice, this reality, but I've survived it by a strand of hope I somehow had for not ending up alone. The tiniest belief that maybe someday when I choose someone, they will also choose me back; someday, when someone really sees me, they will value what they see. They will be scared to lose it – not scared to accept it. I've been sustained by the littlest, faintest hope that the ability to see and connect and put in the work will be recognized for its value and held onto with a grip both fierce and tender. That I'll be loved with the same unrelenting love that I can't help but have for the ones who take up space in my life. That someone will lay their head next to mine at the end of the day and feel awe and gratitude that I'm sharing this life with them.

The Strange Monster

Depression is a strange monster. 

There are things you can do to weaken it, but they're hard to do because of it. There are pills you can take to make you stronger than it, but just enough to survive. There are days you feel like it's finally gone, only for it to show up the next day, rearing its ugly head. And there are whole days lost to laying underneath its full weight. 

I don't have bad days all that often; depression hasn't been with me my whole life. In the pandemic my depression has felt more like an ever-present companion – at times it's more in my face than others. Perhaps there's some rhythm to the worst of it that I just haven't hacked yet. Today was one of those days. And sometimes it's kind to me and lines up with days I have nothing to do, maybe more the nothing to do invites it in, but today was not that day. 

Today was a draw a bath (well, that's every day in my house), bring the coffee up, and pour some salts in kind of depression day. Write some things, cry a bit, write some things, cry a bit... Sometimes I almost believe the monster needs to be tended to. It needs attention to stay away for a little while after. Which is what struck me today. I actually knew what to do when I realized it was not going to be a good day but that I didn't want to surrender to the monster's heaviness. 

I decided to drop the dog at daycare. I finished my long bath after really shaving my legs, and we got in the car. I had one of my favorite albums playing while I drove, and I didn't try but just thought, even though there are days like this when everything big feels hopeless, there's always this music. And I felt just a little better. When I got home, I thought since it was a balmy 10 degrees today, I should finally change the engine air filter in my car. I've never done it before, turns out it's insanely easy. Great! I got one little something done. Next, I made myself a delicious, quality meal and enjoyed it without anyone whining at me. Just before my first session, I put on some makeup to brighten up my not-so-cheerful face. And wouldn't you know: my last session of the night was a home run. 

When the dust settled, it's still one of those days; no simple magic had slain the dragon. But I found a little relief that if you care for the monster and meet its needs, it isn't quite as treacherous to have in your company. 

Worth & Hurt

I do want it again. The head over heels love. Gratefulness just to be near them in the day-to-day. The inability to imagine life without them. But I find myself wondering, do you get that more than once?

I know I can open my heart again, but won't anything else feel a little less sparkly? Or will my heart be resistant to feeling head over heels, grateful, and like something could possibly be forever? Logically, I think it's the latter, as I know my wary heart is fearful in resisting hope that there can be something sparkly again. I sit with a mixture of longing and fear; daunted and yet unable to let fear keep me from being seen. 

After my last relationship, I kept hearing this thing to me that drove me nuts: "it's not a reflection of your worth." I know rejection isn't a reflection of my worth, though it is my painful and perplexing reality nonetheless. When what you really want is to be seen for who you are and found captivating, inspiring to gratitude, and an undeniable fixture in one's life; for someone to recognize your worth and grab hold of the chance to share in life with you? Yeah, rejection of that very idea is painful. It feeds hopelessness. It bolsters fear. 

Yet the only reason I can dare to try to open my heart is because I know my worth. I value sharing life with others and find that the most fulfilling relationships are the most intimate ones, in which full selves commune. I know that what I have to bring to a relationship, especially a partnership is something worth having and being grateful for, committing to. But all of that doesn't mean I'm not scared to offer it because the last time I did it was rejected, and that hurt. I am not concerned that I'm unworthy, I am afraid of ever knowing that pain again.

May Take to Another

Not too long ago, I "got back out there".  Initially I told myself, I was going to date the old-fashioned way, picturing casually getting malts in an ankle length skirt without all this pressure of will we be together forever, or is he just trying to sleep with me? But really, I set out that way because I was downright terrified of the prospect of letting someone in my heart again. And I fully doubted anyone else could get there.

It's still a bit surreal sometimes that it hasn't just been a long week since I've seen him, or even that I didn't dream the whole thing up, start to finish. So when it came to accepting that he had run away for good, I thought maybe my way forward was just to try. Ground myself in reality by moving forward in some way. So...

