What I have

 I tore open my computer just now. I want to write this while my mind is good, because when the demons come back to play, I want to remind myself that their battle doesn't last forever. 

My therapist asked me last week, "what are you proud of?"

I sat there in raw emotionlessness, as tears gripped my throat, and started to silently slip down my face. 

"nothing" I finally mumbled. 

She sat for a moment, "nothing?" 

I brought my eyes from mindlessly looking at the floor to look into hers, "everything I worked so hard for...I lost. I am proud of nothing right now."

I love to see the human side of my therapist, and when sad shock swept across her face, I kept going. 

"I worked really hard and got a job to support myself, I moved out, I had my own place to live my own car, took care of all my own bills, I had lost a ton of weight I felt SO good and so healthy. I started losing these things, but I found a relationship I really thought was it I mean he was SUCH a good guy- he had all the things everyone always told me I deserved and that I should wait for- everything, EVERYTHING I had worked so hard for...I have lost. And it's hard not to feel that what he turned out to be isn't what I deserved all along."

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I had been in that place for days. And have been for days since. It is still factually true that I have lost all of those things. But this morning I woke up, and after battling a cold all week, was given a snow day, and I was so thankful to be able to keep sleeping it off. When I finally dragged my lazy butt out of bed, I was able to make myself coffee with oat milk- because my parents always make sure I have some handy. I was then able to clean my room and put fresh sheets on my bed- and while doing so meditated on this very post I am no furiously trying to get out before it leaves my heart. 

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I just want to remember...to be thankful, always. It's so easy to focus on what I don't have, or what I have lost, and most often- that's where I have found myself these days. But even if I have lost everything, and I mean truly everything, but I still have breath in my lungs then I have breath in my lungs to keep going and to keep. on. trying. And right now, while I am in that place of thanksgiving, I want to tattoo it to my soul, so that God-forbid, should I ever find myself truly with nothing, I will wake up and choose to be thankful for His life-breathe still in me, because 

I. 

WOKE. 

UP. 

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I'm not gonna get it right. I will forget. In an hour, a day, or a year...and my demons will haunt me and play with my mind. But I will have a moment I can look to and say, "but remember that. Remember when you decided, you were going to embrace every opportunity you had to keep on going?"

get up

 it's like an out of body experience. i'm hovering over myself, begging me to get up, to keep going. but instead, im sprawled out across the road, bloody, bruised, and broken. my eyes are hallow. my skin is in shreds. there is no spark, no sign of life, other than the labored rise and fall of my chest, and the slow, existential, dread-filled blink of my eyes. it's the curse of nightmares or reality. i don't want them closed too long. don't want to stay awake.

i'm not here cos i want to be. but who ever is? i made some bad choices that contributed to where i now find myself, but not every factor was by my own hand, and i can't get up. i find the courage, i prop up on my elbows to begin lifting my torso off the ground, trying to sit up, and along comes another blow, and i'm back down, weaker than i was before. sometimes, i even make it to my knees, i'm about to stand back up, and that's when the next one comes. 

one of my favorite motivational speeches is rocky balboa saying "you, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t how hard you hit; it’s about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward. How much you can take, and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done!"

and i'm trying. but earlier this week i collapse in my mama's arms and wailed out "i don't know how to get up, i feel like i can't get up" hit after hit, i have gotten up, i have shaken it off, i have moved forward- and i, am. tired. the idea of having to keep do it, to keep going against every force i am facing, it wears me out. i cannot wrap my head around how i am supposed to get up again. all i have wanted to do that last few months, is curl up, and just kind of...well disappear. but i have gotten up. i got back out there and for what? to be shoved. back. down.

so i lay here. i lay here looking at my problems looming over me. all i have ever wanted to do was  have a simple life. to just live. and now all i am doing is barely surviving. and i have tried so many times to take the bull by the horn and show my issues whos boss, to be thrown off said bull and trampled by it. 

"you think this is bad, hold my beer!" and they set off making sure i know, they can get so much worse. 

i have never wanted to just scream, but i do. i have never understood why in the Bible, people in grief would tear their clothes, i do now. 

i keep reading my Bible, and keep surrounding myself with Godly people, but i'm angry. i'm not asking for a life of luxury, i'm not stupid i know God is not a genie. but i desperately need a way out from under the incessant weight i have sitting on me. i feel like i'm dying alive. i know He wants better for me, more for me, and i'm trying to walk in faith of that, when does he meet me? when does he pick me up, dust me off, and carry me? because i am tired. i'm tired in parts of my heart that i didn't know i could be. i feel like i am being mocked. "you won't actually make it out of this" 

i'm clutching the side of the boat, begging him to ease the waves. and if not to calm the storm, to just hold me through it. 

do i ask too much? is what i ask outside of the line of what he gives his children? if im wrong- someone tell me. 

i just need him to lift my head. i just need help getting up again. i need to be firmly replanted on my feet. 

i beg for it. i plead for it. i ache for it. i look for it. but for now, i just wait for it. 

