A sentiment that is typically said by a loving mother who walks her toddler into the first day of pre-school or waves goodbye as her teenager leaves the house in a glittery prom dress.
But how unfortunate it is for the girls who truly did grow up too fast.
The girl whose doe eyes flinch when someone else snatches their rose colored glasses.
the pre-mature bloomers.
Nothing is quite as tragic as a child who is forced to bear adult problems.
I often grieve for my childhood self.
I ache for the girl who was told in her first year of public school that she was “ugly” and deprived of any connections in those gloriously awkward years.
I ache for the girl who went on her first date at 15 and the older boy put his hands places she’s never been touched before.
She froze under his gaze but the lasting thought was,
I’m uncomfortable, but he must really like me?
But ultimately, she learned a very terrible lesson that day.
No does not mean no, really.
And it took many, many years for her to unlearn it.
I ache for the girl who was so desperate to receive love, that she gave it away freely to the worst people.
I ache for the girl who didn’t know any better.
She had no reason to distrust anyone,
no reason to lock her window at night.
Oh how terribly wrong she was.
Reader, I want you to try something with me really quick.
I want you to take 30 seconds and imagine a world where there is no danger, no person who would ever harm you, adults have all the answers, and there’s no need to even ponder “trust” because you would never have a chance to lose it. Everyone has the best intentions. Everyone loves each other. No life is above another.
This was our reality at some point. I will say, maybe not everybody.
But we’re not born with distrust in our hearts.
There was a point in time when we had faith in those older than us.
Faith that no harm would come to us intentionally
But I believe many of us can pinpoint when that belief switched on a dime.
Maybe this person does not have my best intentions at heart.
Maybe this person wants to harm me.
No matter how much our parents can prepare us for this terrible moment,
I don’t know if it’s every easily handled by the child.
I know for a fact that I did not handle it with ease.
And now I lie awake at night, petrified for any future children I may have.
How am I supposed to protect them?
How do I shield them for the ugliness of this world?
I guess you can’t.
What a terrifying thought.
This is why people over-shelter their kids, I think.
I grew up on a Utah mountain (in a cave essentially… A very nice cave, though)
And I was surrounded by very sheltered kids in high school.
We were no better off than the under sheltered kids, I believe.
My rose-colored glasses still shattered
Just the same as any other girl’s.
My story is not unique.
I used to think it was.
I used to think that I was one of the very few who had been terminally scarred at a young age.
No one could ever understand my issues or what I’ve been through.
I genuinely believed that tale,
Until I told someone my story.
“That happened to me, too last year.”
And I told more people.
“I was a little kid when it happened to me.”
“My parents didn’t believe me.”
“My church blamed me.”
and more people.
“All of my friends took his side after it happened.”
“I was told never to tell anyone.”
And I slowly collected these horrible stories, all told by people I loved very deeply.
It was shocking to me how many people have experienced an unwilling pre-mature loss of innocence.
I thought my case was “special” (a terrible kind of special, obviously)
But I was horrified when it was just another sad story from another scarred kid
I hate how much this happens.
I grieve for all of us kids who didn’t get to spend another day running through the woods,
battling magical beings with wooden swords
and playing house or capture the flag with all the neighbor kids.
I despise the resilience we all had to build up over time,
I’m thankful we have it
But I despise its origin.
I wrote this song as an ode to the part of me that I had to lay to rest way too early.
She was covered by a landslide that flattened a mountain.
She had absolutely no chance.
But now she’s “one with the earth.”
And that’s probably the best place for her to rest.
We’re all just trying to grow, creating cracks in pavement
I’m desperate to find colors that I haven’t seen since I was a homeschooled, wide-eyed kid.
well goddamn it has been a minute since I’ve typed out a blog.
I mean truly, what year is it?
Remember when I used to blog all of the time??
It used to be the absolute best way for me to cope and process all of the swirling chaos that was my life for so long.
But then blogging became *lame* and people started filming videos for the clock app instead.
No one really wants to read a blog anymore, right?
