22 June 2017

I’ve been speculating a lot when it came to this blog. I think for a while I forgot why I was writing in the first place –- or why I started this whole “rewind” and “unwind” mantra when all I wanted to do was let go of my past.

When I think about it, this will be my first post in 2019, but I haven’t left my writing behind. I had a job writing eight hours a week for a company that didn’t fully appreciate the talents they had within their teams. I wrote a novel for my thesis, which you can find at my other website I started while neglecting this one. I did a lot, I graduated my Master’s program, started my career hunt, and traveled all while I put off my hopes and dreams for a blog that I love –- all while putting off making this something I am passionate about.

Then, in the heat of all the stress from all the above coming to a close, I found myself wallowing in my future. So as all New York self-pittiers do, on June 19, I sat down in Central Park to think about the fear that was rising in the pit of my stomach. What was to come now that I am no longer a student, but rather a human drowning in debt and without a job? So, I did what I did best, I opened Notes on my iPhone, and I began to write a post for this blog. On, June 21, I was going to sit down, edit, and post that blurp I wrote, starting the revitalization of this blog, but then I remembered what today, June 22, meant for me in the past.

Oddly enough, but not out of the ordinary for me, on June 22, 2017, I felt the same weight of human suffocating from the thought of my future. I remember not sleeping more than an hour between the night of the 22nd and the morning of the 23rd, to spend the dawn researching and calling any option of help. I remember lying on the shower floor for hours while my tears mixed with the lukewarm water spraying above me. I was a mess, a bigger mess than I am right now, but none the less a mess.

This day, I was forever changed about how I viewed myself and my future. It was the day that broke me before I moved away to New York. I was scared. I saw my dreams of grad school slipping through my fingers like warmed sand. I thought about my life of wanting to write and how that would shift with these changes if I didn’t find the solution fast. I thought about my options and how the last thing I ever wanted was to see the person that hurt me ever again. I saw my parents, friends, and families disappointment, but above all, I saw the disappointment I had in myself.

I started to believe I wasn’t capable of overcoming this obstacle. I found myself in a hole far darker and scarier than any hole I had been in before. I told little to no one about this situation. I often wonder if those who know ever think about it, or have told other people, but I know that I have done everything I could to move on from June 22, 2017.

I started this blog in July when I needed to reflect on what had happened in June and what I would be going through in the coming years. I knew the journey I was meant to be on was never easy, but it was my path, and I was going to make it through. Fortunately, I can write this uplifting passage today because I found a way to make money while I continue my career search, but part of me always believes everything will work out. I like to say it’s my realistic side because I should always stay positive when I view something that I want to be my reality.

That post will come shortly as I work out what more I have to say about the month of June, but for now I am thankful I took a moment to start this blog. I inherently allowed myself to see my growth during the times where I feel so lost and out of control. I don’t regret my older posts about past relationships and heartache –- they have become buckets of inspiration while I write more and more novels. I know I need to keep my buckets full, so in honor of the day I thought my future was changed in such a negative way, I will try my best to overcome my obstacles and change the future of this blog.

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21 September 2016

Vulnerability was such a foreign concept when it came to my relationships. I protected my heart for so long. I locked it in a cage and threw out the key until I met a man and he picked at the lock.

I gave myself to him. I gave all I could in every moment I spent with him. I gave him parts of myself that he would never be able to give back to me. I found myself selflessly devoting my soul to someone that at times came off as an incredibly selfish individual. A year later, I question this night more and more. I wonder what I know now if I would have ever allowed this night to ever happen.

What if I never bought that plane ticket? Would I be a better individual today? What if I never ran into his arms like I had? I could have met another. I would have at a different stage in my life and it could have been a better situation. Would current me ever let past me stay in that situation? No, I would have told her a month before today to save herself. Save the heartache and pain, but it would be in the intention to save who I am today, not to protect her yesterday.

A year ago, the night was perfect. It was what I hoped for, but feared at the same time. For nearly a year, the night was great, but then I began to grow and change and so did the evening. The glasses I viewed this night darkened and reminded of the pain that lingered in the air that I breathed in.

You wish you could shake your younger self. Shake some sense into them and hold them tightly from all the worse things that could happen, but you can’t. You sit idly as the memory resonates and repeats itself in your memories. I began to pray to forget this night and every night since. It opened a door that I was ready to walk through, but I lost my protection in the process.

I pushed my back up against wooden planks on an outside patio. The rain poured around me, and a roof sheltered me slightly. The spray hit the exposed parts of my body and I felt the cooling sensation tingle my body. It was uncomfortable, but that could never compare to the discomfort that he and his friends were subjecting me to. How inconsiderate the whole situation became clear as I saw how self-centered he must have been to not see how it was an inappropriate conversation to follow the event that had just occurred.

