One Year Later.

One year ago, I steeled myself as I opened up my laptop and clicked the zoom link sent to me. I felt robot-like. Emotionless, guarded. I nodded my head and provided a curt "yes" as it was required of me. Yes, I wanted to keep my name the way that it was. It made no sense to me to return to a name that belonged to a father I didn't speak to. Yes, I was sure. No, I had nothing else to add. What would have been the point? It wouldn't have changed things. I just wanted it to be over.

As the judge ruled from across a computer screen that the divorce was final, I took a long exhale and shook as I opened up my blog. I had a long cry, and then I wrote about it. Then, I went to work. It didn't seem worth it to make the day any more than what it was. It was both monumental in what I had left behind, and a new page from which I was finally free, after many years of hurt. A symbol of moving on for which the real groundwork had already been done over many hard months. There was nothing left to mourn, nothing left to say goodbye to. Every bridge had already been burned, and with it a cloud over those old memories settled, permeating how I saw those last 5 years of my life. Things would always be different from that day. But that was a closing part of moving on past what I had already grieved for in the months previous. So it didn't make sense to stay home and mope, it made more sense to just step outside and keep going. After all, Covid had robbed me even of a final encounter, of the satisfactory feeling of watching a book close on an old chapter. A zoom call to settle things felt merely like a pantomime that failed to assign any real relevance to such a large event. At any rate, truth be told, I'd had enough of that over the summer. Afternoon after afternoon of sitting on the sofa, staring at the ceiling and wondering how coming home to an empty home would ever feel normal. I forced myself to observe solitude for many months. I needed to: needed to know I could be alone. Needed time to read the books my counselor told me to. Needed time to process both sides of what happened. Needed time to be okay to accept that there was no going back. Needed time to remember how happy I could be outside of a relationship that was wrong for me, but that I clung to out of fear. 

I had spent a long time deciding whether this was what I wanted even after the choice was no longer mine to make. It took a long time to accept that it was happening, and that was hard, too. It's one thing to decide that something is right, but another to follow the steps that make it more and more real. It's hard to step over to the other side of what was once an idea, to the final result, the one that cannot be undone. It's sort of like thinking about having surgery for a while. You know it needs to be done. You accept that. You schedule the appointment. But sitting on the operating table waiting to be put under, you are fearful. There's a realness, a sense that you cannot any longer go back. You know that when you wake up, there is no changing your mind: what's done is done. Deep down though, I knew that this is what I’d wanted for a long, long time. It had actually never even been a question of that, not really. It was a question of whether I was strong enough to come out on the other side of what I needed to do intact. Did I have the strength to follow through? For years I had decided that I didn’t. So I decided it was better to try to be happy in a bad situation than to risk it with the unknown. 

Spoilers: the unknown is usually not as bad as we make it out to be. I wish I hadn’t let it scare me the way it had. 

That isn’t to say it wasn’t the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I’ve had an overall very fortunate life with some very hard things sprinkled throughout. More than anything, I’m just proud of the strength I’ve cultivated to survive the hard things. Even if to no one but myself, I feel I’ve proven I have what it takes to get through the downs, especially the really, really low ones. Even with that, this almost broke me. There was a time I thought I would never recover. Everything felt grey, my joy evaporated like the water I used to water my plants in the summer. There was pain that hurt my heart so immensely I thought I would sink under it. I don’t know how I made it. But overused as the saying might be, what they say about it being darkest before the dawn is very true. The dark was darker than I’d ever experienced. But even that small sliver of sunrise that came after gave me just enough to hold on. 

It was hard, but ever since that day, and now standing on the other side, I've never felt so free. I remember a night about a year and a half back, before COVID, out with friends at the time. They asked how I was doing and over the pounding music, the throngs of people at the bar of our favorite mexican restaurant, I leaned over and said, "I'm so anxious. All the time. I don't know what's wrong with me. Maybe I should see someone? I'm just so unsatisfied, no matter what. I'm always trying to find the next thing to distract me." 

I never made any secret of my anxiety to my friends, but truthfully, I struggled with the weight of it more and more as time passed. I really started to wonder about what could be wrong with me. One day as I was taking a shower I realized I'd just woken up with the feeling that I was tiptoeing over glass and it never fully went away. Sometimes, it was a dull ache. Other times, it felt like a shard of it was lodged in my heart, hurting with every beating motion, and I couldn't figure why. I found myself loathing quiet moments to myself, my mind taking them as an opportunity to wonder deeper about why I couldn't avoid the worries growing ever louder in my mind. 

I've actually had quite a few friends go through divorce now, especially this year, and I shake my head and wonder if it's really true that young relationships don't last. I don't think that's always the case, but without even realizing, I changed and realized I didn't like the things I thought I did, I wasn't the person I thought I was, my priorities were very different than I had ascertained them to be at 22. Without a guidebook, I felt the parts of me that I wanted to nurture sat in the shadows, unable to realize fully what I wanted to be. What was harder still was perhaps having an idea of what those parts of me could have been, had I chosen differently.  

Do I regret how things happened? A little. I wish I had been a better communicator. I wish it had been a cleaner break. I wish I hadn't waited so long, hadn’t changed my mind the first time. I had sat on the steps outside my apartment, largely quiet as my mom spoke on the other side, years ago, back when I was a new bride and had been sideswiped by the drinking episodes. "Ask for an annulment," she'd urged me. "You didn't know about this before. That's grounds for an annulment." I did look into it. In the state I was in, it was hard to get one, hard to prove. People online said your request would get denied. But part of me held me back from searching deeper. I even applied for my physical therapy license in Florida, knowing that if I didn't make some monumental point of leaving, I might never be able to extricate myself. But when it came time to take the Jurisprudence test, I never followed through, letting the link to sign up sit untouched in my inbox. 

All of this taught me a few things.

I've learned that letting yourself truly and deeply suffer to spare someone's feelings is almost never worth it, no matter how noble you might be trying to be. The suffering has to have somewhere to go, and inevitably it falls back to both parties. 

I've learned that being alone isn't half as bad as being with someone not right for you. It might not feel okay at first, but I promise you, it gets better. Hobbies, trips, friends, counseling will save you. It doesn’t get better all at once, but little by little. 

I've learned that anxiety can be a manifestation of buried feelings, of grief, and a sign that you should listen to. If you’re uncomfortable in the quiet of your mind, you need to lean closer. Ask why. It’s uncomfortable. You may not even like the answers. But it never gets better if you don’t. 

There was a time just a little over 8 years ago now; a September night I’d finished a gig. It was my senior year of college, and Jordan came up for the weekend to DJ a gig in downtown Macon. We were going through one of our phases of talking, and it was bad. It wasn’t actually bad. But I’d realized a few weeks earlier again that I still had the same feelings I’d always had for him. I still felt the immense pull I inevitably always did to talk to him, and sitting next to him always felt like there was a magnet drawing us closer. It was bad because I was aware of how much I loved him, despite trying to push those feelings aside, but I was still in a relationship I felt I couldn’t get out of. The situation felt doomed once more to spiral out of control until I shut it down out of fear and the feeling of hitting a wall in being unable to do anything about it. 

That night, I lied. I told my boyfriend I’d be working at a gig late, but I went to watch Jordan at his show instead. I guess you could say I first realized I had really strong feelings for him the first weekend we ever spent time together a few years before when I watched him play a show. Even back then, when he looked up at me, it felt like I was the only one in the room he was playing to. It felt the same way that night. He looked up at me and smiled, and I couldn’t tear my eyes away as I smiled back. I lost myself in that moment, until a girl came over, drink in hand. She tapped her foot to the music for a while, and then turned to me. “Is that your boyfriend?” She asked. 

“Oh…” I said, caught off guard. My cheeks turned pink. “…no.” 

“Oh,” she said. “It’s just, the way you were looking at him. It looks like he’s your boyfriend.”

