To be honest…I’ve got some serious writers block—I think because the thing that I actually want to write about feels absolutely embarrassing for no good reason. And I think that means I should probably write about it.
I am so comfortable wading through the depths of the darkest thoughts. Melancholy is an old friend who I invited for dinner except we never got around to dinner. I would pour her glasses of wine and I’d listen to her talk for hours. Melancholy can’t come to visit so often anymore. And as friendship breakups go, I have had to remember who I am without her.
I have been surprised to meet myself again. There is a lightness in my chest and an affinity for enjoyment that almost seems frivolous. I want to open the curtains and pick flowers and put them in pretty vases. I want to set the table for dinner parties and hand paint a menu and bake something complicated just because I have the time.
I started to believe that I was good, that I wasn’t perpetually failing, and that I could fall in love—and that maybe just maybe— I deserve the same love back. I am learning to rewrite the book that I had titled “the truth” and filled with every glum conclusion I had come to in the throws of unrequited love and crippling anxiety. And now, I have found myself somehow open and hopeful—and that feels completely foreign.
“I am thirty years old and although I have had a couple of prolonged run ins with unrequited love… I have never been love-loved, romantically. I haven’t tried to find it again since the last time I gave someone all of my love for crumbs. Because I am scared of being unloved again.”
I wrote the above in February and at that time I truly didn’t believe anything would change my fate. I quite literally could never have foreseen the series of events that would follow.
Of course, it had to get worse before it got better—
I told the truth to a bunch of strangers that don’t feel like strangers on the internet to start my 30th year, and I continued to write. I wrote through depression, anxiety, loneliness, heartbreak, losing religion…I wrote about the darkest week that I may have ever had, and I wrote through finally deciding to get medication.
Since then, I think I have been writing about what the world looks like after you emerge from the darkest cocoon and see the sky for the first time. Positivity has historically made me roll my eyes and my cynicism was my security blanket.
But, I am so thankful to see the sky and I want to write about it. I think maybe I believe that people will stop connecting to my art because it is losing some of it’s depth. But what if it isn’t the depth that I am losing—maybe it is just the hopeless stuck-ness. I wondered around the stuck-ness, believing it was my fate until I had driven myself crazy.And now, I feel un-stuck in a lot of ways.
So, I’d like to tell you something good.
After swearing off dating apps for the better part of the year, a friend told me about her efforts in the ocean of swiping and mostly underwhelming men and the date she was going on that weekend, and some combination of the serotonin that I was missing before and gumption made me respond to a message, and then keep responding, and then say yes to a date that same week. When I tell you this was out of character, I mean it was REALLY out of character. This was one of the first tests that I put my post-medication self through. And, wow was it a different experience. I wasn’t anxious. I had no expectations. I had blinders up to all the worst-case-scenarios and was somehow just putting one foot in front of the other—so I showed up to a diner in the middle of the day and I met someone.
It felt simple. There weren’t fireworks and the world didn’t suddenly come into focus. But, I was curious and somehow comfortable. I said yes to more dates and we continued on, building a foundation of experiences and truth telling and a depth of conversation that surprised me. There was clarity and intentionality. It was slow and steady and patient and it was good.
And when the doubts came, because of course they did—they were met with a blanket of compassion and understanding. And we communicated. A lot. And well. And, as time went on, I felt safer and safer and more open to the possibility that this would be different. Like maybe I wouldn’t be able to predict the same sad future this time.
We grew separately and then together and now for the first time in my silly little life, I don’t feel delusional or like I am clinging onto crumbs of affection and smiling and saying I am full. I am in a reciprocal relationship. And for the first time I am letting myself fall without expecting to fall alone.
And, perhaps most importantly, I am still the sun. I have taken turns making people who saw me as a star in their story the suns in mine. And, in the last six months, I have made myself the sun again. And, although I care about this new person in my life very much, I am not letting myself get lost in it. I am not breaking myself in the caring. I am present and excited and I care deeply but I am still me, not whatever I think he needs me to be. I feel steady and the butterflies aren’t angry anymore. They are excited and hopeful and a healthy amount of nervous.
So, there’s that. I pulled myself out of a hole this year—and it was ugly and honest and raw— and then I saw the sky and I let myself open up to the world that was under it, then to one of the 8.1 billion people who live in it. And I’m so glad I did.
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