2008
Closer to Fine
…It is a hard moment. The moment you realize the past that had a vice grip on your feeble heart is slowly lessening its suffocating hold. The moment you come face to face with the damage you have been suffering with all alone. When you can stare that one person in the face and say, “I’m closer to fine.”
It is a humbling experience. A moment to scream from the highest mountain, a moment to chronicle in the history book of your life. However, like for many of you, this moment came in the oddest of packages. It did not look like the recovery I had been praying for vigorously. It did not have any recognizable features and I had no map to navigate this surprising turn of events.
I had planned how I would get over her. I had a step-by-step chart in my mind on how it would go. I would spend the time I needed alone and in bed. Walking, stance like, from my bedroom to the kitchen and the kitchen to the bathroom in her old shirt I could cry in the comfort of my own space. I would hold the vital for what once was and I would allow myself to feel sorry, just for me. Then feeling only slightly stronger I would reenter into society, slowly making my way into the light of day. I would begin to smile again and make new friends. “Our friends” held a different meaning now and I need to make “my friends” in order to process completely. Still transparent, I would gradually start to become the person I finally wanted to be. I felt that a little portion of me died with our relationship and, like a snake, I could finally grow new, fresh and beautiful skin. I understood, when planning my healing, that I would be triggered often and without warning. I deliberately planned this into my processing and I knew that I would be emotionally unstable and needed all the forgiveness I could give myself.
My triggers came so frequently I could barely keep my sanity in tact. She was in everything I did, everything I saw and everything I had become. Little reminders haunted me; songs on the radio, places that had become “our spot”, my house was no longer mine but a ghost of a relationship that had once been. With everything left in place, as it was when she was here, I could not bare to move her clothes or divide our things. It was too permanent, too lasting if I moved the shirt she had dropped to the floor just before getting into “our bed.” It meant she was not here anymore, that we were no longer us; it felt like I was picking her up and out of my life. So there my house stayed just as the night she left, reminding me that I was not even close to healed from the life I once had lead with the person I still loved. It had a haunting affect on my emotional stability and only until recently have almost all traces of her been taken out of the house. It happened painfully slow until one day my roommate, who could not take the sight of me crying over found shirts and haunted reminders, bagged up everything of hers and took it away. It happened while I was at work. The catastrophic feeling of despair I had as I walked into the house was unlike any heartbreak I had ever felt. I had no words for the unplanned, upheaval of sadness and grief that took over my body. I felt like I had lost the last piece of what held us together and as I dropped to me knees I knew this is what needed to happen. My roommate found me later that day in bed, clothes on, laying, eyes wide open, and explained why she felt it necessary to do what she did. The only words I would find my raw, tear-clogged throat were “Thank You.”
That was the first in a series of emotional relieves I had come to expect unexpectedly. In all my heartache, in all my sadness I had no idea the amount of strife taking place by my trying to plan my recovery. I did not have the emotional capability to realize that in all my planned healing, in all my systematic guides this was the most detrimental.
I have had many of these “emotional relieves.” They are rare, but they still happen. My most recent came when talking to my new therapist. I could finally talk about her without my voice wavering in hurt or my throat closing, like a vice, around the words I so rarely spoke. Our process of breaking up had happened for so long that I had become a nuclear bomb shelter. Shut down to the outside world, not willing to put my friends through my trauma or hurt any longer, I started the long journey to self-love, spiritual awareness and core individuality that I had refused to begin before, alone. I am now able to look at all my hurt and realize that God just had a witty way of telling me it was time for me. I had make the necessary mistakes in order to realize it was simply telling me that I needed to make space for my own healing and self discovery. Its funny to think that 4 months ago I thought my world had come crashing down around me because now, my world is just starting to build on solid, authentic foundation. I have clear sights of what I need to do for me but without planning, without expectation, with forgiveness and clarity I move forward one-step and one breathe at a time.
I spoke with her the other day and I finally got to say, confident in each syllable, that I was closer to fine.