Swipe left, swipe right. Swipe on your ex to find out he swiped right (interested) on you...? Never mind that confusing nonsense. Then another right swipe, SUPER right swipe on a joyful, handsome hottie that to be honest I thought to myself was out of my league. There's no way he'll be into me, so what does it hurt? *swipe* But in real life leagues do not exist, which I keep forgetting. Simultaneously, I still told myself – and this guy – I was not ready to put my heart out there, but wanted to connect with someone again. 

Independent of starting to chat with a new man, I realized something else that I've realized before but had since forgotten. See, I thought about my closest friends. My best friend I've known since we were in first grade, I love her dearly. Another friend I've known for several years, she too has claim of significant space in my heart. Yet another I've only grown close to in the past couple years, but I can be fully honest with her and admire her greatly. All are very different people that I deeply love and no one love supersedes or negates another. So then, no matter how significant my love for my last partner was, it doesn't mean that there isn't more available for someone new. 

Now, don't get ahead of me, I am not saying I've found love. Rather that I was pleasantly surprised to find myself genuinely intrigued by someone new. And a little less afraid – and maybe even a little excited – of the possibility that my heart may take to another. 

What Reverence

What reverence I have for big, deep, vulnerable, altering love. I'm not eager to find it again, I have a healthy respect for the risk that it is. I see it as a far off, distant future that could be. No imaginations of what it will look like and who it will be - only haze, and a sense of openness but not quite desire. A quiet longing, but a knowing fear. A caution to do everything I can to not have it only to lose it again. A hidden, buried thought that if I don't want for it, I will be okay. I tell myself I have safety within myself; I can be okay no matter what...but love had me awestruck at its heaviness, its weight. Losing love makes you sure you'll never want for it again, build around you a fortress, impenetrable and therefore unaffected by comings and goings. Yet appreciating love, even that which is lost, makes one long to know it again someday.

An Entire Person

I keep thinking to myself, it should be easier to not miss him after all this. But I also keep thinking, it's just not that simple. 

Today it occurred to me: this is the loss of an entire person from my life. There is no one else that I talk to every day. I suddenly lost regular frequency of physical touch which has a huge effect on mental, emotional, and physical well-being. As an extrovert, I was thrown into truly living alone for the first time in a decade – after having someone close in my life every day. There are days I go without seeing another soul, where I feel pain because my being is not witnessed by another human. 

When I feel a bit pathetic for longing for something that became so unhealthy, I use my training to remind myself that my body and emotional brain (bonding/attachment centers) are struggling with this adjustment as much as my logical mind struggles to make sense of it. I was a goner. Sold out on him being my person and continuing to share a life together. That is something that most people must not be thinking about when they say whatever it is they might say about how I should feel; what it's like to lose someone entirely and abruptly from your life.

And I've been trying to tell myself how I should feel, too. Trying to push past the weighty and hollowing sadness, but that doesn't work. I have to wade around in the confusion and the pain for however long until stepping out feels possible. Yes: feels. Because no matter what I try to tell myself, I wake up and my chest hurts, signaling that I am sad today. My breaths are a little short. Oh! I feel lonely. I have succeeded to avoid these feelings most of this week, but I can't avoid them fully. 

This kind of end is like a haunting. There's nothing that can be done to relieve it, it just is until it will not be some day. I do not believe time heals all wounds – that's how I got in this mess. Time allows some healing to occur so that the pain decreases, however, some wounds never fully stop hurting. Healing from the loss of someone who was incredibly close to your heart and in your daily life before disappearing is an arduous process. It requires presence to the pain. And the thing about time is, it must be allowed to pass, yes, but it also must be endured. There's no avoiding that either. It isn't simple as a trite phrase implies. 

Healing from the loss of a love so dear is long and slow, and painful as hell.

Alone at the Bottom

I have felt completely tossed and tumbled, like being swallowed in a sea of confusion. Wearily trying to find my way to the surface, to catch my breath and it pulls me back. 

This is the biggest rejection of my life. There is no simple way to process it. Not everyone has experienced this kind of personal rejection. Likely few have been completely blind-sided by someone they let their walls down with. So I keep trying to explain it and saying that I can't find the right words to describe how much it has afflicted me psychologically. (A therapist nails it in the caption here.) When the reality you've lived in for over a year is brought into question, you start to think that maybe the love you thought you were given was also an illusion. I don't know, because I don't know what was going on, other than I wasn't getting the whole truth and was being kept happy for some reason. The ironic thing is how much it hurts in the end. Keeping up a charade only made this so much harder to process. When what you thought to be true for a long time is revealed to be partly a show, it is incredibly exhausting and complicated to not only grieve but try to make sense out of what it is you're even grieving. Am I losing someone I loved, or did I really know that person? Am I losing the kind of love I'd been hoping for, or was that all just a show too? Can I trust my perception of reality? How about of whether someone is genuine? Why work so hard to make me feel loved, then cut and run the moment it was most convenient?