No one has any remnants of an attention span anymore… right???
No one cares about the torment that is my past love life anymore….. right!???!!?
I’m really hoping that you’ll prove me wrong.
Even though I just spent approximately 2.5 hours scrolling through the clock app.
No one is perfect OKAY.
Anyways,
On Friday, 7.29.22 I released a single called “Relapse.”
If you haven’t listened to it yet,
are we even friends?
it’s definitely got swirling chaos energy so
if you ever enjoyed any of the blogs I wrote, you may potentially enjoy that song maybe
I wanted to write just a little something about the inspiration behind the song and all of the processing that continues to occur years after it was written,
in a swirling chaos kind of way.
I was in an on and off “relationship” for about 7 years.
That’s right, 7.
That’s right, “relationship”
It was more of a best friendship turned trauma bond,
a let’s-hang-out-for-15 hours-and-cancel-every-other-plan-we-had-for-the-week, type deal,
a life lesson disguised as a twin flame imprint, if you will.
(I’m assuming if you’ve read my blog then you’ve read twilight. the research is there I just haven’t gathered it)
I don’t think I could put it more plainly than that.
Over the course of those 7 years, I wrote songs.
Dozens of songs.
Hundreds of poems.
Thousands of drunken rants in my notes app.
I was a woman possessed.
And through all of those scraps of sentences and metaphors and letters to myself that began with the phrase, “BECCA, CALM THE HELL DOWN.”
(I’m not even joking)
I began to process bits and pieces of the swirling chaos that was this “situationship.”
I decided to downgrade it.
It was a very large pill to swallow once I realized I had dedicated some of the most enthusiastic, romantic, and optimistic years of my life to someone who didn’t care if I got hit by a bus.
Unless he could profit off of the pity somehow.
I gave this man my youth.
I know I’m still hot and young but damn.
My most well-crafted lyrics were dedicated to someone who once referred to me as a “quick fix” in his own writings.
So why was I so hellbent on the idea of us being together and fulfilling the prophecy of us being Johnny and June reincarnated?
I may have lost my marbles…slightly.
So how did I go from being hopelessly dedicated to a human potato,
to an independent lady who is finally capable of having a healthy, wonderful relationship?
I will share all of my secrets.
I made a quick little timeline of my life, emphasizing the years that I became pathetic
I wrote down all of the times this man had upset me. Or really any time anybody had upset me in the past 7 years. I made notes about when we came back together, when forgiveness was gifted and boundaries immediately blurred. I pieced it all together until I had a general timeline of my life.
Then I saw an immediate cycle. It had always been there and I had always known we were in a rut, but actually seeing the cycle of how we’d be buds and then spending every second together and then he’d do something so incredibly horrible that I cut him out immediately and then months or weeks of space and writing, and then BAM I miss him. One of us reaches out and back down the rabbit hole we go.
I was doing the SAME thing over and over and over again. Hundreds of times from what I gathered, and not only with him. I had been living in this cycle with multiple people for YEARS. He was just the prominent one that uncovered the rest of my insanity. I immediately thought “I’ve been having the same conflict with the same characters over and over again for almost a decade.”
It’s almost like when you watch a comfort show or movie over and over again because you know exactly what’s going to happen and who’s going to betray who and how the ending always is. I had made these relationships my comfort show. I knew exactly what they would do to me each time we tried again, yet I allowed it because I felt comfortable in the outcome. I knew it wouldn’t kill me and I knew I’d forgive them again anyways. Why was I doing this? So my working theory is I had a massive fear of commitment and allowing myself to be loved the way I was truly worthy of it because of lack of self esteem or some shit like that? Idk I’m still in therapy.
2. When the moment came, I made a different choice.
So what happens in a cycle? The same shit over and over again. Exactly right. So how do you break out of something like that? One of you needs to make a different choice. So when you haven’t been speaking for three months and you REALLy miss them and you just watched a REALLY sad movie about lost lovers who were supposed to end up together but didn’t and you REALLY hate yourself because you’re stalking their instagram and who liked their recent post and so you send a quick text or like one of their photos to be coy, just don’t. I know that sounds impossible, but hear me out.
