Changing seasons…
The temperature drops, the long days disappear…so much change so quickly, how do you adapt?
I loved ,my heart grew in the last year, more than I thought it capable, it’s amazing the emotion you can hold in yourself for someone. Emotions that were more erratic and more potent that you have experienced with anyone else, and yet although I felt more pain, more hurt, more scared and more hopeless, I also felt more happiness, more passion, more content and more euphoric than I had ever before as well. When you yearn, when you give yourself over to someone to such a degree, how do you even begin to function when it’s taken away from you.
I didn’t function, I failed in every way. I cried, the simplest of things really, I cried for the loss, the loss of something so important to me, for months I refused to give up on the emotions we shared together, the adventures we had,the feeling of warmth inside for having him…the memories, the memories! I cried for losing control. I cried for being rejected by the one person who’s love I craved more than any other. I cried for losing a person I loved, and I loved loving him!
Reality,that’s the first that enters when the time passes, the reality is, you can fight, you can yearn, you can cry…he didn’t want me, or maybe he didn’t want me enough, to get back what we had. The hardest part in that, is the photos that surround me taking me back to each beautiful moment they were taken, each song taking me back to the beautiful time he wrote it, or sang it. It’s hard to give up on so much that created so much beauty in your life.
But he wouldn’t let me go, and we talked, and we saw each other, and the moments in between left me drowning, and the moments we were together left me soaring, and then when he left I would fall, and crash! Because our time together reassured me, and demonstrated how much love was still there, how much we still cared for one another.
But then the reality, he doesn’t care enough, he doesn’t care enough to want to be with me, and the reality again, why should he when he gets to see me, and talk tome…I can offer him emotional support when he needs it, I can still help him and know him better than anyone else, but he still gets his freedom. Reality is unfair, and crushing.
So how do you do it? How do you say to yourself, you need to part with the love, and part with the hope, and cut all you had. Because if you don’t cut it all, then the hope will still burn inside you?
I’m still unsure of the answers, but I think the realisation of something helped…
I wanted him to either be with me or not be with me, to love me or not love me, I wanted it to be either black or white…well it’s not, life has shades of grey, life is the shade of grey. I can’t force life to be one or the other, I can’t force him to chose one of the other, cause he doesn’t want black or white, he feels grey,the situation is grey. I need to accept grey.
So here I am in grey, I don’t know what we will become, I don’t know which direction we will go, I am only in control of what I do and feel, I can’t control what he does and feels, and I need to accept it. But, I can change what I do, I can change my situation if I want, a constant battle between what I feel and what I know, between my heart and my head. Eventually, in a situation so fraught with pain, you know your head will win out in order to survive.
My heart wants something that is in his hands, because the reason we broke, the reason we broke down, was in his hands. He ruined us, and I hate him for that. And although I believed we could return, we could get back everything that was so beautiful, he has to want it. And more reality, he doesn’t. And because he doesn’t want it, there is no point in fighting it. Because he doesn’t want me,there is no point in having hope…and why should I anyway, I love deeply, but I will no longer have this love wasted on someone who doesn’t want it, it’s enough.
So I must let go. He wants to be alone, then he must be alone.
More change.
My memories, my family, my home…more change again. More to let go of and force adaptation, to give over to the unknown and release my comfort and safety. My home will be sold, my home where we were a family, before we broke and weren’t…the home where we all built back up after the destruction. The home where we mourned, where we played cards with him, where I met him before his life was taken away, before that terrible night when we all crashed, and the doctor announced he was dead. The home where I felt safe when everything inside me was so anxious, when I was scared of the world and scared of my own thoughts! When my anxiety had risen to heights I hadn’t experienced before,heights I never thought I would come down from…but my home, it was safe.
And now,a new home, a new life when so much has changed already…a new way of being. So much change, so much to learn and be and know. It’s a beautiful place, and I have found a new sense of home here, but so much happening at once this place now already holds negative feelings because of what I have mourned here. The state of mind I was in when I reluctantly welcomed this new home, it will be eternally linked with that heartache. But it is mine, for the first time in my life, I have something that is mine, and I can make my own, and I can live freely in. And I have my brother, my best friend, a person who’s head works so similarly to mine, and he helps, he makes me feel safe, he is a large piece of home.
How much more must I endure though, the next source of change was a journey I decided to embark on, something I chose to do regardless of some of the smaller motivations, this was something I wanted to do for me. I wanted to grow! I wanted to change myself and challenge myself. My anxiety, which I have lived with in varying degrees for 10 years, I decided to seek help. This would be one of the most terrifying things I would ever confront, but I wanted more control of myself and my thoughts when so much around me was out of control.
Driving to my first session I was the most uncomfortable I had felt, I felt my heartbeat, and the tension build as my panic rose. When I was welcomed into the small room and sat, I thought maybe I could keep a handle on it, oh how wrong I was. I began to talk through my experiences, describe my life, and the room started closing in, an unwelcome but familiar feeling that has plagued me throughout my life. A feeling that escalated only a few short years ago that left me unable to board a train or plane since. So I talked, and she talked,and the whole hour the panic was there, as I expected it would be, and it was uncomfortable sure, but she had been through it before, and she talked of things that helped, and ways she could help it go…of course all the suggestions made me want to run a mile, but I believed her! And when the clocked ticked round to the time of my departure, I left the building expecting the feeling to follow me, to still feel trapped, but instead I felt…calm! She made me feel hope, and more confident in my abilities, and although I was terrified of what was…is to come, I also feel strong enough to do it. Calm was a nice feeling.
So more sessions will follow as has one already, more struggle and more anxiety, but also more knowledge of myself. I have discovered my inner judge, she’s a bit of a bitch, she has grown out of the person I am and the experienced I’ve had growing up, but she is always there putting me down, making me feel like a lesser person, telling me how pathetic she is and how I’m not strong. Well she can shut it, I am strong, and I am worth it. (Ok, it’s still hard to write that and believe it, but in the process of trying to silence her I will write and hope).
I want to silence her because she tells me I’m not good enough, not good enough for him who rejected me, not good enough for the mother that left, not good enough for the boy I liked who got taken away in that horrible crash. I’m not a good enough creator, my images are not good enough. I’m not good enough for life, to live it well, to be a success!
I must not let her tell me these things…
So the changing of Summer to Autumn has been more change than just the temperature. It has been a change of heart, a change of home, a change of attitude…
I am not saying I am settle or embracing it all right now, but I am living with it all,and every day I get a step closer. Closer to calling this place home, closer to meeting someone new and leaving him for good, closer to feeling calm. I get one life, and I will make it worth it.
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