unapologeticallybella

[unapologeticallybella]

Redacted :)

[unapologeticallybella]

Mercury Retrograde

Every mercury retrograde that passes I think that this one may be the one that makes you think of me. So far I believe there’s been seven since I last saw you. These are the only times that I really allow myself to admit that I think about you more than I’d like to. I still mention your name to people who’ve never even met you, I tell them about that one time we went to that one place, the things you used to say, all the things, all the times. If they’re lucky I’ll even tell them a story about the time I first shook your hand. The first date and even the second first date. I think I’ve fallen more in love with our story after you left than I did while it was still being written. I can still talk about you with a smile on my face, I even laugh sometimes. I think it throws people off to hear me say your name without flinching, I’ll explain how I could never hate you and how I don’t blame you for anything. I get mad at myself for being so hard on you, I tested you a lot more than I should have. I played a little too rough sometimes, I didn’t allow myself to be as soft as I wish I would have. I don’t know why I handed you the consequences of hurts you never gave me. I don’t think I said “thank you” enough, maybe I didn’t say all the things I loved about you out loud, I’m sorry for just assuming you’d just know. Truth be told, I am just a body of flesh filled with honey, thick and heavy but still sweet and desperate to make its way through my cracks. I did an awfully good job into tricking you into thinking I was tough and solid like I was filled with wet cement, cold and sturdy. I wish I would have allowed myself to be soft with you, that I hadn't been so scared to tell you how much I loved having you around. I wonder a lot about what your drive home was like on April 1st, 2019, I wonder about what songs you listened to, if you cried even a little bit. If you ever thought about turning around, a least once. I wonder a lot about you. I wonder what you thought about the ending of Avengers, if you ever finished This is Us, do you have a tik tok? Do you still like baseball? What songs can’t you listen to because they remind you of me? Are there things you wished you could have told me? How is your grandma? How is your mom? Is your barber still with his girlfriend? I want to tell you that I think Dave Ramsey is kind of a dick. I want to tell you that I crave that lobster mac and cheese all the time. I want to tell you that they changed the name of our favorite hotel. Do you ever crave your favorite pizza from Alexanders? Did you throw away the gold Minnie ears I left in your car? I wanted to tell you that I love eggs benedict and bao buns now, I’ve tried so many foods you wouldn’t believe. I could think of a million things I’d like to talk about before I’d ever think to ask you why. Why everything happened. Or what even did happen. I am not religious as you know, but I pray a lot now. I can't even count how many times I have prayed to fall in love with someone else. I have prayed so hard to forget you, prayed to go one day without your name crossing my mind. I have prayed to not feel you here anymore. I have prayed on my knees for someone new, to love someone else more than I loved you, to have better memories and better times with someone new. I cannot begin to tell you about the times I have begged to have this feeling disappear. I have asked a million times why you still feel like my best friend after all this time. Most of all I pray for you and that you’re okay. I pray that you are more than okay and that you’re happy. I pray that you wake up every day and feel no pain, no sorrow, no heaviness. In high school, I read an article that talked about how we lose details of our memories every time we recall them. Every time I am reminded of a time and place with you, it fades a little bit more I guess. I think about this a lot, sometimes I find myself pushing away my favorite memories because I don’t want to lose a single detail. I don’t want to forget the waffle you got on our first date, the shirt you were wearing the night you said I love you for the first time, I especially don’t want to forget the first words you ever spoke to me. Sadly, I find science being more credible as these months have passed; sometimes I try to remember the sound of your voice, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t. I fear as the years pass I won’t be able to recall your face without a picture to remind me the way your smile lines fall on your face. I think a lot about forgetting you. Some days it’s comforting that every time I think about you I am one step closer to letting you go completely. And most days I am horrified that a day will come where I won’t be able to remember you and the way it feels to fall asleep next to you after a long day. I think a lot about what my life looks like now. The woman I am today is a million times better than the version you knew and how much I wished you got to know her too. I went to a medium the first September I spent without you, I didn’t tell her about you at all but she felt you. She told me to send you love and forgive you from afar. When I asked her what to do, she said “you can always hold space for a person in your life without waiting for them to return” so that’s what I did. I have held space for you for close to two years while simultaneously opening myself up to loving anyone else. You’d be happy to hear that I don’t have a broken bed anymore. But my mattress is lopsided from all the months I refused to sleep on your side. There are things I see every day that I know you’d love, restaurants I bookmarked, tiktoks that I know would make you laugh, songs you wouldn’t believe I listen to. Holding space for you has been one of the most gut-wrenching things I have done in my whole life, but I have grown a million different ways in what feels like lifetimes since my hands have held you last. I am sorry for the ways I did not speak my truth.  I’m sorry I couldn’t heal the parts of you that so desperately needed relief. And even more sorry for ever letting you believe I wasn’t happy with you. I have found myself speeding up to cars on freeways because I thought it was you. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve missed my exit in hopes I would run into you one last time. The times I have confused strangers in grocery lines for you. I would have never guessed your soul would have lingered this long, it’s frustrating while unbelievably comforting. I think a lot about getting married and what I’ll feel when he’s down on one knee. But my stomach does back flips when I am reminded that there is a good chance you will be the first thought on my mind all those years later. I think a lot about our story and why it happened. What if you were busy that night, what if I wasn’t working that night, what if I would have never worked there, to begin with? Would we have found each other down the road? Would we have run into each other at a random coffee shop? Would you have said hello? I think a lot about the life I had always envisioned with you. And I have convinced myself that there are so many versions of us living different realities as we speak. in a parallel universe we are together, others not, and in some, we are meeting for the first time right now. But in this version you still feel like my person on days where I know you shouldn’t, you are the one I want to talk to about the smallest of things. In this version, I should be so angry at you but I’m not. I am now the softest and strongest version of myself and allowing them to exist at the same time has been the greatest gift. In this version, I am learning to sleep on your side of the bed for the first time. In this version, I pray for you to become the man I thought you’d grow to be. In this version, I have learned to love you without conditions and with forgiveness. It’s in this version that I hear your voice every goddamn time I roll my car at red lights“the censors don’t exist Bella.” And every time it turns green I tell myself “yes they do.” 

