Now comes the time to screw my courage to the sticking place because I am watching my world crumble and it’s hard to find my spot inside myself where I feel good and happy and whole. I still know I made the right decision, but I have gutted Joe and he wants me back. My mom yelled at me on the phone this morning, voice shaking, tears in her words, hateful. Telling me this is a mistake. Dad is upset I didn’t consult him first. Reuel telling me in a text message that he disapproves.
Joe leaves me a voicemail, telling me that he’s never known pain like this, telling me he loves me, he was going to propose this summer, buy me a dog, telling me all these things that ache in my chest, rattling around like dried pods, and I am touched, tugged, but unmoved. Unmoved because I have been so certain, but touched and tugged because when my galaxy goes spinning and screaming at me to tell me I have failed them, disappointed them, wronged them… I can’t help but question my resolve. I feel like I must be going crazy, dissociating, but I could not be further from it. I’m back in my body.
Stability has not been me. Maturity has not been me. Doing the right thing has not been me. Being healthy, safe, careful has not been me. I have not been stable. I am not mature. I have not done the right things. I have not truly attempted health, safety, or care with or for my own self. Joe’s love surrounded and enveloped me but contained us both within the roles of provider & patient, father & daughter, owner & pet.
Joe’s been my stability, but by definition that leaves little room for me to be my own stability. Joe didn’t know what to do when I started to become healthier because he no longer felt needed, and truthfully, he wasn’t needed. I’m ready to be stable by my own right. I am closing the chapter on my wandering years. The years I spent just trying to breathe. And now I’m moving forward, knowing myself deeply and rationally and emotionally. I can listen to myself… even better, I can hear myself.
Even if this is all wrong – it is still okay. I will experience and learn and grow because I can only do what is undeniably right in my body, right now. Good things don’t come easy. Growing hurts. Experiencing anything is a sensation and too much sensation, when it comes all at once, is overwhelming and painful. I am experiencing right now. And that means I’m living. Happiness is a choice.
This is not the end of me, this is the beginning.
(hold on (I am still alive))
This is not the end of me, this is the beginning.