He finished his set, and we mingled for a while outside until it got late. One of us suggested we take a walk through downtown. We turned the corner, and as our hands brushed we grabbed each other, walking hand in hand down the street. It was such a simple thing. I’d held hands with him before, in private. But I’ve never forgotten how it felt, that outward show of my feelings, holding hands as people passed us and wondering how we looked to them: like we were together. We sat on a park bench holding each other as long as we could until I had to go home, unable to make excuses for how late I was out any longer. 

Eventually I grew tired of those goodbyes. Watching the clock. Never having enough time. 

In that quiet of the morning a year ago as I contemplated what to write, I realized this had never been a story about my ex husband and I at all, but rather a story about finally trusting myself enough to take the leap of faith to be with Jordan, a contemplation always riddled with self doubt for me. Even before we dated I second guessed myself with him. 

“What if we give dating a try and it doesn’t work out after all? What will that mean after years of believing we should have been together?”

“We’re really different, we’ll argue all the time.” 

“What if you get tired of me?”

You spend long enough losing at relationships that you get jaded. And yet, for all of my years of doubts and talking myself out of it, they never did come true. It’s been a full year now, and I still spend large portions of the day wondering if my life is real. How could I still be so happy? How could I still get butterflies every time I see him? How could I have lived so many years saying goodbye over and over again to the one person that I’ve never been able to be without?

I’d written to him, just as COVID was starting to get bad.

"I only want to be true to myself... accept these feelings in my heart, make peace with them. Letting myself have the space to feel makes me feel free, in a circumstantial way, through having the peace to know simply that it's okay to be. I close my eyes and exhale, allowing those feelings the space to exist. They live in a garden in my mind, and in so many rooms in my heart. Just this one small connection of writing to tell you this is a solace, this connection one I treasure always." 

Yes, if I could have changed things, I would have listened to myself sooner, instead of spending so long bargaining with myself, convincing myself that eventually things would be better when I learned how to quell my feelings and be more devoted. 

But I’m so proud of breaking the cycle. I have never felt one iota of self doubt in this year. I wake up and I’m at peace. It was long overdue. 

Recovering from divorce is hard. Some view it as a mark against you: a thing to be judged by. A failure. As a child of divorce, I remember growing up being very resolved that I would never get one. That was my life goal: have a relationship that lasted forever. I may have grown up in a broken family, but my own family wouldn’t be. I’d make it so. I believe I fought the concept for a long time in part because of this. But as you get older, things aren’t as black and white as you think they are growing up. I realized that just because you might still be together doesn’t mean things aren’t broken. In fact, sometimes staying in something that isn’t right is the thing that makes you broken, each of you chipping away at each other until there’s less and less of both of you to give. Sometimes, you come around the circle far enough to realize, sickly, that you were broken before you ever entered that relationship. That your past perhaps made you more prone to choose things that weren’t good for you. 

Perhaps I’m only putting a positive spin on it because I lived through it and I’m trying to be kind to myself. But if you’re going through it or you’ve been through it before, there is strength to be found through it. You’ve experienced the splintering of your entire life, lost friends, belongings, perhaps lost a home… and you’ve come out on the other side. Get the counseling, if you haven’t. It’s worth it if you can. If your counselor isn’t helping, find another.

And don’t let it harden you. Stay soft. I think the strongest people remember that that’s where true strength lies: in our ability to not let our hurts accumulate into chips on our back, but scars that we let others see to show them that we were strong enough to survive them.

Now I’m one year into the best year of my life. I’m excited to see where it goes from here. 

This is the Hardest and Most Vulnerable Story I'll Ever Tell You.

The paramedics called during the summer of 2016, two weeks after our wedding.

They had found him on a sidewalk, bloodied and unable to remember how he had gotten there. “Your husband is intoxicated,” they’d told me. “We’re taking him to the hospital.”

I didn’t know I had married an alcoholic.

What a foolish thing that sounds like when you write it. When I was 21, everything about our romance had felt like a fairytale. Two weeks into meeting him, he said I was the girl he was going to marry. 5 months later, he proposed. We didn’t spend a single day apart until our wedding, a year after we met.

Despite all of that, this is not even a story about my ex husband. It’s about the man I’ve been in love with for almost a decade. It’s taken me a very long time to be ready to share this story.

I had met Jordan 4 years earlier, when I was 17. Later, he’d tell me he saw me from across the room and thought,

“That girl is special. I need to go and talk with her.”

The briefest of conversations was the most pivotal moment in my life up to that point. That night set so many events into place, the effects rippling for years onward. We learned we were both from the same place in Orlando, and we shared many of the same circles there, in fact. When we spoke later after that night, I learned that we shared the connection of chronic illness. Mine with Diabetes, his with a kidney transplant. I learned he was a DJ and passionate about music. We shared a love of literature and intellectual conversation.

I felt a real connection with him, but I had a long term boyfriend I’d been dating for a few years when we met. Ironically, he was the reason I’d ended up in Macon…of all places. Then, he’d ironically also moved across the state after I moved there to start college. I had hoped to close our long distance gap.

It wasn’t until a year later, on the brink of a breakup, that we reconnected.

Jordan had moved back home from college, but was visiting friends back in Macon for the weekend. He invited me to coffee. We’d had a phone call just a few weeks prior, but aside from that, I’d met him only twice. When I accepted the invitation for that evening, I wasn’t sure what to expect.

I didn’t return home to my dorm until he dropped me off at 4 in the morning. Neither of us wanted to end the night. The evening had passed and the coffee shop closed. We spent the entire night wandering the Mercer University campus, exchanging the entireties of details about our lives, who we were, who we wanted the other to know. Many of us can’t notice the inexplicable shifts that occur in our lives until we see them in hindsight, marking the point where we become changed people. But that night, I felt the shift. I discovered a kind of intimacy I’d never before felt in my life. It touched me inexplicably within my soul, in a way that has never changed, not once, since I felt this shift 10 years ago. If we’d never had any interaction after that night, I still would say I’d never felt closer to another human being.

I felt giddy the next day, full of butterflies and nervous jitters, disappointed to have to spend the day working, unable to think about anything but how immensely, unbelievably enjoyable spending the night talking had been. We texted each other the whole day, and we met up that night for a show he was playing. A pull that felt magnetic coursed through me that entire day. The kind that makes you feel like you’ve only ever read about love but never felt it before. Even now, ten years later, that feeling still remains. I remember seeing him as I walked in the room and lighting up. I was so aware of everything that night: the way our gazes lingered on each other, the way our legs brushed under the table after he’d finished playing his set. His friends had driven me there, but he volunteered to drive me back, just the two of us. Every moment just sitting next to him felt like it set my heart on fire. We stayed up the entire night talking again, and no matter how many hours passed, the conversation and the company never grew old: something I still feel even today. He felt like my closest friend even after just that weekend.

The next few months were filled with mountains of consequential moments for me. Jordan told me he liked me. I invited him to my college homecoming dance, and then I got so nervous, I almost didn’t go through with it. Over Thanksgiving we met up in Orlando, spending a sunlit day in my hometown of Winter Park, somewhere I’ve always found to be an idyllic place paved with brick streets, and shadowed by canopies of trees overhead. We played chess, I saw his family’s home for the first time, we held hands in his car, I cried on a swing over something my mom had said. We shared a moment on his dock at the lake and I felt like I could have kissed him then, but my fears of moving on from my first love held me back.

When I started second guessing myself, and got back together with ex boyfriend, Jordan insisted I was making a mistake.

“If you’re so angry at me, why are you still talking to me?” I asked.

“You know why,” he replied.

“Tell me,” I pushed him.

“Because I love you.”