[unapologeticallybella]

The Traces I Left on Your Skin

I trace the words I am too afraid to say outloud onto your hand

Sometimes you’ll stop mid-sentence and smile at me

I freeze, fearing that I’ve been caught writing these crazy things onto your skin

On car rides home I’ll rest my head on your shoulder

Listen to you talk about days when you slept in a perfect home

How you’ve dusted yourself off and picked yourself up

I can’t help but offer my comfort by looking at you with soft eyes, always offering you my warm hands to have and to hold

And when you’re not looking I’ll move my fingertips across your palm and tell you what I can’t with my mouth

We lay sprawled out naked on my white sheets

I close my eyes and play with your hair while I enjoy the sweet pressure of your lips on my cheek

When I open my eyes I see your face half pressed deep into my pillow and the other half staring at me with eyes rich as honey

I watch you sit up on the edge of my bed giving me a perfect view of your messy hair and freckled back

I scoot my body over and wrap my legs around your waist while I kiss your shoulders and run my hands up and down your spine

I bring my fingertips to your skin once again and trace you a story of a girl who was scared of falling in love

It’s occurred to me that these words will one day slip from my lips because you are like a rushing river whose stream will one day be too strong to hold

And I have gotten so incredibly good at building sturdy dams

But you were made to break a crack through my cement walls

Through these cracks my words will slip out and make it’s way into sentences I’ll be able to speak aloud

For now, I’ll listen to you ramble about the things that excite you and watch your face brighten with thoughts of your favorite things

Without you noticing, I’ll pick up your hand and begin again

With my fingertips I will continue to trace these words for you

Because your skin has become my favorite notepad and my poems have found home on every inch of your body

So I’ll keep writing a thousand I love you’s

Until i am brave enough to tell you myself

[unapologeticallybella]

I Don’t Look Like J-Lo but Someone is Gonna Love Me Anyway

TW: Body Dysmorphia/ E.D   

   I’m going to go ahead and say, I am so happy I am not a notably attractive person. I’m not saying I’m ugly in the slightest but you know what I’m talking about. Those people where their attractiveness is one of their defining traits. Like you mention their name and almost always someone responds with, “Oh, the pretty one.” Yeah that’s not my story and that probably won’t ever be me. What I’ve noticed about those kinds of people is that almost always their personality suffers in some way shape or form. I’m not saying notably pretty people can’t have a good personality but basically yes, it’s rare. So when you don’t get to lean into your beauty, you tend to lean on other things like humor, kindness, intelligence; Oh, did I mention humor? One of my earliest memories is being around six years old, waking up in the middle of the night in a god damn panic. I ran to my mom hysterically crying. I said, “I don’t wanna be ugly.” I couldn’t really tell you what she said because I genuinely don’t remember. Obviously it didn’t make me feel better because here we are sixteen years later and I still wake up with that panic from time to time, only now I just don’t wake anyone up to hear me cry about it (that sounds a lot darker than I intended for it to.) Anyway, what I’m saying here is that I’ve always struggled with the way I look. 

