I see you, you know. You may think no one really sees you, but I do. I promise. I see all of the things you try to hide. I see your scars. I see it all. You are hurting. So, so much. I know, I get it. But you need to stop hurting yourself. Stop the cutting, stop the drinking, and stop all of the meaningless sex. It is not okay to try and drown your feelings in the bottom of a bottle and it is not okay to cut yourself just to feel alive. I know you want to be numb and I understand, but sex isn’t supposed to leave you numb. It is a beautiful thing, and you will understand what I mean later in life.
Contrary to what you may believe, you are NOT alone. You are loved. People care! Stop drowning yourself in alcohol, stop going to school drunk. Stop taking handfulls of pills. Just STOP!
You are pushing your closest friends away. They don’t want to watch you slowly self destruct anymore.
You are about to make the biggest and greatest mistake in all of your life. It’s dangerous and damn near-deadly, but I won’t stop you. You need this, you’ll see why. Not right away, but you will. I promise.
This guy you’re with? He’s bad. Worse than any of the others. He is going to use, abuse, and destroy you. He will sell you out to push himself ahead in the blink of an eye. This isn’t love and he isn’t worth your tears. We can get through this. Together.
Someday, when you are older, you will thank me for not stopping you from making that mistake. I know you believe in fate, and I am pretty sure this is fate stepping in to make sure you don’t kill yourself (accidentally or on purpose). This is your rock bottom.
I promise you, you will find happiness someday. When you least expect it, it will come.
I promise you, there is a lot of work to be done, so start now!
I once had this guy friend who was as obsessed as I am with shoes (and clothes, but we’re talking about shoes today). He was smokin’ hot, too, but that is an issue for another post or my sponsor or something. Anyway, back to my friend who loved shoes. When his birthday rolled around, I gave him the most perfect birthday card I have ever seen (except it was probably created with woman in mind and he was most decidedly a man). It said something to the effect of “the feeling of wearing new shoes while you’re on your way to buy new shoes” was what I wished for him on his birthday. He totally got it and he loved it.
At the time, I thought I got it. And I suppose, given what I knew at the time, I did get it to some extent. New shoes make me happy. In the pants. Wearing new shoes on my way to buy more new shoes? Is kind of a shoe-junkie’s idea of nirvana. It was a card that wished great happiness on my friend. We all deserve to experience great joy, right, but birthdays should be even more joyous.
However, recently I gained some new insight into the idea of “the feeling of wearing new shoes on your way to buy new shoes.” I’ve been having ankle problems after a mild injury, and had been buying some new shoes with flat-ish heels. Those who know me know how devastating this was to my psyche.
However, I wound up with several bad-ass pairs of boots, so I was ok with it because boots generally convey a certain attitude that says “get outta my way or these boots are gonna walk all over you,” and who doesn’t like feeling like queen of the universe every now and then?
I also had broken out an old, much loved pair of oxfords that I wore to death last summer while working on my feet all day. Those oxfords saved my feet last summer, and they looked far worse for it. The soft leather was gouged up in several places, and I asked my Sunshine if I could have a new pair of flat heeled shoes.
Being the bright and shining Sunshine that he is, my Sunshine handed me his card and told me to order some. I went to my go-to site for online shopping (same site that blessed me with the oxfords I wore to death) and found a beautiful pair of loafers on sale. I ordered away and waited with anticipation for them to arrive from Italy.
I’m glad my boss was away on vacation when those shoes arrived. I’m also glad that all of her hotel guests were out doing other things off the property. I’m pretty sure the noises I made when I opened that box would have rivaled the noises Meg Ryan made in that infamous scene from “When Harry Met Sally.” These loafers are made of the softest leather I have ever had the pleasure of touching, and I have touched some fine leathers in my life. Hell, I have tissue-thin leather leggings that feel oh-so-good on my legs that didn’t feel this soft and buttery to the touch, but I digress…
Those loafers were made of some seriously soft leather. Even the soles were made of quality leather. They were beautiful, too. I couldn’t wait to get these shoes on my feet.
When I got home and actually got those shoes on my feet, I almost cried. Not only were these shoes beautiful to look at, but these shoes felt better than any other shoe I have ever put on in my life (and I’ve put on many a pair of good shoes in my life). Even after I wore them all day to run errands, my feet did not hurt.
Now, that’s saying something. I have freakishly high arches and now I have the ankle problems. For something to make my feet feel that good even after hours of running around town and running through multiple stores was amazing to me.
It made me realize how right my Sunshine actually is when he says that your feet have to be happy for you to be happy.
My feet didn’t hurt at all for the first time in months.
When the physical body is comfortable, it makes it much easier for the emotional body to be comfortable. When the physical body is comfortable, it opens the door wide for the spiritual body to experience joy.
So, today, on this Monday, I would like to say that I wish you “the feeling of wearing new shoes on your way to buy new shoes,” but I can’t. I have to take it a little further and wish you the feeling of wearing beautiful AND comfortable new shoes on you way to buy beautiful AND comfortable new shoes. Because you deserve to have physical comfort and spiritual joy.
All the shattered hearts and broken promises that I thought I was angry about all seem so irrelevant now. I know that separating is probably the best thing for both of us, but it’s killing me. I no longer care about whether I pass or fail in school. I no longer care about graphic design. None of that matters without him.
How could I have been so blind? So stupid? I got so lost in the things that he had done to me that I forgot about the girl he brought to life. I may not be able to prevent the pain he causes me now and again, but I am in control of MY actions, and my actions have been deplorable.
This isn’t me. I don’t retaliate. I forgive, and I move on. When did I lose sight of that girl? His mistakes should have never been repeated no matter how much I wanted him to understand. He’s a man. He will never understand the emotions of a woman. I sure don’t understand the emotions of a man.
