Tag: love

Healing

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I never realised how much I actually needed to be alone. Any time I flew from the nest, I knew as my home, I was always off on an adventure or with a boy so I never experienced the art of being alone. I was living it up in NYC high or drunk (as a 21 year old should), on a ship in the middle of the ocean without a lot of contact to my home reality or living in my boyfriend’s flat/house/world instead of my own.

So yeah.. I never realised how much I needed to be alone. I had to get to know ME, I had to figure out how to love ME, I had to learn to self soothe more, I had to be the bread winner, I had to be person for myself that I had wanted someone else to be for me. I only figured that out within the last 6 months or so and I was completely unaware of the journey I was on. So what brought me to this point?

I’ve always been seen as a very independent person, I have never had a problem being alone. I like it because there is no pressure when I’m alone. I love going to the shops by myself, I love travelling places myself. I have amazing family & best friends I do these things with too, of course, and I cherish my time with them. My point being I’ve never been dependent on others, until I was. I was in a very toxic relationship. I lost myself and I lost my independence.

“Why didn’t you just leave?”

I was manipulated every day. The pattern was this – they pick an argument, gaslight me to the point I actually questioned my own sanity and mental health, I feel coerced in to apologising even though I don’t fully understand why I am even sorry, quickly followed by them love bombing me with affection, gifts & instagram stories. Then, same again, 3 days later. It was mentally exhausting. It was my fault if a boy wrote on my Instagram posts, my fault if a boy DM’d me, I wasn’t allowed to go to my gym, I had to join their gym. I wasn’t allowed to talk to my guy friends. I always had to picked up after nights out. I had a time frame that I had to text back in or I was told I couldn’t go home that night. I was shouted at regularly for having an opinion. I was called immature and had my personality scrutinised if I was too over the top and cheery. I would retreat in to some of the darkest corners of my mind and cry while I was in the same bed with them and have them tell me to shut up but then 2 minutes later shower me in kisses and cuddles. Imagine how confusing that would be!

When I finally left I was a shell of the young woman I once was. I was emotionally blackmailed, I was gaslit, I developed trust issues, I relapsed on my ED, I was extremely self conscious and I felt completely helpless. I threw myself in to my job, everything I had. So, I numbed myself, I didn’t deal with any of the trauma, swept it under the proverbial rug and ignored it. I bossed it though – 2 promotions in 2 years & bought my own house but it wasn’t until 2021 I started to really figure my shit out. Regular counselling, the gym and I came off the pill (which I swear fucked my mental health up so bad)!!!

I started to therapise myself (pretty sure that isn’t a real word but just go with it). I started saying my problems out loud and then answered myself OUT LOUD the way I thought my counsellor would, it worked. I deep dived in to my childhood trauma as well as the relationship trauma. I started to empathise with myself and my own thoughts asking myself “If someone came to me with these thoughts, how would I respond to them?” – that’s when I found out that the more time I spent alone with my own brain and without the negativity of others around me that I could really change how I think & react. It’s been a long 3 years figuring this shit out and it’s been exhausting.

Truth be told I didn’t realise I hadn’t healed from that, it’s only now I am aware of it that I can make sense of it all. I am a work in progress. I have not got everything figured out but I am FINALLY back to a STRONG, INDEPENDENT WOMAN. I have had some dating experiences after that relationship and it’s only now looking back that I have the self awareness to think “no wonder that didn’t work out when I still had crippling trust issues.” Now, I think I can actually enter in to a relationship and confidently say that I will never let another human treat me that way ever again, nor will I let how that human treated me affect my future relationships or me anymore.

That was a bit of a long one, but I needed the release, the weight is lifted, the healing has started. I won’t feel compelled to talk about that person or relationship anymore because I’ve taken the control back. That feels good.

Always remember – You are loved. You are special. You deserve to be happy, and you will be.

Christmas Day

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An experience I never expected was waking up alone on Christmas day in an empty house. This year, I woke up and scooped my phone out from under my pillow to see floods of messages wishing me a Merry Christmas and thanking me for the gifts I had given. Oddly, these messages, simultaneously, brought me sadness and happiness. Happiness, because I was warmed to see my loved ones names on my screen and photos of their kids opening presents and smiling from ear to ear. Sadness because I was alone, in my bed, with nobody to laugh and smile with on Christmas morning like my friends & family were. I forced myself out of bed to make a coffee and stared at the presents under my tree – I wasn’t excited to open them. I wasn’t really even remotely interested in Christmas day at all.

I opened my presents and sent my thank you messages and suddenly became overwhelmed remembering that I am loved, I am thought of frequently by my friends & family and I am never truly alone but I could not shake the feeling of complete loneliness away. As I journeyed back up to my bedroom I stopped in the mid-staircase and began crying, not the loud whaling kind of crying. The soft, almost silent, unending stream of tears kind of crying – the silent pain I carry being released. In that moment, I felt like I was looking at my life through someone else’s eyes, sort of like an out of body experience. I have never felt “alone” on Christmas Day because I have always woken up in my parents house on Christmas morning, with my parents & brother, knowing my Grand parents would be over in the morning to open pressies with us all and eat some breakfast before retiring to their houses to get dressed for Christmas dinner. No later than 3.30pm would the Aunties, cousins, kids, gran’s & papa’s arrive in their glad rags ready to get drunk and tell stories about past Christmas day shenanigan’s and get the annual photos taken before we get too merry.

Of course, I told absolutely nobody about the crying. Painted on my best “I’m Happy, It’s Christmas” face and went to my parents for dinner, just us 3 and my Gran, where we laughed, spoke to family on Zoom and I forgot about just how lonely I felt only a few hours prior.

Let me explain something – I am good at being alone, I am very independent and always have been, I enjoy my own company and quiet time. That being said, there is absolutely no comparison to being in a room with people who love and cherish you. I simply miss the feeling of being encompassed by that kind of love and warmth that you can only really get when you have your family/friends/partner surrounding you laughing and creating memories to talk about the year later.

This is a selfish excerpt, I know. I know there are families who have to do this every year when there isn’t a pandemic, I know there are families who have been torn apart because of loss. I know there are families who cannot see their children or who are making sacrifices to give their children a better future. Your pain and loneliness matters. This is just how I felt, and writing it gives me some closure, it’s part of how I heel.