warm glows

8/20

I have many thoughts speeding through my mind, one after the other after the other.

This past weekend was my cousin’s wedding. I felt beautiful in a way I rarely do, makeup and hair done with a yellow silk dress. I know some of the guys there were interested in me, but nothing came to fruition. As the weekend was wrapping up and I began my drive home, that familiar sinking feeling started to catch up to me. There’s something wrong with me. There’s something wrong with me. There’s something wrong with me. How could nothing come to fruition once again? You aren’t sexy in the way other bridesmaids are. You don’t know how to flirt. Your breath smelt bad. The drive took me closer to home and a frenetic energy settled in my belly. These opportunities - potential connections - feel so far and few between for me that I put an immense amount of expectation on them. These expectations, wishes, hopes feed a sense of desperation. If a connection doesn’t happen now, it never will. There is a chance you will be alone forever. I have learned enough about my patterns to understand when I am looping versus when I am honestly assessing a situation. This is a loop, no more true than any other compulsive worry. In the days since her wedding, this thought pattern has been strong. The frenetic desperation hasn’t left. I am trying to catch myself before I get so wrapped up that I can no longer see the shoreline. I do not want to be lost at sea anymore. Coming back to my body, I name the sensations I feel. In my ribcage, anxiety and a held breath. In my chest, grief and sadness and loss. In my belly, clenching and desperation. In my brain, the need to fix, to solve and make disappear. These loops are trauma responses, beliefs that if I can find a boyfriend I will have fixed all that’s been done to me. It will no longer matter or hold weight. I will be like everyone else. Finally, I will be able to prove nothing is wrong with me.

My cousin’s father-in-law passed about a month before the wedding. My stepdad’s dad passed away this spring as well. Juxtaposing their ability to grieve publicly with mine, I feel a sense of anger - both at myself and at those around me. My father was a confusing figure, shameful, abusive and loving. Verbalizing my grief to my family feels like confessing a sin.

I took two days of work off after the wedding, and now I know for certain I need to quit. I have known that for some time, but I have not felt it in my exhales just yet. Giving myself this distance, six full nights of rest without waking before a workday, I know my body and brain and nervous system can no longer tolerate a workplace inundated with tragedy and dysfunction.

9/1

My intention for my twenty-sixth year is to be kinder to myself. It is simple, but it is not easy.

I often (meaning nearly always) assess all my experiences through the lens of: did I make process towards my goals. My goals being did I prove I am becoming more comfortable around men? Did I prove that I am like other women my age, that I am cool and fun and carefree and sexy? Did I express myself with truth and eloquence? Did I stop resisting the flow of life so adamantly? I am viewing my experiences like they are to be graded, and I do not often give myself a passing score.

I am working on reminding myself that I am ok just as I am. If I were to stay who I am - single, independent, introverted - for the rest of my days, I would still be just as worthy of all the world has to offer as anyone else.

These goals have been my north star for as long as I can remember because I have believed there is something wrong with me for as long as I can remember. Accomplishing them would be a tangible badge I could where to say to all of those around me hey, I am just like you. I am not deficit and weird and traumatized. In fact, I am normal and healed.

I have lived most of my life with my actions being pleas for acceptance amongst my parents, my best friends. I mold myself into who I believe they deem most worthy or I mold myself into invisibility. Accept me or do not look at me, but please please please do not push me away like the pariah I fear I am.

For the next three hundred or so days, my intention is to come home to myself more deeply than I have before. To remind myself over and over and over that I am a solid, embodied woman just as I am. There is nothing that needs to change or evolve or heal in order to be able to fit in with my girlfriends at the next dinner party. I am different than them and they are different than me, but we will all still share the next plate of calamari amongst the warm glow of happy hour candlelight.