I have set with this post swirling in my mind for months, and have managed to fill my brain with ALL of the things to discredit myself and occupy my time instead of “just” sitting down and writing.  Being vulnerable is hard.  It is harder when there are people that misunderstand you (on purpose) and mistake your vulnerability for weakness.  I have battled so many of those thoughts lately that I am exhausted and at a point where: if people chose to misunderstand me without asking for clarification, that is on them… a reflection of their brokenness and not my mending.  And, my dear reader, this is a story of mending.

To my best recollection I have gone through three soul deaths in my lifetime.  I classify a soul death as anyone would a great depression.  When you lay still enough, quiet enough, that you are sure your heart will stop beating.  When there is nothing left to give, and you are absolutely certain you are empty inside, all that remains is the crumbled blackness and jagged feelings of lost love, hope, goals and dreams. Laying for hours, maybe minutes (time no longer exists) waiting for your heart to finally give in to the death that you are quiet certain is living where your soul and heart once were.  This is not a pain that can be explained for it does not even feel like pain, it feels like nothing.  It feels empty.

The first time I encountered this feeling is when my boyfriend died in high school.  It was his fault, of course, he was reckless, an addict, always chasing a new way to feel alive after his world crumbled around him after the death of his mother.  He killed himself and two other teenagers by driving drunk head first into a tree.  I had known trauma before this, but when he died I did as well.  I ceased to exist.  I had to physically force myself to not crawl into his closed casket.  No one will ever fully understand how that changed the entire chemistry of who I am and how heartbroken I still am over twenty years later.  The only thing that kept me alive was my ability to pretend that I was alive.

My second soul death came at the hands of a man I believed to be in love with me.  Of course he turned out to be an addict as well as both mentally and physically abusive.  He tormented me for years as I tried to work with law enforcement to incarcerate him for breaking into my home, almost killing me, and for stalking me.  He plead down to stalking and received three years.  That man had my mind so fucked up I believed I was the one broken.  I believed I was the crazy one and that no one, ever, would love me, a reoccurring theme/thought in my life.  I specifically remember bawling my eyes out on my living room floor yelling at God, or creator, whomever, that I was going to end my life. That I was DONE and that I could no longer take anymore.  The answer I received in my mind was that I needed a dog. At least with a dog, I could sleep because a dog would bark if someone tried to come into my home.  The next day I went to the local shelter and got Nico and wrote a bad check for his adoption fees. That dog saved my life, and he is still the most absolute greatest man dog ever.

My third soul death feels harder to write about.  Maybe because it is fresher? Maybe because I should have known better? Maybe because it was caused by my son’s father?  Moodswing Maverick.  The man I had on a pedestal for fucking years.  The man I compared other men too. The person I believed and loved more than anything.  The man I let sing to my soul and caress my scars.  I secured my blindfold made of his red flags and dove completely into his disaster of a life, wanting nothing more than to just be near him.  I let him destroy me with his lies, cheating, abuse, addiction, and now the abandonment of our child.  I clung to the glimmer of the person he showed me at the very beginning and held on to that thought for dear life, only to discover, that too was a lie.  He was, and never could be, the person he pretended to be.  It has been five years and I am still recovering, and I have the knowledge of narcissistic abuse, borderline personality disorder and my son to thank for my survival.

I wrote this today as a reminder that I can survive heartbreak, even tiny ones.  That even when no one “loves” me, I am still loveable and still damn capable.  That even when people misunderstand me, or chose to ignore me, or decide I am not worth talking to… I will continue on… I always have, and I always will.

Also, dear reader, what would you like to read more of?