2019 — a final reflection (pt. 1)

In my head, I’ve written this post a few times. I’ve broken it down into smaller posts focused on different topics, I’ve thought of lessons I have learned, I’ve turned all the negatives of the year into positives. But after all of that, I still don’t really have a direction I think this will go in. I have a lot to say. So much has happened this year, and this will probably be nothing more than a word dump. Here goes nothing…

If you’ve read anything I’ve written before, you probably know I hate change. Change is something that scares me, makes me anxious, causes me a great deal of stress. This year was full of so much change and it made for turbulent months. I’m just now finally settling in after the last shakeup. It was just really damn hard. My thought process was to make this a chronological blog of the year, but I don’t think that will happen.

Anyways, I moved three times this year. I lived with my parents at the beginning of the year, met someone and planned to live with them, moved on their couch for a while after the parents harassed about my sexuality when I came out of the closet, moved into a house with that person whose couch I lived on, then moved in with another friend. From May to September, I moved every two months. Just when I got comfortable, I had to go. That was not easy, but the worst was probably the last move.

(Here’s where we get into the things I don’t post about, woo hoo!)

It’s not even worth dwelling on at this point, but it all played a huge part in my year so I need to write it out. I also don’t intend for this to look like a smear against the person, as they still mean a great deal to me, I care about them, and would have done a lot to change the course of the past few months.

That person I moved in with, we moved in as “just friends” but that was complicated and caused me a lot of grief, pain, confusion, sadness throughout the year. I’ve tried to write about the situation a few times, but nothing ever comes out right, though there’s a lot of poems I’ve jotted down about it. When I met said person, she told me she thought I was gay. We grew close incredibly fast. She was going through a breakup and I was realizing that, yes, I probably was gay but repressed it because I was taught it was wrong. We formed a strong friendship and started talking about renting a house together. There was this nagging feeling that something else was there, but nothing was ever said until the weekend we went to look at a house. We both got drunk together. I finally admitted I was gay for the first time and she told me she wanted to make out with me, but that she wasn’t going to. The next day, she told me that can’t happen, she doesn’t know what she wants, and she can’t be with me because she would “destroy” me.

As time went on and we grew closer, my feelings grew stronger and I grew more confused. There were things said that just added to that confusion. One night we were out at a bar and she grabbed my hand. We walked around holding hands, but she insisted that she didn’t know what she wanted and that she couldn’t be in a relationship at that time. Understood — she just went through a breakup. So I told her I would wait until she was ready. She told me not to. About a month later, I went to a wedding reception with her to be her designated driver. That reception was so much fun. We slow danced, took a bunch of cute photos, and just had a great time. She made out with me a few times, but the next morning, she woke up and told me it couldn’t happen again. “I will destroy you” was again said to me.

A similar situation would happen again the next month, at Pride in Detroit. When we got home from Pride, she told me she didn’t like me that way and didn’t want to be with me. The confusion I felt that night was quite painful, as everything just felt like a roller coaster. I held on to this glimmer of hope that when she figured out what she wanted, we could be together. I mean, it was all so perfect, wasn’t it?

By that point, we had the house we would be moving in to. She decided to buy a house and I would just pay her rent. It was a nice house by the water in a really cute city. Part of me struggled with the idea of whether I could handle living with her when feelings were up and down, but I was already living in her apartment. And that little bit of hope was there. Plus, she was such a good friend of mine that I thought it would be fine.

It wasn’t.

I got to a point that I thought I was over what I felt, but looking back, I wasn’t. We fought a lot over stupid things (don’t get me wrong — there were a lot of really great moments, like late night show binges, long walks, and coffee shop writing days, but there was a growing tension). I struggled with the idea that even though things could be so perfect, they weren’t and I guess I didn’t understand what about me made her not want to be with me. But I was happy with where I lived and happy with where my life was headed. But in the midst of that happiness was an anxiety I couldn’t control and couldn’t pinpoint an exact cause. I remember having random panic attacks near the end of my time living there.

I remember asking her if I should start looking for a new place to live when the arguing got to be intense. She said no. About a week or so later, I had to.

She said a lot to me when kicking me out and it hurt. I lost my cool and screamed back, and I still regret that reaction. But through all of it, I never got an explanation. She told me she wanted to remain friends, valued me, cared about me and didn’t want to lose me. She told me it was her, not me, told me she shouldn’t have moved in with someone, told me that me leaving would be better for our friendship. I agreed. It was toxic and unhealthy and us living together would have just gotten worse and worse for both of us. I don’t blame her for not wanting us to live together, but I still don’t understand why it all went down the way it did or why everything just crumbled after that. She told me we would talk later, after time and space.

