Car Crashes and Anniversaries

Emotions? Forget it. That was my mindset. The funny thing about detachment and dissociation is that it works so well as a coping mechanism, that you forget what emotions are even when you are emotionally hijacking yourself.

It was 10 days before our 2-year anniversary when we ended and I needed a new car. The driver of a brown 1979 Ford Bronco stared back at me. Eyes wide. Dented bumper. My little Toyota Camry didn’t seem damaged from the inside, but when we drove off to stop blocking the intersection I could tell -- my car was messed up.

Steam slowly stemmed and trickled up from the front of my little red car. My first feeling was shock, but my first thought wasn’t fear. It was relief. The universe always had a weird way of granting my wishes but at least it was always on my side. I didn’t want to go to work today and I had grown so accustomed to being unhappy in my normal life, maybe this was the trigger to a better life. In other words, I never wanted to change my life myself, so I wanted the universe to do it for me.

This car accident sucked but it was going to make my life better.

I was in a relationship where I forced myself to be happy. It felt like my boyfriend never truly understood me. I would always have to explain why I was feeling how I was feeling and by the end of it, I would be the bad guy for overreacting and wasting his time. We had a talk about how he was sorry for not making me feel comfortable being myself around him. That he would try to change. That he would change. And he did, we had a heart-to-heart conversation and it felt like we were meant to be. Only to have it turn out to be fake. The same night after our talk, it had turned out he had misunderstood all the messages I had sent in the first place. It had been almost two years and he still didn’t get me. He never did.

Helping me always seemed like a burden. It was an inconvenience. My car was totaled, and he went out of his way to come and visit the scene. My driver’s door couldn’t open. The driver’s side was indented with a line across both doors and my bumper was folded back so far that you could see the machinery underneath the silver metal that crunched up what had once been red paint.

He left me to go ride his bike with his friend.

Some people were always unhappy in their relationships. Relationships aren’t perfect so you need to put effort into working things out. The good makes up for the bad, and I had a problem with only seeing the bad. That is what he taught me. After this, he would just say sorry and lay next to me as I cry it out for another half an hour to an hour. Then, we would be okay.

I always wanted to leave and already had some things packed up in my car, but I didn’t want to be alone. Relationships were so hard, and I didn’t want to go through all of this again with someone else. Losing myself, the constant disappointment, the loss of my self esteem and then the blame because after I brought it up after it was too late, I was the problem and the hypocrite. It told myself this is what a relationship is and I accepted it for almost two years.

I am grateful for the universe and I am grateful for my dad. After my car was towed back to my parent’s house, my dad said that he was disappointed in him. He said that I could move back. I was no longer trapped. We packed up my stuff from my now ex-boyfriend’s house. His grandma cried and told me not to go. She loved me. We were both heartbroken. But she also called and told him that I was packing up before I did.

It was messed up. He had left me, so I left him. In the end, we were both at fault, but I was once again, more in the wrong because I left our relationship. That is what he told me. And for some reason, I believed him. All the mistakes he made could always be fixed and he was never sorry until I called him out. He would change but the same situation would just repeat itself in different ways. But I still regretted what I did. I wanted to get back together.

In 2018 and 2019, I believed that love was all I needed to finally make peace with myself and my life. If I had someone I could rely on, someone who was always there for me, I could do anything. Using another person as an escape, was what could save me.

He was that. He was there for me and held me when I cried. But he was also the reason why I cried somedays and the reason why I stopped believing in love itself and taught me how to accept that true love meant being unhappy and unsatisfied in order to keep feeling content.

He was creative and we had the same kinds of goals. But his disrespectful tone of voice, criticism, and forced support made me lose the confidence I needed to pursue my ambitions. The list of blame can run on forever, but he was right on one thing. The problem was me.

Losing yourself in someone else is the foundation for an unhealthy relationship. My self-worth was just all ego when we had first started dating and I had taken it all out on him. Maybe when we first met, it was pure. Mutual interest, mutual feelings and mutual admiration. But there never was mutual respect. I called him ugly jokingly a few days after we met and from the beginning, I never actually valued him as he deserved or truly respected him.

I was manipulative. I always dissociated when I got hurt or upset so I could be apathetic to whoever hurt me and cut them off. To hurt them back like how they hurt me. And that was just who I was. Instead of holding myself accountable, deep down, I thought it was okay.

The universe always grants my wishes and is on my side. With the start of this year and in the form of a car crash, it caused me to truly reflect and look inwards for the first time of my 23 years of life. No more suicidal thoughts and wanting to run away. I was the problem and I needed to change. I needed to not only acknowledge that I had problems, but I had to take steps to solving them.

It made me realize, that maybe I struggled with suicidal ideation before because acting against your own mind is incredibly hard. It is so much easier. Easier to distract yourself, to take your mind off things, to do “self-care” and my yourself feel better temporarily but never doing things differently rather than what comes naturally.

I couldn’t do it alone. The reason why people do not normally change, is because we don’t know how to. Stereotypical healthy coping mechanisms as simple as thinking more positively or just exercising don’t work when you’re in it. At least, they don’t work until you get an understanding of yourself.

A self-book on clearance from Target changed my life. The first page made me feel understood and inspired a sense of self-compassion that I so desperately needed that enabled me to take the first steps to changing. Self-compassion is different from self-pity. But that’s not how our brains work. First comes feeling bad for ourselves. It sucks to me, my life sucks. We’ll then take it out on ourselves and take the blame. After we reach out for help, or with time, we’ll get inspired by a quote on social media about loving ourselves or our friends hype us up. Self-pity then turns into self-righteousness. I deserve better. How could they do that to me. I am better than this.

Recognizing your own sense of self-worth is an important step to healing. However, constantly reassuring yourself of your own self-worth but never empathizing with yourself stops you from loving yourself. I was scared. It felt like no one would be able to meet up to my standards. I was only to be hurt, dissatisfied, and unhappy because no one is perfect. But again, that was just me spiraling into yet another round of self-pity.

It seems like none of the thoughts that come naturally, that come easily, were that of the self-compassion that I needed. Self-compassion isn’t feeling bad for ourselves but empathizing and forgiving ourselves for having emotions. It is telling ourselves to breathe and say it’s okay to not be okay.

Breaking patterns is doing what you don’t normally do because you’ll come out for the better because of it. For the first time in my life, I’m actively trying to change. That means learning new coping mechanisms when I realize I’m feeling hatred or I’m detached and don’t know what to do that work for me. It means taking accountability for when I mess up. Letting myself reflect on why I messed up. Then, accepting the fact that I messed up whatever it was that I messed up on, but not taking it out on myself and instead seeing what I can do better.

It’s combatting down my habits of manipulation with killing my dissociation and splitting with love and genuinity. It’s writing down three things I’m appreciative for every day so I feel grateful instead of simply taking things for granted. It’s writing even though I know I’m not the best at it and letting myself enjoy things without worrying about winning.

It’s my resolution for not only the rest of this year, but for the rest of my life.

Breaking patterns is falling in true love with myself.