I was questioned repeatedly as to why I would be subjecting myself to the rain, but I knew then, I felt dead on the inside and this was my grounding sensation. What they didn’t understand was that the rain was bringing me back to reality. The words I was hearing were only slightly eating away at my happiness, I felt at the time they were killing me. I was still breathing and I was alive even though the words cut into me deeper and deeper.

Current me just wants to hug the woman sitting on the ground. To whisper in her ear and tell her the decision she made will not harm her. That the naivety of the situation was essential for her growth. To apologize for the fact that this won’t be the last time she welcomed falling water as her saving grace.

In her opinion, he was perfect. Although he continuous hurt her, he was kind. I kept telling myself this for a year. His intentions were pure, but how could someone lost in a desert alone ever be able to share in my life and not drain me of my life. He was thirsty and he drank me dry.

He took a part of me with him, that at some days I am grateful for, and other days I stand and let the shower head camouflage the water falling from my eyes. I don’t want it back, but I want the pain surrounding it to subside. I gave him my heaven and he took it willingly. I spoke so kindly about it for so long, but knowing what I know now, there are smarter ways to better my ideas surrounding that aspect of my life.

17 August 2016

I would like to insist that life is accompanied by a user manual. That way our birth certificates can be bound with all of the experiences we could encounter in life. So as we transition we can recognize them while they happen. Love is a verb I struggled to define before I really experienced it romantically.

I came home to my roommate a year ago today and asked when she knew she was in love with her partner. It was deep into their relationship for her, and here I was just two weeks into getting to know a man who had already confessed his love for me and I was thinking I really loved him.

He hit me with a foul ball plummeting from a universe I was so unaware of. I was ready for him to open up about something difficult when he asked me if he could tell me something without me freaking out, but I couldn’t prepare for the feelings he unleashed. I read the words everyone who has had a crush wants to see, hear, and feel. A man loves me!!! He loves me, yet I froze. So much had happened two days prior and our future felt futile, yet there I was thinking about moving away and falling in love. simultaneously.

I stared down those three words—8 letters—a simple construction of subjects and verb to which I was instantly filled with a pulse of electricity. It radiated from my heart down to my fingers and toes as I read them over and over. When it fell into my stomach the upheaval of emotions I suppressed for most of my life twisted at my innards. They were emotions I had never felt at this intensity and I was nervous.

He overwhelmed me.

My thoughts thrashed violently around my head. I had no idea what I was doing.

ABORT! ABORT! ABORT! 

He left me speechless, so that was what I responded with:

“You and making me speechless.”

“Is that bad?”

“No”

Then he started backtracking & attempting to explain himself. I felt like he was filling with anxiety because at that exact moment those words were too heavy for me to throw back in his direction. I began to get anxious. I was so unsure what it was that I felt because I didn’t have my user manual handy. 

Is that what love is? Feeling lighter than air as you float to the heavens while you simultaneously feel a magnet’s pull, that surpasses a human’s tolerance of g-forces, towards another soul? That you want to black out and throw up from the effects love has on the body? Is love a drug that forced its way into my bloodstream? I was scared to simplify it a year ago, but today I know that was how I first felt our love.

It grew to become something I needed. Soon it just became happiness. It filled me and my days with incredible thoughts. I walked around knowing someone loved me. I barely understood affection before him; hugs and kisses, romance, and the meaning I put to love were all different before him. I stepped into this world and had no intention of leaving. I spent my days telling him what I could not put into words a year ago.

Now I feel empty.

I freely share a love with all. The want to radiate it outwards comes naturally to me. However, this love came at a different rate for him. This love knew no depth—it knew only of infinite goals. This love poured out of me for him. I am yet to find the shut-off valve; I bust at the seems and let it flow from my eyes as I forcibly hide it each day. I feel constrained to only suppress it now. That I have no choice but to bury it alone in the darkness when all I want is to let it free. I am compromising for him.

I spoke to him on the phone a while ago and I said it again. I told him I loved him a month after he broke up me. He said nothing except that he doesn’t know what to say to “that”. Life came full circle. I blurted it out like he did a year ago and like me, he didn’t say it back. I never said it to hear it back when we were together, and I didn’t say it that day to change his mind. I just know I can’t spend my life pretending that I am okay with what we are now.

I feel like a liar if I did. 

11 August 2016

I have been known to go the extra mile throughout my journey. Whether it be in my education, relationships, or daily tasks, I have gone further and would continue to seek an above and beyond mentality to better my days where I could. However, I tended to exhibit perfectionist ideals while I strongly believed there was something more I could do, or do differently, because of the extra mile I was and am willing to walk.

