The ultimate power move of all time is moving on and accepting it for what it is. For the longest time, I held on to the idea that I had to fight for everything. Fight for relationships. Fight for love. If love is pain, I have learned to suffer and endure.
For the past couple of months, I have attempted to move on from someone I fell in love with. I sought after other people and tried to find other people to distract me from the person who saw me for me. What I mean by me is more so the facade that I put on. The smokes and mirrors. Games I played because I became so used to this idea of toxic love, because the idea of being vulnerable was so scary, and because my insecurities got the best of me I realized a little too late that we ultimately attract people who are similar to us.
When it all went to shit I came to realize that all that was left was the mirror staring back at me.
Wondering why I sought after someone who did not want me, or show up for me in ways that mattered to me. It made me realize the importance of showing up for yourself. For speaking up for how I feel and most of all saying it with my chest. Speaking your truth is so important for yourself.
As a child, I was so used to swallowing my words. I was silent in rooms because I was afraid to take up space. As an adult, I have learned to speak up and advocate for myself because I do not want to spend this lifetime choking on my words. I do not want to spend another moment being this person who can not express how they feel. I have learned to confront the parts of me I want to hide. I have learned to speak up in relationships and return, I have spared myself so much time.
But now and then there are a few slip-ups and exceptions, where without much explanation you fall in love, and to me, there have never been any rules in love. I didn’t realize at the time that I was falling into love, I chasing a carrot on a stick for someone who would come around rarely. Someone who would burn hot and cold. I did not fall in love. I was breadcrumbed into love. It didn’t happen all at once I was love bombed into love because when you are so used to being given the cold shoulder and having your feelings pushed aside you believe the first person you meet at a bar at 11 pm who tells you he loves you is the love of your life. You’ll ignore that feeling in the pit of your stomach that is telling you, it isn’t going to work out, but you’ll play the game because it's what you learned to survive.
You’ll watch him drink tequila like water and be told to leave the bar at 4 a.m. and you believe him when he tells you he loves you. He will learn to say it in your mother's tongue. He will bite love into your lip, hold you for one night and you won’t hear from him again.
Sounds like poetry, I guess all poetry is a bit heartbreaking.
There was nothing poetic about my heartbreak. It was misery because he left me and I'll come to realize months later that wasn’t love. It was something but it wasn’t love.
I’d learn to breathe again.
I’d dance the pain away.
Learn to swim again above water.
Learn that life goes on and that one day, I won’t be someone’s sometime. I won’t be an afterthought or allow just anyone to walk into my life and say all the right words to just leave.
I like to believe that karma is always at work, always at play. I hope karma does what she does best.
I used to say I miss him but you can’t miss someone you hardly knew.
I learned to believe actions not just empty words and promises.
Put all the passion that I had into my work.
To chase a life, not a person because the best ROI is yourself.
I had to learn to nurture myself. Be the calm waters for myself. To be the home I can come to when the world has disappointed me. Break the cycle because I can’t do this again so in the meantime I am learning to love life, to eat all the food I want. To do all the things that I have wanted to do. Like, go to art galleries with my friends. To paint by the water. Carry my camera everywhere with me and capture moments that speak to me. To not chase people or things but chase adventure and a career. To listen to the silence because it says so much. I have learned to dance how I want in public, in bars, in restaurants, in clubs, and not give a fuck who is watching because life is happening now and I refuse to be a passenger, I’m in the driver's seat.
In return, life has been gentle to me. I haven’t gotten everything that I have wanted in life. I have gotten more than I could have imagined and I have learned to dance in it, dance in the rain, dance in the hard times, dance in my pain. To laugh because life can be misery. Heartbreak tore me to pieces and I wrestled with myself but I learned to dance. My dancing shoes don’t have to be the most comfortable but you have got to work with what you got.
