2020 F**ked Me Up

 Excuse my language, but I don't know any other way to describe 2020. It fucking sucked. It has left me empty, alone, and hopeless. I write this as I am struggling with one of the hardest depressive episodes

I've experienced in years. I am aware that colors some of reflections about 2020, but not all of it. I've had time the last few weeks to look back, and there's nothing else I can conclude. 2020 fucked me up, and took some of the best parts of me.

Before the lockdown, I fell in love with a flashy, egocentric man who flaunted to the world success and discipline. His emotional scars looked and felt so much like mine. His love of Christ made me ignore so much of his ungodly behavior. The closer I got to him the more I saw so many alarming edges. The kind of edges we all form when we have not forgiven ourselves, when our hurt has turned from anger to hate. The kind of jagged hurt that no matter how much we try, will harm the people who want to love us. But, I didn't run. I felt so broken, and damaged that any form of love even the toxic kind made me feel good. I swallowed my discomfort to cater to his emotional needs. I stayed when he called me a bitch and a whore, smacked other women's asses in front of me, and ultimately forced me to do something that I did not want. I recall everything in me telling me to run that night. But I didn't. I just kind of went outside of myself to get through it. It would take me weeks to share this with my therapist, and only then did I realize it was abuse. I still blame myself for putting myself in that moment with him.

I met a man that showed me love could be different. That it didn't have to hurt. It wasn't disrespectful or condescending. We went on dates. He made me laugh. I attempted to let him enter my world. I told him about the broken parts of me that had not healed. He waited to kiss me, and showed me off to his dozens of lady friends. But, I've learned you have to be careful who you share your shame story with. The nitty gritty, dark places are not for everyone. I shared my family's abandonment, my life on the street, instead of empathy I got interrogations. Why did I do this? Why did I do that? It's in those moments I wish I had not shared my shame story with the wrong person. He was not someone who could love me judgement free. He always seems to be searching, seeking for the origins of my brokeness. And when I needed him most, he abandoned me too.

He taught me that some parts of yourself are sacred, only to be shared with a special person who has proven they can handle it with care.  People who get the right to hear your shame story have proven they will honor it. They will not judge it or remind you of it. In one of our biggest fights, he took my shame like a sword and plunged it my heart. His exact words, "You will always be broken." They still haunt me. My pattern of taking even toxic love continued even after this. I thought we could start over, move past it. Shortly after a young person I was mentoring died suddenly and the pain felt like a swift kick to the stomach. It took my breath away, and left me unable to sleep for almost a week. Then I broke..

I really did break. A mental break, one of the scariest I had ever experienced. A part of my past I may never share fully. What I do feel safe to share is - I've never felt more afraid in my entire life. And in the throws of it people I trusted intimately exposed my crisis. Used their city titles to strip me of any dignity I had in that moment. After nearly a week in a psych hospital I came out feeling more alone, and broken than ever. Bonds were broken forever. Betrayal simmered in my bones. The world felt unsafe, and so did people. 

I buried myself in work, wanting to escape. I now wore two masks one to protect me from COVID and another to hide the pain that I had buried. The violation, the betrayal, the abandonment,  my safety net being ripped away from me. It was if I couldn't bare to face those things so I hide them under pretty selfies, and overworking.

Now with no distractions, the mundane life of seclusion - I can no longer hide the facts. I am not happy with myself or my life. I am struggling to find purpose, and I feel empty.  

Part of writing this is to release the need to hide behind something, anything. This is where I am right now. 

You know how so many people say you have to sit it in? Feeling your feelings? Who actually does that? Now, I am. I no longer want to push them under this invisible rug to keep going. I no longer want to hear, "You're be alright" with no guidance to the right. Maybe it's only from the bottom you can see your way out.

Some may read this and think, 'Eek this is dark, depressing even." For those I will say I'm active in therapy and working on clawing my way out. But, I need to say this. I need to release this notion that I'm happy.

I am not okay, and now I want to investigate why. I am not happy and I want to find what my new happy feels like. I have no direction, and I want to maybe explore places unknown.

For now this is me...