We reconnected my senior year, after cycles of speaking, and my ghosting, him. Each time we talked, I couldn’t remember why I had chosen not to be with him. It was always the same story: I’d reach back out. We’d start talking until well into the morning, night after night. All of my feelings would flood back. We spent so many evenings walking around downtown Macon, braving cold nights, getting coffee at Jittery Joe’s, me thinking I was finally ready to act on my feelings: always second guessing myself. I couldn’t understand what was wrong with me. I hurt Jordan with my actions, but he never held it over my head. He was always the level headed one, imploring me to see things for what they were.

Every year on my birthday, since the first evening we’d had coffee together, he’d send me a beautiful mix of songs he created, telling a story through lyrics, song titles, and concepts, about us. The very first one was titled “ideal day”, inspired by a question he asked me as we were our getting to know each other: what my ideal day looked like. They grew more intimate as the years passed, exploring the nuances of our complicated relationship.

“The only walls we’ve got are the ones we build ourselves,” one of the songs in his mixes mused that year.

By the time my relationship finally ended, my senior year of college, Jordan and I again weren’t speaking. I still had yet to realize the cause to my poor dating choices. That was in order to feel needed, I looked for men I could try to fix. These relationships were unhealthy, but they felt normal. Safe. I struggled with codependency, having grown up with a complicated relationship with a father rarely in my life, and a cold family. I would later read books that write about how codependents will push away healthy relationships for this reason: they were uncomfortable, and this is exactly how Jordan made me feel. Uncomfortable. Unsure of the feelings I was having. He knew me better than anyone, but I couldn’t explain why that also made me feel like I wanted to run away and shut him out. I don’t think I wanted to face many of the things he implored me to confront within myself. Still, my feelings were so strong, so unlike anything I’d ever felt. They ran deeper than anything I’d experienced, which was what I knew always led me back to reaching out to him. I’d always wake up one day and out of the blue miss him so much I couldn’t stand it anymore.

The summer before I moved to Atlanta, Jordan came to visit. I was so nervous. It was a tumultuous time: my ex was stalking me, his post-breakup interactions having turned very abusive, and it made me paranoid and fixated on him, worried he would show up at any moment. The weekend wasn’t at all what I’d hoped it would be: an opportunity to solidify our relationship. Instead, it became a weekend of my paranoia intensifying with Jordan's presence, leading me to shut down almost the entire time, barely sharing my feelings, and certainly not moving our relationship forward in any meaningful way. I wanted to get out of Macon, to have a fresh start in the city and wash away old memories and hurt. I came to the conclusion that I just wasn’t ready for a relationship, and might not ever be, with him. For what I thought was the last time, I said goodbye to him after that weekend and again pushed him away. I’ll always remember that weekend: how hurt I knew I made him feel. “I worry,” he told me. “That there will be a day where you’ll wake up and regret that you made this choice. Where you’ll remember this moment, and wish you could have changed it. By then, it might be too late.”

I chose not to let myself think of this.

---

I managed to forget him for two years. I well and truly moved on in my life. Then, I found that I really did wake up one morning and was struck by the overwhelming need to talk to him. Jordan had been right about this.

He’d also been right about the other part: It was too late.

Because I realized it once I was already married.

That first summer after my marriage, I had struggled, in complete isolation, with the gut punch of realizing I’d married someone who had lied to me about who they were. Two incidences with paramedics, and nights of disappearing and not remembering where he went the next day. Hidden bottles found behind the trash can. I found I grew paranoid as I second guessed every action, every smell of what I thought might be alcohol on his breath. It felt like it had come from nowhere: surely it hadn’t, but I hadn't noticed any of these signs before. And then, one day, I got that call, and it was like a switch had flipped. I went to sleep in a fairytale one day, and the next I woke up in a story I didn't recognize.

But I felt I could tell no one. How could I? The shame I’d feel admitting I married someone too soon, and only a few months after our wedding … I was too proud to tell anyone. So I buried these thoughts, as deeply as I could, as long as I could.

Deeply troubled, I spent two weeks barely sleeping after I woke up that morning. But my thoughts felt deafening, and no matter how I tried to bury them, they kept resurfacing. Finally, I did the only thing that gave me peace: I sent Jordan a message.

I felt panicked. Lonely. I felt shame and guilt. Here was the truth: if I had known that the man I’d chosen to be with was an alcoholic, if he had been fully honest with me… I wouldn’t have gone through with the marriage. I felt pain and hatred towards myself for this realization. I grew up as a child of divorce, wanting desperately for my first marriage to be my only one. I felt a strong sense of Christianly duty to honor the vow I made through thick and thin. Imagine how I felt when almost literally all of a sudden, I couldn’t rid my head of these deafening and troubling feelings for someone else.

I realized I would therefore very likely live my life in love with a man I could never be with at the same time I came to the realization that I wasn’t strong enough to leave my marriage.

I didn’t want these feelings, or the questions they left me with. I didn’t want the solution: a complete upheaval of not just my life, but my husband’s. Unthinkable pain. I wanted to be a good person.

But the pain of his addiction, and hiding it from me, cut deeply. So did the realization that we were simply a bad match. Caught up in mutual codependency and naive romanticism, we had failed to stop and ask ourselves whether we operated in compliment, or opposition, to each other, prior to marriage.

I felt truly lost: like God had forgotten me. I went to church. I prayed to God and I asked him over and over why I felt the way I did. I wanted to cry out in church, "Here I am. Why can't I stop these feelings? Why is trying my hardest not enough to silence my doubts? Why can't you silence my thoughts?" I questioned my life. I mourned from the pain of mistakes I felt were permanent.

“You’re going to have to make a choice,” Jordan told me. “I’m not saying that for me. I’m saying it because you making a decision that prolongs and perpetuates your sadness will only prolong this negative cycle.” I knew he was right: I had to choose whether I wanted to move forward or remain in this cycle. I again chose the cycle.

Two weeks later, my husband found emails we'd exchanged while we were on our delayed honeymoon in Europe. I had felt both elated and sad on that trip. Elated to be overseas for the first time in my life. This, overshadowed in that I felt sad at how angry I was about what had been hidden from me. I felt bitterly heartbroken at how many doubts I had about my marriage. When he found those emails, though, I felt numb, and ashamed. As he cried at me, I knew I was in the wrong. I knew what a shock and betrayal this was to him, to see that I struggled with these emotions towards another person, that I hid them from him, and for him to read about how much I struggled to justify staying in our marriage. Emotionally cheating is a heavy thing to carry. But I was angry, too, and I snapped. “If you didn’t drink too much, this wouldn’t have happened,” I told him. Was that really true? I honestly didn’t know.

When he convinced us to go to counseling, things got better. I was relieved: I wanted to do anything to avoid facing the hard questions my dilemma posed. I so badly wanted us to mend things so that my life could be stable. The questions still loomed. What did it mean that still, no matter how hard I prayed in church, I could stop neither my questioning over whether I should be with someone else, nor ease the pain in my heart?

I wanted to dedicate myself to fixing my marriage. After losing his job from a drinking incident, I encouraged my husband to go to college. I threw myself into supporting his dream of going to medical school. I knew it would keep me busy, being in graduate school and working nearly 30 hours a week myself. I preferred this to allowing myself to stop and think about things.

If I thought this would change me, I was disappointed in how depressed and unsatisfied I still felt. I caught myself hoping that my husband would slip up, to give me a reason to leave. But what would it say about me, to leave a man struggling to become sober? I think it was wrong to both of us to wait for him to make a mistake first to leave. I was giving control of my life to someone else.

But I was too fearful to end things, worried about the pain I would cause, worried about the shame I would feel. Worried about what people would think, and filled with guilt: I felt I could never hurt someone I care about that badly. I promised myself I’d stop giving into my feelings, stop all communication with Jordan, and I did. It hurt me immensely to do so, and I wrote about my unhappiness and pain in my journal, which my husband picked up and read one day without telling me, then later confronted me on. I didn’t know how to make things better.

