new chapter

Now Playing: Third Eye by Florence + the Machine (I am the same, I'm the same, I'm trying to change) 

I guess it's no secret that I have started a new chapter of my life, and I'm doing an exceptionally terrible job at adjusting.

I spent the last twelve hours I ever had with my partner screaming. Quite literally screaming. I went from the girl who took half an hour to get ready to this red faced, ugly crying, bawling mess who screamed for an hour straight, passed out, woke up, and started crying again. To his eternal credit, he didn't also have an enormous breakdown and/or kick me out.

That's the thing - I have a lot of mixed feelings about my partner. When I'm scared it's easy to imagine him as the wonderful person that he was to me, for our time together - but that's so incongruous to the utter mess he's left me in now. And it would be so easy to hate him - I don't think anyone would begrudge me for utterly loathing him - but that's also very incongruous with what I know. I try and do that thing people say to do when a chapter of your life ends, to smile that it happened and not cry that it ended, but the way it ended...I think anyone with any heart would cry at that.

I've also swapped mental illnesses, as it were. When I was a young teen I suffered a lot through depression, but then in my late teens I got okay at managing depression but became very, very anxious. And anxiety was part of my relationship - it was all new, and I'm not great at new things, and anxiety informed a lot of what I did and how I felt. I thought I'd be more anxious, here, living on my own, doing things that used to trigger me, but I didn't expect depression to come back after so many years of just laying dormant. I'd forgotten how truly awful it feels.

My usual way of dealing with my issues is just to be very candid, because through talking and writing and thinking I find ways of understanding and accepting and moving on - I feel like, in the heat of the moment, I can't think straight, I go along with things I shouldn't, I don't say what I'm really thinking, and I don't really mean what I say. It's only in retrospect I can gather myself again; but there's so much I can't say. I have no qualms dragging my abuser through the mud because, quite frankly, there's very little about him that I would say is nice or redeemable, and I don't think he deserves my praises. But this time is different. People contain multitudes, and not all sins are unforgivable. I am hurting, badly, but I don't think I am in a position to just set someone on fire to make myself feel better. It's been difficult to convey how much of a difficult time I'm having without people assuming that my partner is the scum of the earth, because he's not. I refuse to believe he's a bad person, and I don't want to paint him that way when he isn't here to defend himself. But then again, it was his choice to not be here to defend himself, to not give me the answers I so desperately need, to leave me alone to come to my own conclusions, even though they are thin and unflattering.

I think the only thing I can say is to not judge people who are having a bad time. When I was young people couldn't imagine why I was depressed, and constantly tried to guilt me out of it - but depression is not really about what you lack, and definitely isn't about what you have. But I feel like I can't talk so freely about being depressed, here, because I feel like people will judge me - to have it all and still cry seems colossaly ungrateful. I am trying, very hard, to be thankful for what I have, and to learn to accept and enjoy this new life I have found myself in but I just wish people knew that, no matter how wonderful someone's life or career seems, it's never easy: change is never easy, even if it's for the best. And as much as you feel like you know someone, you don't know the whole story; you don't know someone's deepest insecurities, or everything they've sacrificed to get to where they are, or how much they miss things from their old life, even if their old life was thoroughly unextraordinary or ultimately unsustainable.

I'll be okay. You know me. I just keep swimmin'.