Moonlight

When I tell you, healing is a long and rough road, I'm not trying to paint you a picture of the peace it brings you after the fact. It is the hard truths about yourself that you must come to terms with so you can choose to break that pattern or not. It is the upsetting moments where you feel you broke something precious because you know that part of you hasn't healed yet. It gets scary to realize the patterns when you are amid something amazing. But you must choose to get out of the patterns that trauma has made comfortable for you; not that it has made you feel at ease, but it has taught you how to have yourself treated. A shame it is to go through hell and still feel like that is the normal, that it'll strike at any moment and you'll stand there and swear it was coming. But on the other side, how fortunate is it to find something amazing that really makes you dive deep and break those bonds to what helped you survive then.

Then. Not now. Now, you're safe. Now, you're loved beyond measure. Now, you can really heal and feel deserving of every little thing that was robbed from you in your past. Healing is a process and sometimes you never notice the progress until a pattern is tempting your understanding. Why's it here? Where did it come from? You must feel through it and sort through everything that you no longer want impeding on what you're deserving of. I've found the perfect part of living in her eyes and any time we talk, I realize, "this is a thing I still need to heal from," and every time after that her heart lulls me and tells me I am safe, I am worthy, I am loved. And it seems so obvious, doesn't it? To have someone love you means that you are such things, but I've been living with a darkness inside me for as long as I can remember feeling it. Most won't know that because I'm not public with the chaos that has ridden shotgun in my brain for all these years. Though, being with her has taught me that my survival tactics aren't needed anymore, and I can stop feeling like I can't breathe. It's painful to realize what trauma has made you accept in the form of what love should be; I've got scars that have made rewiring my train of thought feel like an Olympic race, my insecurities that I thought were real was a fake armor that I wore because what kept my self-esteem low benefited those that saw me as prey, and my fears took charge in efforts of doing anything to just feel loved. How crazy it is to know that I truly felt like I was deserving of the things that have happened to me, of the way I normalized it all and rationalized it into a molding of who I thought I had to be for everyone else but myself. It was only when I couldn't breathe anymore, when all I could think about was how suffocated I felt from all the hands around my neck, when it finally dawned on me that I shouldn't have to keep dying just to relive this same pattern over and over. It gets exhausting attending funerals for all the times you thought you were okay.

Patterns are usually guidelines, but I don't think they were ever meant to be something that has to stay repetitive unless it is positively nurturing to who you are. I used to think that you'd glow a certain way when someone loved you right. I used to think love wasn't meant to be and that any form of "love" I received was what I deserved. I used to devalue myself because I grew into an adult feeling abandoned by an absent father. I used to feel desperate for happiness from other people just to fill the void I had because I grew up feeling so alone and detached from what other kids-- other people had that I didn't. I also used to think I was okay with how my trauma built me and made me survive. I used to think I was okay. I think this is what healing feels like, when all the ways you used to feel are finally fading and is being replaced with a healthier way of feeling and thinking and reacting. It was only when I finally wanted to break what was breaking me that I started to realize that I was needing to take back my sense of self so I could live again.

I started to feel better about the new direction that I was going to take my life and, on my way, I met her. Opportunities present themselves most when your eyes and heart are open to receive them properly. She has shown me that the light I have inside of me is as worthy as the sun and just as beautiful when the moon comes out at night. She's helped me recognize the behaviors I've previously had towards certain things were a response to what had been taken from me. She allows me to breathe in the way that branches on a tree slowly sway when the wind blows on a calm, breezy night-- easily and peacefully. What we have makes me want to break every pattern I created in means to survive because now that I've made it, now that I'm safe, I can finally live the life I was always meant to. It is beautiful to be a survivor, but you shouldn't always have to live like you're being hunted, like something bad will eventually happen, like you are undeserving, and like you are less than because life has mistreated you. So, when the walls start closing in and your mind is chaotic, ask what pattern you are following and then break it. Chuck it out the window, veer off that path and give your heart a chance at beating in a brand-new way. Like I said earlier, I’ve always had a darkness about me but I have been relentless in not letting it win in my most trying times; I prefer the night rather than the day but she’s my moonlight—even the brightness of the sun needs a break but though it be dark, she’ll be there to help light my way.