These are among the questions I struggle with. But am told "one day it will get better" - how? Just accept that a partner could leave at any moment? I'd rather be alone than let someone do this to me again. "You say that now..." yes, I do. How should I keep believing that I want a companion to share life with when I was just shaken to my core by thinking that I'd found that with someone who hurt me instead? "You don't deserve this" and "Someone would be lucky to have you" not to sound conceited but, I know. I actually don't question my worth, I question why giving my best wasn't enough? Or not desirable? Why being me was sustaining but not commitment-worthy? It's not what I believe about myself, but what I was shown. 

And it's almost like my system is telling me I'm being abandoned, which makes it so terrifying to be alone – alone in my house all the time, alone all day; sometimes days in a row, alone in my finances, alone in my cooking, alone when I go to sleep and alone when I wake up – yet I cannot fathom how I could ever know that I'm safe in an intimate relationship again. Or how I'd muster up the courage to risk it.

You'd think it's been a month and a half, I'd start to be okay. But I'm still struggling. Every day. My extravagant self-care consists of eating and bathing regularly, plus a 20-minute walk daily. I don't know when I'll feel good enough to work. I can't afford not to, but I happen to have an emotionally involved job. Even the paperwork is a growing disaster. The dishes pile up. The house is a mess, but no one sees it. I find myself wondering how many days go by that no one even thinks of me now. Who am I really important to? The person to whom I thought for certain I was, is contentedly moving on. Which tells me I was pretty disposable to someone I thought loved me. (Or was thought of as strong enough to handle it.) And that feels incredibly lonely. 

A close second is being with others and trying to share how this all feels, only to be told it gets better, or there's a lesson, or it hurts so much because that's how much I loved... It's hard to pull off but it's more kind not to make someone feel alone when they are with you.

Which has also made me realize something I don't think many people think about. Societally we're not only very focused on romantic love, but we're also incredibly busy. Chase after all the experiences. Work work work. Grind grind grind. To go from being in an intimate relationship for years to solo out of nowhere, is to experience a kind of whiplash. And what feels like no relief in sight, because we live in a way that the romantic relationship is primary and everything else is supplementary or optional. Until you're single, and then all you get is supplements. And yourself. Which, I can only speak for myself, but I am not an endless well to meet my own needs. Some of them, yes, but also for some I need others. That's to be human. Contrary to the popular individualism of the day.

So that's all I'm navigating mentally and emotionally right now. Facing down my 30th birthday which, frankly, I don't really care about. I was looking forward to it but the past year has been so up and down, that it sort of seems like it'll be just another Monday. 

The one thing, the one cliche I can tell myself that doesn't totally feel false or invalidating is that it must be only up from here. This is my rock bottom. My lowest place. And I'm on the ground. At least I love myself enough to try to keep going, to keep crawling, because maybe, possibly someday there's some hope in the future. 

Grief and Knowing Yourself

"To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom" -Socrates

In the past many weeks I have seen so much of myself. Though they've been weeks of living hell, hanging on to functioning – if you could even call it that. I've always gleaned from and studied what I'm experiencing, always hoping to gain understanding.

If I had a dime for every time I'd been told not to overthink, I'd have...some amount of money. Some dimes. But I know the line between processing and slipping into obsession. To process, my mind will turn something over and over until I understand it. Whether it's learning how something works because it interests me, or understanding human interactions to try and be better or at peace. These last several weeks have been set on the latter. Making sense out of this.

In this time, I've been getting these gut feelings, followed closely by a wave of fear that would topple me and attempt to destroy my footing. There were a few days that I'm not sure I'd ever been so challenged mentally and emotionally in my entire life. I thought back to past breakups, and while they were trying times with much processing, they did not compare to this. Though I hadn't quite put my finger on why.

But these little moments of clarity have come. I know myself, I'd think, I know what went on and who he is. I know.

I'd reached out for support because I was suffering so greatly. I needed to make sure others were aware of me. I felt an immediate and sudden shift to my aloneness. But with sharing of trouble, comes advice. I tend make my mind up and then test my certainty against advice or input. When down for the count, this became slightly less important than trying to eat something that day.