   We all have that voice in our head that tells us we look like shit, that we shouldn’t post certain pictures, and that everyone else sees what we see; I swear sometimes I’d just rather stay home. I know everyone looks back at their old pictures and thinks “Wow, why was I so insecure, I looked fucking amazing.” It’s a pretty common thing, I know. For some of us that voice inside our head is a bit louder and a lot more persistent, mine was very cruel and eventually it just kind of took me over. I’ve never really talked about what I dealt with because I did it so privately; partly out of guilt because I knew I was harming myself and secondly because it was something for me to control and I didn’t want to lose that. I think I was eleven when someone else commented on my weight for the first time, I was 115 pounds. That’s when it started. I would go through these spells of not eating, restrictive diets, the obsessive calorie counting; no one noticed. This continued on and off for years, I love food so fucking much that it eventually turned into bingeing and then starving myself for the day, then bingeing again. Eventually I gained weight because my hunger would just build up, my cravings would just get stronger and I would lose every time; I’d binge. I would eat so fucking much. I could eat entire pizzas within 15 minutes, boxes of Oreos, bowls of cereal, tubs of ice cream, blocks of cheese; it’s absurd how fast I could eat it all. I was obsessed with diets, skinny detox teas, meal replacements were my favorite, and I loved watching my fitness pal tell me how much I could lose if I maintained the low calorie intake. My junior year, I tried making myself throw up for the first time. It was such an easy way to get rid of the guilt I felt for eating that much food, it helped me maintain the weight for a while. I really wasn’t under the impression that it was a problem because I wouldn’t do it often, only when I lost control and ate enough for me to feel fucking disgusting.

   You could say it might be emotional eating but what I’ve come to learn is that sadness absorbs my ability to feel hunger; it’s kinda great if you have a fucking problem like mine. My first breakup, I couldn’t eat solid foods for a few weeks; I genuinely only ate a cup of yogurt a day and Cheez-its when I felt like passing out. I lost weight immediately. It made me feel so powerful; I loved the feeling of hearing that I looked good. What’s crazy is that the power only lasts so long before that voice inside tells you still look like a troll. I look back at these pictures where I clearly look small and tiny but in that moment I promise you; I didn’t see that in the slightest, I couldn’t. My senior year, I got better for a while. I was the biggest I had ever been, and I felt like everyone could notice; I thought my curves looked weird and the way my body just held fat in the worst places made me want to die sometimes. I did crash diets on and off that year; I was extremely self conscious and hated the way I looked. I moved to New York, and I had started taking Ritalin (prescribed okay kids.)  Three weeks in, I forgot to eat for a little over two days. I genuinely did not feel hunger in my body. I was outside a hotel during fashion week, waiting for Kylie Jenner to show up when I had a full blown paranoid delusion. I called my mom thinking a bomb was going off. “Mom, I’m looking right at this cop and he looks fucking worried, Mom. Get me on a plane I need to come home right now. Something is happening, there are loud noises.” Then she tried to calm me down, she asked when the last time I ate was and when I tried to think back I was like, “Oh shit that bagel I had was literally two full days ago.” Yeah, so I stopped taking Ritalin, I think that would have been a dangerous combo for me.

   I struggle to call it an eating disorder because I never looked sick; it didn’t ruin my life; it didn’t hurt me (I don’t think) but I definitely wasn’t healthy. I think that was my turning point; I was tired of feeling weak all the time; I was tired of obsessing; I was so burnt out from all of it and I decided I wanted to stop it all completely. I eventually gained over sixty pounds over two years, it’s been a fucking nightmare let me tell you. Every day, I struggle with my body and what goes on inside my head. I tell myself awful things; I know that it’s not good, but it doesn’t really go away. I fight so hard to not fall down that path because I don’t want that for me; I don’t know how bad I could get and that scares me. I went out of my way for the past two years to prove to myself that I didn’t have a problem anymore by constantly treating myself with food. It’s like every time I ate a shit ton and I didn’t throw up was a success but then at the same time it wasn’t. Turns out that guilt manifests in different ways and it’ll find its way to you. I’ve gotten to the point where I know the weight gain is noticeable, I feel like people think the awful things I do; So I did the only thing I knew how, laugh it off. Humor baby! Self deprecation is my middle name, sweetie. 

   I know I joke a lot about the way I look and the weight I’ve gained, it’s all light-hearted, but it actually gets pretty dark in this neck of the woods. Body dysmorphia is a mean bitch; She didn’t even allow me to enjoy my skinny days, talk about a shitty time. I used to do this thing where I would wash my hands on the right side of the sink just to avoid being in front of a mirror; “I just don’t wanna ruin my day, ” I’d always say. Anyone who knows me knows I’ve always used the same 2 inch mirror when doing my makeup because “looking at my whole face all at once is overwhelming.” You did not want to be around me when I couldn’t find that mirror, now that was a full-blown panic attack. I’m trying to be kinder to myself, now that doesn’t mean I won’t still make self-deprecating jokes but I’m trying to unlearn that shit. I go through body positive phases where I force myself to look at myself and find things I like. I unfollow Instagram models sometimes but it doesn’t matter; pretty people are everywhere baby. Every day is a god damn battle with myself; I can look at in the mirror and say “Hey you look good today” out loud but that bitch inside my head is screaming “You look like Shrek dumbass.” Having a past where men weren’t all that nice to me; I have an inherent feeling that if I was prettier, a lot of the things that happened to me maybe wouldn’t have (Come to find out even the hottest people get cheated on too, sick world we live in.) You know I’ve spent so many years comparing myself to other women because of something some asshole did to make me feel insecure; I always fall short so I’m done doing that now. Sometimes I worry that even if I lose the weight or if I cosmetically change the things I don’t like, that voice still won’t go away. Then what? What if I’m never happy with myself regardless of the ways I can change my appearance, I mean there’s a pretty good chance that could happen. So I’ve decided that I need to find a way to fall in love with myself the way I am right now. 