She wanted me out of the house immediately, and my friends all told me that once I was out, I should stop speaking to her, but I wanted to continue a friendship and hoped to repair all that went wrong when we lived together. I didn’t hate her for kicking me out –I knew she had a tough year, there was so much tension, and our relationship was turbulent. But the day I got my stuff, she told me to never come back again and blocked me on everything. Since then, the talk she said we would have hasn’t happened. When we speak to each other, it’s short, it’s work-related. And I truly don’t think that talk will ever happen. I get that things weren’t meant to be, but why say you care so much, you want me around, to just turn around and severe all ties with me? It’s not the up and down of our complicated relationship that gets to me. It’s not the fact that she kicked me out that gets to me. What gets to me is that after sincerely believing what she said and wanting to work on forming a friendship that was healthy and good, she just left. It was heartbreak mixed with a lot of confusion. I know you shouldn’t ever beg someone to stay and there’s some reason it ended, but it still has been one of the most nagging things I have dealt with. Even now, I care about her so much and hope her life is going well. I still am sad I was cut out of it, especially so easily, but that’s something I needed to work through. I know I can’t force that connection again. I accept that. And the friendship, while it had its toxicity and was built during poor timing for both of us, added a lot to my life. For the time we were close, she was so supportive, so caring, so patient, and I am thankful I knew her and will always be thankful for the things she did for me and taught me. And I know I wasn’t an innocent party in the situation. If I went back, there are quite a few things I would do and say differently. But I can’t. That’s life. I learned and will carry those lessons forward to future relationships as I form healthy bonds I deserve.

While that and coming out this year really put me in bad places, both had good sides, as they helped me truly see how loved and cared about I am. While my parents are not supportive of who I am and preach at me over it, my friends embraced me and have made sure I am happy and know how much they love me. And when I told my friends I needed to cancel plans because I needed to move that day, last minute, they didn’t say, “OK;” they asked what time I was moving. They showed up with cars and trucks and helped me pack up my life yet again then stuck around to make sure I was fine. They gave me a place to live, they let me cry on their lap for hours the day I got kicked out. They listened to me over and over again. They gave me advice. They never once made me feel bad about how I felt, even though after a while I felt like it was time to stop being hung up on it and talking about it.

That whole situation aside, 2019 was full of adventures and memories I will hold on to forever. I am grateful for everything, even the bad. I needed those things to happen to help me find who I am. I know that may sound cliche, but all of the bad was necessary to show me how strong I am, to help me finally embrace myself, and to give me the push to love who I am.

I am growing every single day, and there’s far more I could write about that happened this year — the experiences I had, the projects I have started and am working on, my plans for the future I am excited about, but for now, I think that sums up what has been on my mind.

2019 kicked my ass, but I’m coming out of it stronger that I ever could have imagined.

about self-love

People seem to think self-love, self-care, and self-discovery are all beautiful things, but really, while the end results are nice, the processes are messy, painful, exhausting.

This year has been a year of all three of those things for me, and it has been incredibly difficult.

Earlier this year, I came out to my extremely religious family after years of grappling with who I was. I think I always knew I probably wasn’t straight, but I tried to push it away or change because of what I have been taught and told. I dated boys, I denied being gay when asked, and was, to be honest, pretty homophobic for a long time.

That attitude slowly started to change. It took meeting someone to realize what I had been trying to deny (that is a complicated story for another post).

Anyways, it took 23 years to accept who I was and tell my family, something I didn’t intend to do until I was moved out of their house, but I couldn’t hide it anymore. It was well-received at first, probably because a good amount of my friends were over at the time, but negative comments later came. I felt belittled, gross, wrong, rejected.

Because of that, I moved out sooner than intended and lived on my co-worker’s couch for a bit (again, a complicated story for another time).

I worked on finding myself. I started writing more, mostly through poetry, and made sure to strengthen the supportive bonds around me. I got into a regular workout routine, fixed up my diet a bit, and in general just tried to better myself and make myself happy.

However, that happiness was surrounded with a lot of stress and anxiety. There was a lot going on, more than I care to get in to or try to make sense of — what’s done is done. I just was seemingly happy but also incredibly down. It got progressively worse, and a few months ago, I hit a slump. I felt like everything that made me happy, everything that brought me joy was conditional and boom, everything changed.

