Self Love - True Love

Lying on the bathroom floor with tears pooling below me all the cracks of my world began to show. The weight of every broken dream I once held in my heart for the man on the other side of the door made me sink further into the floor with despair. I was finally allowing myself to question who I had become, how did I get there. Had I really moved across an entire country for love? What was I thinking? The whole predicament was like a jagged puzzle piece that didn’t quite fit with the bigger picture. We had been living together for about eight months, yet there were so many things we didn’t know about one another. The clarity of that moment showed me that I was meeting a side of him I hadn’t predicted and it was quite possibly the very first time in my life that I lost trust in myself. I was never wrong about people, it was my super power. I thought back to the night we sat pinched together in that pocket sized wine bar in NYC when he accidentally spilled his glass of merlot into my lap. He was mortified which I found to be charming. It wasn’t a big deal to me, I was wearing all black, but you could see him calculating exactly how much the misstep would cost him. He had flown into town on a whim after a chance meeting we had a month or two prior. I was in Atlanta on a trip to see my sister through a breakup and in need to blow off some steam one evening we went out for drinks, that’s when I first met Damon. My sister introduced us actually, later having admitted she wished she hadn’t. When I said I was moving to Atlanta to give things a go with him she was only thinking of having me near. Whether or not the circumstances proved healthy for me in the long run was an afterthought. As for me I was deeply in love and ready for whatever came next. In the beginning everything was light and airy, full of promise and romance. Jet setting up and down the coast falling in love with each embrace. It all happened so fast, before either of us knew it we were picking out furniture together. Somehow it made sense to jump head first with that one and so I did. A whirlwind utopian love only to be lived to the fullest. In other words we were seizing the damn day and throwing all caution to the wind like the ignorant children we were. Young lovers playing house, living in a bubble. Older me crack a cynical smile at the thought of it all, but also appreciates the naivety of my younger self. She was in love like never before, good for her. Silly girl.

Damon had the charm of a Southern boy mixed with the grit of the North and one of those perfectly symmetrical faces with a Romanesque statue vibe. He was handsome, pretty even. His hair was just long enough to curl a bit at the ends in a boyish manner and we laughed so much together about everything and anything. That’s how the wine spilled, he always emphatically talked with his hands, and in his exaggerated movement he smacked it over. So much time has passed between that night and now, but I remember the wine bar and I remember the first time I locked myself in the bathroom in our apartment on Euclid Avenue. A scene that would repeat itself too many times to count in the four years we cohabitated. “Is this really something to cry on the bathroom floor over Jess” he asked through the door. If I had been better acquainted with gaslighting back then perhaps it could have saved me a lot of time and energy, but what I lacked on that subject I’d gain ten fold in experience in the years to come. To be honest I should have left by year two but I stayed. I stayed and I continued to make excuses as to why his moods would swing or why he fussed at this or at that. I couldn’t see the rationale in getting upset about the things that sent him into fits. “He isn’t happy at his job” or “he’s just overworked.” They were all the typical thoughts that we use to replace reality when we aren’t ready to face facts. You keep going because the good times are the very best and the bad times are quickly replaced by the dopamine reward that comes with making up. The thing about dopamine though is that it’s short lived, unsustainable and fleeting. He’d smother me in gifts or tropical vacations served with a heavy dose of future promises topped with love. He would never say sorry though. Not ever. Narcissists rarely do. He would just book a trip and accept any accolades that came his way for being a fun and spontaneous partner. “Look how he dotes on her, look how in love they are. When do you think they’ll tie the knot? How many kids are you two planning on?” We hardly ever catch glimpses of what lies beyond the curtain if we aren’t intent on seeing it. To those around us we were the couple who hosted great dinners and cultivated fun group experiences. We marched in solidarity against social injustices and donated our time to charities. They never saw how ill treated I was behind closed doors. Though it wasn’t constant it was intense. Hard for me to make sense of at first. The outbursts few and far between with enough time to forget how bad it could be just before the next explosion laid me out. Those around us witnessed the light, but never the dark. Such is life. How could I ever expect someone else to see the intimate details that I myself had not yet paid tribute to? Abuse comes in many forms and often builds up over time. That’s where the confusion around why we stay is so hard for others to grasp. It can take years to pull the wool back from the eyes because it took years for the wolf to reveal itself. It took me 4 years to leave him and while to some it seemed 4 years too many I have made peace with who I was and what I was capable of. More importantly I have learned to accept what I wasn’t capable of. I’ve come to find that we grow the most in our moments of weakness, perhaps it is in those particular moments even where we gain our most valuable insights. Over the course of a lifetime we are many people, each a varying version of our past selves paving the way for an ever evolving upgraded model. I’m happy to have grown through those years into a woman who takes care of herself and I no longer fault my younger self for wanting the good in humans to conquer the bad. It takes a tremendous amount of compassion and love to want the best for those who care so little in return. I believe a piece of that girl still sits within me and I’m glad for that. It’s in our nature to seek out the light in others, to want that light to outshine the dark. It brings me peace to know that regardless of past traumas I can still love with all of me and not just through the brokenness left behind by others. I rest easier knowing that what I have to give is pure and in knowing this about myself it has become all the more easier to see the lack of it in others. In some ways my experiences have reinstated the power I thought was lost. I’ve come to embrace that voice inside of me as a guiding force with more trust than I ever had before.