Still, I felt that knowing inside of me. I felt a newfound sense of attunement with myself. See, I'd been struggling with feeling distant from many people, and within that feeling like I'd been changing and growing so much over the past several years, that some in my life didn't know who I am now. I looked back at past painful struggles with grief and moving forward after the loss of a relationship, and I correlated it with when depression set in. At the time, I was beginning to question my faith and find less comfort in it, more unease. This put a discomfort in some of my relationships, as well. Not only was there misunderstanding or a felt lack of space for grief over the relational loss, but it is incredibly difficult to question the Christian faith.

The past few years then, I lived with the weight of this. Going on hiding a part of myself, and feeling to some extent like I was both alone and could not fully trust others. What I'd actually done was grown weary of expressing who I was and what I believed, whether about grief or about questioning a long-held belief system.

As I felt myself thrashed among the waves of grief in this recent loss, I knew I had to reach out for help and tell others how to show up for me, and that I had to be authentically messy as long as it took. This approach has been incredibly healing for me in regard to those old wounds. I think it's something I could only allow myself to do because of the work I've done (with the help of therapy) and what I've learned in spite of depression over the past years, particularly this past year.

It is difficult, especially in times of grief, to be aware of oneself and find the energy to fight for that self. It is risky and feels even more vulnerable to ask others to be there for you. And it is all necessary to allow the grief to be with you.

"To thine own self be true." -Shakespeare

There's a Word For This

I didn't know there was a word for it, and even when I found it I didn't know it's what I was doing: deconstructing. Sounds so intentional. So much like taking a wrecking ball to things – wait, no, that's demolition. To deconstruct something is to pull it apart by its pieces until it isn't anymore. That about sums up what I've been doing.

Really, it started as a slow process, more like a loose thread that began a true unraveling. It's not yet finished, either, so it's a little terrifying to name, but not unlike untangling a knotted mess, there is relief the further I go.

It all began when I couldn't hear God anymore. Having grown ever more steeped in the belief that I could not be abandoned, well, that didn't seem to help all that much when I felt the very most alone. When darkness and sadness took up residency in my life, nothing had better answers or a louder voice. I tried, I asked and I sought, though wearily. I persistently showed up on Sunday mornings.

For so long it was so painful and uncomfortable, until I finally allowed myself the space to stop enduring the pain I had been experiencing while still trying to participate. I got up, bussed my coffee cup, put on my sunglasses and coat, and walked to my car – doing my best to avoid eye contact. Far before that day when I walked out of those doors the last time, people didn't seem to understand my struggle and pain, so why would they that day? I didn't want to be stopped. Something had finally begun in me, it was the pieces coming apart.

The next few months there was a dull ache. I wondered if I was betraying everyone I knew, because, well, everyone I know is a Christian and I wasn't sure I wanted to be one anymore. Even saying that to myself was hard, I don't think I uttered it aloud for months. At first it was because I wasn't sure I wanted to walk away, though gradually it became because I had walked away and desperately didn't want to be cornered with looks of concern and offers of prayer that didn't seem to change anything. I felt more well away from church, away from constant attempts to gloss over the pain and errs of the human experience, than I did slouched in a seat every week trying to find peace again. I wanted my choice to be accepted, not challenged and questioned, or worse dismissed.

Some of the time that followed was painful, because I'd wrapped my identity up tightly in all things Christianity and my church, that without it I felt hollow and very alone. At the same time, I knew I was nowhere near ready or interested to go back. Not just that church, any church. I tried once and while it was more accessible and realistic, I still felt uncomfortable. Since I started to let myself question, I wasn't sure what to say I believed anymore which suddenly made the world feel unsteady, too.

Over time it became a new normal and the sense of dread over whether I was missing something started to dissipate. Instead, I found so many facets of the Christian life I lived were with flaw that I couldn't fathom how I'd ever overlooked. It also became harder to reconcile the life I've lived so far, with where I am now and where I'm headed.

Writing this is a risk; a way to say aloud what I've been quietly turning over and over in my mind for over a year now. And it's not even finished – pulling apart several decades worth of layers and intricacies takes time. While some have fallen away like dust, others take prying and elbow grease and the right leverage.

The odd thing is, although it's been a challenging time and the things that brought me to deconstruct changed me, I am still me. Sure, I'm a little different me without church and without a formal life agenda, but I hope that I can be seen and respected for where I am. I hope I can be valued at more than a "lost soul" or a wandering sheep. The peace of mind I have is this: If indeed, God can influence me, surely he can do so without using a human's voice. So, it is to be seen.

