Free

When things ended 5 years ago with someone I had built 11 years with, I can still hear the disbelief in my mothers voice when I called her that first time. It was a random weekday. It was a random time mid-day. My heart was racing. I was pacing the living room. I couldn’t sit still as the phone rang. 

When she picked up, I almost chickened out. I was incredibly close to just saying hello and that I was checking in and saying hi. It was that knee jerk reaction to years and years and years of hiding who I really was underneath and the pain that resided there. I told her I needed to leave him; that things were over. That I was unhappy. That I was more than unhappy; that I was so incredibly buried in the depth of my pain. 

To this day I still hear the complete shock in her voice. Talk about a blindside. She had not seen this in me. She had not known how I felt for so long. She did not have a clue. In everyone’s mind we were going to get married. We were going to have babies. We were going to make it another 11 years and then another 11 and another 11 after that. We had bought a house together. We had dogs together. We had built roots so deeply together. 

Of course she was shocked. I didn’t allow anyone in. The thought of someone seeing me in pain was so abhorrent to me that I chose to stay in the pain. And damn did I sit in it for a long time. I couldn’t even share with my own mother, let alone anyone else that I had already drowned and was just sitting at the bottom of the swimming pool looking up. 

I was a pretend. Even to myself most of the time. Not one person outside of my partner at the time could have guessed the turmoil inside, the tears so desperate to come out but that stayed so locked inside, the fear in my eyes that I allowed no one to look close enough into. I smiled and laughed and conversed in the socially appropriate moments. I was the happy one; the joyful one; the one on the trajectory we as a society claim to be the path of the “should's”.

I got so good at pretending, lying, faking it, that I believed it at times. It became such a norm to me to deflect, make up stories of my fun weekends, have talking points ready that stayed so far away from any hints of unrest. And when I just didn’t have it in me to keep up the facade I even had the lies  ready of being sick, having other plans, losing my phone, etc. The webs I weaved to keep people away from who I really was and what I was really going through…..

The loneliness of it all was one of the things that hurt the most. No one was allowed to see me; truly me. Not even myself. I buried it all. I thought no one would want me if they knew the real me. I thought people wanted the happy woman with her life together; not this shell of a person holding on for dear life. That day when I called my mother, I took a step to a different trajectory. My life was uprooted. It has never been the same since. 

Today I am writing in a blog that is public to my family, my friends, people near and far in my life. I am not the pretend person. I am the mess. I am the woman that is laying it all out there as I try and reconcile, heal, just get fucking through another huge hurt in my life. 

The tears are falling. The fears are voiced. The pain is on full display. 

I am not hiding. Never again will I. 

Today is about celebrating steps we take in life that change everything. I am not that woman anymore that is pretending. 

Today….honestly….I feel free.