It’s probably too late for us. I simply hope someone else can learn from our mistakes. Forgiveness is a wonderful thing, and by forgiving your spouse you can make a stand. You can say that you will not allow the darkness to destroy what you both have built, even if you have to build the walls on your own.
The happiness in our eyes has been gone for quite a while. Once they told the world a story of a love that few would ever experience. Somewhere along the way, we forgot how lucky we were to have found each other. I wish I had been better at showing him how truly grateful I was to have him here. And while many might say that I should use these lessons for the next guy, I know, without a single doubt, that there will be no other for me. The attention that I was seeking from others never managed to replace what I was desperately in need of from him. And because of my foolishness, there will always be a break in his heart that won’t heal, and that I am responsible for. No matter how many times I assure him that I never followed through, he will always believe I did. Maybe that’s even worse. He will spend the rest of his life hoping that my words are true but never truly believing.
Dear God, what have I done? I ruined the only thing that was truly pure and beautiful in my life out of pure spite. My life has never had any light in it until he came along. The day I met him, everything sprang to life. The grass was greener; the sky was bluer. Exactly when did I lose sight of that? Was it the first time he slapped me? Was it the day he broke my tailbone? I seem to recall a spark up until the moment that I felt that a single promise from him had become necessary – that no matter how our fights ended, if something ever happened to me that he would not panic and kill our children as well. Anything that was left after that died the moment I pleaded for my own life.
I know this relationship isn’t healthy. I’m fully capable of taking a step back and screaming to the girl before me, “For God’s sake, run!” But I stand by a decision I made one night in our Blessing home: if I intended to love him, then I was going to love him to the end, whether it be tragic or happily ever after. It looks like tragedy is the theme of this play, but at least the heroes in question have lost only their souls and not their lives.
We had a meteorological anomaly occur here in Texas a couple of weeks ago. We had some arctic air from Canada push south and give us 77 degree (Fahrenheit) high temperatures in July. Now, up until then, I had never considered myself a fan of arctic air from Canada. Polar vortex, anyone? However, here in the swamps of East Texas, July generally brings with it highs in the upper 90s (Fahrenheit), and when you add in our humidity, that’s pretty rough.
Of course, the upper 90s are nothing compared to what we’ve been gifted with in August and September here these last few years. Remember Tropical Storm Lee, that left most of Texas burning? Yeah, minus the fires, that kind of drought and heat is our normal August and September. So I generally don’t complain about the upper 90s in July, because as hot as that is, it ain’t nothing to a Texan.
So when we got that arctic Canadian air a couple of weeks ago, I got all happy. In the pants. I did the happy dance. My happy dance scared the neighbors, so I had to come inside and dance with my dog. Thank heaven she is used to me, and just wagged her tail because she knew that a treat would be forthcoming after I was dizzy from dancing with her.
Then the arctic air retreated back to Canada where it belongs, and we went back to business as usual. Until I saw something weird on twitter. One of the weather geeks I follow tweeted a picture of a map of the USA that showed east Texas in a blue blob next week. While 86F may not seem that cool to a lot of people, here in the swamps of East Texas, a forecast of 86F on August 1? Does not happen.
Except it just did. And it has me shopping for puppy treats so I can get my dog to do the happy dance with me.
Months – if not years – of untreated depression, followed by years of depression treated with therapy. Then an all-too-brief period of remission before a slip back into depression that happened both slowly and all at once, so I didn’t even realize it at first.
It was different this time. I looked okay on the outside to all but those closest to me. I wasn’t having a breakdown every day or pulling the car over on the drive to my friends’ house to cry or to throw up. I was going to work.
But this time, I was tired of trying.
I put all that effort into getting better through sheer will, and it didn’t stick. I was frustrated. And though I absolutely didn’t want to kill myself, I needed everything to stop. I needed to be done.
I didn’t let on how relieved I was when my therapist suggested we re-visit the idea of medication.
It took a few weeks, of course. The transition wasn’t that bad. An acute breakdown caused by stress at work, which was unpleasant but okay because I’d dealt with that intense depression attack before. Then a slide back into the all-pervading guilt. But then one day I woke up feeling happy.
A fluke, I thought.
Then it happened again.
And again.
I’m on day four now, and I feel like I can function. I don’t feel stressed, I don’t feel guilty about absolutely everything.
Some things didn’t change. My coworker still drives me insane. My friends can be boring. My dog needs too much attention. But these things don’t drive me to the brink of giving up. They feel like standard downs of life, to balance out the standard ups I’ve been re-experiencing.
The ups.
I love the ups.
I almost feel like I don’t deserve this, but I know that undeserving feeling will go away as the medication continues to work. It feels strange to be able to sit here on a long weekend, doing nothing, enjoying the cloudy, wet weather. It feels strange to enjoy doing nothing, for that matter. It feels almost too good for me to see a cute guy at church and decide to go talk to him. Do normal people enjoy life this much? I’d forgotten.
When the good days come and I’m smiling? I feel like it’s a small betrayal, to you, myself, our family. It’s just not fair. I try to remember you with a smile through the tears. I try to think of the moments that make me laugh. And I do. I can do it. But in the end, you’re still not here. Not coming back.
And it sucks. My heart hurts. Because it sucks.
I love you, Daddy. I miss you. I carry you in my heart always. That part is full. Despite the chunk I lost when I lost you. You fill up the rest of my heart with memories and laughter and moments where you simply held my hand. That’s all I need, for you to hold my hand as I make my way through this.
Do you think that’s possible? Reach down and hold me. I know you’re watching. You should be able to do it. Right? How does it work, anyway? Ah. I’m surely asking too much. But sometimes I have to.