   People always preach “love yourself” and all that shit, but it’s so hard when it’s just you alone with your thoughts. Feeling love for yourself is arguably one of the most difficult things you’ll ever learn to do, it takes a kind of strength I’m trying to find. I will say, I do think the way I feel about myself has projected itself onto my relationships and in-turn sabotaged them. I have always required a certain amount of reassurance and affection from my partners which I’m sure can be draining but I forgive myself for that now. I have so much love for others that it just pours out of me uncontrollably and somehow I can’t find a way to feel that love for myself; it’s quite the problem to hauve. I’m learning to protect myself from that voice inside of me; I avoid things that I know will trigger me and cause me to spiral. I’ve been trying to lose the weight I gained these past two years, but for the first time I’m addressing the inner work. I acknowledge my weaknesses, I know my vices, I know myself better than ever now and that makes all the difference. Last December I forced myself to pick a form of exercise and like it, so I picked cycling. The first time I took a class, I actually catapulted out of the bike. I felt like the biggest idiot, but I tricked myself into enjoying the class. I just told myself that I would feel like one of those people who thinks spin is equivalent to a morning cup of coffee and eventually that’s how I genuinely felt.  Now it’s been almost a year since I made that choice and I’m so happy I forced myself out of bed. After the breakup, my mom really wanted me to start yoga to “soothe my anxiety” and it did surprisingly. It’s amazing what you can do for your body by just taking time to just sit there in silence and think about nothing. Sometimes when it’s that quiet, feelings come up and before you know it you’re on the beach on a yoga mat crying in the arms of your yoga instructor. These past six months, I have healed things inside of myself that I genuinely didn’t know where there. It’s been a mixture of therapy, cycling, yoga, listening to my body, forgiving myself, forgiving others and learning to love the parts of me that I don’t (oh and just not eating Chick-fil-a so fucking much.) This picture is me in my favorite pair of jeans, I bought them almost exactly a year ago and when I bought them they were snug and now this is what I’m working with. Is it sad that my favorite pair of jeans don’t fit me anymore? Hell yeah but I can finally say I can feel and see a difference in my body now. 

   So no, I probably won’t ever look like J-Lo and that’s okay. I’m probably always going to struggle with these issues and I will probably have that voice inside of me forever. But someone is gonna look at me and feel so fucking lucky; and it won’t just be because of the way I look. It’s going to be because of the way I make them laugh and the way love just pours out of me uncontrollably. Most importantly, when that love pours, it will be for me too. 

[unapologeticallybella]

Dear Universe, This is Not What I Ordered.

   There’s a lot to say about someone who can leave things up to fate. Someone who doesn’t fight or try to understand why things happen but just accepts what comes to them. My whole entire life has been me just fighting everything that happens to me, whether it be by trying to change it or understand it. Nothing soothes my anxiety like repeating out loud my schedule for the day; I love making lists in my head and sometimes when I’m alone, I just repeat these lists to myself. (Yes, I think I’m okay.)Planning is everything; I like to know what to expect and what’s coming. I’ve been this way for as long as I can remember; When things change, I actually want to crawl out of my body. Curveballs are stupid; unless it’s getting proposed to, but that’s the only exception I can think of. Come to find out, that’s not really how life works (disappointed is an understatement.)People die out of the blue, healthy people get sick, good people get hurt, and that’s just that. I swear I’ll find the positive to all this just give me a minute; I just have to make some morbid points first. 

   We count on things to be good; we count on things to not fall apart; I mean, at the very least, we count on things to just continue to be. When I’m alone and I think about what I want from my life, I envision all these happy things. But then I’m flooded with these worries about everything that could potentially make all of those things go to shit. For the most part, I like to be positive about where my life will go. These past few months, I’ve really shifted the way I think about control and what I can change. In reality, we have no fucking control over our surroundings. Oh, your husband you’ve been married to for twenty years? Yeah, he’s come to find out he actually fell in love with his new assistant, Beth. Him and Beth are doing better than ever, but you’re kinda getting in the way, so now he’s leaving you. That happens, now what? You can’t control that your husband might be an asshole, but you can control what you do with that information. Obviously, I’m sure you’d probably want to know all about Beth and why she’s so fucking great and then secondly you’d probably want to curb stomp your now ex husband. Unfortunately, neither of those things change the narrative and, most importantly, none of that can take away your hurt permanently. At first glance, it probably looks like you wasted a good portion of your life with an absolute stranger, which maybe you did and so what. Grieve the motherfucker, pick yourself back up, get a new hobby, change your hair, do your inner work, and heal yourself like you didn’t even know you could. If you look at it for what it really is, it’s a blessing. I mean can you imagine if you would have spent the entirety of your life with someone like that; Now that, My love, would be a waste. We all have a choice on how to react to what the Universe throws at us even when it’s definitely not what we asked for. 