Afterword: Although I share this publicly, I ask that you please refrain from digging or sending words laden with overt tone or undertone. I shared publicly in hopes of helping highlight that religion can be harmful and painful, even for those who were formerly a tight-knit part of it. There's no easy way to drop losing faith into conversation, so I wrote a blog instead. 

Christmastime: Anxiety, Pain, Grief, & Hope

"Remember that if it’s heavy and ill-fitting, if it’s a burden, you don’t need to hold it." Sarah Bessey

This has been yet another hard year and as Christmas (my favorite holiday) comes around, I've had a lot of anxiety. To be honest, this entire year I've had a lot of anxiety. It took me a while to realize that was what was gnawing at me, but since I have it's been a strange relief. In realizing and recognizing the places of pain in my life, I have found so much more freedom and peace in sitting with those things, in tension with desiring hope for the future. I don't have a ton of hope right now, and it seems every time I've gotten it something else tries to squash it. Instead, I've noticed the simple pleasures that can tend to get overshadowed by the hard things.

The above quote (and blog) from Sarah Bessey spoke to me. Not all of it resonated in a deeply felt way, but more in a weary nod of agreement from the heart. I've learned a lot about grief in ways I wasn't expecting to; in ways I didn't know I still needed to. Of course in the throes of pain and immediately after, you think you've known enough of it. In that, I've learned a thing or two about resilience, too.

Resilience isn't necessarily the springing back up from a blow with enthusiasm that we may think of it as. It's more of a rolling on your side, catching your breath, processing what happened as best as your brain will let you, and slowly steadying yourself into an upright position – in stages. Grief and pain can be slow. I was so tired from grief and pain in the previous year, I didn't want to do it again this time. I was so deeply angry for being forced back down into the hurt, and I didn't want to deal with it, so I laid there for a while – as Brene Brown puts it in her book, Rising Strong, I was "facedown in the arena." It wasn't until maybe August I realized and fully admitted to myself that I was in grief again. And November revealed to me that I had grief yet to come from my first relationship.

What's surprising is that I thought this year was the lowest I've ever felt, until I got wind of some startling news: my first love is marrying someone else. That's the lowest I've felt in nearly a decade; my heart broke all over again. It scared me, the depth of isolation I felt. Still even writing this, thinking about that makes my eyes well up with tears.

And we first connected at Christmas time, three years ago, spent one together as a couple. Then by the following holiday season I was falling in love again, which I thought was maybe the redemptive plan to follow the long, drawn-out heartache. I thought I'd found what must be better for me. But as fast as it started and high as it rose, it more quickly and ruthlessly broke my newly healed heart.

I learned so much in this past year about pain that I know will help the next time I get knocked off my feet. I'm certainly no longer naive enough to think I'll be ready, if anything I know you never are, but I know that even in the very lowest I can hang on. That's resilience. It's by no means a strength of my own, but the things curiosity and others have taught me. Those who showed up in the pain and let me sob on them, or repeat my pain in words so worn out. Those people saved me. Curiosity about how our consciousness is a blend of mind and heart that can be experienced but also managed; learning that the darkest of dark feelings are real, but not true. Not everyone is so lucky – and yes, it seems like luck. Perhaps some want to call it grace, which if it suits you, by all means. To me, it seems like luck that when I felt like life is possibly too painful to endure, I found it in myself to grapple for hope in spite of myself – not because I have some virtuous ability others aren't as fortunate to have, surely not because my faith is strong.

It was actually knowledge that helped me. I write this with a dual purpose: first, to give voice and validation to others experiencing a hard time or a hard year. The second is to tell them it's possible to get through the low moment, even when it doesn't feel like it. One of the best things I've heard in a long time is your feelings are real but they aren't true. When life feels like it's too much to handle, it is right now but it won't always be. Sometimes that's as close as we can come to having hope, and that's okay, because it's enough to actually get us to tomorrow.

A practical thing I learned this year was to notice what I'm feeling (not to be confused with reacting or acting out of emotion), and not surprisingly I noticed my anxiety piquing as Christmas started to come around this year. Which I suppose is the final, bonus message: painful spots might still hurt even after you think they're done hurting, but it's okay. Getting comfortable with the idea that there is pain in life is important, but with a sense of compassion for yourself (not suck-it-up-ism!).

