It is hard to follow a post like my last one. It seems like it needs to be followed by something cheery, like, “I woke up this morning feeling GREAT and everything is now OK!” or “I fixed myself using <magic trick>”.
But there is no waking up one morning feeling great, and there is no magic. Just day after day of making it out of bed each morning. Taking the drugs and waiting for them to work. Going to a second (less judgy) counsellor, crying lots, and then sleeping for 12 hours. Realising that my posture had gone to hell, and walking a little straighter. Seeing he-who-was-known-as-the-boy and wanting to move to another country. Making a backup plan to move to another country. Coming home from a night out and realising I wasn’t just going through the motions, I was actually enjoying on myself. Crying on my birthday. Going on a date. Another one. Noticing for the first time in what feels like forever how beautiful the walk to work is.
Is this what being OK is? Maybe. It’s continuing. It’s feeling like a human again, albeit a slightly bruised and bitter one. So much drama, and what seems like so many men who crawled under the extremely low bar I set for their behaviour. Some relatively minorly – does it really matter what an ex says about your breakup? If things end in part because of their poor grip on reality it shouldn’t really come as a surprise to discover their version of things has little relation to my truth. But hurtful none the less. And <event> that led to <redacted>. <Event> was almost unsurprising, low bar, crawled right under it, but <redacted>, was supposed to fix things, well that was worse part of it. And then the creep.
It’s hard to rebalance the ratio of positive to negative interactions with the world, when you’re afraid to go out in it because who knows what new disaster awaits. But the drugs took the edge off that terror. And finally – finally! I can find things to be grateful for. I’m working on something cool, and I’m learning a lot. My parents have been great, my friends amazing, work and especially my manager have been awesome.
And, after so much drama and upheaval – moving! Crises! Breakups! I realised the other day that my life is currently boring.
My initial reaction was – panic! How do I make it more interesting? A project?
And then I realised, my life is boring. How fucking amazing is that?
One reply on “The Aftermath”
@catehstn 🙂