In the bathroom there is a saying inside of a frame: Bloom where you are planted. I don’t know if I am planted here but I am trying to bloom.

It feels like I have to because of the decision I made.
I haven’t really spoken about that here, and I think I should it’s just difficult to actually ‘say’ the words.

If I say them ‘out loud’ then I am a failure right? Every struggle over the past 3 years was for nothing?
This can’t have been for nothing, this pain and restructuring and fighting. It’s can’t have been for nothing. I don’t know how to turn that off though so I don’t say it and I don’t allow myself to feel it and I don’t process it.
I focus on small progress like finally getting all of my accounts out of the red.
I focus on little victories like learning all of the new work flows at the gig and trying to figure out just how this is gonna look in 6 months.

I do little things like karaoke and finally being able to order both a meal and a beverage and pay rent and not wonder if I’m gonna be able to put gas into the truck also.

I sit on the deck in the sun giving myself some much needed vitamin D and dance around the ‘work’ that I need to do.

I do laundry and try to enjoy an afternoon without a petulant 6 year old stomping around the house and wonder if in a couple months if I am gonna ask for the apartment and what it looks like if the answer is yes.

I do almost everything that I can to ignore that feeling of emptiness and loss and most of the time I am successful.

I’m good at some things and not allowing myself to feel is one of them. Putting on that public face to mask the private pain is a skill I excel @ and don’t plan to let go, even when I am healthier.

I think about joining the gym to keep up the weight loss. I ignore the text messages that I still get on occasion from B.

I reach out every so often to my spoon, who I miss terribly, to let her know I still ove her and I am still here….even though I seem so far away.

I allow myself random infatuations knowing the reality is I will find some way to determine this is not ‘relationship’ worthy and figure out how to move along to the next one. I don’t look at the calendar because it will remind me of dates, like Mother’s Day which I know I am gonna struggle to get through, since I have no distractions I can create on that day.

I catch up on TV I haven’t watched and I eat too much popcorn.

Sometimes I spend an afternoon helping out my roommate and resist adding the Hello Kitty keys she gave me to the house to my keychain because that would mean this is something resembling permanent and I don’t really remember what permanant feels like and if I am ok with it.

I remind myself that I have to do things like have sex, and then I figure out how to avoid it by picking a ridiculous fight, and then making a drive down an old path, staring at a window and wondering what if…..

I got lost on that drive Friday night. Well not exactly lost, I just missed an exit. Then I missed another one but like all things which are imprinted within you, I found my way there. 5 years ago he might have still been there, but I am sure he is not now. He’s been much more successful at rebuilding his life than I have, even if that life he chose is no longer what he wants. How do I know it’s no longer what he wants? The same way I’ve always known everything else when it comes to him, I feel it.

My feelings with him are never wrong, they are the one truth that has remained since my 20s. I’ve ignored them when it suited me and I’ve obsessed with them when they were all I’ve had but they were never wrong. Unhealthy at times perhaps but never wrong.

Because they were never wrong I ask myself am I prepared to take this walk again? I’ve let go of so much, forgiven too much, been far too injured yet I am asking if I can do this again? While I know the answer to the question is yes, I also ask will I?

I understand that I can say no. That is a new word in the lexicon with him, but I know that I can say no. I’ve created a new default for me in these last 3 years and the possibility of saying no to what I’ve never stopped wanting is a possibility. Even on long nights at 3 am when I am sitting in a parking lot and wondering just would happen if I crossed that line in the sand I drew.

Right now though I am trying to bloom where I am standing.

Planted? That is a possibility for the future, in this moment though, I am standing. For a woman who life beat to the point she didn’t want to breathe any longer, standing is a big fucking deal.

 

Aphrodite Brown