GLOW UP
2 years ago vs today (well, 2 days ago)
About 2 years ago I went through one of the hardest periods of my life… the end of a destructive, unhealthy, codependent relationship.
It was one of those situations that started as the peak scene in everyone’s favourite indie romance - I’d never experienced so much joy, laughter, intimacy, love - all at once. We were that couple who were it for eachother. That couple who looked at eachother and could see our entire lives together.
And slowly, through a series of well meaning but naive, dumb decisions, through lies, illnesses and spiralling, it ended like something from a horror film.
It’s hard to be in a situation where you experience the sweetest love and also complete abuse of that love from the same person. I can’t hate him. 2 Years later, and there’s still too many moments where I miss him. But every time I tell someone our story, I realise how bad it was. How bad we were for eachother.
I look at myself in this picture from 2 years ago, taken maybe a few weeks after he left. I barely recognise myself. I was failing classes, getting high 24 hours a day, refused to leave my apartment, even bleached my hair in some desperate attempt to mask my shame. To my friends I was turning a new leaf - going to parties again, getting back out there, moving on - but kept messaging him for months, worrying about him for hours every day, obsessively checking when he was last active online to check he was still alive. I was comforting him with my heart that had been completely destroyed, until he finally got so bad that I had to cut off communication. And I felt that I couldn’t tell anyone about it, because at that time, more than anything else? I was so ashamed.
So after months of isolation, escapism and loneliness, it slowly started to get better. There was a lot of ups and downs in the process. I didn’t take the path someone else might have taken. There was a lot of denial in the process. As they say, healing is never linear. But here I am today… not always happy, maybe with a bit of a wall still around my heart, but moving towards that carefree girl I used to be. I deserve to be her again… and when I see the smile I wear today, I hope she’ll be back soon.