Pardon the cheesy title, but I am in a playful mood today.
This probably won’t be a long post. In one week, I will be waking up on Christmas morning next to the man I love. I’ll be cooking us a delicious, healthy breakfast, and then we will be opening presents. Our families and friends have mailed us all of our gifts for the holidays, so underneath our very tiny tree (which is currently perched on a stool) are a lot of cardboard boxes. I’m so excited to watch him open the presents I got him! And I’m excited to open the presents he bought me.
In a few days, we will be having our six month anniversary. I really can’t explain how magical and healing it is to celebrate this milestone after going through my divorce last year. At this time last year, I was seeing someone I was really into, but due to distance between where we both lived, things didn’t work out. It was a big disappointment at the time because we’d been seeing each other for about six weeks and I felt like we could make a relationship work, but he didn’t. It was my first big dating disappointment since my divorce and it taught me some important lessons.
Looking back, I can see that things wouldn’t have worked between us anyway. Sometimes these things are hard to see when you’re in the middle of it. Ultimately, I don’t regret being with him because through the disappointment, I learned that I actually can handle rejection. And honestly, I handle it better than I ever thought I would after such an abusive marriage.
Last year at this time I was also preparing for the second residency of my M.F.A. I never would have imagined that this is what my life would be one year later. I mean, I obviously knew that in one year, I’d be in the last year of my M.F.A. and I’d be preparing for my last semester of my M.F.A., and while I certainly hoped I would be in a committed relationship, I didn’t actually imagine I would be. Dating is extremely hard, even under normal circumstances, but add in a global pandemic and it’s even more difficult. So to look at where I am now, compared to where I came from, I am in awe.
Who would have thought that happiness and personal fulfillment and healing and confidence and self-assurance and financial stability were actually attainable? I honestly didn’t think things could go this well in such a short amount of time, especially not when things went so very, very badly before. But one thing I am more grateful for than I can express is finally seeing just how strong and capable I am. So many things have made me feel small and insignificant, that it’s hard to see through those feelings sometimes. But I have seen through them now.
Next week is Christmas. The week after that is New Year’s. And then the following day, January 2nd, is the beginning of my fourth residency, as well as the beginning of my last semester of my M.F.A. The next several months are going to be incredibly important. They will, literally, be the beginning of the rest of my life, the life I have fought tooth and nail to build for myself, the life I never imagined I’d get to have.
I’m just…really grateful to be where I am. There’s a lot I still have to figure out and process through, lots of pain and trauma and disappointment, but the more I work on my healing, the more I see myself grow and improve. See, I think there’s this idea that people who are mentally ill can’t ever be happy, or that if they do find happiness and fulfillment, it must mean they aren’t actually mentally ill. One of the guys I dated earlier this year was a therapist and he said that he didn’t think I was depressed anymore since I was always happy when I was with him. But that is just so untrue.
Yes, I am happy right now. I feel happy. I feel fulfilled. I feel excited for the future. But I also still feel anxious. I’m also still scared. I’m also still working through the traumas of my life. I also still have depression. I still have nightmares. I still have flashbacks. I still have anxiety attacks. Healing from trauma is a process, not a destination. And while I can definitely look around my life and see a tremendous amount of love and beauty, I can also look backward and see pain, the wounds, the hurts. These things don’t have to exist separate from each other. And the existence of one doesn’t negate the validity of the other. I’m learning to accept the complications and even, at times, contradictory feelings that run parallel to each other.
So, remember that your feelings are valid. Remember that you’re allowed to hold complicated spaces for yourself. I’m sending love and light to you today.
