I’m not gonna lie, I’m both in love with and exhausted by life right now.

I had a fantastic weekend full of reading, pink champagne, and hate-watching the 2005 Pride and Prejudice with my best friend and soulmate. She and I had just finished rereading Pride and Prejudice, and after finding some truly astonishing (and honestly, infuriating) TikToks about Pride and Prejudice, we decided that people’s misconceptions about this timeless classic were entirely the fault of Joe Wright’s vision of the book, and it was time we dissected it at length.

And so we did.

With pink champagne in hand, we trolled the shit out of that movie, and it was some of the best fun I have ever had. The movie is about two hours long and it took us almost four to get through it. We paused at literally every single moment that made us angry and ranted. I don’t remember the last time I laughed so hard. It was magic. And surprising because, honestly, the movie is even worse than I remembered. Just, truly, in every way, abominable. I don’t understand why it’s so popular. I’m not sure I ever will, especially for those who have read the book and still like this movie. And look, I’m usually the one advocating for letting people enjoy things, and I really don’t think it’s wrong to like the movie as a movie, but it is not, in any way, an actual adaptation of the novel Pride and Prejudice.

Okay, moving on from that.

I received my student loans for the semester and, once they post to my account, I have plans to pay down some outstanding bills, and invest in some new technology for the remainder of my education – namely, an iPad so that I don’t have to use so much paper to print out reading assignments and such. My classes are going extremely well. One of my professors emailed me and said my participation so far has been “exceptional.” I’m already planning what I want my final project to be in that class, and in the other class we’re reading The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli. I’m learning. I’m growing.

And even though the world is, well, fucked, and my daily mental and emotional health isn’t as consistent as I’d like it to be, I can see the faint light of still-burning embers. I have an almost completely edited manuscript and an almost completed cover for my debut book of poetry. How fucking cool is that? Especially in such a tumultuous time, poetry, art, literature, film, feeds the soul. I have a job that is beginning to bloom into a career, financial independence, and a deeper understanding of what I want from life: which is abundant, thorough, tremendous happiness.

And I have a home, a stable home, with a partner who loves me and cares about my well being. I’ve never had that in my entire adulthood, and now it’s something I cherish, something I hold tenderly. More too because, for the first time in a very long time, the person I’m living with inspires me to love myself, take care of myself, and allow myself to be imperfect. This relationship, this partnership, has shown me what it’s like to be built up, rather than torn down, and to build myself up.

This is what healing looks like.

I didn’t realize just how damaging it was to be in multiple living situations where I genuinely didn’t know if my home was stable. It started with my ex, and then extended to the people I lived with after him. With my ex it was the always fluctuating state of his “love” for me. With the other roommates, it was never knowing from month to month if they were gonna pay their portion of the rent or not; so much so, I had to get a second job on top of being a full time grad student. NEWSFLASH: if you can’t pay your own bills, you don’t have any business taking on roommates.

The wounds are still there, but they are healing. It’s a hard line to walk – healing so that I can be independent, but still allowing myself to trust the people in my life. I still, to this day, hyper-fixate on the tones in people’s voices because I’m worried the next thing I say or do will be enough for the people I love to shove me away. But then I remind myself: if a friendship or a relationship is such that someone can just shove you away without warning, explanation, or a chance to make amends, then it was one-sided anyway.

And I’ll never allow myself to be treated like that again.

Another beautiful part of healing: you raise the standard for the ways you expect to be treated.

Keep shining, lovelies.