   I went to lunch with this guy recently and he told me, “I’m not the kind of depressed that makes me want to kill myself. I’m the kind of depressed that makes me funny.” I swear I about choked on my Sangria. I have never related to anything more.  I deal with sadness or whatever it is that’s inside of me with humor because I’d rather laugh than cry about it, not saying I won’t cry because I definitely will. I joke about the things I don’t quite enjoy about myself, things that hurt me, things that scare the shit out of me; I don’t think it’s necessarily unhealthy. However, I’ve come to realize I have spoken a lot of shitty things into existence which sadly I have attracted into my life. I hate to sound like someone who read “The Secret” once and now thinks they’re a Law of Attraction guru but here we are. I really do believe the Universe hears what we say and returns it tenfold. I always joked that my boyfriend would leave me out in the cold in the worst possible way and turn out to be a completely different person; So the Universe said here you go baby. 

   I didn’t open up about my break up to many people, but when I did, I always went from mild sobbing to hysterically laughing. About a month into it, I was on my friend's couch telling her how everything happened and how he just disappeared. She was quite a fan of him and had always said what a great guy he was; She just watched me cry on her couch for thirty minutes just trying to understand everything for myself. The first thing she said, “I’m sorry, but this is just not what you ordered, send it back.”  And she was right; This is not what I ordered; I ordered the Filet Mignon honey, I was served a big ole plate of trash and I was charged for both. That’s when my mindset shifted about the situation; all I know is that I gave that man the goddamn world, and it meant nothing. I could sit here and reminisce all these lovely memories, go over the list (a long list I may add but who cares) of things I did to benefit his life, tell you all the ways I showed my love but for what? No matter how hard I tried to dissect it all and explain why this shouldn’t have happened, it did nothing. The Universe wasn’t really listening to all that because it didn’t change who he was. I drove home that night, and I sat in my car before going upstairs. I cried and cried; I begged the Universe to not do this to me. I asked why. I asked for help. I truly felt in my heart that this wasn’t what I deserved so I asked for answers or even a sign as to why this was happening to me. Bad things happen because they just do; the Universe obviously doesn’t give its reasons, but it doesn’t mean there aren’t any. Those reasons were not for the Universe to just give me, they were mine to find on my own and with time, and I did. 

    When I tell you I am a better person because of the shitty things that have happened to me, I mean that with my whole heart. Also, I don’t think I would be as funny but I don’t think that’s quite as important. You don’t get to plan for these things, you don’t get to say “no thanks” and just because you hate curveballs doesn’t mean they won’t get thrown your way. I had the choice to either hold on to something I arguably loved more than myself or let it go and trust that it was all for something bigger than me. I chose to let go and release control for my own sanity. Not just regarding this relationship but for every relationship, everything I’ve ever cried for, everything that has ever hurt me, every worry and every fear; I let that shit go. Three months after that moment alone in my car, I had another moment similar to that one, only this time I didn’t cry. I sat there and thanked the Universe for showing me how strong I am because I would have never known. (I always thought of myself of this sensitive emotional weak person but boy was I so wrong.) I told the Universe someone would be so lucky to be able to experience what it feels like to be loved by me because it really is spectacular. Someone will appreciate the tiniest details about me. Someone will laugh at my jokes and they’re going to love that about me. I know someone is going to fucking love me. To be honest, I think I was heard that night by someone or something, I don’t know. For the first time of being alive, I trust that everything is exactly where it should be. I am amazed by the woman I’ve become. I am so proud of that because I never thought I could even feel this way about myself. I may not have gotten what I ordered and I may not be able to send it back but I had a choice. I chose me. 

[unapologeticallybella]

The Tower

   The Tower card upright in most tarot readings is one that most people probably would like to avoid, you pull the tower in a reading and it’s kinda like “oh fuck.” In most tarot decks, this card is depicted with lightning setting ablaze to Tower causing obvious chaos and destruction. In the Rider Waite deck, you’ll see people leaping from the windows to escape the turmoil. I mean, that’s technically jumping to your death, which just goes to show how shitty that burning tower must be. If you want to be positive, it could be interpreted as a death to old ways that no longer serve you which is meant to be replaced with better things to take its place. But let’s be honest, if you Google the Tower card the three main words that pop up are Sudden Upheaval, Broken Pride, oh and my favorite, Disaster. We all have tower moments in our lives; they’re inevitable, which is definitely a hard pill to swallow if you’re a control freak like me. I am no stranger to tower moments, my whole life has been a steady pattern of doing okay, then; Bam here’s that disaster you were waiting for. Followed by a period of clean up after destruction and then attempting to create a somewhat stable foundation and rebuild all over again. And yes, it’s just as exhausting as it sounds. 