When the accident did happen, it shocked and shattered me. He showed up to swing dancing, drunk, a little over a year later. I remember laughing about that day in morbid humor: the day of the solar eclipse, the day people thought the world would end. It didn’t, but my world felt like it did.

He’d told me he would meet me there since he was late getting back from seeing the eclipse. I’d just started my first job, and had had to work. He drove my car there, and ran up and violently shoved off the partner I was dancing with, screaming in the middle of the crowded floor. My mind felt like it shut down. I sobbed, running out of the dance. Dancing had been my “place” for years. My happy place, my safe place. It’s where my husband and I had met. I felt violated and ashamed at the scene caused. I drove across town alone to a parking lot and sat there, after calling my husband’s mom, letting her know what had happened and crying over the incident.

It had been months since we'd talked, but I called Jordan. Instead of admonishing me, Jordan told me gently, “This can be the last time you hurt like this, if you want it to be.”

For almost year now, I’d tried denying my feelings. What if everything was all in my head? Was this merely something I clinged to for escape from my unhappiness? Would I feel this way if my husband didn’t drink so much?

I needed time alone back home. I saw him after 3 years that fall. When I did, I couldn’t breathe. My heart raced. Everything I’d denied myself came rushing back: just from literally seeing him. The most wild and long-burning love I’d ever known. In that moment, I knew it was never just in my head. I’d been waiting for years to allow myself to accept that this was who I should be with.

I planned to end things and move back to Florida. But when I returned home, the pain I anticipated leaving would cause outweighed the truth that I had lost the ability to be happy in my relationship. When he implored me to, I told him I would try again. I shoved away the future I hoped for. The words Jordan had once told me rang in my ears.

“When sacrifices cause us deep unhappiness, in the long run, we aren’t even doing the right thing anymore. The sadness will come back around to ruin the original sacrifice. The cycle will continue.”

He promised to stop drinking this time. A year passed. Jordan moved to Atlanta for work. I told him I still couldn’t be with him. I pushed myself to stay away.

“I made a promise,” I said. A hundred social ties still bound me to a marriage I felt trapped in.

“So did I,” he told me. “I told you I’m going always going to be here for you.”

We didn’t talk for another year. I told myself that I had to put my all into focusing on my life in the moment, if I was going to fix things. I didn’t expect a birthday mix that October, but it arrived. It came with a message.

“I tried to move on,” he wrote. “But I always wake up one day, and my feelings pull me right back. The biggest thing I regret is choosing not to remain friends with you. I’d do anything to take that back.”

I knew that if we began to talk again, I wouldn’t be able to ignore my feelings. As long as he was in my life, in any capacity: everything in me pulled me to him closer. I knew I would inevitably have to make a choice. Otherwise, this cycle would continue.

I fantasized about what my life would look like if I could stop letting my fear paralyze me and see the truth for what it was: I’d gotten married too young to someone who had lied about who they were. I’d married someone during a time in which I’d buried my feelings for someone else as an attempt to run away from processing old hurt and emotions in my life. But I felt I was doing right by putting every effort into my marriage to fix it. Was I truly willing to sacrifice everything to end things? I didn’t think so. That’s the nice thing about a holding pattern: all of the possibilities are present, with none of the consequences. There were a lot of consequences. I didn’t think I would be strong enough to bear them.

Nearly another year passed, and my husband promised me it would be okay if he could start drinking again. I never thought to push him to finish AA. My mom always asked me how his meetings were going. I lied and said they were going well. I didn’t know how to properly support someone recovering from addiction. I didn’t realize it was significant that he didn’t finish. I figured it was like counseling: you felt better, so you could stop going. (Later I learned this isn’t necessarily the case either). Sober, he was angry, so it was almost a relief. Then, one beer turned into two drinks. A bottle overnight. It always did. I cleaned drinks hidden behind the nightstand in the morning.

I knew this wasn’t happiness. I might have been Christian, but I had a hard time believing that this was what any God could want for me. I didn’t want to feel like I was losing myself anymore. I didn’t want to feel like a hollow shell struggling to find happiness. I didn’t want to feel like I had to drown myself in half a dozen activities just to stave off depression daily.

But I told myself this was merely my own selfishness talking. If I tried harder, I could find happiness. If I went to church more, I’d stop feeling things I shouldn’t. I ignored the next birthday mix.

In 2020, 15 months since we’d last talked, I suddenly couldn’t get it out of my mind. I decided to listen to the mix on the way home one day. I felt I was in a stable place at the time, and able to listen with impartiality. He’d sent a second mix with the first. “One I’m very fond of,” he’d noted. Titled, ISLY.

ISLY. I still love you.

I listened. The mix devastated me: it felt like every track implored me to see the truth for what it was. I wept in my car as I listened to a track with lyrics that sang,

“I have unfinished business in this life/Not ready to go to the other side/Your immortal lover.”

It made me so depressed. I wanted my heart to do something other than cause me pain. I started getting anxiety attacks. I cried during my commutes for days. I sat in my car once I got to the parking lot of work, listening to the tracks I’d heard in the mix on repeat.

Something was wrong in my life. I’d done everything the right way as much as I could. I had followed all the steps. Church. Counseling when I had doubts, or started to end things again (Even if I went begrudgingly at first). Small group. Friends who encouraged me. Not perfectly. I failed many times. But I truly gave it my all. I prayed. I journaled. I focused and worked hard to love my husband. Years passed. It felt like I tore out my heart to not talk to Jordan, over and over again. My heart felt like it beat at half capacity in the life I continued to live.

I think I had done everything the best right way I could.

And still I couldn’t escape the fact that I loved another man. What do you do when you realize that? Do you hate yourself for years, like I did? Fight it with all of your might? Push it away as desperately as you are able?

I suppose if I could tell you that I finally got my act together - that ceasing all forms of communication, doing counseling, and continuing to tell myself that I was happy fixed things for me - this would truly be a redemptive story. But the fact is, I tried all of that, and it failed. Lines became blurred in my life that I never thought could. I became a person young me would have villainized. I think it was hard for me to see the good in myself for a long time. And maybe the fact that nothing I tried to amend this situation worked made me weak: I’m not sure. But I did learn this, and it’s made me very sympathetic to stories of difficult love: ignoring the heart is something you can only do for so long. Something will give: you’ll have to find a place for the sadness to go. You don’t get to try to decide what the heart feels. I don’t know why that is. But I never could tell mine what to feel for a prolonged time. It never lasted. It always went back to telling its truth.

Eventually, if you cannot rid yourself of these feelings you have to accept that it is all real. Then, you can either choose to continue in darkness, smothering your heart, or step into the light. I’d lived in darkness for a very long time now.

So I wrote him a letter. I hurt so much that it was all I could do. When you hurt, you’ll do anything to make it stop.

I posted it in the Dropbox we’d shared for 8 years, making no grand statements or declarations, simply telling him that it was enough just to have found what we shared in this lifetime: that this gave me happiness when my days got hard.

Truthfully, though, I think I took for granted that Jordan would still be there. I think I knew that, deep down, he’d also never fully shake the very clear fact that whatever we had, we seemed to be made for each other. He knew I felt the same.

In his reply, Jordan told me he’d again woken up and couldn’t shake the feeling that he had to talk to me. He’d found my letter by accident, three weeks after I’d written it.

Just a few weeks after, when I came home and my husband was still drunk from the day before, I finally sunk with the realization that the cycle had merely continued. Pain, dissatisfaction on both ends. Deep down, I believe I had always known that no matter how hard I still tried, this wasn’t right, even if I didn’t want to. My body knew: the depression, anxiety I had developed. We’d lived separately under the same roof for a long time. I had struggled greatly for never letting myself believe that choosing Jordan was the right thing, never truly able to shut out my feelings for him. Instead, I had spent 4 rather lonely years unable to give my husband the wholehearted support he needed for a truly devoted wife. I had distanced us. I had given myself an anxiety disorder. I won’t abscond him: he continued to abuse my trust by spiraling back into addiction. He blamed me for not finishing AA. In the end, he told me that my toxicity drove him to develop a drinking problem, even though it had existed long before me. Two of us were at fault. And almost every night for 4 years, I had questioned if anything I ever did would make me feel satisfied.

