Have you ever woken up one day and with no explanation, you just didn’t feel like yourself? Most likely chalking it up to a bad night's sleep, stress, or something of that nature. Except then you wake up the next day and the next day and the next day until before you know it - it’s been weeks, months, or quite possibly even years that you’ve felt like this. Eventually, there becomes this point where you simply cannot deny that something changed within you, no matter how many different ailments you try to blame it on. This was me in August of 2020.
I woke up and no amount of success, no amount of love or support, no amount of venting was fulfilling to me anymore. Of course, I used the pandemic. The way that life flipped upside down for the entire world basically overnight. Everything was so different, friends that never felt comfortable being around anyone anymore, mask orders, restaurant bubbles, all of it. And that’s what I blamed for the next [almost] two years. Plus I was planning a wedding to a man I had been with for over seven years and the pandemic played a huge role on top of the natural stress that comes along with all of that anyways.
Before I knew it, it was June of 2022 and my body showed signs of such physical distress when nothing in my life really seemed wrong or out of place. I napped all the time, I was so irritable that I stopped being able to recognize myself and not to mention, I lost over 40lbs. Which would be great and I did have weight loss goals anyways, but for a girl who is 5’3'' and starting at 137 lbs. Getting down to a mere 97 lbs when I didn’t even weigh that little in high school was frightening. All with what I used to insensitively joke to be from the “depression diet” when anyone would ask, “oh my gosh, what’s your secret?”. I started relying on over the counter sleeping pills to stop my brain enough for me to obtain any sliver of sleep and I never wanted to leave my house or do anything at all. Not to mention, I was making some VERY poor and “unlike me” decisions when I did leave my couch.
In July that year, I was on a work trip with a female coworker who became my best friend. We were sitting, eating lunch, in the Philadelphia airport and I absolutely lost it. Nothing could stop those tears. And bless her heart for not even batting an eye at my emotional breakdown. She looked at me and said, “you’re going to move out and you’re going to move in with me.” “I don’t care how long it takes for you to get on your feet but you need to get out of your current situation, now.” She was newly pregnant at the time (and a Pisces, iykyk) but her words struck me to my very core. I heard her and it was the first time I can remember hearing something in over two years. And as horrible as I felt, to come home from that business trip to tell my newlywed husband that I was moving out. I knew it was the right thing to do. And it hit him like a truck.
The day I packed two laundry baskets and a backpack full of toiletries to move in with my best friend is one I’ll never forget. First, I was picking up the only life I knew since I was 17 and leaving it in the rear view mirror. But remember the truck? That morning I saw my husband cry for the first time in all of our almost eight years together. He sobbed on my shoulder as he was getting set to leave for work, hugging me goodbye. Right before he broke the embrace, he sniffled into my ear “please come back” and started his descent of the stairs to his car. It still brings me to tears even as I write this. My thoughts were, “who even am I anymore?” “What am I doing?” “Is this actually what I want?” All while I ran like a four year old running to the window to watch their parents drive away while being left with a babysitter, to watch him back out of our driveway. My entire commute to work that day, I sobbed. I sobbed so much that by the time I got there, I was swollen and all that I had left of my make up was on the toilet paper in my lap.
That’s the day my Dark Night of The Soul journey began. If you don’t know what that is, but feel some sort of connection to this - I highly encourage you to research it or stick around here. Since that day, I have been to hell and back. Actually, thinking back on it; that day was a good day compared to some of the days I’d live following that. But I wouldn’t change it. And maybe your journey looks or feels a lot different. Maybe you aren’t even sure if this blog will resonate with you, yet. But if my story and all of the experiences that go along with it only reaches one person who feels the loneliness, the shift, the darkness that I’ve felt, then I think of myself as being successful. Because in all the heartache and confusion, no amount of researching or self-help books seemed to nail down exactly where I was and what I was experiencing. Nothing could explain what I was going through and why it was happening. I couldn’t “logic” my way out of this. I had to live through every single day, hold myself accountable and ultimately, relearn who I was again. And if I’m being honest, I’m still learning. I still have dark days and I know my journey is a work in progress. But that’s the best part, we can heal together.
Love,
The Wounded Lover
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