Letter to Myself on 08-08-17

Hi.

Just keep breathing. It’s true. It happened. It’s over. 

This day will be the part of your story where you come back to yourself all at once. But he is not done hurting you yet; there is more coming, and it’s going to blow away the ashes of your life with him, the lie that you ever knew who you were married to, the idea that you ever had a family of your own. Some days the very best thing you will be able to do for yourself is get out of bed, and that will be okay. Just keep getting out of bed. 

You’ll dream scenarios where you ask him if he ever loved you. You’re going to tell him in your dreams how cruel it was for him to ask you to believe in happy endings, to take you out of your cozy, safe reading nook into a wedding dress, only to take it all back. You'll tell him in your dreams what it's done to you to love, support, and believe in someone down to their bone marrow, only to have them crush you with stone-cold betrayal. How familiar this kind of pain is. But you won’t get answers. Your dreams will just show you where it hurts the most. Keep writing. 

You won’t have any control over what everyone knows and doesn’t know. He’s going to take that away from you, too: the dignity of privacy, the decency of respect, any honor to what you allegedly ever meant to him. Yes, you meant enough for him to ask you to be his wife, but you'll mean less than nothing to him when he drags you and the people you care about through the mud. It will take months for you to stop letting that thought run in circles in your head. It will be close to a year for you to realize that he did it all for the 'likes.' 

These next months after today will be blurry, you’re going to be in a haze and come up for air at concerts or ordinary moments laughing with friends, but mostly they will be blurry. You’ll fall apart and glue yourself back together a lot. Pride will be the scotch tape that holds you together. 

You’ll force yourself to get drunk alone and listen to your wedding song to get it out of your system. You’ll cry so much that you’ll go thru boxes of Kleenex in one afternoon. You’re going to think you might actually break in two. But you won't. 

Your life, the one you abandoned so you could lose yourself in this one, will rush back to you as well. And not every aspect of it is going to be a happy reunion. Every holiday that is coming your way is going to burn you from the inside out. Because you’re going to be at your family’s holiday dinner table, and no one is going to come out of their own lives at that table and ask you if you’re okay, if you need anything, what happened or what he did to you. It’s going to go back exactly the way it was before. 

It's going to be impossible to explain to people what you're feeling, how deep this wound goes. There won't be enough words to explain how embarrassing it is to be in this situation and the toll it will take on your psyche to hold so many different devastating emotions inside. How you desperately want to be left alone in a dark room for years so people can forget you even exist. The social anxiety will be real, and you'll hide out. You won't be able to explain yourself, but it won't matter. 

Because your tribe will witness your pain, they will hold your hand at weddings and hug you when you cry without asking questions. They'll let you come over for no reason to sit on their couch and do exactly what you would do at home except not alone. Never alone. The laughter of your friends recording in the next room will keep the desperation of your emotions at bay. Your friends will let you scream at the top of your lungs, let you sit quietly at parties, and invite you to create. They will see moments when you are spiraling and go out of their way to make you laugh, to pull you back up above the water. They’re going to respond to every single text you send in a matter of seconds no matter what they’re doing, get mad at you for not letting them come to your court date, remind you every second that you’re not alone, and back it up by never leaving your side. Your tribe will watch over you, protect you, and you will not be alone. Having each and every one of your friends in your corner will be the sun in a very stormy grey season. 

And the tide is going to turn, so just hold on until then. 

In February, you’ll pack your bags, go to Melbourne, FL, and spend a couple of days with complete strangers in a town you’ve never been to. You’re going to wake up and watch the sunrise on the beach. You’re going to write until your fingers and wrists ache. It will be the very first vulnerable thing you do, and it will scare you to your bones, but you’ll do it anyway. Because you're going to remember that the core of you is a writer, a creative, a dreamer, an artist. It will make you feel your blood pump through your veins again. It's going to bring back the color in the world and into your life. Write your way out. 

You'll return to doing whatever your heart wants, and the freedom will make you Shaq-shimmy. You’ll join and quit Tinder and Bumble a few times. You’ll plan your trip to California with your best friends and solo weekend trips to NYC. The night of your 'Friends' themed graduation party (yes, honey), you’re going to take a second when no one realizes what you're doing and take in all the love in the room, and your heart will want to explode with joy. All that love: just. for. you. 

You'll spend some time naked in front of a mirror, look at yourself, and dream about making out with hot men you’ve never met. You’re going to decide that the next time you get naked in front of a guy, you’re going to feel intimidated by how hot the guy is, and that will only make it hotter. And he will be so lucky to have you. Because you’re having a good time, babe. You’ve just forgotten that you are. 

You’re going to feel a lot in the next year. But the one thing you won’t do is miss him. You’ll miss the things that make being in a relationship great, like coming home to someone after a crap day or having a date for a social event, or a proper makeout sesh/roll in the sack. But none of the things you feel will come close to missing him. You’ll laugh for thinking this was love. 

But right now, you need to get up from this cold bathroom floor. This moment right here and now is the end of a chapter of lies and psychological warfare. This was a chapter, not the whole book. So get up from this floor, wash your face, and get dressed. It’s almost a reasonable time to call your best friend and tell her what’s happened. It’s a new day. It’s a beautiful day. Your life is waiting for you, so get up and go get it. 

The pain is going to crush you. 

It’s not going to break you. 

And I’ll be waiting for you a year from now.