Ready...or not?

 Twice now, I've been 6 months in, and thought I was about to see the man on one knee. The first time, I was glad it didn't happen, and the one to break it off. Hindsight is always 2020, and when it came down to it, I wanted to be his parent's daughter-in-law more than I wanted to be his wife. Side note ladies, date people you are actually attracted to. But I digress. 

The one after him though...man I really loved him. I will not go down the rabbit hole that was our relationship, as I have already done so several times, no good comes of it, and I really am moving on. I'm in a far better place than I was and feel no need to continue to open that can of worms or stir the pot or whatever idiom you want to use. I'm doing better and I would like to keep it that way.

However, that healing stage brings me to the melancholy doorstep of the state of my heart this morning. It's been a few days, maybe weeks, in coming. The tipping point was Friday on my way home from work when "Say Something" came on, and I lost it. I've heard that song a million times. But the tears leaped from my eyes, and it was as if my heart was screaming to the faceless man that my soul aches to complete. "Say something, I'm giving up on you" a line from another song says "how can you miss someone you've never met, cos I need you now but I don't know you yet." and I feel that. I'm ready to be ready.

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I have a love hate relationship with my therapist. She's absolutely incredible. And I do adore her. But she makes me realize or acknowledge uncomfortable and sad things. As the love I thought I was going to grow old in was sabotaged from the inside out, she asked me how it made me feel and we talked through the different emotions I had been experiencing. But she knew. And I knew. And I finally confessed, "even though he wasn't everything he portrayed himself to be- after all the cheap relationships I've had, I really believed I had finally found a good guy and the kind of love and respect and romance I have always been told I deserve- and it too was taken away- it feels like...I don't deserve it, nor will I ever actually get it."

And that revelation I had, sitting on her couch, has plagued me. I thought I had finally found what I had always been told to wait for, and not only was it taken from me, it was like the cruel kids, who pretend to be your friend until you come over- only for them to make you miserable upon arrival. It wasn't just taken away, it was thrown in my face as like this "haha you didn't actually have it, stupid!" I feel like the devastated, fat little girl on the playground  whos being laughed and looked at. I thought I was desired, but really I was just their point of entertainment. I was just here for them to poke a stick at, convincing me it was just a game, until the pokes became lethal jabs to my tender heart. 

I say all this, because it is the environment around which my heart find itself these days. It's not so much him I am not over, nor is it our relationship I'm trying to hold onto. Its that I so fully and completely trusted this man, and he destroyed it, in tandem with- do I even deserve a good guy, that my heart sits here and plays ping pong between "I'm ready" and "I'm ready to be ready."

So as I sat in my car, weeping, and aching and singing off key and broken voiced, I asked myself, "how do I know when I'm ready?" I know I don't like to be alone, that I miss that partnership of a relationship. That "my person" ness of dating someone. I miss the perks of arms around me, hands to hold, and lips to kiss. I miss being in love and feeling loved. I know that I want those things again. But I also sense this fear and dread in my heart- I'm not quite there yet. I bounce back fast, but this one is taking a while. Which is fine, I guess, but how do I know when I am ready? How do I know when I can start looking again, start talking again, and start putting myself back out there without the crippling fear I feel when I consider it now? And likewise, how do I go ahead and get myself there? Cos this sucks. All my friend are married and starting their families. I thought I'd be right there with them. But instead I am not only behind I feel like I'm aggressively behind and I won't catch up. 

What's the marker? Where is the goal? When do I know, "ok, get back out there girl"? I want to be ready now, I ache for it. I cry to sleep often, longing to find my lifelong companion. Missing the person my heart seems to already know, but I do not. It sucks.

So ready, set...hang on. 

Redeem My Love Song

I fell in love with a farmer. 

I found him, because I looked for him y'all, I straight up joined Farmers Only to find this guy. I wanted that life before I almost had that life with him. 

I want a country love song kind of romance. I want a slow dance in the kitchen, love me till I'm old and gray, build the life, raise the babies, face the challenges, embrace the little moments kind of love. I wanted those things before I almost had that life with him.

I wanted the animals, and the bonfires, and the mess of kids, and the life in the country. And I wanted that before I almost had that with him!

I didn't want these things as a result of being with him. And it kind of pisses me off when people tell me "you only like that cos of him" 

Noooohohoho I do not! Thank you ma'am, I was with him because I wanted those things. Not the other way around. I will get a little irate if you say this sort of thing to me. No, no ma'am, he didn't build me. I built me. I know what I want and I know what I'm after, and I know that the only part he had to play is that he wanted (or said he did) the same things.

