It’s finally the holiday season and I find myself Srooge-ing tremendously hard this year.
I didn’t go with my family to buy the tree, I have not assisted in any decorating – I just have been throwing myself into work and activities and secretly hoping that time will set itself into hyper-speed so I don’t have to actually acknowledge that for the first time in a long time, I have to try and get through this entire season without singing or humming “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” – and damn, has that song been stalking me this month. It could have something to do with how this always felt like “our” season – and now, for the first time in seven years, I’m trying (and failing) to navigate it by myself.
I spent tonight miserable in bed, then hanging out and drinking with a friend, to being back in bed (in the dark this time) while Florence and the Machine blasted in the background hollering that the Dog Days were Over – and it occurred to me : I AM NOT OKAY. Which is terribly difficult to actually admit, especially via a blog post that many people are bound to read. But emotionally, it’s true. I am not okay. My family is concerned cause I wound up in urgent care last month: a result of exhaustion and dehydration from pushing myself too much, too fast. I have a friend who thinks that I need to go back into therapy, because he’s concerned about my well being. And I’m sitting here KNOWING these things – knowing that my body is on the brink of a physical breakdown and knowing that my head is on a brink of a mental meltdown, yet I choose to just laugh and run forward as fast as I can. Because honestly, sometimes it’s actually harder to admit that you’re trying to fill the hypothetical void – to make up for something that has been lost, than it is to actually push yourself to the brink of a potential disaster.
Usually, I try and make my posts inspirational. I like to talk about adversity and how I get through my problems by relying on my friends, family and life experience – but in this situation, I genuinely feel like I’m in a bit over my head. I don’t have the life experience to handle this. I can write all I want, I can vent as much as I can – but I still feel like I don’t have an answer. I just don’t know how to fix myself; I don’t know how to make myself feel like the old me, the Allie from a year ago – and that’s the thought scares the living shit out of me.
I am so tired. I am so tired of trying (and in my eyes, failing) to prove to myself and to everyone else that I’m surviving. I’m exhausted of purposely taking photos and acting a part, that announce to the world that I’ve embraced single-hood and that I am LAAAAAVING it – cause sometimes, at the end of the day, all I want is to be back in bed with the guy I loved, laying together under the covers, with candles burning as we watched The Mindy Project and we told each other about our days. Sometimes, at night in the dark, I still find myself wrapping my arms around myself and pretending that it’s him.
I know that these things take time. And I know recovering from extreme heartbreak doesn’t happen overnight and that it takes a lot of self-realization and self-acceptance to come to terms with who and what you are destined to be, but it. is. hard. And like I said, I am desperately not okay.
I’ve received a lot of messages from my peers telling me how inspirational my writing has been to them. I’ve had a young woman tell me that I’ve inspired her TO write – and I’ve seen a fabulous blog develop shortly after that. But, whenever someone reaches out, what I really want to tell them is stupid simple : I didn’t choose this reality. This reality was chosen for me.
A year ago, if you had asked me, I would’ve told you that I thought that I had it all figured out. I had a guy on my arm that I was madly in love with, I had a job in the fashion industry that I desperately wanted. In my mind, I had everything I could possibly want. And then, one day, I snapped. I quit my job on the spot and then within two months of that, I was a literal pile of heartbreak on my front porch after that guy that I loved so much dumped me out of the blue. This is all brand new territory and I honestly have no idea what I’m doing. And I’m terrified. And again, I am not okay. I get that, in life, all this stuff happens, but when you’re in it and in your mind, you have it all, you just never think that disaster and heartbreak will actually happen to you. And then when it does, you’re completely shifted upside down and it’s just a matter of surviving and trying to prove to yourself that you’re not actually losing your mind throughout the recovery process.
So, I guess what it comes down to, is that this past year – this 2015 experience, has been a massive effort to try to fill the void. It’s a big one, a whammy of an emptiness that has been inside of me, lingering and threatening to implode on itself – but I’ve just been trying to keep on keeping on in an effort to maintain my own sanity throughout this entire process. My friend sent me a great Lucille Ball quote tonight : “Love yourself first and everything else falls in line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.”
Clearly self-love is a long and difficult process, but I’ll be sure to keep you posted on how it goes.
