What a ride

Today was a fucking rollercoaster. It was one of those days where my heart felt heavy and I could feel sadness lurking but I was in no mood to confront it... Everything I'm working on right now at work is super interesting to me and engaging and it feels so good to be back and I just want to be present, but as soon as I got into my car to drive home it was like the permission to let it pass through had been granted and I ugly cried on my commute home. I guess I really hadn't realized how much hope I still had for a certain version of the future and my tears weren't just sadness but anger. Anger at myself for recently lashing out at him because even though I do have anger towards him, I know that what I'm going through right now, this one's all on me, this is me causing my own heartbreak holding on to something that was never really much of anything substantial in the first place. Perhaps it's easier to hold on to situations like that sometimes, when so much of it has remained in the realm of the "what ifs"... it's easier to have this imagined version of how it could be when you have nothing real to ground yourself with.

I've never been good at letting go or giving up on people...but perhaps it's not the worst quality. Heartbroken me 11 years ago to the day actually now that I think about it cried herself to sleep and begged for relief and literally the next day had her first conversation with my ex-husband. And the boy I had been crying over is now a person I know I could count on if I really needed them and we regularly make plans to catch up and hang out and check in with each other, I mean we just had dinner last night. I would have never guessed we'd find ourselves in the space we're in now, but it means a whole lot to me to be able to have a meal with my first love and know we're genuinely out here rooting for each other's success and happiness.

So much has changed though since those naive days where I believed he'd be my one and only, but thank goodness some things haven't. When I got home I threw on sneakers and grabbed some left over sugar cookies my mother made for my birthday dinner party and headed to the hospital to meet the first born of a woman I've known since I was six years old. It's a wild thing to sit there and hold this beautiful tiny baby and look at your friend and her parents, faces you've known for almost as long as you have memories, and begin to catch glimpses of those faces in the little one in your arms. I think my favorite part though was watching my friend watch her husband interact with their baby and just seeing the love and adoration. It filled my sad heart right up and I'm so glad I was able to go.

The worst part about not being completely ok with the fact that I don't have a significant other is when that doubt I'll ever find what I'm looking for presents itself as jealousy when all I want is to be happy for my loved ones. I felt it last year when my sister's boyfriend joined the holiday celebrations but was so happy to notice that feeling wasn't there this year, and I felt it a bit when my friend sent a beautiful photo of her husband just staring at their baby earlier this week, but I didn't feel it tonight. I hope that means I'm growing, I hope that means I'm reaching a place where I really am just fine living this solo life of mine, well aside from Lady who started licking my hand as I typed that lol.

It's hard to admit to yourself you should have already let go of and gotten over something but I guess sometimes a hopeless dream feels safer than no dream... In this moment I'm not even really sure what I thought would eventually happen, that finally they'd magically see all the potential that I see and then there would be some magical grand gesture moment and then all of the hard of the situation would be absolved? I think perhaps there are some people you never stop caring about but that doesn't mean they still should have a seat at your table... That sometimes avoidance is your only option to give your heart a chance to forget and a shot at healing and there's nothing cowardly about needing that boundary. There was always this notion of a possible friendship, "that if I really cared, I could manage that".  But I can't manage it even though parts of me sincerely wish I could, and I just need to finally and firmly accept this truth. Maybe in the distant future I'll be able to have a meal with this man and catch up and be able to genuinely wish him well, but that time certainly isn't now.

I think I need to do a better job at cutting myself some slack, that while yes nearly five years is a stupidly long time to be holding out for something, I cannot forget I was given hope on multiple occasions across the years and the longest stretch of zero communication may only be about 6 months. It takes longer than that to let go when they once told you they believed you were who they should have been looking for all along and you couldn't help but feel the same way.