Those dreams don't die with my relationship with him. I wanted those things before him, I want them after him. Thank. U. Next.

As you can tell, I get kind of bent out of shape when I'm accused of  this sort of thing. And yet. There is a thing, a most precious thing- a love song, that I cannot break from memories with him. It was a song I had been holding in my heart for years. It's my favorite love song. And I wanted to keep it for "the one" to share it with them. 

He and I would swap love songs back and forth, send new ones we heard that made us think of the other, or digging into the oldies and sharing timeless tunes with the other.

Then one day he told me, there was a very special song he wanted to share with me. It strayed from the country love songs we usually shared- it was one his grandparents would slow dance to. He had vivid memories of his Pop turning on the vinyl and swaying with his nanny in the kitchen- old and gray, and still just as in love as ever. 

And he sent to me the song I had had in my heart for years. The song I knew would be shared with my forever and always love. 

Is this stupid beyond all reason that it's one of the things I can't get over? Probably. But music holds a special place in my heart- and he touched a tender and secret place in me when he sent that one. And it became our most special song.

We spent many moments slow dancing in our kitchen to it, listening to it when we were feeling generally in love with the other. We would send it to the other when we were especially missing. It was a song that ran a cord through our relationship and bound our hearts together. We dreamed of first dancing at our wedding to it. It was our song.

I still can't listen to it. 

I loved that song before him. I loved a lot of things before him that I have been able to separate from him. Why can't I detach the sentiment of this song from him? I've been able to for most of the other songs, and just about all of the other things. Why is this one thing, that I loved before him, one I cannot remove from my memories with him?

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I started a TikTok, joking not joking, and honestly, it's been fun. But I've started a "haha I'm single again" series called "Oddly specific requirements for my next relationship" because- well I've learned some things. 

But I'm not laughing right now. My heart is sad. I'm still skipping that song. 

And I need the next guy, to hopefully be the last guy, and to be the guy that redeems my love song. 

I don't want it to be bound any longer to a man who destroyed my dreams and wrecked my spirit. I have worked so hard to rebuild myself- but I need the right man to help me reclaim this song. To rewrite this connection. 

I hunger for that touch. 

~M

The Big Event Letdown of Life

Although I’ve only watched the entirety of the series through twice maybe thrice, out of all the tv shows I’ve ever watched, Gilmore Girls probably takes the cake for me. It’s witty, it’s emotional, and you (if you’re like me) you get invested deeply. You feel like you grow up right instep with whichever character you identify with. If you wanna talk GG I will swap the tea over coffee any day. When it comes to Dean, Jess or Logan I will fight you and I will win (#TeamJess). 

I got deeply invested and felt myself grow along with Rory. She was my girl. I was her. I felt how she felt and walked roads she walked. 

Until she stated walking roads I didn’t like. And then I uttered words we shouldn’t “I would never...” because most often what we would “never”, we end up doing. 

And then the reboot happened. What a train wreck. I mean an absolute catastrophe. National disaster. 

And RORY! What happened to her?! It’s like Lorelie grew and Rory...regressed. 

I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her and scream in her face! This isn’t how our life was supposed to go!! 

But as a wise friend pointed out to me at this point in our conversation about Rory’s great regression: we grew with her- and when she showed up at the shore of the real world- she, like so many of us, couldn’t find all the potential we were bolstered into believing we had. Where was our great contribution to the world? How are we going to leave our mark on this world if all we drag out of the ocean of our younger years is a brief case full of ordinary? 

Some of us faced this in our early to mid 20’s. We finished up college and merged into the busy highways of the professional world. Others of us faced this kamikaze mission right out of highschool and have found ourselves floundering for that much longer. 

We showed up bright eyed and bushy tailed only to find out all the things we thought made us soooo special, barely distinct us from the survivor next to us. 

We drag onto the shore and the monotony of the world chips away at us. 

It’s so much more than realizing we didn’t get the Noah/Allie love story and farmhouse. 

It’s so much bigger than realizing everything we thought made us amazing just made us human. 

We show up and we’re disappointed to find ourselves on land and still struggling to keep our heads up. 

We’re not just not “something special”, we’re lost. We’re in our 20’s or early 30’s and nothing looks like what we thought. 

We not only missed out on the 13 going on 30 storyline, we missed the job, the penthouse, and the happiness. 

I would venture so far as to say, we weren’t even looking to be the next big thing. We weren't hoping to Jeff Bezos part 2. But we are let down but how underwhelming our lives have turned out. So many of us just want a good old American dream life. Instead, we’re a generation of depressed, lonely, overworked, underpaid, anxiety ridden men and women who just wanted to get to this point in our lives and be where our parents were: married, working, raising kids, building the dream. The normal, monotonous dream. Yes it’s plain white bread- but it’s the building blocks we wanted. If we had it, we wanted to replicate it. And if we didn’t, we wanted to create it. 