Then, the pandemic felt like it had stripped everything from me that I thought was too important to leave behind.

Church. Friends. Travel. Work.

With nothing left to bury my unhappiness in, I took a long walk and then I finally told my husband what I should have said years ago.

“I can’t do it anymore. I hope that you know what your drinking has cost you.”

The week of what would have been our 4th anniversary, he left. I wanted to undo what I had done. I asked him to stay. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep. I begged him to reconsider. It all felt like a mistake: I didn’t feel the grand sense of freedom I thought I would. I felt pain, and disgust, with myself. Had I flippantly villianized one man to ease my conscious about being in love with another? Was this the greatest mistake of my life?

I told Jordan I needed space. I didn’t know when, or if, I could talk to him again.

Alone, I went to the darkest places imaginable. As I considered going to the hospital for my panic attacks, I sought treatment for my codependency. I went to the counselor I’d gone to for years, who had counseled me through my marriage and now counseled me through divorce. I got a psychiatrist. I still went to church online. I did a lot of talking to God. It took months of healing, months of being alone and learning how to not cry when coming home to an empty home. Months to think about what I wanted, and what the past ten years had meant. I began to see things clearly, very slowly, in the midst of that copacetic summer, I finally found, after all those years, healing.

I texted Jordan, months later. It had been 9 years. I felt as though we had fought a war. We’d tried moving on. I’d pushed him away, multiple times. Back in Macon, all those years ago, Jordan made me a promise that he would always be there for me and would care about me. Even after all the years that passed and all I put him through he never broke that promise.

Finally, it was time to bring the cycle to a close.

So I wrote to him.

“I’m finally healed enough to talk again. Do you want to come over?”

Listen to ISLY here: https://m.mixcloud.com/jordan-mcgee2/isly-mixed-by-mcgee-me/

One Year On My Own

This week marks a massive milestone for me: it has been one year since I began living alone. Looking back, I'm frankly blown away by the speedy passage of time. I hurt so much back then that I thought I didn't even want to live anymore. I have experienced a lot of pain in my life, but nothing compared to what my heart went through during that time. I cried until my eyes went dry. I couldn't eat. And once I was finally stable enough to be alone, I felt like the silence I came home to swallowed me whole, each passage of each hour slowly ticking by, marking an eternity of solitude that lay before me. I felt like a fragile shell, easily broken by any small kink in the day, easily jostled by any bad news, waiting constantly for the other shoe to drop. It was a time of great questioning for me. A year ago, I sat crying on the floor, telling myself that I could still undo things, that things could return to how they were in my life before I chose to walk down this path of ending my marriage. Looking back, I believe I knew what I needed to do, but there was no way for me to fully anticipate or understand the kind of pain that the journey would put me through. It was enough to make me want to stop and rewind. But I am so fortunate that that wasn't what happened. 

We don't always know what we need while it's happening. A year ago, I couldn't tell you that I needed things to happen the way they did. I didn't realize that tearing apart my entire schema of life: confronting all of the pent up guilt, the anxiety, the uncertainty, the anger, even: was pivotal to moving forward in my life. I felt stagnant for many years. It was only this year that I began to feel like a stream from which rocks have been dislodged, allowing the waters to flow freely once more. "I just can't find peace," I thought to myself long time ago. "No matter how hard I try. There are questions I can't silence, and answers I can't bear to face." At the time I experienced my lowest point, I couldn't know that relearning how to seek happiness, appreciate the world around me, lean into my loved ones, was all part of the framework that would build this incredible future that I'm living now. It was all I could do to get out of bed in the morning. I sang a song very often during those first few months, as I leaned heavily into John Mark McMillan and Josh Garrels' music during this time to provide me comfort as I processed my pain, for much of the time, alone. 

Farther along we'll know all about it, Farther along we'll understand why. So cheer up my brothers, live in the sunshine. We'll understand this, all by and by. 

As my counselor, who has known me for years and counseled both myself and my ex husband, told me this evening, "You're here because you put in the hard work." And I know that that is true. I have never felt more loved, more supported, or more true to myself than I do now. 

There are a lot of emotions that come with this time. I know that what I write perhaps seems melodramatic, but I had only ever lived alone for about 5 months out of my entire life prior to last year. This year pointed out many glaring facets of myself to me: I had never cultivated a satisfaction for living alone and creating my own space. I wasn't sure how to be happy alone. I relied on people I was in a relationship with to fill up my space. I had to completely rethink how I approached life, how I filled my time, and what brought me peace.

It feels like a lifetime ago, because now - without trying to sugarcoat it - I truly wake up each and every day so grateful for my life. I love my beautiful home. I love its views that overlook the city. I love my plant jungle on the patio. I love the light on Sunday evenings at sunset. The high ceilings, the decor I've painstakingly rearranged and added to for years now (and redone this past year). I wake up now and I am so happy. Truly. It's been the hardest and the best year of my life. 

So... I have a lot of words of advice for anyone struggling with loneliness. Or living alone. For people exiting relationships, or entering new phases. I've lived it, each painful day and week, and it didn't happen all at once but one day the sadness didn't drag me down anymore: I realized I'd risen above it. My hard work had buoyed me upwards. 

Firstly, treat yourself. I get myself fresh flowers weekly. I got a subscription to a monthly box I liked. Those little gifts really lift my spirits. When I cultivate my space and intentionally use my money to spend on something aside from basic necessities - it gives me something to look forward to, and was a much needed bright spot for me.

Secondly, exercise. No, really. I didn't know how badly I needed a regular routine. I got an unlimited subscription at a yoga studio. It has hands down been the best thing I've spent money on this year. The accountability of going to a class - being able to watch my body get stronger and transform - it has been so empowering and satisfying. If you have a hard time motivating yourself to go to the gym, which I do, I highly recommend a subscription to a studio or some other type of gym. It has improved my mental health tenfold. It can be pricey - but for me, it's worth setting aside this money because it's an investment into myself. (Also, if I skip eating out 3-4 times per month, that pays for my classes. So it can definitely pay to shift priorities if you are able).

Thirdly, get outside. This is harder in the winter time. I'm really grateful I went through the darkest times I did in the summer - I always used to hate summer, but this past year it became one of my favorite seasons. I intentionally made trips to the beach. I bought a bike and rode to the park, to the grocery store, just rode. Start a garden. Feel the earth in your hands. Lie underneath the sun and just daydream. I'll admit winter was hard for me because I couldn't do these things as much. I really relied on exercise and visiting friends more during this time. But every sunny day I could get? I made it a point to spend some time outside. 

Fourth, lean into your friends and family. This should be a gimme. But I started weekly calls with my sister. I made time to see friends. It was a huge shift for me, one who is so work-centric. COVID was actually a blessing in that I couldn't work as much as I'm used to. It’s easy to go down the rabbit hole of feeling alone, to get lost alone by yourself. It really helped for me to schedule phone calls, that way I'd stick to doing them - otherwise I'm the kind of person that can sit at home alone and talk to no one, even if I promise I still love you. 

Lastly, I highly recommend planning things to look forward to. I planned frequent weekend trips to see friends. I got to travel a few times this year. I climbed a mountain on a spiritual hike in a rainstorm. We all need something to look forward to, and having those checkpoints helps give you motivation to push through each day. 