Love addiction is incredibly difficult, but also kind of predictable. I know that I won’t miss them forever. I know that withdrawals only last so long and then I’m on the up and up again. I know that as soon as I give in to a relapse (hehe) I will hate myself and it honestly doesn’t feel as good or satisfy my heart like I thought it would. Going back to the wrong person over and over again is disappointing. You’ve spent days, weeks, or months romanticizing their greatest hits. It’s almost as if anger and betrayal and broken hearts fade but love doesn’t. The good things don’t fade like the bad things do. So when you miss them and look back on this “shituationship” (I downgraded again) all you feel are warm, fuzzy and passionate feelings. All of that icky stuff has faded or simmered down. It only bubbles back up when you’re with them and it STILL sucks. It never feels quite as good as you think it’s going to when you’re back with them.
I still remember the moment that I made a different choice. I was home in bed. I hadn’t seen him in 6 months and I was in a different relationship. I missed being friends with him but I knew it would be impossible. The withdrawals started, but I didn’t give in. I held strong.
But then one night at 11pm.
BAM.
He calls me.
I stared at my phone as it just buzzed in my hand.
I started thinking “Oh god he’s drunk in a ditch somewhere. He needs me. If I don’t go then he’ll die. He’s in a depressive state. If something bad happens then that’s on me. I should answer. I have to answer.”
But I continued to just stare at my phone.
And then,
silence.
I didn’t answer.
I didn’t text him the next day.
I just went on like nothing ever happened.
He later told me when we ran into each other that he basically WAS drunk in a ditch somewhere and needed me but I didn’t answer.
Did I almost throw up?
Absolutely.
Was he my responsibility?
Absolutely not.
It is 100% possible to make a different choice when the cycle starts to pull you back in. It’s uncomfortable. It goes against every screaming fiber in your body, but that’s addiction baby. You have to re-wire your brain by breaking out of that cycle.
3. Love yourself just as you loved them
I wasn’t the biggest fan of myself for a long time. I didn’t care about what I put on my body or what I ate or my living space or how I spent my time. My entire existence was to please another person. Not cute !!!
After I broke the cycle, he came back up one or two more times. I will say, the cycle damn near pulled me in again but I stayed strong. Now it’s just second nature.
I spent a year and a half by myself. No dating, really.
I moved into a place by myself and furnished it with things that make me so happy.
I went for walks in my new neighborhood that happens to be my favorite part of town.
I started buying myself flowers for my dining room table
I took pottery classes and poetry classes and acting classes
I fell in love with painting
I worked on my music like a crazy person
My creative energy exploded into like 8 different channels
I made new friends
I went out by myself didn’t want to hide in a corner due to lack of self esteem.
I developed a skincare routine !!
I read the entire bible
I learned how to cook and bake
I learned how to take care of curly hair
I continued to write songs and poems and drunken notes in my phone to further process what had happened
I started releasing art inspired by him.
I started inspiring myself.
I figured out all the things that made me happy and all of the people who don’t deplete me of energy and love and I held onto them
The rest were given boundaries or nothing at all.
When you’re forced to spend time alone, you really figure out who you are.
It’s been a total game changer for me.
I know that those 7 years were not a waste of time, ultimately.
Do I wish I had made different decisions?
Absolutely.
But I learned so much about myself and about love and it led me to where I am now,
A somewhat stable bitch with a terrifying work ethic and all the love I could possibly ask for.
Every person I’ve spoken to about this situation always responds with something like,
“Oh yeah I have one of those, an on off again will they won’t they from hell.”
So I thought I’d compile some of those tips that helped me (even though I have truly no idea what I’m talking about, I just have vast experience in this department) and also maybe promote my song and also write a blog because I miss it.
Thanks for reading this far and for listening to the song! Here it is,
I’ve always felt so strange staring out the window of a plane.
It almost seems… fake?