Instead we find ourselves dripping with disappointment. Find ourselves working jobs we don’t want, earning less than we need, to pay for bills we didn’t know about that come from expenses we didn’t find necessary. 

Yeah. My 20’s have been the big event let down of life. But I know that once January gets rolling, I will no longer feel the sense of sadness that the holidays are over that I do right now. I will eventually find other things to look forward to, and these months become another sweet memory to tuck into my heart. 

The January of my life is about to get rolling. And maybe yours is too. No, our Januarys won’t catapult us into something earth rocking and mind bending. But they’ll put us into a better light. That this season doesn’t last forever. And no, where we weren’t all born to be Ruth Bater Ginsburg or Rosa Parks, but we all have the power to impact someone’s life. I know many “mundane” women who have dramatically altered mine. 

So go work the job you don’t want a little better. Hug your child that would be called an “oops” a little tighter. Smile at strangers a little more often. 

Find joy in the ordinary, mundane, magnificent life you were given. And hold onto the hope that after January, is the spring. 

The best is yet to come 💜

“For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”

‭‭2 Corinthians‬ ‭4:17-18‬

flowers

 i read a quote that said "one day you'll meet a boy...who will learn you favorite flower"

ugh. flowers.

sometimes i could throttle my oldest nephew. he's so much like a little brother. i love him to death, but he talks to me like an adult and i don't like it. who told him he could have an opinion? 

i wouldn't really. i adore him. but sometimes he says stuff i don't like...that's also stuff that's kinda true. after my first relationship ended he told me "the right one will bring you flowers" 

and when i got neck deep in with this last one, and flowers never came, i thought it didn't matter. the ring he gave me had a flower etched into it. that was enough, right?

"but he never gave you flowers"

ouch. ok punk. you were right. the right one will bring me flowers. 

it's such a simple thing. why couldn't i have just listened to him the first time?

cos it seemed so silly. but he was right. he's known long before me who was and wasn't gonna be around. 

one day, some boy is gonna learn my favorite flowers...and then bring them to me. and i truly believe, if he don't, he ain't the one. 

drained

i stood in front of the mirror for a long time today. not in a vain way. i was wearing a worn out tshirt from three or four jobs ago, day old hair, no make up, my cat pajama pants on. i just stood there, just looking at me. my face looked so....old. i noted the involuntary downturn of both my mouth and my eyes, not a sight i am used to seeing on myself. and i don't like it. 

i sneered at myself. i look terrible. my eyes look sunken in and dark. are those wrinkles? i cant decide if the stress is making me gain or lose weight but either way, i just don't look good. 

i look so...void. 

i remember telling him, "everything i'm looking forward to, you've just decided we're not doing!" 

every little getaway, canceled. event, turned down. every project, quit. it didn't matter what it was, he just decided, we weren't going to be apart of it. i had nothing to look forward to anymore. every day was just- survive. he sucked the life out of me, and took away anything i was excited about. he was cruel, and i'm not even sure he realized just how cruel. 

i don't even remember when i went into survival mode. but i can't seem to get myself out of it. 

so this morning, as i stood there taking in the sorry sight of me, i asked and let the question hang in the heavy air between myself and my reflection "how much more can you take?" 

i just need a leg up. one firm step in the right direction and i might not feel so utterly lost. 

i have nothing to look forward to. i have fears plaguing my mind i don't talk about. some i do like, i have a financial strain on me, and not only no income- i have nothing there for the strain to pull from. i have few job prospects and even fewer i'm excited about. 

but there's other things too. there's other fears i don't know how to name. other fears i don't know how to categorize or combat. other regrets i don't want to acknowledge or come to terms with.

i broke down on my mom "it feels like i'm drowning...i can see the surface of the water, but i just can't reach it. and every time i thrust my hand through, something drags me back down, and i'm left looking at the blurry and distant chance of breathing again. it's always just out of reach."

i confessed for the first time ever that i am deeply sad and truthfully, in despair. i see no way out. i see no solutions. i see no end to unconventional living. i feel only dread weighting down upon me. 

more mornings than not i lay in bed and just stare at the ceiling. hours pass in this manor. it sits on my chest and i can't move from beneath its weight. it's usually some outside force that moves me from this place. 

i sat with a friend this afternoon, and regurgitated the events of the last year+ to her. 

she had this sad sort of joyful look in her eye, like she was sorry i had gone through everything i had, but also like she knew something i don't yet. oddly enough for the first time since my world came crashing down, i felt hopeful. clearly she could see something i can't. and maybe that means some day i will see it too.