   On April 1st 2019, I had the mother of all tower moments; my two-and-a-half year relationship ended. Before I get into this, April fools was probably the worst day to get dumped because literally everyone around me thought I was kidding. Like I said, if this was a sitcom, the writers are doing an amazing job this season. When relationships end, typically you see it coming. You can feel someone being distant and cold; It comes to a point where you feel alone even though there’s a person right next to you. Normally, this is something that builds up for weeks and you can feel the love between you and this other person fading for some time before anything actually happens. This was not that. Looking back now, it freaks me out to think how quickly my entire life changed all within thirty minutes; that was all it took to end it all, literally the length of an episode of the Office. Even creepier, only one person cried (hint: it was me.)

   I want to preface all this by saying that I was under the impression that this relationship was “it.” I went into this relationship completely guarded, my ideas about men and their intentions were not positive ones. There were so many reasons for me to argue against ever feeling so strongly about someone; I have always been so inherently distrustful of commitments. I learned early in life that nothing is guaranteed, people’s feelings change, circumstances change, things just change. The concept of people getting married was absolutely wild to me. Aren’t you just scared for your life every day that everything could just change overnight? I made it very clear from day one that I was a skeptic. I mean look around there are so many people on this planet;How could someone possibly just want to pick one person? How could you even know that you met the person you could (happily) spend the rest of your life with? To which his answer was always, “when you know you just know.” Early in our relationship he made it clear that he was more than sure that it was me; I was it for him, period. This man reassured me day after day for roughly 950 continuous days, that I had no reason to be scared. “Why do you always feel like I’m going to pull the rug out from under you?” He made me feel stupid for thinking this had a chance of not working out so after a while that’s what I began to believe. Being able to look at other relationships fall apart and say with certainty, “That just would never be us.” is so powerful. It's cocky as fuck, but that’s what he made me believe. How he managed to turn the most skeptical sinister person into the most trusting believer, I’ll never understand. 

   Pinpointing where everything switched is tricky. We went on a dinner cruise the week prior; he paid for us to go to a baseball game a few days before and we worked together the day before; He brought me my coffee like normal. He annoyed me at work and when he had to leave to his other job; I refused to kiss him goodbye. I just wanted him to apologize and I would have hugged him, everything would have been fine but he never did. He left in a hurry, he said something like, “Bella, I just don’t have time for this today.” To put things into perspective, he was the type of person who couldn’t handle the feeling of someone being upset with him. One thing we said we’d never do is go to bed angry at each other. To the point where this kid would drive to my house after a seven hour closing shift at two in the morning just to say “sorry” and make sure I wasn’t upset before going to bed. I always admired him for that, he was big on keeping peace between us and for the longest time I always said it was those things about him that made our relationship so strong. I’ve always had this overwhelming fear that the people I love could die in a freak accident so for those reasons he always let me know when he made it to work or home safe. This was the first day he didn’t let me know he got to work. Eventually it was two in the morning and for the first time in two-and-a-half years I didn’t get a call to let me know he made it home. 

   I argued with him that night about how I felt like he was being distant during a time where I needed support. Here’s some backstory, my cousin had died early that week from a heart attack at twenty-three which didn’t really help my fears of people around me dying of freak accidents. So I was a tad bit emotionally drained and also anxious as fuck. Maybe I should have waited and let him get some sleep. I could’ve brought it up the next morning over breakfast; Mondays are our days anyway, I could have just waited. Morning came, this was the first time in the history of us that I didn’t get a “Good morning, baby. I’ll be there in a few hours.” I guess that’s when I felt it, that everything was about to change; that tower was definitely on the horizon. I got ready and did my makeup like normal;We were supposed to go look at cars and see a movie. I got a text letting me know he was ten minutes away. I said I wasn’t ready. He said it was okay. When he walked through my door, my Apple watch said my heart rate was at 145. His eyes looked vacant, emotionless, and just not himself. He was never someone I’d call cold, but he never did show much emotion. I knew when things hurt him; I’ve always been good at reading his emotions even when he tries to hide them, but this time I saw nothing. “I’ve been thinking a lot about our relationship and I just don’t see this working out, you’re never happy and I don’t know what else to do.” Right off the bat, that is what he led with. I sat there and explained to this man how all I ever wanted was just to feel supported a fraction of the way I supported him. I tried so hard to convince him I was happy, this could be worked out, that I was just struggling; I asked him to be there for me and the answer was no. It became very clear to me after watching him try to answer my questions about his feelings that he just checked out. One thing I promised myself the first time someone broke my heart was that I would never again ask someone to love me and I sure as hell would never beg for someone to stay. So I told him to get out of my house, obviously a little harsher than that but you get it.