Like there’s no way I’m floating thousands of feet above the earth right now.
There’s no way that those itty bitty little toy cars on those plastic streets could be driving around Nashville or Dallas or Salt Lake below me.
I guess if you really think about it, it seems a bit alarming.
The other thing is I’m always shocked at how neat the land and the buildings and the farms and the cities look from up above.
When you’re walking along city streets or driving on winding back roads,
The layout doesn’t make much sense does it?
But when you’re above the clouds staring at our earth like a museum goer stares at a magnificent painting, it all seems to make sense.
There are shapes that are impossibly symmetrical. Roads that move effortlessly with rivers and lakes. Suburbs that look so meticulously planned out that it baffles me.
You wouldn’t even know how planned and intentional it all is unless you take the time to look at the entire picture.
Sometimes miles above and away from the picture itself.
I’ve always thought that that must be how God works sometimes.
The big life plan He has for us.
When I’m sitting in the trenches, it’s hard to imagine it being an entire predetermined labyrinth surrounding me.
This past year has felt like I’m right down in it.
Self sabotaging.
Healing myself and yet not treating my body so kindly at the same time.
It’s been a year of learning, heart break, confusion, pessimism, opportunity, drinking, loss of faith, loss of confidence, loss of will and yet there were some absolutely stunning moments wrapped up in there as well.
This past week, I moved into a new apartment.
I’ll be living all by myself for the first time in my entire life.
I’m not even sure I like myself all that much.
How am I supposed to hang out with my self all the time?
My soul sister is moving away after two years of spending every minute with each other. We were roommates, bandmates, best friends, cat co-parents, platonic life partners, etc.
And I really don’t think any of that will change,
But won’t it?
After having someone there all the time to sit with me on the front porch while I cried my eyes out over some idiot to sitting on a stairwell in my apartment complex by myself is not the smoothest transition.
Looking back over the past two years with my best friend, we were truly given to each other as a extremely generous gift from God, I think. He knew what bull shit was coming up in our lives and He really did us a solid but sewing us together for so long uninterrupted. Also the fact that we spent 5 months in a tiny cruise ship cabin and never wanted to murder each other ??? and then still wanted to live together in a tiny house immediately afterwards ???? absolutely unheard of and it’s a God thing don’t @ me on this.
As the earth shifts into a post-pandemic world (God willing) I expect a lot of change for everybody really.
This week just feels like the end of an era for me personally.
I’m getting old.
And not very gracefully might I add.
I don’t move through change well.
I actually avoid it for as long as I possibly can.
I’m practically tossed off the cliff of change.
I’m always the last to board the plane.
I’m always the girl who cries when the party’s over.
This innate sense of knowing when the end is has always been inside me.
Have you ever hugged someone or seen something extraordinary or heard something that almost gave you a feeling of nostalgia even if you hear it all the time?
Then you might have this sense too.
I know when I’ll never see someone again
Or re-live an old routine
Or walk down familiar halls for the last time.
And I grieve it in the moment instead of fully appreciating it.
Because of this bitter-sweet sense of mine, I grieve while I’m still living it.
When I had a goodbye party a few days before I left for the cruise ship a couple years ago,
I just sobbed for 6 hours during my party.
I was a complete mess.
Everybody thought it was because I was leaving and I was going to miss my friends, which was true,
But I was truly grieving the end of that era.
I knew I was going to lose some of those people by the time I came back.
I knew I was never going to step foot in that old house of mine again.
I knew it was the end of that chapter.
I didn’t know why or how it would all happen
But I just knew.
And then when I was one the cruise ship, the crew members used to refer to me as “the crying girl” because I was crying in crew bar ALL the time.
Whenever one of my friend’s cruise contract ended and they were about to head back home, I’d cry my eyes out the night before.
Because I knew I’d never see them like that ever again.
In the same space living day to day, side by side with me and our clan.
Some of them I probably won’t ever see again in this life time.
And it’s devastating.
I’m not sure how to embrace change.