So as I approach Christmas, I hold the tension of weary hope for better love and renewed joy in the future, with feeling anxious about embracing the pain that will inevitably hook me in the next few weeks. Within that, I will also take Sarah's words of wisdom to heart, and I hope you will, too.

Keeping Time

I'm the sentimental type. I think about anniversaries, they're etched onto my mind in a way it practically helps me keep time. But it's almost been a year and I'm at least okay now, but I still don't understand what happened. I live with a daily melange of feelings of love and hatred, and no place to put them but let them simmer in me and maybe, if I'm lucky, they'll just evaporate.

See just a year ago, my heart would change in a way I didn't think it ever could – though, truthfully, it also didn't. Maybe some people can do the love and let go thing, but I'm not cut out for that. Just a year ago, in spite of this, I finally managed to let go. Then a mere few weeks later a man came into my life and casually charmed me off my feet. Impossibly cool, but aloof so it didn't seem to matter to him that he was cool...which made him even more attractive. (Yes, I see the cliche.) I usually have a good read on people, I kind of get how we work and how we interact with each other, I feel like I can often see through people to their motivations and values. Yet somehow I got duped.

I tried to move on, thought I was ready and it would take someone else proving to me that not all that's left out there are emotionally stunted men who are so cool they'll break your heart without remorse -- icy. I tried to move on and one mediocre or crappy instance after another, I'm finding myself feeling discouraged and yet with clarity. The good old-fashioned way really knocked the wind out of me a time or two, so I go through these phases of attempting to date the modern way: apps. It always seems to go a variety of ways, none of which are successful. There was the zero chemistry guy, the CSG doppleganger who was also too cool for human decency and communication, and the guy who doesn't know what "no" means, or "owe" or "don't". That last one, left me missing the aloof emotionally closed-off guy because at least he was respectful of my body and my "no". And that left me missing the one that couldn't be. Which then made me realize, I need to get comfortable.

I hate being single, because compared to having someone who knows all about your life, checks in on you and thinks about you daily, and is gaga for you, and on and on – compared to that, being single sucks. I wish there were a more eloquent way to say it, but I don't have the patience and, well, it's a thought for another time.

Almost a year ago I was high and dry in life - no job, broken heart still mending, long overstaying in a place that was meant to be temporary. I can't help but look back at that version of myself and envy her. She didn't know life was just winding up to take another swing the second she'd get back up, that that handsome guy stealing glances at the coffee shop would break her heart all over again, too soon and too carelessly. I envy her because she didn't know it would get so hard again.

The me now? She knows that you don't find the real good stuff all that often and you can't force it where it isn't. She knows that no one's really deserved her since the first one. She knows that was special and to look for something like it. Hoping? That's another story.

How #MeToo Got Real

I'd had enough to say #metoo when the wildfire spread a few weeks ago. Even if you set aside the catcalls or "hey babys" of life in a female body, there was Rome.

A crowded subway car, me in light-airy mediterranean pants, and some guy thought it was his prerogative to touch my ass. At first I thought it was just the tight quarters and an accidental graze. However, as the ride went on, I realized it was intentional. I'd always envisioned myself as some kind of a hero in a moment like this, defensive and vocal. After I exited the subway, heart pounding, I went back to my hostel only to turn and leave on the bus headed to the airport to leave Rome. I sat down on the bus, and that's when it set in. I'd had no control over the situation; I didn't speak the language, I was an obvious tourist and I was trapped in that metro car with someone taking advantage of my body, whom I couldn't even see. On the bus ride to the airport, I cried because my body was used without my permission for the gratification of another. 

No one should ever be made out to be merely a commodity for their body.

Sure, the metro was uncomfortable and I was violated, but last night my #metoo got even more real... 

Apparently by the third date a guy can push a woman's boundaries and do things she didn't agree to. I won't go into detail because it isn't anyone's business whom I don't choose to tell, but my body was a commodity; something to be used, in spite of my requests, in spite of my voicing of discomfort and pain, in spite of my "no's". I didn't realize it until I left that something felt off and yet I felt relief the moment I stepped outside. I wondered to myself as I drove home feeling a little numb, was I just sexually assaulted? 

When I settled into my bed, icing my neck to hopefully reduce the appearance of three large, unwanted, protested hickeys, it hit me the answer was 'yes'. The quiet little strange feeling I had was from being cornered, being stuck in a situation where I felt powerless and weak. I'd generally consider myself a strong, independent woman who doesn't live much of life guided by fear. Still, I found myself in a scenario where I was not being respected and I was incapable of rendering a different outcome. Afraid. Intimidated. Scared. There aren't even many times in my life I've actually felt scared. So, as I laid there with a bag of frozen food on my neck, I cried. 