   He asked if he would still see me on Sunday (at the job; I convinced my parents to give him at my family’s restaurant) and I about flipped my room upside down. This kid just pulled the mother-fucking rug out from under me the way he said he would never and he wants to still work with me on Sunday. No sir, you don't get to continue to benefit from all the things I added to your life while simultaneously cutting me out of your life. I swear to God at that point I was like “Shit, maybe this is an April Fools joke.” The worst part is that it was all his doing; he spent everyday convincing me that this was it and I didn’t have to worry anymore. And I believed it. I would have stood by this man through anything, I would have given my life for someone who turns out would never have done the same; talk about a slap in the face, right? He stripped me of any peace of mind, peace of mind that I had worked so hard to have, in a matter of minutes. I was finally safe and at home. I felt for the first time in my life I could breathe like I didn’t have to worry about everything changing. I genuinely believed with my whole heart; Every part of me believed this was my person. I watched him say everything so effortlessly, he didn’t struggle at all watching me break in front of him. Not one fucking tear was shed for me. I swear there were moments where he tried not to smile. It almost makes you sick, well no, it definitely does make you sick. 

   So I said a few things to him that maybe I shouldn’t have, I was just so angry; more at myself for allowing someone to do this to me but nonetheless still angry as hell. “You should see a therapist” to which he agreed. I mean, I guess I’m glad we’re on the same page? When you watch a person you love completely morph into a different human right before your eyes, you tend to just word vomit. I said what I could to wake him up, but he never did. I told him to leave, so he did and never looked back. Less than thirty minutes, that’s all I got. I poured my entire soul and all of my energy into this person, years of my life I’ll never get back. Only to be proven right, it’s like every fear that I had that he laid to rest was now wide awake and pounding on my door. That was six months ago; I never heard from him again. He disappeared, poof, gone like the wind baby. I reached out three times. Once to say, “I miss you.” Second time, I showed up outside his house because everyone convinced me that was a good idea, turns out life is quite different from romantic comedies. I called him to let him know I was outside; I just wanted to say sorry for the things I said. To be honest, I think about dying all the time and what my last conversations will be with other people (callback to my irrational fear of everyone around me dying). It crushed me to think if anything happened to either of us, our last moment together was what it was. He never came outside. Last time I reached out was at the end of April for his birthday, I told him I loved him and how I wanted him to have a beautiful day. And that was that, I never reached out again. Like I said, I’m a firm believer in not asking others to love you, so I left it. 

   I never got any answers, I never got a fair goodbye, to be frank I never got what I deserved. These past six months have been me finding peace with that. Most of you would be shocked to learn that I actually have never looked up his name once on any social media. I don’t want to see anything; I have personally asked everyone around me to keep everything they know far away from me. I know there are things I don’t know; I know it would change the way I remember him and the time we had; I know that I would probably not be as friendly writing about him if I knew what’s out there and I have found peace with that. I don’t need to know the extent to how badly I was deceived nor do I want to. I’m the kind of person who likes to twist the knife in their wounds, fuck I’ll throw a little salt and lime on there too while I’m at it. This is the first time in my life that I stopped it before I even had the chance, some wounds are too big and I just don’t have the energy in me to make them bigger. Surrendering control for the first time in my life has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do but that’s what Tower moments are for. They’re meant to change everything for the better even if that means you go through absolute disaster; it’s the start of a whole new you. I lost my best friend that day; I lost my partner, every future memory I envisioned with him by my side, every plan I ever had was snatched right from under me with no explanation. I lost my routines, my comfort, my stability; everything I counted on to be there was long gone. God, I fucking hate change and it scares the shit out of me. There’s a kind of peace in having someone who knows you like no one else; I think losing that peace was the hardest part. I didn’t deserve a single fucking thing that was done to me; there’s nothing I could have done to prepare for that pain, I just had to go through it to get where I am now. 

   I drive over a bridge every day, multiple times a day to get home. That bridge is about 200 feet tall; I’ve crossed this bridge over a thousand times throughout my life and every single time I think about it collapsing. What would I do? What if I jump out and try running super fast, maybe I’ll make it to the end? Or my favorite; jumping on top of the roof of my car and try to ride down the fall, kind of like surfing a wave. I’ve never surfed in my life and I’m also a shitty runner. So no, there’s nothing I can do to prepare for that fall. Chances are, I’ll die if that bridge collapses. This Tower moment showed me you can’t run and you can’t prepare for things like this. You’ve gotta just make peace with the fall and pray there’s a soft landing and if there’s not hopefully, you’ll recover from all the broken bones, eventually. And if you die, well that sucks. But this fall didn’t kill me and that’s all that matters.

[unapologeticallybella]

Is this thing on?