I could say a lot of other things - about how that spiritual hike changed my life. About how faith and my church really got me through the hard times, even when we couldn't meet in the middle of a pandemic. I found a quiet spot in my neighborhood by a pond that I loved spending time in. I picked up a new hobby that challenged me (music), and leaned into new books. I started pen pals with people - I loved the excitement of a letter awaiting me in the mail. It's been a lot of self care - but not the froufrou kind. It's been the intentional kind, that I built on and sometimes forced myself to initiate until finally, my mind started realizing I was human again. And you know what? It's rocked. I'm so grateful for this time learning to be happy on my own. It makes me so appreciative of the little things, even more appreciative of the big things, and enriched my life in ways I never realized I needed.

It's so good to be in that place. For all that I felt I had lost last year: I spent a year "alone", but gained more than I could ever imagine.

A Candid Reflection on the Last 5 Years.

In two weeks, one year will have passed since the day my marriage ended. How long ago that seemed, back before I knew the pain and the withdrawals I would go through, before I knew how much I would transform, before I knew that this year was not the eternity of lonely penitence I once thought lied in wait ahead of me. I have to be honest, part of me believed it was all just a test back then. If I did the right things, if I got counseling, wrote the letters, went to church, prayed enough...things could go back to the way they were, reconciliation would happen. I only thought this in the early days, to be clear. Looking back now, I believed this because my codependent brain couldn’t cope with the ending just yet. I needed some sort of reassurance, even just a false one, that things wouldn’t be the way they were. 

For the past year, I have tried to walk a fine line of being both open and being more reserved about what happened. I do believe in respecting other people’s privacy, but at the same time, I also have always believed that it’s important to shed light on your struggles, and on your truth, because it lends strength to others who perhaps have gone through the same thing. I have always tried to walk the route of being more open and candid with my life, even if it doesn’t always shed me in the most beautiful light. I’m a very flawed, divorced, chronically ill 27 year old who has struggled with depression, eating disorders, anxiety, and her share of familial issues for most of my life. I’m not merely a passerby in any of that. I’ve played an active role in the drivers seat, hurting people I love, being too rough on the edges and making mistakes along the way. But I do believe that learning from it (and by extension, processing it through writing and candidness) is helping me continue to grow into the woman I am meant to become. 

So I wanted to talk to you tonight about addiction, about alcohol, because I have spent a very long, long time thinking about it. Years, actually. It has played a center part in my life since 2016, two weeks after I walked down the aisle, when I learned I was married to someone who struggled with this. The paramedics called me one Friday while I was interning at the hospital, still a student. 

“Lacy Mason?” They asked. I answered yes. “We found your husband on the side of the road. He’s injured, and we believe he’s been drinking.”

I felt like a train had hit me, but the most overwhelming feeling was one of confusion. What? How? Why? I had known literally nothing about this until the moment they called. Had I been that much of a fool that I really hadn’t known? Had other people known and not told me? Had I really missed all of the signs? 

I was angry, too. Selfishly, I was. Anger is a first instinct. A human one. And often the thing we feel before we start to take a step back and process things. I missed my best friend’s wedding rehearsal dinner that night as I picked him up from the hospital and let him sleep it off. I lied to everyone and said it was a biking incident, full of shame and denial. Even my clinic instructor who I frantically explained a fake situation to so I could leave and get him. My heart hurt. My head hurt. I felt like I was in a dream.

I think the hardest thing was hardly being able to talk about it. How do you have a conversation with someone who barely even remembers what happened? How do you tell your friends who just helped you live your “happily ever after” mere weeks ago that this has happened? I couldn’t begin to figure out how to start. So I didn’t. 

It was not an isolated incident. Not that summer, not that year. Sometimes months would go in between, sometimes shorter, other times longer. I felt worried when I was gone, worried what I could come back to, worried about the bottles in the kitchen I had yet to get rid of because I didn’t fully understand the gravity of depth of what was happening. I wondered if I had done something wrong. I wondered if I had caused this. 

At 22, mostly I was just confused. I was hurt. I hadn’t seen any behavior like this before, and it seemed to start without warning. Truly, it just began on a day that seemed exactly like every other day. 

I know now after many years that addiction is a difficult thing. It’s not a linear healing process, and that’s something I struggled a great deal with, as I believe I unfairly expected that for a long time. I think as someone who personally has never struggled with this particular battle in life, my lack of experience didn’t equip me to provide the kind of emotional support necessary to either let myself thrive instead of just survive, or help the person struggling through it properly. Nor to recognize the right steps to take to get either of us through it. 

While I recoiled in anger and hurt, I should have extended an olive branch and built a community. I should have set structure and accountability. I should have pushed the 12 steps more. I did try to do my part. I didn’t mention it to friends. He wanted to keep it private. So I did. And I did do everything I could do establish that protective wall of privacy around us, even at the expense of my own well being. Even when I got questions from friends. Where did the entire bottle of whiskey go from the pantry of my friends house that weekend we stayed? As I pulled more into myself, I clung to old bad habits. I didn’t give myself enough insulin. I lost weight. It was to give myself a sense of control, but it was a silent cry for help, too. And when I didn’t think I could take it anymore, I’d try to walk away, and then I’d inevitably return to the cycle, unable to face my fears of loneliness and loss, digging a deeper and deeper well of hurt into not just myself, but both of us. The “flight to health” - the act to push away any of the deeper, residual hurt in order to soothe the bad feelings and return things to normal in the face of a blowup - plagued me for years, as I was unable to break out of my own toxic cycle I created. I became consumed with my own hurt and emotions over everything, demanding more, turning to things I shouldn’t have, and shutting myself off. I built my own walls. And it stunted my own ability to heal, let alone my ability to help support the person I was with. I wish I hadn’t done all of this, but that’s the thing about growth - it often takes the “what not to do” to learn the “what to do.” (If that’s not the case for you, consider me jealous of you.) In the end, all of this left two people unable to move forward and heal. I was angry about the past, my illusions of happiness shattered, and I became a harsh critic because of it. People rarely respond well to this. 

At the same time, I was just young. I went back and forth between feeling I was too harsh and too soft. I have an innate desire to please, and a hard time saying no and telling hard truths. Lacking healthcare or feeling the strain of a single income for a long time, it was hard to prioritize getting the mental help needed for either of us, believing that with enough hard work this could be handled without professional help. When I was pressed to bend the rules, to “allow” a drink, I eventually caved in, on multiple occasions that led to bad outcomes later on. I brought the occasional bottle of wine home. I followed all the wrong steps. 

When I got sad, I tended to pull deeper into myself, instead of reaching out. I think I could have avoided a lot of pitfalls had I talked to someone with similar experience, perhaps, or just reached out to a trusted adviser or confidante more. But I felt shame, and felt I’d betray trust it I did. I wanted very much to preserve the illusion that everything was fine on the outside. 

It was hard processing a lot of this hurt alone, because there were so many things that happened that only I remembered or witnessed. It was hard when those happened and they made you more paranoid: every little thing became more noticeable. The smell of their breath or skin. The cups hidden behind the nightstand. How full was that bottle the night before? A “good night out” put me on edge, just waiting for the other shoe to fall. 

I also think one of the harder things when things finally ended was having it thrown back to me. There was the, “I’ll admit I had a bit of a drinking problem... then,” and the “I struggled so much because you didn’t join Alanon to properly support me.” I still don’t understand how it all started. My once dear friends who told me I was lying and manipulative to ever accuse the person I’d lived with for 5 years of having a problem hurt very deeply. There were the incidents revealed to me even after, that I hadn’t known about. It made me question several years of my life: what version of reality I could actually trust. 

And all of it is just water under the bridge now. But I’ll admit it hurt for a long time, and even when I talk about it to my counselor... I’m shocked at what an emotional reaction it evokes from me. The tiny shakes, the quiver of my voice as I told back tears. The ache in my throat. I wanted to sob. I held it all for a long time. The times I felt alone, the guilt I carried for all I thought I could have done better. And I’ve spent a year letting it go. It feels good, to let the universe play its part now as I have set this part of my life free. I learned, I grew, I changed over the years. I hurt. But I was who I needed to be then, and that helped me become the person I need to be now. It takes strength to move past your mistakes and let them refine you.