How to calm down this cruel sixth sense of mine.
Learn to enjoy the moments as they’re passing rather than grieve them before they’ve even left me.
I suppose all it truly takes is time and distance to see why everything happens the way it does.
The Artist’s choices are always intentional with every stroke of the brush,
sometimes it looks like a mistake or a random assortment of colors and shapes
but all you have to do is take a few steps back
or look down at the earth from a few thousand miles up in the clouds
I’ve spent the better part of my life pulling people into my circle.
Because once I’ve decided that I love you and I need you to keep breathing, that’s truly it for me.
I have to do everything in my power to keep them from walking away from me or our friendship or our relationship.
I’ve always heard that it’s natural for friendships to wilt away and for people to keep moving down their own paths without eachother.
“Some people aretherefor a reason, some people are there for a season.”
It’s that old cliché, right?
Wrong.
At least, that’s what I always thought.
It’s not hard to keep up with a friendship, right?
I spend the extra hours of my days calling, texting, writing and thinking about the people I love.
If I haven’t talked to a childhood friend for a few months, I’ll always call them out of the blue and ask how life is going.
One of my childhood friends told me once, “Bec, we were so close when we were young but as we grew older I was fully prepared for that friendship to wilt away but you… you just wouldn’t let it.”
No, I never let friendships “fade” for no reason whatsoever.
It always baffled me when people justsay“I don’t know… we just don’t talk anymore.”
Why?
Why would you let that person you loved so much at one point just fade out of your life?
It was an insanely foreign concept to me up until this past year.
For me, there always has to be meaning in everything.
I spend years trying to find lessons in the trauma and experiences I’ve endured because if I don’t find the meaning or the “lesson,” how am I supposed to move on?
Was I just not good enough?
Did I not call them enough?
Was I not there when they needed me?
I ache over the absence of someone for years.
Until it finally clicks in my mind
“Oh… that’s why that happened.”
But it gets exhausting, you know?
Constantly throwing myselfat people just desperate to keep them around.
If I never called them again, would they call me?
If I stopped sending them random memes one day, would they notice?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
I never wanted to find out.
SoI call.
I text.
I send gifts.
If there was a fight, I always apologize first.
Even if I wasn’t the one in the wrong.
But over the past year, I’ve learned a very important and brutal lesson,
I can’t make someone love me.
I can’t force someone to be my friend.
I can’t insert meaning into a situation when maybe, there’s no rhyme or reason.
If something’s not meant to be, then I can’t change that.
No matter how many times I call,
No matter how many times I pour my heart out in a letter,
No matter how many lessons I feel I missed out on.
I can’t make someone feel what they don’t.
It’s been a lonely season in life for me.
Because I’ve lost quite a few people over the last year.
And I’ve been attempting to force puzzle pieces together that just clearly don’t fit.
But through it all, I have learned a few things (still searching for lessons),
There are people out there who do truly love me just as much as I love them.
And people who do choose to be in my life just as much as I choose to be in theirs.
But the only person I need validation from is myself.
The onlyperson who can fulfill all my needs and dim down my insecurities is myself.
People come and go.
Friendships end.
Love fades when it’s not meant to be.
But that doesn’t mean that I’munloveable.
That doesn’t mean there’s something fundamentally wrong with me.
It’s just the way the world seems to work.
I’ll continue pouring my heart out sure,
And reaching out to everyone I love and have loved,
And I’ll even continue rebuilding my half of any burned bridge,
But I’ll do it while being kind to myself.
I’ve been giving every ounce of my unconditional love to everyone I possibly can,
And I’ll continue to do so.
But now I’ll save just a little for myself as well.
It might have sparked from the belief that I am innately different.
Emotions overcome me and I feel as though I’m drowning in whatever feeling I happen to be immersed in that day.
People have often told me that we can “control” our emotions and how we react to certain situations, but I have never found that to be true.
For example,
I was once in a relationship and the person cheated on me.
The second I found out, my heart became an anchor that dropped through the floor.