All thanks to the guy who was self-proclaimed "different from the rest." I'd liked him because he was happy-go-lucky and talkative, he'd voiced how he cried easily at movies, he even made me a delicious dinner. That guy made me feel afraid and ignored my "ow" and "ouch" and "no" and "don't". That guy thought he could text me something cute today about how he gave me three large hickeys (never mind that it was clearly against my will), which I had to cake in concealer and cover in a scarf. My response was a lengthier, more convicting and educational version of "Boy, bye!"

I cried a little more this morning, but mostly at the thought of the fear that I'd had. It was something new, this experience. Getting catcalled feels like a weak threat tied to expectation of appreciating the "compliments" and it's uncomfortable; being touched without permission by a perfect stranger is a personal violation and it is frightening; but being made to feel in fear of your safety, and unable to voice the feeling in the moment, that is alarming and disgusting. Other women have been in that position and had worse, and the thought of what happened to me makes me uncomfortable and angry and scared. 

For some reason, I felt I should write about this although I'm not entirely sure why. Maybe because we need to stop blaming women? Maybe because we need to stop saying that women are exaggerating or being "emotional"? Maybe because men need to face the reality of how much more physically powerful they are than us and not take that responsibility lightly? Maybe because women deserve more respect? All of the above.

So, #metoo.


NOTE: I don't write it to be asked about it. I don't write it for sympathy. But if it should help someone feel like their experience is valid and they should tell someone, or seek help for processing a sexual assault, that I wrote it for.

To Put Off the Conscience

My life seems to say to me: remember that time you got your heart broken, oh and that OTHER time, and when you didn't matter to that person enough to have a conversation, or not enough to that person to bother to see you, or that person to pay attention to you?

And it stings. And aches. The place where the wound was gets poked and prodded again, the moment it seems to heal.

And I wish I knew what it was like to be able to put off the conscience and do what I wanted to, even if it hurt others...and yet, there are constant reminders of what that looks like in our world. It is the reason anyone is on the receiving end of something painful, even life-threatening, and I don't want to be the cause of that in someone else's life.

Pain can teach you that you need to harden yourself, or it can teach you not to be hardened toward others; rather to value them. Wounds can cause you to unleash pain on others like a wrath and continue to ache on the inside in a way that oozes outward to infect - or they can cause you to take care not to be a hypocrite with intentional actions and words.

More than anything I find myself prone to indignation that these are the ways we find it acceptable to act and to use the privilege of the time we've been given and one another's company.

Life in the Gray

Lately I'm floating on a sea of so many questions, so much uncertainty. I'm someone who likes to ask, likes to seek, and likes to find. It's been a while since I've found much, but I'm still asking and still seeking. Some of it has been quite painful, I'd be lying if I didn't acknowledge the depth of pain that has also been with me through the questions. But I ask. And I seek.

One thing that is not a concrete "answer" but one I'm finding as I ask the questions is that some things in life are just in the gray. There has to be space for wonder and questioning and seeking and growing and stretching and withdrawing. We seem to want so badly to have answers, sorting everything by rule into the black or the white. But I've been finding I cannot live without the questions; I cannot push them away and live as if they do not beckon me to examine them.

Even as I write this, I am sitting a few feet away from a family eating dinner at this same cafe. The couple's young son is questioning everything, and it's like music to my ears. Drink it in young one. Ask the questions and seek to understand.

Because the thing I'm learning is I'm better for seeking to understand rather than just taking things as they come, without wonder. Some answers are harder to come by, and may look more gray than black or white. Learning to live in the discomfort of questions unanswered has made me stronger, increasing my endurance for the gray of life – of which there is so much, if we're honest with ourselves. At first, this state of unknown was taxing, and it's still less comfortable than certainty, but it's helping me become better and stronger, and more empathetic.

And I think that's an option with everything we encounter in life. Not just what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, but every pain, every hard place can be something that breaks you down a bit more, or helps you become stronger, and better, even if worn. I'm not to the 'better' yet – though I feel good today – I'm seeing more how there is courage in facing the fear of the unknown and the pain.