I want to say this: you might think you can’t, but you are strong. Whatever you choose, whatever you are facing, you are strong. Looking back on a year... it sits so well with my soul that everything happened as it should have. Could it have been executed better? Yes. But it took strength, nonetheless, to come out of this situation whole. Strength takes sifting through the oftentimes messy weakness to find what lies beneath. 

I want to tell you to trust your heart. I want to tell you that choosing to repeat cycles that only perpetuate your pain in an attempt to sacrifice for someone will inevitably come back to sabotage and ruin the original sacrifice. Because neither of you learn. Whatever that means to you, know that you cannot expect to heal without FULLY confronting pain and hurt. Not partially. Not just laying things aside and not processing how they’ve effected both parties for the sake of preserving the temporary peace. 

The good thing about setting something free is... you can hope for a happy ending from a distance, as though you are reading a fairytale. We should all want what is best for our fellow humans. 

You no longer play an active role, but there are little reminders and whisps of memories you’ll get every so often, and you’ll smile at them and think, “for all of this that happened, I was made better. They too, learned in ways that they needed to. For all of this that happened, I played my part in the universe’s grander scheme. It is no more, but it was good.” These thoughts will pass. The lessons have been learned, the story seen to conclusion. The final page of that chapter turnt. It is here that I wish for peace and goodness, it is in this space that I feel whole and complete: the work I did to heal has made me feel whole again, because I rebuilt myself from the ground up using what I learned. 

The journey, for all its pain and poignant beauty: it was good. 

The COVID Blues

Lately I’ve been down. I feel like I’ve been crumbling under the weight of this pandemic. And I feel guilty saying that, because things could be a lot worse. I have a job. I have healthcare. I have a roof over my head. The boxes of “survival” are all checked. 

I suppose this is indicative of an important distinction for all of us: that there is a great deal of difference between surviving, and thriving. This winter has been long and dark indeed: I have lost some of my favorite residents to Covid, seen others hospitalized, and am feeling the pressing burden of keeping patients, managing budget, and assuring residents of our safety protocols as a rehabilitation director, while brainstorming creative ways to build caseload. The stress gets to me.

In the springtime and the summer, my walks outside gave me life. Picnics in the sun, watching the geese by the pond. Riding my bike to the park and sitting for hours on a blanket outdoors, reading. I didn’t take for granted these moments, because they healed me. But I didn’t realize just how much I depended on them for my well-being. The cold, dark days make it hard to enjoy being outside. 

It is isolating, and I struggle with it. No one tells you about how isolating it feels after divorce. To have made a home with another human being and then learn to grow accustomed to living alone. Even if you are better off for it, the fact is, you will almost surely feel the absence of another human in your space more acutely, and there will be things, even little ones, that you miss, even if you don’t miss the person. I truly have had to work hard to navigate the transition, and doing it in a pandemic made it a great deal harder. Aside from a 5 month stretch between college and undergraduate school, I have never lived alone in my life. Everything I learned that was useful in my previous season of life, I have to unlearn to adapt to my current one. There is a peace about it: I enjoy the space I’ve created, and everything in its place just the way I wanted. I enjoy the too-few leisurely mornings or the quiet evenings with a glass of wine (not too much) and a book, or sitting listening to NPR. But there is an intense loneliness, too, that makes feeding into depression easy. One that might more easily be abated by groups, or church, or dinners with friends, or going out on a Friday - things that aren’t readily available in the current state of the world. 

Don’t get me wrong: I’m so happy with how my life is right now. I feel so blessed, I feel as though my life is just filled to the brim with goodness and abundance, I have so much to live and be happy for. I am truly grateful and satisfied. But in spite of all that, I do still have ups and downs, and I’m sure I’m accurate in saying that many of us are feeling the strain of COVID right now.

I am prone to depression. I weaned myself off of antidepressants late last year. It was a difficult process. I am glad that I went on them last year. I had a difficult time pulling myself out of bed most mornings. It strongly interfered with work and I couldn’t eat. Going off of them was painful. My moods didn’t always feel like my own. I feel much better now. But some days or nights I’m just... down. And it’s hard to get back up again. It’s hard to know if I made the right choice choosing to go without them, but I made the choice I thought was right for me at the time, so I’m comfortable with that. Artists and highly emotional people often struggle with the darker end of the emotional spectrum that can manifest as depression. Where there is intense joy and feeling, is sadness, too. The piper has to be paid, at least so I see it. I can write some beautiful words and feel beautiful things and be moved by the human experience in ways that I feel many of my fellow humans cannot. But so too can I be moved by sadness and negative feelings, compounded by childhood pain, codependency, and a chronic illness. So this s is not to say that depression can’t also be a clinical thing, or simply something that anyone can experience based on circumstances in their lives or their processing. Because that is the case, too. Since I was a child, I was a writer and often a loner, and as a teenager, I was aware of these ups and downs, although I didn’t have a word for them. As an adult, I am glad that I largely know how to manage it. I’m good at coping. I’m good at staying busy. The repetitive and peaceful routine of cleaning. A show I enjoy. Checking on my plants. Yoga. All of these things help. 

But the times they don’t, sometimes, I just get to be sad, and I have to let that process happen, and try again tomorrow. I enjoy the peacefulness this stage of my life has brought. I’m grateful for the freedom. I’m grateful for how much less stressed I am. But I’m also sad being alone, sometimes, because I miss the space around me being filled. I accept that. Perhaps it is simply laziness: I enjoyed the space filled around me because it didn’t hold me accountable for looking inside of myself for internal gratification or fullness. Perhaps it is just simply human. 

Covid feels like a little too much today. I want to be around people. I want the “easy” route of companionship - sitting in a coffee shop, or swing dancing, the casual encounters with familiar strangers that make me feel like a part of something. I miss casual strangers, faces, and social outings. I think one day I’ll look back and I’ll feel glad that this time exposed weak points of mine and crutches I relied on to supplement my own internal sense of happiness. 

But I’ll also rejoice and appreciate every normal moment, once those days come again. 

Otherness.

Carving a path for myself has always been hard. In truth, I’ve always felt like an outsider. Even long before I had an invisible illness that made me feel as though I lived my life inside of a glass box.

I was acutely aware of my own “otherness” even as a child. I was a puzzle piece that never seemed to fit quite right. I would look at myself in the mirror as I grew up, studying the different angles of myself, hoping to glean more insight into who I was. Practicing conversations I imagined I might have with other people. Letting my mind wander with fantasy and whimsy, and even more dangerous - idealism I dared to hope upon. I learned to settle that quickly, my own personal motto becoming, “taper your expectations.” It is too easy to become disappointed as an idealist. We oftentimes learn this the hard way. 

I had an active imagination and a love for writing and art from a young age, but an awful awkwardness around people. Am I the only one who could never even figure out something so simple as what to do with my hands when I talked to people? 

The words of a girl I used to spend time with when I was 8 still ring in my ears, even to this day, on the last phone call we had: 

“Lacy, when we hang out, things are...different. Really different.” 

It took me time, but I realized a large part of my feeling like an outsider was born from my early struggles with anxiety and depression. As many of us artists, feelers, and creators find ourselves struggling with. I think this can be complicated because we both mourn and delight in the things that set us apart. We push ourselves into art to find our great belonging, as our way to try to connect with a world that inherently tells us that our way is the one that doesn’t quite fit. There is a freedom in stopping to say, “Maybe it’s not me that is wrong. Maybe it’s the world. Maybe the reason I feel so different is because I’ve been told that “right” is only one thing. Maybe I don’t have to be like that after all. Maybe I’m like this because I like it here.”

