“I am ever changing and evolving, therefore, befriend to understand.”
This was the line I put in my bio on Facebook at the ripe age of sixteen. No one tells you at sixteen that the changes you’re experiencing are so minute in the grand scale of your life that they could be equated to your choice of cereal the next morning. Or maybe they do, and we just choose not to listen.
Don’t let my sixteen-year-old self-assured bio confuse you; I am not good at change. I have historically never been good at it, really. I began my lifelong battle with real change when I went off to college. I tried coping by holding onto the past, as I think everyone does at some point in life.
I held on to a doomed relationship (months after splitting) and took a job well within my comfort zone. I didn’t know how to live life without my pre-defined routine. The job I took was with a marching band, and, as the youngest in a family of musicians, this had been my life since I was nine. The aforementioned boy, in fact, I had met on my first day of my initial experience of marching band.
I’m telling you, I don’t handle change well. Fourteen-year-old me liked her comfort zone and was determined to remain there until it was stolen from me. Which it inevitably was in the life change most millennials (are forced to) encounter: college.
I didn’t want to hold onto the past again, so when my next life-changing crisis came about, I discovered my new mechanism. I referred to it as “eliminating the negativity,” but it was really more of “pretending I’m okay by forcibly removing everything that betrayed me, thereby spiraling myself into a crippling depression.”
Enter the next change I wasn’t prepared for. I didn’t understand how to handle the never-ending depression that accompanied the elimination of several close friends, my best friend, and my (in my nineteen-year-old brain) soulmate. I became a shell of myself. I lied in bed all day, got lost in television series, and joined a sorority (the latter proving to be the most effective method for pulling me out of a TV coma). Over time, I crawled from my hole of misery and rejoined the world. I came back to life and tried to take the world by storm.
Change.
I broke into the world, applied for leadership positions, became a teachers’ pet (again), pierced my body, got tattoos, and felt like a new and improved version of myself. I became so hyper-enthusiastic about life that I, in turn, made the most reckless decision of all.
I forgave someone who left me emotionally crippled. I let myself love a damaged, dependent human. I gave my heart, self-assurance, and newfound livelihood to someone else. I did the thing they tell you not to do. I loved a broken person. I filled his cracks with gold, my gold, and dulled my own shine.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t regret what I gave to him. I live with regrets, but loving someone wasn’t one of them. That’s what you do for the person you love, and damn it all, I loved him with everything I had. I do not regret showing him what it feels like to be truly loved. I regret how long it took me to realize that he didn’t couldn’t love me in the same way - a fun fact he never fails to bring up when I drunkenly say that I miss him.
Even months after breaking up, and over a year of realizing we were terminal, he still manages to berate me. As much fake happiness he created for me, he takes it away tenfold with his backhanded comments about my ridiculous decision to love him. I gave my life to him, so I guess it’s reasonably logical for him to call me out for my bad judgment.
Emotionally, however, I’ve never felt so hopelessly devoted and simultaneously hated in my life. I tell you all this to express the sheer bewilderment at this new change I’ve recently encountered. You need to understand a bit of my first love to understand why I am at a complete and utter loss as to how to continue from here.
Another change - overcoming true heartbreak.
I can’t tell you how many times my friends and family have said “time heals all wounds,” but what nobody tells you is exactly how much fucking “time” it takes to not feel like I’m going into battle each day.
While I’m at it, all of those phrases are bullshit.
“You just need to get out more.”
Bullshit.
“Ooh! Pick up a new hobby!”
Bullshit.
“In the future, this will all seem insignificant.”
Yeah, that’s all well and great, but because I’m not physically able to transport myself into that magical future time with happiness and banana pancakes and Sunday mornings, I present to you the lovely words from Kelly Bishop’s character from "Gilmore Girls," Emily Gilmore, in the new revival.
“BULLSHIT.”
I’ve taken the happy pills, gone to therapy, bought a dog, spent time with family, deleted social media, and waited - albeit not entirely, too - patiently for the desire to escape my life to dissipate. No such luck. I’m trapped in a career I chose at twelve, in a town I chose at seventeen, haunted by an ex I chose at nineteen in a life that I didn’t fucking choose to have.
Right now, I’m in the most life-changing change I’ve ever encountered. I use this phrasing because this feels more like closing a book and less like completing a chapter. I’m changing as a being, and I don’t think the choices I made at previous changes are going to stick. My book as this version of myself has come to a close; I am in the epilogue. I can feel the finality in its end. I want to break free, and this time I think I actually will.
Instead of a dramatic YA novel, I hope my next book is about traveling in Europe. I could deal with a nice Danielle Steel novel, but it’ll likely be called something along the lines of “How Not to Have A Breakdown or Existential Crisis Every Week.” … I’m still working on the title.
