When I was little, my parents had us do all kinds of chores, both indoor and outdoor. I didn’t mind chores, but washing dishes was so anxiety inducing because I was always afraid to break anything. My mom had this rule. If you broke a dish, you had to replace it, but not just the dish, the entire set. No one sold dishes individually that I knew of, so she made it clear that, if you break something, you had to replace the whole set. To this day, I cringe when I hear a waiter drop glasses in restaurants, or when I drop things in my own home because I know that they’ll just throw it away when it’s broken. To be clear, I don’t try to put things back together once they’re broken, unless it something that’s super important that can’t be easily replaced. It takes a long time to figure out where the pieces go and make sure the things fit right. It’s super time consuming, and once it’s broken it’ll never work like it did before unless you take it to a repair expert, but who has time for that?

April has seen a spike in creativity for me, inspired by people and things around me, but it’s had the opposite effect on my emotions. This past couple of weeks, I’ve been re-breaking my heart, and laying all the pieces out to see what did and didn’t heal properly. There were paths of repeated decisions I made deliberately, that I had to relive in conjunction with some external work factors, and Friday was a build up to an unexpected release of  emotion. I’ve done some stupid shit. Like some really stupid shit, and I’m going to be really transparent about it because I need to be. There are things on my credit currently that I financed for people I’ve dated that never paid me back. Cell phones, a computer, all types of wild shit that I was left to foot the bill for, ultimately leaving me to suffer financially for years after the fact. There were so broken promises built up to years of distrust, and all I did was give people blank slates who didn’t deserve them and completely dismiss people who only wanted to do right by me. I’ve  overlooked people with genuine hearts because I didn’t want to believe anyone was good or would actually follow through with things they said they would. I’m not sure when I became so cynical, but it has become super hard to trust the intentions of new faces, and that’s never been me. I let years of disappointment tear away at the very person I am. I’ve always trusted people, until they’ve given me a reason not to. I invested in people who I know didn’t have my best interest at heart, but it didn’t keep me from investing. It didn’t keep me from loving hard and deep, and risk everything to prove that I was worthy of the same love in return, by going all out. I’ve been made to feel crazy for asking for things I deserve and been manipulated into staying in places that I knew I should have left eons ago, but didn’t because I convinced myself that it would get better; that it would be worth it. I put the broken pieces of my heart in the hands of people who broken them, and had no clue how to fix it, but weren’t willing to invest in the time it took to figure it out. If I wouldn’t trust valuable material things to someone with no repair experience, why do I keep doing that shit with my heart?

I’ve spent the better part of 10 years in spaces where I gave all of myself to people, and left the spaces because I couldn’t bear to spend anymore time there. I either became physically sick or suffered emotional and psychological damage The investment in me didn’t come from outside sources. People will tell you all the things they are willing to do to keep your around or show you they care, but as soon as you give them an opportunity to put their money where their mouth is and follow through, they somehow acquire selective amnesia. In turn, I kept giving people multiples to opportunities prove to me that they actually never had my best interest at heart, and ended up more and more hurt because I had spent too much time in that space to walk away. This type of skewed thinking caused me to turn away from so many wonderful people who actually cared for me. I’ve lost out on friendships, jobs, potential relationships, and experiences.

I’m a jokester who has always been the strong friend because it’s important to me that everyone else smiles, but this is the part of the journey that makes it difficult. It’s been hard to find my smile, with the exception of a few particular bright spots. This is the hard shit I talked about last week. I have to confront all of the decisions I’ve made that placed me so far from reaching the goals I set for myself because I was too busy placing energy in people and things that weren’t good for me. Reconciling all of this has been a real struggle and I’m really trying to find my footing. There are days I feel lost. There are days I feel fine. There are days I have no clue whatsoever. I just know I can’t give up on the journey or the process. It’ll all be worth it. So, in the meantime, I’ll experience all the emotions, learn the lessons and see where the journey takes me. from here.

Don’t stop healing bitch. Keep healing. All 2019.