Trauma? Love? Life?

So you’re at the finish line. You’ve overcome every single fucked up obstacle that life threw at you.

The ones that made you feel like you weren’t enough because you weren’t perfect in the way people expected you to be. But also the ones that made you water yourself down and suppress your personality. Because you’d been told that sometimes you were too much.

Which made you feel like the real you wasn’t loveable.

So you forced yourself to be the made-up version of you that people created in their heads. And that hurt you. But you never told anyone.

Because you wanted to be loved more than you wanted to be happy.

The ones that made you swear you’d never let anyone get this close to you again, because you realized that you never wanted to give anyone the power to hurt you again. The ones that forced your heart that used to be so warm and so full of life to turn so. fucking. cold.

The ones that stole your childhood from you. But you didn’t realize it until college when you were 20. Because when it happened, you were 13. And everyone told you it was your fault. “Well what were you wearing?” A t-shirt and shorts. Because it was 90 degrees out. The 2nd week of summer break after finishing 7th fucking grade. “Well you shouldn’t have been wearing that, you were asking for it! You wouldn’t have let him do that to you if you didn’t want it!”

But you didn’t let him. You told him no. And with everything in you, you tried so fucking hard to not let him.

But he does anyway.

And so you disassociate. And a part of your soul leaves your body. You watch yourself from the outside. Waiting for it to be over. Begging for it to be over. And then your youthful spirit-the kid in you, dies.

The ones that made you want to get on every medication you could so that you’d never have to feel anything again, the ones that made you believe that happiness was something you’d never get to have. Something you’d never get to keep.

The ones that made you resent the world, the ones that made you resent yourself.

The ones that made you bring your sharpest knife to the bathtub with you when no one was home. The ones that made you want to stop existing.

But you did it. You don’t know how. But you got through all of it. And not only that, but you started to heal. And you started to love yourself the way you always wanted to be loved. You left anything and everything that hurt you behind.

And you moved across the country. Alone. To a city where you knew no one and no one knew you. And it took a few months, but you finally settled in. You made new friends. Friends that actually felt like friends. You made new memories. Memories so good they drown out the bad ones. You really built a whole life for yourself.

And finally for the first time in so long, you felt genuinely happy.

You were healed. And you felt so safe. And so at peace. With yourself and with your life.

Nothing and no one could ever hurt you again.

And you make it a priority to protect yourself from anything and anyone that could disrupt that peace.

You realized that the things that hurt the most from the past all revolved around love. And even though you had never actually been in love, you were so committed to never letting yourself get hurt again that you told yourself you were okay with never taking another chance to potentially fall in love.

But you’ve been here for a year.

And before you can stop yourself, you start liking someone.

All of the alarms in your head go off. Your inner peace is being threatened. All of your old memories resurface and you can’t help but think of all the ways you could get hurt again.

You have to end it.

So you start self-sabotaging. And you’re almost angry at this person for having the power to potentially hurt you. So you start being mean, you start getting defensive, being hyper-critical of them and argumentative. During every silence, you start creating problems in your head and bringing them up. Even though you know-you fucking know that all of the problems you made up are complete bullshit.

But you keep bringing them up, because a part of you is trying to sabotage and burn this connection to the ground to protect yourself.

But the other part of you wants you to stay. The other part of you believes that even if you did end up getting hurt, it’d be okay. And all of the potential hurt would be worth the happiness you felt around this person. And that’s why you resorted to sabotaging instead of directly ending it. Because you weren’t ready for it to end. You didn’t want it to.

But it did.

And even though you know you’re happy and fulfilled alone too, you realize that you’ve been alone for so long that you forgot how good it feels being around someone you like. And how good it feels to let your guard down around the right person. And to have feelings.

You forget that you’re human.

You forget that emotions, every emotion-happiness, sadness, hurt, are all a part of the human experience.

And by trying to avoid feeling a certain “negative” emotion for the rest of your life, you’re only limiting yourself. Because yes, sometimes relationships don’t work out and sometimes you get hurt, but remember how you felt when you were in it?

Remember how you felt during the good times? The giddy-ness you felt when you first started seeing them, the excitement you’d feel right before hanging out with them, the rush you’d feel when you started developing feelings, the safeness you felt when they were receptive after you opened up to them, the peace you felt around them. Like. The world could be on fire and you’d still be okay. Because you were with them.

And honestly. After everything. I’ve realized that all of those feelings are worth any potential hurt. And I don’t want to live the rest of my life having only experienced half of my feelings. And metaphorically living half of a life.

And do you realize how unrealistic it is to go through life believing that you should only feel “positive” feelings? That there can only be good times. And that you have to avoid every painful situation and feeling even if that means limiting your potential to experience so many amazing things.

Also. That’s so fucking boring.

There’s almost a different kind of happiness that forms when you experience it with someone you have love for.

And I want to experience that again.

Yes I got hurt in the past. But I made it through every single time. And I could do it again.

I’m done ruining things that make me happy. I’m done limiting myself. I’m letting go of anything and everything forces me to suppress myself and my feelings. I want to experience life fully.

I deserve happiness and I deserve love.

And so do you.