I have learned to not let that ideal weigh heavy on me. I am aware that I do not have to be, nor will I ever truly achieve perfection. I have settled with unperfected pieces in school and life even if I shouldn’t have. I allowed first drafts to be seen and I did so to protect myself and my mental state from wavering under the pressure. By doing that, I allowed for mishaps in order to lessen the outcome of stress and have grown in a new direction.

I internalized the bad grades and worked at time management and performance in academics to excel. I noticed where my efforts were needed more and where they could falter a bit for balance and cohesion in life. I became selective with the company I kept. From the imperfections, I saw my strengths and weaknesses under a spotlight and I became a better person because of the lessons I learned.

A year ago today, I was given a lesson on my heart. It was different from the lessons that I became accustomed to. I had not hoped to learn a lesson from it, rather learn and grow with it. I laid the foundation that provided me a way to strengthen my needs, desires, and feelings. I was making sure they were met first by myself and then through others, I had relationships with. I was not aiming to perfect this, but not half-ass it in a way that I had been previously.

I openly discovered parts of myself that had been left overlooked. I used to neglect my needs and did not put enough effort into what made me the happiest. I had a voice, and I used it occasionally, but I also had an internal sense that spoke to my hopes and desires, and I finally had no choice but to listen to it a year ago.

There were often times in the past where I subconsciously did not settle for “unperfected pieces” when it came to partners because internally something felt off. I did not know it at the time, but I was able to keep myself at a distance from them and protected my heart doing so. Together, I and another played Operation and we found the points that made me buzz. Finally, there was someone who encompassed more than what I could have ever expected to find because I found what I deserved with him. 

I literally drove the extra miles to have a chance at this evening, but never could I have dreamt its outcome when we planned the trip. In turn, I left no distance between our souls and by doing that, I found myself. I began to understand why I overlooked everyone else before this moment. I learned why I walked away so often, and I did not question why I felt my feet beginning to firmly cement down. He was not perfect, but he was doing a damn good job at making me feel incredible about who I was.

I still am learning from this evening a year later. I am more in tune with my needs in all variants of relationships I encounter. I have been told to remain single until someone who completely cherishes my compassion comes along. To find someone who regards my intuitive side as a strength and where my care-taker abilities are not exploited. This night I felt thoroughly cared for. I felt an unsurpassable passion then and he was emotional enough to validate me in ways I needed. I stayed single until I met him, and it made all the difference in understanding my heart.

30 July 2016

Two months ago, I added an event to the calendar on my phone. I wanted to be reminded of the plan I dreamt up to execute this morning. Earlier this week, I deleted the reminder. 

I envisioned waking up and rolling over to my phone. I would squint at the bright light so that I could spell out Good morning baby and adorn it with a red heart to symbolize the love I felt towards him the second I woke up.

I would then click over to Instagram to create a new post. I’d scroll to the beginning of my camera roll and find the year-old picture of us. The photo would be faded to match my silly aesthetic, but in my opinion, the smile on my face radiated enough vibrancy to capture the feelings I was developing towards him that day.

I could caption it with a thousand words or I could let the photo speak for itself, but I knew I above all wanted to remind him that I see you. Today and all days since this day in 2016, I have seen you.

A year ago, I noticed him for the first time. I purposefully put myself standing beside him all night and for the past year, I stood taller knowing he was the one who held my heart with such delicacy from that moment on. This morning I am hunched over writing this in a hotel room feeling rather nostalgic and somber about our past.

I did not wake up to sweet texts and sent none of my own, today, and all days for nearly two months. During the relationship, it felt like I’d blink and a whole month would pass, now each day weighs heavy as they collect in months apart.

I kept the love we shared between us. I was less than vocal on social media during our relationship because I did not seek the audience’s approval. I was so incredibly happy to be caring for something bigger than myself.

I had no intention to post the photo for it to be “liked” by my peers. I intended to show him that this day in the past made quite honestly the biggest turn around on my well-being thus far. Today, a year ago, I took my first steps in a new direction that would lead me towards unforgettable love. All I currently have is a hole in my heart where we used to take up residency, but I am trying to strengthen myself by filling it on my own with memories of caring about who we were.

I was given a heart of pure compassion. I have borne the weight of others and have been driven by empathy throughout my days, but it felt like he was given to me so I could understand how to be grateful for what was literally sitting at my feet. His love for me felt as if it knew no bounds. My knowledge of love, relationships, and affection grew because of him, but so did heartbreak.

He may have turned away from me a few weeks after I set the reminder for today, but his absence is a daily reminder of how thankful I try to remain while knowing I have felt a love like that in my lifetime.

If you meet someone and feel internally drawn by their presence, don’t let them pass you on. We may have been strangers connected by mutual friends, but I regret nothing by asking to take a photo with him that day.

I knew then I did not want to forget that man, and if my memory failed me one day in the future, then I would have a photo that would speak for itself.