My mind raced with anxious and terrible reasoning as to why this was happening to me.
My limbs became so heavy that I couldn’t move and began shaking.
I was drowning in sadness.
It consumes me entirely when it washes over my life.
There’s very little time to process during the crashing waves of sadness, but when the ocean stills itself and I’m floating there, broken but alive, I begin to process the storm that just happened.
And all that to say,
I kind of enjoy being sad.
I know that’s kind of messed up, but it’s true.
That’s where I feel most misunderstood.
I think sadness and suffering is truly beautiful.
It makes me a human being.
And it shows me just how durable my body is when it comes to feeling sad.
Or anything really.
Emotions completely fascinates me.
And I’ve always felt that I feel a bit more than others do.
My heart sinks a little bit lower than most.
My emotions pull me a bit farther into the dark trench in that ocean of sadness.
A lot farther than most dare to go.
But I always swim back up to the surface with new findings to write about and describe.
It also makes me capable of understanding other people because,
hey, I’ve been there.
I’ve bought property and lived comfortably there.
I like to understand other people and empathize with someone when they’re in pieces.
Because sometimes you just need someone to be in pieces with you.
I gladly volunteer to be that person.
I’m not sure if that makes disturbed or just compassionate.
I guess I’d be fine with either.
At the end of the day, I think sadness is beautiful.
When I’d enter new relationships, my worst fear was never having a broken heart ever again.
What if I never feel that deeply again?
I didn’t think I’d ever find someone who’d help me let go of that fear.
But I did,
And it’s magic.
I’ve felt a fair share of sadness for this life, and I’m sure I’ll feel a lot more before my time is up.
But now I don’t try to break myself and self sabotage relationships just to feel something.
I’m steady and put together.
I no longer enjoy being “broken.”
p.s. check out my band’s new song “Broken” which inspired this blog and my whole life tbh
I really enjoy having a stable living situation, romantic interest, and somewhat steady job.
Don’t get me wrong, spontaneity is my middle name
However I enjoy having the same friends I’ve had for 6+ years.
I love being in a long term relationship.
I love knowing Nashville like the back of my hand because I’ve been here for a minute.
But then all of a sudden, usually out of nowhere
boom
Change.
And when it enters into my dramatic, soap opera of a life,
It’s usually a boat load of change.
All at once.
Every season of depression that’s moved over me like a fog, has bloomed out of big changes happening in my life.
But this year has really sent me into a spiral of change.
It all started with a change in my job.
It needed to happen, honestly.
Have you ever worked somewhere that sucked every positive fiber out of your body like a soul sucking vampire?
Well, I was working that job for the past year.
It dug me into a very dark place for a few months.
I hadn’t felt such hopelessness since sophomore year of college when i was committed to a psychiatric hospital.
I started becoming a very pessimistic and honestly, bitchy person.
Which is very much not my nature.
This job turned me into someone completely unrecognizable.
I hated the person I saw in the mirror every morning.
So changing to a new job was just necessary.
And then of course came the breakup.
Dating someone long term
Seeing them almost everyday
Being in love
And having someone who supported me constantly, loved me perfectly, and was my absolute best friend was a dream.
But then I woke up.
And it was over.
That change hit me like a ton of bricks.
And last but not least here I am,
Leaving Nashville.
Yep, you heard me.
I’m leaving Nashville.
…
…Temporarily.
Almost got ya there, huh?
Basically, I’m heading out to sea to sing on a boat for four months.
I’ve never even been on a big boat.
But here I am, making moves and packing up my whole life to leave the city I spent so long planting my roots in.
It’s terrifying.
Because all of a sudden,
I’m single and basically a pirate.
This is not how I pictured I’d start my 25th year in life.
But a few weeks ago, I went cliff jumping with my best friend.
Something I’ve never tried before.
I’m not one to just throw myself off of cliffs.
But I thought,
what the hell? I don’t even know who I am anymore. Maybe I do jump off cliffs.
And I jumped off the smaller cliffs, no problem.
But there was one huge cliff.