   Obviously, I am no Mindy Kaling; I am not Lena Dunham (as problematic as she may be, the girl can write.) I realize that I have no actual idea what I’m doing when it comes to composing anything worth publishing. However, this is a blog, so that alleviates that stress for both of us. I think everyone goes through phases where we let our dramatic tendencies get the best of us and we become convinced that we’re poets. Or maybe that’s just me and I have a Google doc filled with poems that will probably never see the light of day. Writing poetry is like one of those things that you just don’t really mention out loud to other people until you are absolutely sure you’re good at it. Otherwise, it’s just embarrassing and as much as I don’t think anyone would blatantly roll their eyes to my face, it’s an eye-roller for sure. With that being said, I have never in my life ever shared anything I’ve written with anyone except my friend Molly, who has never shared her writing either. You know they say there is a direct correlation between how emotionally unstable you are and the amount you connected with your high school English teachers. It’s a real thing, Molly and I are prime examples of that theory being 100%, not bullshit.  

   Lucky for you, I’m not writing poetry here because that would just be sad for all of us to watch. I am here to just write what happens to me; unfortunate events, romantic encounters, mild spiritual awakenings, breakdowns, breakthroughs, all the shit that happens in between. My whole life I’ve had a lot to say which I guess is pretty annoying for everyone around me. Believe it or not, it’s really annoying for me too, it’s like my brain is just writing shit all day in my head and I’ve always just been too lazy to express it. So for the first time in my life, I’m just going to say it all with no filter, probably cringey sentences that don’t make sense and definitely some poor punctuation. I am just gonna write how I talk; I think it’s so cool when you can read something in someones’ voice so that what I’m gonna shoot for here. 

   I’ve always jokingly said that my life is like a sitcom. Only now it’s like the writers of that sitcom are just trying to make the protagonist (AKA: me) more likeable by absolutely flipping everything upside down. Plot twist isn’t even the word to describe the shit they’ve come up with for this sitcom. We all wanna be the underdog because everyone fucking likes them, who’s the asshole who doesn’t root for the underdog? Sadly, to become the underdog you have to actually get to the point where people genuinely look at you like “Damn, I hope everything works out for them.” Well, I’m pretty sure passed that point a few months ago and now it’s more like “How are you doing okay?” In case you’re not picking up what I’m putting down; I was broken up with pretty poorly, to word that gently. I wouldn’t say I’m going through a breakup because really there’s nothing to go through after a certain point of time. When a breakup happens to you, there’s no going through it so all you can do is handle it or don’t. I chose to handle it in probably the strangest way possible which I’ll get into eventually. When it comes to breakups, there is nothing you can control which has been a very humbling experience for my micromanaging ass. 

   Although this is a part of my life that I now want to share with other people, I don’t want this to just be a collection of morbid details about my failed relationships. I want to talk about what it’s like to date again after a shit show like this, starting my first “big girl” job, my tumultuous relationship with my body, and my weird family dynamic. Basically, I’m finally doing the work on myself after years of just running. Let me tell you when the universe (or God whatever you believe in; the wind, the ocean, I don’t know.) wants you to deal with your shit and work out your life’s karma, it will tear everything down and force you to do it. You can run from people, situations or whatever your whole life, but you quite literally can’t run from yourself. After a certain point, the Universe will shift things around (or in my case; burn it all to the fucking ground) to force you to face yourself. By the way, I’m dramatic if you can’t tell which explains why I have had so many poetry phases.

   For the past two-and-a-half years that I was in this relationship, I slowly stopped having things to write about so I just didn’t. Not because it was this sad relationship where I was emotionally trapped, it’s just that everything I normally would have written I just spoke out loud to another person. In the midst of all this post-breakup healing, I got a tarot reading that changed the way I wanted to go about all this. When I say she is a gifted medium, I mean damn she read me to filth but in the most gentle way possible. Anyway, she pulled three cards for me. One card represented where I was in that current moment (hint for you: scared for my life and stuck). Then there was the card that represented where I was supposed to be in life, which was to share my voice. Hopefully, help other people along the way by sharing my experiences and what I’ve learned; it’s kind of cheesy to say out loud but, hey. And then there was the third card which represents how I get there; healing. I have to heal all of it; forgiving myself for allowing things I shouldn’t have, forgiving wrongdoings of others, letting it all go because it’s the only way. When I left the reading, I knew in my heart; I had to write again. 

   “You split me open in the most honest way there is to split a soul open and forced me to write at a time I was sure I could not write again. Thank you.” I read that for the first time three years ago around the time my last relationship began. I connected with it so much and I felt so deeply that it was about him but I never knew why. He hadn’t hurt me at that point so my soul was very much not split open by him. I had stopped writing so why? Why did I feel like this captured the way I viewed him so perfectly? Looking back now, maybe I always knew I’d be here; split open and forced to write again when I wasn’t sure I could. In a way it’s good because the Universe wants me to be here right now and who am I to argue with that? So this is me finding my voice again. Thank you.