Towards the end the fighting got so bad I could no longer find excuses for his behavior. His troubles ran far deeper than me and they were his to bare. Not mine. I was ready to let go of the fantasy we had created together. I remember sitting in contemplation one afternoon, with faded green bruises all over my arms, questioning what our toxic environment would do to a child and it was in that moment I made my final decision to leave. I had suffered a miscarriage around that time and couldn’t help but to think about what sort of mother I wanted to be. I deserved so much more, as we all do, but so did any child I was to bring into the world. I was in my mid-twenties by then and coming into my powers as a woman and individual. Femininity in your early twenties is tumultuous. You’re feeling and experiencing and growing at a pace that’s hard to catch up to at times. My time, my body, my youth was mine and mine alone and no love however great or small could replace the love and respect I had forged for myself. If there was a time prior to those years when I hadn’t grasped the severity of self love, that time was soon forgotten. No longer would I remain small so that he could be seen as larger than life. No longer would I accept the demeaning words hurled at my throat or the bruises left on my body without recognition or remorse. He was traveling a lot in those days, thankfully giving me time to sit in peace with my needs. I scoured the internet that afternoon and made the necessary arrangements, stars seemingly aligning as if awaiting my arrival at last. It was done. I was leaving. The conversation was calm and rightfully expected, he even had the nerve to tell me he was proud of me for leaving. What’s even more revealing about his state of mind during that time was that later he would admit that he always knew I would leave him, but he truly believed with all of his heart that I’d come back. That I would finally say yes to marriage and we would have those kids he always wanted. He could never see that what he wanted was my actual nightmare. He attempted for years to strike up a physical relationship with me with that very thought in mind even long after he was living with other women. After all that time he still could not see the harm he had done. He still could not comprehend the damage he caused. Let alone apologize for any of it. To carry any amount of hate is too heavy a burden and not who I am. All we can hope for in a situation like that is the inner awareness that spiritual and emotional evolution offers us to extend to those who have caused us pain. That and maybe a really good therapist.

With it all said and done and a decade worth of moons having passed I have gone on to feel the depths of love and loss so many times over that I can’t help but to question why any of us continue down this self masochistic road of self destruction. Maybe its the hope of coming across someone out there in the world who appreciates the importance of self love and can grasp how intimately woven it is to their relationships. Someone who knows and feels your struggle before you even speak it because they too have gone through the same wars. Let us celebrate all the warriors who have picked themselves up off the bathroom floor and rebuilt themselves, no matter if it was in that very moment or years later. Let us applaud their strength. May we all honor that fight and share in the ability to love through it all as the celestial majestic creatures that we all are.