Out of The Rabbit Hole

I was dead inside for a long time. A very long time. I am still finding the dead pieces inside of me and trying to discard them as healthily as possible. I was broken after he left me. Broken in a way where the pain didn’t even feel like just my own. It felt like a joint hurt and somehow I agreed to take it on for the both of us. The pain was physical. The pain was mental. The pain often times could not be confined to a specific word or feeling, it kind of just existed, haunting me every conscious and unconscious moment. I was prisoner. I had no choice if the pain was present. My only choice was if I was to suffer in silence or aloud. I chose the silence. I chose the four walls in my bedroom with the  lights off 24 hours of the day, alone, with just the hurt. It was agony. There were times I’d forgotten the day of the week. There we times I woke up before noon disappointed that I would be conscious for more than 6 hours of the day. I had to remind myself to shower. To eat. To drink water. To tweet. To text one person. Like a handful of pictures on Instagram. To step outside the house at least once every two weeks. When I had forgotten what my voice sounded like I forced myself to use it. I asked no questions because I wanted no answers. Just more silence. 

I took a razor and I sliced my wrist. I sliced my forearm. I looked for a vein and tested how thick my skin was. For a moment while the physical pain sent the warning to my brain I’d forget. I’d forget I was sad. I’d forget I was angry. All I could remember was it hurt. It hurt in a way I could control. It hurt in a way I could remember only the last words he said to me. I counted the drops of blood until the cut stopped bleeding. I did this over and over and over until I could recall exactly what it sounded like for him to say “I love you, Jessica. Don’t do this. You have people here that love you. You hear me. I love you”. Then I cut again until I forgot. 

I started to drink so when I called him and he hung up the exact moment he registered my voice, I would be to drunk to remember I had lost my dignity for the thousandth time that day. I drank until it the liquor didn’t burn anymore. Until the dizziness felt like stillness. I drank until the bottle was empty and whatever I thought about wouldn’t matter when I woke up because that hangover required to much of my energy. 

I saw his face in every song. Remembered his laugh after every breath. Felt his touch whenever I closed my eyes. I cursed him. I prayed for him. I hated him. I wanted to love him again. I wished he could love me back. I resented him. I wished him unconditional happiness. I hoped to forget him someday like he never had been born. I mourned and grieved him as if he were actually dead. I desperately wanted to hear him laugh just one more time. I remembered it wasn’t real. None of it. I couldn’t forgot it was all too real. All of it.

I lost myself. I didn’t know who I was. What I enjoyed. I became the shell of someone I didn’t know. I was hallow. There was nothing on the inside. I was drowning and my body was unaware of how to come up for air and it felt like it would be easier to let go. I convinced myself to let go but only to the memories that hurt the most. All of them hurt the most. It was an impossible task. I couldn’t fathom life without him but I knew there would no longer be a version of a life with him anymore. There would be just my version and his. Separate. Somehow it was possible that our past remained connected yet we couldn’t be further apart. 

The accountability was almost as hard as the blame to navigate through. A part of me realized I shared the same role in whatever it was we had. That too was hard to confine to a single word or term. We were indefinable. We weren’t all bad. We weren’t all good. Instances were healthy while others  would forever remain toxic. We weren’t all any particular thing. I think mostly we were comfort and discomfort and while we grew sometimes we sometimes shrunk. We understood one another the same way we knew fate was a real thing, an infinity of possibilities, and we both fought for our version of the best one. Some days I knew he didn’t break me. It was my own delusion of what I wanted us to become. Embarking on a fictional journey that lead no where. No victors. Just a single solider on the battle field. 

Blaming him and being the victim drained the power out of me. Giving up felt better than fighting. I was tired of being at war all of the time. 

Somehow, mainly on a whim, I decided to try and believe that this was the best possible outcome. This was the best version. This was the moment God was giving me because I asked for it so many times. This was it. Whatever lay on the other side of this was life. My life. The best possible outcome. I tried to convince myself that I would see the other side of this. Another side of this was real and attainable and it was all for me. On the other side of this was a version of myself where I smiled. I laughed. I danced. I cried only tears of joy. Love surrounded me and in the choice between silence and living out loud. I chose to scream. I choose to scream as loud as I can and fill my lungs with as much life as they allow. I choose to remind myself that yellow is both a color and a feeling. I chose to define the pain. To name it. To feel it. To let it in but not let it consume me. Live is for the living and I wanted to love the seconds. 

I saw a flicker of light and I swallowed it whole. I decided that whenever I faced the hurt and the pain I had this firefly belly and my light glowed best in the darkness. I scrapped my power up off the ground and forgave myself so that no one else needed to. I created two versions of the story. Both real. Both relevant. Both important to moving forward. In one version I am the villain and in another I am the good guy but in no version am I the victim. I had to learn that no one person broke me. My heart and my mind had to catch up and learn to run at similar paces. Trying to prove who I was only enforced that I wasn’t good enough. Seeking validation from everyone but myself only made me less of who I was. Trying to love someone into loving me wasn’t love. It was a psychological warfare I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. Hope can be your greatest weapon or your greatest tool so I hope for nothing but I work for everything. I used to think I had to live with my past, so bound to me or I would be doomed to relive my mistakes over and over, but living amongst my past only drowned me. 

Everyday I fight to live above it. To be better than it. To never go back to it. Everyday I fight to see each day as a new day instead of a continuation of yesterday. Somedays are harder than others. Some memories still haunt me. Some days I find myself sleeping more than living but most days, I remember that the monsters under my bed aren’t real and if I remember to turn the light on, there is nothing to be afraid of.