While healing from trauma, it’s normal for things to feel like they’re much worse before they get better. I have to keep believing it. This has been the most difficult road I’ve taken so far.

When we started my present focused therapy, there was a major wave of memories from my past relationship, the abuse that occurred for nearly a decade, all the fucked up things that went on. To put it nicely, I was on high alert.
I was anxious, but through writing, a lot of grounding, and talking, I was able to start seeing things clearer. Slowly, I’ve started to feel better about it. It’s not a happy topic, but I’m able to kind of look at it without it seeming so dark. I still have flashbacks, but they’ve been much less frequent.

I believe that this process is actually making a difference, but it continues to be a major source of pain and uneasiness every day. Lately, my mind has been fixating on my first experience with a relationship, when I was approximately 14, or 15 or somewhere around that age. Most of these years are blurry. My mind has the tendency to fixate on negative thoughts or bad memories, about how I felt in great detail at that time. It’s super uncomfortable to think about because it’s something I’ve pushed away for so long. I have always dreaded the topic.

My first heartbreak wasn’t anything catastrophic, I just think at that age I didn’t understand how I could feel so strongly about someone and they just did not feel the same. It was confusing. I thought that every living thing wanted to be loved, so why did he not want mine? I would’ve done anything. I was very much a dog in love. But I think heartbreak is a lesson that most people go through, it’s just not a fun one to learn, you know.

Whoever he was, it wasn’t what I thought. I think I was really in love with an idea. He listened, and he was kind, and seemed to care about me for a brief time. He was sweet, and funny, I felt very cared for and safe. I felt there was purpose to each day when he was around. But it was so hard to get him to just be around. And then he would just be gone and I would be left wondering why I wasn’t good enough for him to stay.

It was one of those situations where we would talk almost every single night before bed, for years, and I thought I was special, I thought of him as my best friend, but then it turned out he was talking to a lot of girls every night. I took it more seriously than I should have, probably. I’m sure it’s a very common story. I’ve also come to understand that I tend to romanticize the fuck out of everything. In my mind, he was the perfect person, he was brighter than any star, but I wasn’t really seeing who he actually was. I’m a dreamer. And it’s a hard fall back down.

We eventually dated at some point. I’m unsure because it feels like it went on for a few years, off and on. He’d just out of nowhere disappear, and stop answering my calls. I would beg for a reason, or something. My brain just needed something so I could understand why he’d go away. I’m sure I acted unreasonably. I was out of my mind trying to figure out what I did wrong. I didn’t want to be the kind of girl that does crazy things, so I would just stay out of his life. I didn’t always used to be so blocked off.

When people leave without explanation, you’re left alone with your own scary imagination. I didn’t know what I had done wrong, so I really believed he stopped talking to me because I wasn’t skinny enough. It seemed to make more sense than anything else. I’d see him in school, usually with girls, and I’d try to figure out what I had to have to be good enough. And then it was that I wasn’t pretty enough, or smart enough, or cool enough, or any other possible thing that a dumb teenaged girl could think of.

Coincidentally, this is the same time I started taking my mom’s diet pills and trying not to eat. Hello new best friend, my eating disorder! I did try talking to my mom about it, but I quit doing that after she said he probably dumped me because “why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free”? I didn’t know what she meant at the time, but I get it. Something about using a cow as a metaphor for a female made it easy for me to stop listening pretty quickly.

School was difficult when I was that upset. How could they expect me to care about algebra when my heart was constantly bursting out of my chest? Later on, the boy ended up dating the sister of a guy who I had been SA’d by. I was floored, and needed to leave the school. I needed to remove myself from that entire world. This is when I started high school at an alternative school, which was super isolated, but it felt very healing at the time. I wanted to be no one, I wanted to just hide out in the basement of a shit school in the middle of a shit town, where no one knows me, and I don’t have to see or talk to anyone. And I find myself feeling the same way still.

I don’t know if it hurt so much more because my relationship was similar with my dad at that time. Growing up my mom would tell me that my dad didn’t want to spend time with me because he wanted to spend time with his girlfriend’s daughter instead. She told me he loved her more because she was “cute and skinny”. I didn’t know what the truth actually was, but I knew that sometimes my dad would go quiet for a time, too. But from a very young age, I learned to not trust what my mom told me about most things. However, when you’re young, it’s impossible to comprehend why some people just aren’t in your life. Sometimes you just believe what your crazy mother tells you because it’s all you’ve got.

So anyway, I have long known it wasn’t the stupid boy that I was having trouble letting go of, it was the why.

I never really got an answer, but at the same time, I always knew. It was easier to just say that it’s because I’m not worthy of love. It was easy to just say it’s because I’m a bad person. My early twenties were as reckless as the earlier years, just more private. Sometimes I’d drink in hopes it would kill me, but after one beer, I’d be sleeping next to the toilet. I’d get so drunk that all I could ever say was “I’m sorry”, and people would ask me why I was so sorry, and I didn’t know. But I felt no one should ever have to be in pain or be unhappy because of me. I couldn’t bear the thought. It was all I thought. This is why I never made it as a drinker.

The real answer that I never really got to hear is that he simply didn’t care. And I guess it was hard for me to accept that for a long time. I’d much rather kick my own ass and believe it was something I did. I eventually did accept it. But even with acceptance, there is still heartbreak. And I give my younger self permission to be heartbroken, to be mad, to be confused, to be SO hurt that you completely lose your shit. Any one else would, too. It’s no longer my responsibility to carry this.

The best part of all of this is that I got away. My heart no longer breaks every day. By some sheer miracle, I met my husband. My life has significantly gotten better, and I continue to grow and re-learn alongside the coolest dreamboat I’ve ever known. A lot of this trauma revisiting would have just been too heavy. It’s really pretty incredible, everything in life feels so much more possible when some one actually loves you and believes in you. He’s a real rarity 🙂

“Skinny Enough” 2017