One Year Later - Written April 24th-25th 2023
Today has marked 365 days around the sun since I stood up for myself and broke free of my relationship with [ex]. 365 days since I made a decision for the good of my own sanity for the first time in a very very long time.
A year is a long time, but also not a very long time at all. I've heard it's a decent metric for healing and progress, I'm not too sure about that. When I think of where I'm at it's plain to see that I'm a few squares behind where I was when I started dating her. I'm back to being terrified of sex and feeling unable to let anyone get close to me. Back to feeling like I don't deserve the physical contact I so deeply crave. Back to wanting to shut out the outside world and return fully to my hermitage. It's clear that my job is just a lucky break that means I can more feasibly attempt to carry on existing like this.
I know I'm not made for the real world; the world of full time work and a mortgage and 2.4 children. I'm not coded to function as just another bland cog in the machine, even though the anonymity of normality is one of my deepest desires. I was made with a series of statistical time bombs within my body and my neurochemistry that make it nearly impossible that I'll live past 40. I'd hoped to have lived some beautiful stories in those years, though tragedies are a special beauty too. As defective as I am I still had too much respect for myself to let the tragedy that was my relationship-my sentence with [ex] play out to the full beautiful ugliness of what it could've been. I considered that ending to my story; slowly giving up my hobbies and letting myself be eradicated piece by piece by the attrition of tiny constant adjustments just like her slowly taking every inch of the bed, all in exchange for physical warmth.
The truth is I really truly want to love someone again. I want to be able to open up to someone and trust them. But I don’t know if I can. It feels like I'm too broken to deserve anything other than abuse under a thin veneer of kindness. I don't know if I'm whole enough to love again knowing that if we don't break up then they'll lose me when I run out of time, or if death decides to carry on her sick joke of snatching people away from me, I lose them. My life is the one story I hated having the ending spoiled because it's made the whole journey feel empty. I wish I never knew this knowledge that has always lived in my brain, this foul truth that makes me feel undeserving of any sort of human comfort.
Last night for a split second I dreamt that I was in [ex]'s bedroom again, the fear that shot through me was enough to wake me instantly, but I still had the ghost of that terror in me. It’s the first time my own brain has pulled the eject cord during a nightmare and it was a dream about being near someone I was supposed to trust. The thing my mind fears most is being back with her, the single greatest fear I have is being back in her bed, and she was the person I chose to love and grew to resent. I told myself I'd never let a lover hurt me again. Promised myself. And here I am with another bag full of lead weights added to my baggage.
Now I truly don't know if I'll have sex again, I don't know if I'll ever be able to suppress my fear enough to trust a partner like that again. I don't know if I'll ever be able to accept a tender touch on my chest or a hand on my cheek. I don't know if I'll ever kiss someone again. [Ex] just drove all of my fears deeper and wrapped them in the confusion of "it's meant to feel like this". She hurt me so deeply and she gets to live in blissful ignorance of what she did to me. I have to struggle to sleep because I'm haunted by the fear I would feel walking into my own bedroom scared that she'd want another round of sex and she just gets to jump to a new partner in less than a month. It’s so fucking hard to not be bitter about it. The bitterness just becomes another recurring boil on my soul if I let it stew too long.
The bitterness doesn't last long, thankfully. I'm passed crying over her, but I can count all the new buckshot pellets she left in me.
I hope the terror fades in time, therapy is expensive. I can laugh at a lot of what she put me through now, I have to laugh at it or else I'll cry, but some things scarred me deeply. I don't know if it's possible for wounds that deep to heal on top of so much scar tissue. "A collection of stories and scars and a love for the arts" is what I called myself once. I'm also a creature that is extensively predisposed to fear, my existence is one of almost perpetual terror and my various unhealthy mechanisms of keeping it at bay; smoke another joint, recite the Litany Against Fear again, recite the futhark one more time. All to make it through the current wave of terror that paralyses my mind. She didn't put this terror in me, it's been in me for as long as I've lived, she just gave it new forms to take.
I'm still hurting, but I'm not sure how much of that hurt is from her anymore. [Ex] abused me, I can admit that. But after all the abuse I've experienced from others, I can see that she left me with very few new scars. I'm broken, but she didn't break me, I've not killed this version of me to hide from the memories, my hair remains uncut.
I cannot say that I will heal, but I take solace - a sense of victory if I'm honest - in the fact that I am still this version of me.
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also like. im really honestly pleasantly surprised with the mutuals and followers i have made here - when i started this blog originally i was so terrified that ppl would crawl out of the woodwork to harass me or smth but nah i've received none of that thus far LOL. if i got much more attention than what i have now then i think it'd just invite mean ppl into my inbox esp since i tend to keep anon on fdsjkl
but yeah the amount of attention i have is more than i expected (which is to say i was expecting literally Zero interaction HFDSJKL) and i feel very grateful and lucky to have such a lovely little circle of mutuals and followers :] it feels like i really did luck out honestly !!! i think yall are really wonderful people !!!
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