So as I grew older, I learned to step into this otherness more comfortably. To surround myself with people who could see me, and whom I could see. It is no wonder that I often felt drawn to others on the fringe - outsiders, or those on the border, if you will, with whom we all shared a little of this “otherness”, too. Though I tried and tried when I was younger, I came to see that I couldn’t necessarily change myself to be the free-flowing, easygoing person who always fit in. Resilience borne from hardship is a badge most individuals do not want to wear, but is rather forced upon you. Living in a world of lows and highs and oftentimes struggling to find the right balance of in between is difficult, but I learned that it’s okay to embrace this for what it is and seek out balance I n my own way. To listen to my inner self. To change myself to conform to my conditioned version of “right” that the world taught me - I did learn that this was the harder and, nay, more impossible task. I instead had to find my own place. And realize that was okay, even if it meant occasionally feeling alone in a crowded room. 

There are many things that I have learned about myself in the 27 years I have spent alive. 

I know that in order to carve my happiness, I must be a creator. 

I must strive to be true to myself. 

I must feel that I am serving in what I do. 

I must try harder every day to make my heart soft, even if I did not innately learn this. 

I must be okay with my good days and bad days, and be willing to take the steps I need to to listen to what my body and mind is telling me that I need. 

I must be willing to put in the work to be my best self. It is not just steps to an end: it is a life long journey. 

As I get older, I realize perhaps that this sense of otherness is not just me. Perhaps we all feel it. Perhaps we all feel that we live on an island, where we are, at the start, innately lonely. And perhaps we all simply act on this in a different way. Some might find it easy to leave. Some might be content with staying. Many might find that right amount of in between, effortlessly, even. Some might hover in that in between, ever so unsure of how to end up in the right place, afraid of swimming out too deep, unable to get back if we go too far, unable to leave if we never dare to go far enough. 

For me? The island is both hard and too easy to live on. For creatures who hate loneliness, there is a sort of draw to it, too. Like a siren’s song. Living in our own world is what sets us apart. Things feel right, there. The rest of the world is what seems strange to us, not the other way around. 

The longer we stay there, the more that the walls that once held us in seem comforting. I want to remember what these times are like, too. But I don’t want to be here forever. We want to be validated too, you see. We want to find our belonging. Striking the right balance is learning to find your belonging without giving up your true self.

My otherness is something I stride to bridge the gap on, between being true to myself and finding my best belonging. It also beckons. “Do you know what you are here for?” It asks. I think I’d like to find out. I say that I think because that journey can be painful.

Part of my sense of otherness, yes, has been my own personal experiences with pain and my reaction to them. A large part of it I have also, importantly, learned to identify in the last year as a single word: 

Codependency. 

My journey out of codependency has not been easy. It has been a mine pit that I have tried to gnash and claw myself out of, all while the voices of codependency whisper to me not to change. I grow defensive. I do not want to change what has been comfortable for 27 years. So I regularly struggle daily with the same self doubts that always plagued me, only this time, the scene is simply set differently. It is hard to listen to my self doubt so frequently, and in some ways, be helpless to do a thing about it. My need to tether myself to someone or something in order to find deeper meaning is a painful artifact of my childhood, a wound that was left in me by a parent who loved me, but could not allow their own love to flow freely to me. 

Codependency is a lonely place. It is cold, hollow, endless. Because there exists inside of you a hole so deep, that no one thing can ever fill it. Your heart is insatiable. And it tricks you, the clever thing. It takes the things that bring you joy and it morphs them into things that are no longer enough. They are poisoned in your mind, as your mind tells you to loathe them because they are not enough to fix you. Try as they could, they could never be enough. 

That sounds awful, you think. 

It is. It can be. Because it isn’t reality. No one bring can be everything. No one person can be everything. But only you can tell yourself, that.

Recovery is something I’ve learned is not an end state, but rather a practice. Daily I must remind myself. 

“It is enough.” 

“Treasure your abundance.”

“Stop and appreciate.”

“Only you can truly be in charge of your happiness.”

It is important to differentiate this from settling. You have every ability and the tools to be happy, with codependency. But you have to check yourself. Because you are going to question yourself. Constantly. “Do I have enough?”

And you must remember to pause and tell yourself, “Yes, I do.”

I used to think that happiness was a career. So I graduated with a doctorate at 23. And still, I felt like a failure. Still, I felt unsatisfied. An imposter that didn’t belong, but also should have strived for more, pouring and pouring myself into work I found identity in, all while feeling more and more empty, depleted, and lost. 

I used to think that happiness was a man. I painted many to be what I wanted. A white knight. I faulted them for not living up to my impossible standards. It also made me stay in situations when I shouldn’t have. I knew, mere months after my marriage that it was not right for me. Deep inside: I knew. We were not helping each other become our truest selves. I think we were even hastening ourselves further away from who we should have been. My duty bound me there. It also caused me to fester, to simmer, in my anger. Anger that said more about me than about him, even if his addiction was an exacerbation to my negative emotions. The more I simmered, the more I tried to control. Control is not love. Trust is. An absence of trust became centerpoint to years of unhealthy behavior, with bandages placed over rough points to smooth them over, without exposing the deeper wounds to allow them to heal. It is no wonder that my ex-husband eventually left me. I was the one that threw the door open, of course. He simply shut it behind him. I wasn’t happy, and he wasn’t, either. I hated his addiction, but it also made me angry at myself. Because I continued to let myself remain in a situation that violated my boundaries. And he did not feel like he was in a safe place to heal and re-establish his own boundaries, either. Will he ever find healing and recovery? I certainly hope so. But the narrative of my own life no longer depends on what he comes to be. Now, I am learning to confront my sadness, my anger, and my codependency in the narrative of what it says about me: not, “I am feeling all of this because of another person.” I am not. That is merely a variable. My feelings indicate that I still have much work left to do, in my own heart and mind. 

I am finally living in a narrative that is right for me. When I look into the eyes of the man I truly believe has been made for me, I see two people that compliment the other. We watch each other’s blind spots. Neither of us are people who can be controlled. It is hard, too. We disagree often, and butt heads. He pushes me, and I push him. But I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I am becoming more and more the person that is my true self, because of him. But. It is important still to note that not even my soulmate can fill the emptiness inside of me. Only I can. From a heart that I fill with the grace to give what I might not have ever had. From one that learns to be softer side by side with its developed fortitude. I must remind myself that I am not left wanting more because someone else failed. I am left wanting more because my codependent brain keeps trying to tell me that nothing can ever be enough. And that is not true. So I learn to hold him a little tighter, to treasure every moment with him, but also to learn to be comfortable in my own space. To remember that being alone isn’t always loneliness. It’s also quiet self reflection, and honoring myself. It has its place. Him needing space is not a rejection of me. It is him respecting his boundaries. It is me respecting his. We are a painting made of different colors, making one thing, but each comprised of our different selves. He helps me to get outside of my head when I get into that codependent, depressive, and negative cycle - and I am learning to get better at letting him. It’s an utterly transforming process. As a slow learner, it’s hard. But I am filled with the comfort of knowing that at last: this is where I’m supposed to be. Learning side by side, with him, who I am, who he is, and who we are.  

“What do you want, Lacy?” I want to be happy, of course, I would answer back. But I also have to be honest with myself. If happiness was staring me in the face, would I even know what it looked like? It is hard to accept that happiness is a transient thing. It is not a fixed state. It is an ebb and flow, a journey that I do not simply work towards, but one that I live daily. I learn a little more each moment at a time. 

I hope that we all dare to continue down the River that is the ebb and flow of happiness, that we have the strength to break our cycles, carve our own path, and that we find the self realization and appreciate within in order to celebrate our otherness. We are not all so different, but rather alike, I think. Other or not, we are boundless, capable, free, unable to be labeled. And we are constantly learning what that means. May we never stop.