Like over 40 feet tall cliff.
And I decided I was going to jump off.
Old Becca would’ve thought,
Um, no. You have to be at work tomorrow and what if you break your leg? Or if you die? Who’s gonna take care of your cat?
But new change-embracing Becca thought,
F*ck it.
I’ve spent so many years avoiding change.
Avoiding decisions.
Avoiding confrontation.
Avoiding life.
Because I’ve always tripped and fell into seasons of change completely unprepared.
And it always sends me into a complete tailspin.
But this time is different.
I am not afraid.
I can go on a boat.
I can be single.
I can leave Nashville.
I can leave all the people I love and they won’t forget about me.
I can do this and I won’t avoid it anymore.
So I prayed before leaping off that cliff.
I thought about making my decisions based of faith instead of crippling fear.
I thought about the customers who have screamed at me for giving them a hot latte instead of an iced one.
I thought about saying goodbye to a wonderful relationship that had to be put to rest.
I thought about my therapist in the hospital years ago who told me it had to get better and I was going to live a long happy life.
I thought about my family moving out of state to get on with their lives after moving here just to make sure I’d remain on this earth for as long as possible.
I thought about my cat and how sad he’s going to be because he won’t understand why I leave one day and don’t come back for him because I’ll be on a boat.
I thought about the love of my life, and how excited I am to meet him.
And I had this overwhelming feeling surging through my veins.
Everything is going to be okay.
I can leap off this cliff and live.
I can leap into change and live.
I can make decisions and live.
I will not melt into a depressed puddle of a person.
The biggest turn off in the whole world is when someone talks poorly about their ex or, worse, multiple exes.
There’s NO way that one person can date like 5 certifiably “crazy” people.
You know it’s a red flag when someone’s like “Oh I’ve only dated crazy people.”
K,
But who’s the common denominator in all five of those relationships?
Hm.
So before you go off calling your ex “crazy,” here are 31 questions you should ask yourself beforehand,
1. Did you re-download tinder before the breakup talk even happened?
2. Did you breakup with her out of the blue?
3. Did you use any of the following reasons: “I don’t deserve you“, “I love you too much to be with you right now“, “I need a few months to work on myself“,”The timing is just off“, etc.
4. Did you ask our her roommate?
5. Her neighbor?
6. Her best friend?
7. Her mom?
8. Did you ever call her “clingy” for just trying to get in touch with you?
9. Do you still call her?
10. Do you still call her to talk about your relationship?
11. Do you still call her to talk about your relationship and about getting back together?
12. Do all of these conversations happen after 1am when you’ve just left another girl’s house?
13. Did you ever cheat on her?
14. Did you ever cheat on her and then write a blog about how she was de-humanizing you but failed to mention that you cheated on her?
15. Have you ever considered the fact that maybe, possibly, in a strange twist of events, you might just be a d-bag?
16. Do you ignore her existence when you see her just to make her feel like she means nothing to you?
17. Do you spread rumors about her being crazy and that she probably shouldn’t date anyone ever?
18. Do you look over her social media profiles with your friends and make fun of the way she looks, dresses, and portrays herself?
19. Did you post a bunch of pictures of you with other girls .5 seconds after breaking up with her?
20. Did she actually end the relationship and your pride is just bruised so you claim she’s crazy?
21. Whenever you were around her family/friends, did you spend the whole time on your phone?
22. Did you ever steal her phone and look through her texts?
23. Did you ever insult her religion because you don’t necessarily share similar beliefs?
24. Did you ever make her feel bad for not wanting to have sex?
25. Do you see her at parties and claim that she’s stalking you instead of considering the fact that you share the same friend group?
26. When she asks if you can talk, do you claim she’s obsessive when actually she might just need closure or give your crap back?
27. When she writes a blog about how she’s moved on and in a better place, do you claim she’s still hung up on you and just trying to air out dirty laundry on the internet?