I don’t do well with change. My comfort has been shaken up so many times this year. I just couldn’t take it. I stopped working out and writing. I stopped returning messages. I started staying in bed a lot, locked in my room, just trying to make sense of things that will never make sense and trying to regain a sense of stability, though I guess I’ve never really known much stability, and this year was a good reminder of that. There’s so much more I could get in to, and I may in another post, but for now, I want to focus on the positives and the good that can come from the process of finding yourself.

That slump lasted for a while. But I recently was able to pull out of it, and I am happy. I am happy with who I am and who I am becoming. There are still things about my life I am working to change and things about myself I would like to improve. Note — I say improve, not change. I am who I am, and I don’t want to change that person. I like who I am. I love who I am. I don’t want to be a different person, and I have finally embraced that where I am is exactly where I should be. It may have took pain, heartbreak, loss, and confusion to get to that point, but I am here and I am thankful.

A big thing I have been working on recently is finding the good in the bad that happens. I am doing a pretty decent job of finding those things, but actually accepting those lessons has been a bit tougher. Nonetheless, I am finding peace. I am letting go of resentment. I am feeling happiness, true happiness without the anxieties and fears attached to it.

I thought I found myself, I thought I lost myself. I thought I finally was happy. Suddenly, I hated who I was. I put all the blame of everyone’s words and actions on myself. I allowed myself to get hung up on the unchangeable, I found myself looking back instead of even attempting to see a bigger picture or realize the importance of change, of moving forward. I got comfortable, and when that comfort was threatened and ultimately pulled from beneath my feet, I felt as though I had lost control and I hit a low.

But I am back. I am proud of the place I am in now. So many good things are happening. I alone am responsible for my happiness, my future, my life. I am in control. I have the power to make choices that will positively affect my life. For some reason, in that messy process of finding myself, I seemed to forget that.

The journey to self-love is a rocky one, I think, but it’s a journey worth not only taking, but embracing.

an open letter to you

You will never read this.

The closest you’ll get to getting inside my mind is if I ever hit “send” on that email sitting in my drafts. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t.

Anyways, I don’t think you fully understand what you did to me. Or maybe you do and you just don’t care. Either way, it’s none of my business. I’ll always remember what you would say to me when I would say that my parents were probably saying things about me when I came out — “What people think about you is none of your business.” I now apply that to you. Maybe you hate me. Maybe I really was too much. Maybe you hold fond memories of me. I don’t know and I will never know, but it’s none of my business what comes to mind when you hear my name or see me.

You made me feel so many things, from the beginning. I tumbled headfirst into something that I didn’t understand. You opened up your life and your home to me and you helped me finally become comfortable with myself. And in the process, I fell in love with you. Or maybe the idea of you? Perhaps a little bit of both? I’m not sure — all I know for sure is that the way I felt with you was new, scary, and lovely all at once. And while it ended in a lot of pain, maybe heartbreak (?), I am thankful it happened.

You showed me that it is OK to be myself. You gave me the strength and the encouragement to finally not only accept but embrace the person I am. You were that push to get me out of a toxic environment, and while what we were, whatever the hell that was, became toxic, the good parts of it were necessary and changed my life for the better.

I don’t harbor ill feelings toward you. If anything, I look at you and feel confusion, I used to question how you could say you cared, you valued me, then just act as if nothing ever happened. But, my therapist has told me that I deserve to live a life that isn’t confusing, and she is right.

I understand that if we were together, we would destroy each other. We were fire and gasoline, we exploded quickly, but the flames were painful and would only lead to more issues if we continued to live together. Plus, we were both dealing with issues in our own lives that we needed to handle alone. I clung too hard to you and tried so hard to fix you when really, I should have been working on myself. While losing you from my life completely was hard and hurt, it’s gotten easier. I can stand back and look at the whole picture, the good, the bad, the red flags, the feelings, the signs, everything, and understand it.

Could things have went differently? Maybe. Should there have been better communication? Of course. Will the talks that need to happen ever happen? Nah, probably not. But you know what? I am OK with that. I wasn’t what you needed forever and contrary to what I thought, you weren’t what I needed, either.

We needed to meet when we did. We needed to go through what we did together. Maybe that was the grander purpose of our paths crossing. Or maybe one day we’ll meet again, though I’m not holding my breath for that one. I needed what happened with you to get me where I am now, and where I am is exactly where I am supposed to be. Who is next to me is exactly who needs to be.

I have learned a lot from all of this, but perhaps the most important thing I have learned is how to love myself.

So, thank you. Thank you for the good, the bad, the confusing. I needed it.