Scary Moments, Strength, & Wonder Woman

So if you haven't noticed lately, I'm still a mess. And in the past few days it's felt quite heavy. Maybe it's just going back to work after laying around existing and attempting to tune out physical pain for two weeks. In the heaviness, I've found myself angry; I'm angry that he put me here without remorse. I'm angry that I find myself in pain that's hard to wade through and keep afloat in. I'm angry that I was more committed and it hurts like hell.

I've been struggling a lot, and constantly trying to figure out where I can fit in therapy, can I afford therapy, and where do I find a therapist that I actually like, and can I practice therapy someday when I feel right now like I'm falling apart, and how does one get medicated? Like I'm that kind of mess. I should be working right now, but I just can't get my weary heart to write about insurance.

So just the other day I was thinking about it all. I read a past facebook post about God only knows what (I post all the time). I thought about how I used to be strong. At first this thought bothered me, it's been a recurring thought throughout this...thing, and it made me sad. But then I remembered something else: I was just as vulnerable at my strongest. Feeling weak and broken doesn't mean I'm no longer strong.

I saw Wonder Woman last night, and without giving too much away I'll say: I needed it. You've got this incredibly powerful, strong woman and a part of her strength and her very purpose is to be courageous enough to believe in the good of mankind – and then do something about it. I caught myself feeling empowered watching a super hero movie. She was both fierce and vulnerable. It was brave to believe the things she did, yet she wasn't spared the pain it brought.

And you see, I sort of realized it's hard to be strong when being strong also means being vulnerable. Sometimes, or what can feel like oftentimes, that vulnerability gets you hurt. Loving with your heart wide open can leave you faint and weary. But I came to another conclusion, too...

Tonight I saw a friend of mine going through it. She wearily asked, "How can it be like this when I've done all I can?" Her sentiments resonated with me, not just from my recent relationship debacle, but from life. Then I found myself saying something to her that, in my own haze of struggle, I needed to hear:

You're strong! Don't let a scary moment make you forget it.

I have been stuck in a real pain that I'm still not fully sure how to dismantle and I certainly haven't had luck wishing away, but I can choose strength. It's hard, and it doesn't feel good, or secure sometimes, but I can draw on my strength. It isn't gone, I can call it up and find it again.

Just yesterday I told myself I can and will be strong again...but by this morning at my desk I forgot. As I said just a bit ago, I decided I don't want to let the scary moments make me forget my strength anymore.

What We Do When We Avoid Pain

My life has felt like a mess. My worldview is teetering on edge because I can't make sense out of so many painful things happening over and over. Being teased with good things, only to have them ripped away cruelly. I've felt like a broken record because I know I've talked about it so much, but I also feel like I've hardly been listened to. It's why I write about it.

A minute to at most a few minutes into talking through any one painful part of my life and how stuck I feel, I'm usually offered a solution. As if the thing that's been on cycle through my mind for weeks and months can suddenly make sense to someone who listened to me talk about it for a minute – suddenly they have an answer. Usually it's that "everything will be fine", or it'll turn around. I believed that, for a while. Then it felt like things were turning around, until they weren't anymore. Until something else bad happened, followed by something else; until I lost the job I loved when I was house shopping, until I got my heartbroken yet again, and then after having my hope naively reignited, having it crushed again. Stuck in places of pain like being in a boat with a hole, bailing water out as it comes in.

I'm still sad a lot. I'm still looking for sense and meaning a lot. And the thing is I just want that to be heard and held, not fixed because I have the utmost doubt that just chinning up will fix this. For so long I felt not like myself, so long that it now feels like the new normal. At the same time, I still feel like I have to argue to have the pain in my life recognized and not brushed over.

I know: people don't know what to say to pain and often they just say something. I'm getting used to that, learning to have grace for it. But I also wish there was a greater effort to learn to think before speaking to a person in pain. I catch myself doing it, too, all the time. If there's one valuable thing this time in my life has taught me, it's to take pause before responding to a person in pain. My whole life I was that positive, look-at-the-bright-side person, so I still do it too, but I'm striving and learning to allow people to be in their reality.

See, being the one who sits and really listens, believing for something better without voicing it – that is a link to the hope outside the reality that the darkness hides. Sometimes life can be so painful, it makes it incredibly difficult to hope; it becomes scary, not just like how hope is often a risk but a thing that is truly hard to do. When we avoid another's pain by assuming they can take hold of hope, we leave them in that darkness to fend for themselves.

In these months that have stretched on farther than I'd ever imagined they would, the best words I've heard over and over again came from my best friend: "That must be so hard." They didn't make the pain disappear, they soothed simply by being with me in the reality that this is so hard.