28. Do you have shirtless pics on tinder? (Not about your relationship, but let’s me know if you’re a tool or not)
29. Is she an actual diagnosed sociopath?
30. Is she REALLy crazy?
31. Or are you just a dipwad?
If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, I don’t assume your ex is “crazy” but that you’re just a dipwad.
We have to stop talking poorly about our past loves.
We have to stop daydreaming of ways to make our exes jealous and cause them pain.
Everyone does it post-breakup.
I’ve done it, and I’m sure my exes would agree. (*cough*)
It’s not healthy.
Unless they actually ruined your life that like crazy new Netflix show. (It’s basically Gossip Girl to the nth power)
So cut it out. Just be civil.
You invested time and love into this person and now you’re going to drag their name through the mud for what?
Prove your innocence?
That you never made any mistakes in the relationship?
A breakup takes two people.
At least most of the time.
So no, she’s not crazy.
You’re just being a dickwad. (ooo she actually said it !!!)
I’ve heard that toxic relationships are pretty easy to spot.
I’ve even spent time attempting to pull others out of toxic relationships before.
I considered myself somewhat of an ~expert~
Because I’ve had my fair share of gorgeous flowers tempting me, only to reveal themselves as dandelions later on.
I swore that I would never let it happen to me ever again.
But you strolled into my life with confidence and humor.
You changed everything.
I’ve fallen in love before, sure.
But it’s never cut me so deeply and fooled me so brilliantly that it left me feeling like an object.
Like I was nothing except a loser at the end of long, exhausting, impossible game.
I still remember when I realized that we were soulmates.
We spent that summer completely enamored with each other.
Sneaking into private pools.
Exploring every part of this earth we could just for the danger and the stories we’d have by the end of the expedition.
I watched you, wide eyed.
Still holding on to some sort of innocence.
I’m not sure I can even remember what innocence feels like anymore.
My obsession bloomed that summer, years ago.
And you recognized that you had me.
All of me.
As long as I loved you more than I loved myself,
You owned me.
I spent the next few years becoming gradually, painfully numb while you flitted around from one girl to the next, back to the first girl, on to another, etc.
And I sat in your room.
Watched you fall apart repeatedly while hating every inch of your life.
And I gave you pieces of happiness.
My happiness.
Every single day, I gave you another piece of my optimism,
My innocence
My love
My life.
I couldn’t bear to watch you deteriorate because others had drained you of all those things.
I gave you every good piece of me I had.
Until I looked at myself in the mirror one day
And I didn’t recognize myself.
There was nothing good left about me.
Just a shell of a human being who became drained and manipulative.
I saw you.
I began to distance myself from this overwhelming love that I had developed for you.
I attempted to fall in love a time or two.
And even succeeded once.
But as soon as you saw me rebuilding my life,
You came crashing in like a wild animal.
Burning down all the progress I had made.
And no one was willing to stay with someone whose heart was already spoken for.
I get it.
But even then, I couldn’t stay away from you.
My limit had not yet been reached.
Everyone sat me down.
Friends,
Family,
Even strangers.
And begged me to let go and to just finally move on.
I refused.
Because what kind of person would give up on love?
I am not someone who just walks away from a relationship because of some particularly heavy baggage.
You were not a lost cause.
I told myself that repeatedly until one day when it all finally clicked.
Love does not mean that you are that person’s savior.
It doesn’t mean that you need to be that person’s only reason to live.
That kind of pressure is unfathomable.
And it ends of destroying both people.
I realized that this love that I had developed and nurtured was not going to just fade over time.
It was a dangerous, terrifying love that needed to be buried alive.
So that’s exactly what I did.
I left.
Refused to look back.
Refused to give in to every impulse I had to protect you.
I see it all so much clearer now that I’ve walked farther and farther out of the smoke.
You can’t save someone else; they can only save themselves.
They can’t change for you.
It may be romantic and cinematic, but life just doesn’t work like that.
People can only change if they want to.
And you just have to keep moving forward.
Keep walking until you see clearer skies and recognize yourself in the mirror again.
I may have loved you,
But now I have to love myself just a little bit more.