Jane, you’re so brave. Am I, really? I truly don’t know. I guess the part where I’m brave is why I’m writing this down today.
These days spent in lockdown are fairly fun. 80% of the time I feel good. Excited about the future and truly experience happy moments where I feel free of the nightmare. I usually start my day preparing brunch. And then it’s either art, Spanish, or yoga classes online. A friend from back home usually calls and an hour or two goes by while we catch up….. Then it’s time for dinner and the three of us usually have conversations or play board games afterwards. The day ends, just like that. And repeats itself again.
So I guess maybe I can’t say that my days aren’t great. The thoughts however…. Im eager to get rid of soon. I know these things take time, and sometimes focusing on them too much would make matters worse too. But I’d like to take time to discuss them.
Grievances. It’s often easy to say “love yourself, give self love, detach self worth from others, ground your identity in how you see yourself, not how others see you”
It’s really hard to actually do so. Because it’s like asking you to go against how reality feels. If we love someone, it’s often because we feel loved too. Love, in its human form, often comes with expectations.
I’ve been getting really good dreams the past few weeks. Fun ones, ones that I used to get before DDay. My dreams get really creative and often make me feel my subconscious is a whole other person I would like to dig out and get to know. The other Jane is probably insecure and shy but wildly imaginative and incredibly talented. Me on the other hand…. I can make friends with any stranger and speak in a room of 500 and more, but ask me what my passion is, and the question leaves me dumbfounded.
But then it comes. A typical nightmare where reality and fear mixes up weird scenarios to make you feel trapped and frustrated. I’m sitting at the dining table with my family, and D and I had come from a stay cation. We had fought about certain reasons for splitting up, and I kept coming back to the same tune “but you left. The point of a marriage is to never leave no matter how much we don’t feel love anymore, it’s to have someone’s back, and to always try to make things work”
My frustration doesn’t get its satisfaction because we are immediately pulled into a dinner situation, with D’s mistress sitting between me and my dad, and D sitting across us with my brother and mum.
I start looking at the menu, logically thinking what I’d like to eat, practicing the social norm of asking my companions what they are thinking of ordering, and then it hits me. How in the world are we all sitting at one table? Why am I normalising this already? I cared why D felt it was okay for this to happen. But it’s funny how I was pissed at this simple dinner, while being extremely fast to want to forgive him for everything else.
In a way, it put things into perspective for me. Im not okay yet. The impatient part of me wants to fast forward to the part where I’m healed and not vulnerable anymore. The fear of having an open wound is making me anxious to fast-track the grieving and go straight to the healing.
But I forget, that Time is greater than I am. And that however determined I am, will not make me defeat what Time wants to put me through.
How then? Do I truly heal? Does time have a magical effect on wounds that just everyone can use on their pain? Is it like Vicks where no matter what the issue is, you just slap a ton of it on the pain point and wait?
Is it sieving through pain points one by one and then willing them into submission so they become numb? I don’t know the answer.
Sometimes I forget. But I loved him alot. It’s in the past tense because I choose not to anymore. Everyone has their idea of what love is and I think Love is a verb. It’s a choice to make. I believe D really loved me too. We were both madly in love. But along the way, forgot how to. We both allowed ourselves to hurt each other, by not actively loving each other. But knowing that doesn’t lessen my pain, because the pain point comes from him leaving, and not fighting. Maybe his hunch was right and that even if we tried, we would fail again. I don’t know.
But I know that I want to be free from this pain point. I know I want to believe the narrative that “you can’t control what someone else does, you can only control how you heal from their actions” but I also fear that I won’t love as naively and as freely anymore. I fear that I don’t believe in loving without expecting to get hurt anymore. I fear that I’ll bring a wall with me and carry it around.
I can feel the bricks forming, and this is the part where I’m choosing to be brave and desperately trying to claw them down. I don’t want fear to cripple me. I want to know God’s love, and let him heal me truly. I want to give God’s love, and one day be able to trust in someone again.
I don’t know what the steps are. But I know that im healing well, alot better than I thought I would. I’m aware of my impatience and I’m reminding myself to take it slow…. To take my time and sit still with my thoughts. To feel all the emotions and let them flow when they have to. To not fight the memories and let them surface, so I learn how to breathe through pain and not want to go around it.
Maybe it’s being in a foreign environment that’s helping. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m doing alot of learning, especially Spanish and art. Maybe it’s because I get to travel around, learn about Europe’s history of war and how people cope with loss. Maybe its the friends I have made and have back home who send me love all the time. Maybe it’s the reading I do, that helps me sort out my thoughts and gives me insight. Maybe it’s my constant quest to want to dig deep into my own brain and evolve into a stronger mind. Maybe it’s also the free spirited part of me thats now free, and itching to go, she’s on her mark, getting ready to explore all these places and things. Maybe it’s all of it put together. But I’m grateful to God for giving me this strength that I never knew was there. I’m grateful that when it was really tough to even get up, breathe, walk, or be awake, God put people in my life to stand by me, and He accompanied me through the toughest of times.
Now that it seems the first phases of pain are over, I want to grieve well. Not dwell on grievances anymore, but find a way to truly forgive D and myself, so I won’t fear loving again.
“when there’s nothing to do, do nothing” if there’s nothing else I can do now, I’m gonna sit and do nothing. It’s alot tougher than it sounds, this nothingness. But I believe I’m already doing well, now I just need to let Time do it’s magic.