Stuck.

What if you were going through some shit that you hadn’t figured out how to make sense of yet.

And then a pandemic hit.

And that pandemic forced you to sit with yourself. All the good, the bad and everything in between. It forced you to reconcile your own traumas, your own mistakes and contemplate your future.

And you had to do this while navigating the breakup of a relationship hardly anyone knew even existed, with someone who’s in a new one. And they want you to pretend it didn’t exist. So they can move on. But your lives are so intertwined that you’re not sure how to begin untangling it all. And do you even want to?

Because to deny that relationship’s existence is to deny a part of your identity, which you’ve struggled to reconcile with, all alone. You’ve never thought about how to define who you are. Do people have to know your identity to make it true?

You and this person still spend a lot of time together, so to the world nothing has changed. You two were always just friends, they think, but everything feels different. They don’t look at you the same, or talk to you the same way. They’ve moved on to thinking about kids and cohabitation and a life that’s far removed from the one you two shared. Because this time, everything feels right with the new person. But with you, everything felt wrong.

So you don’t like yourself too much these days. But hey at least you have your friends right? But you feel too sad really to engage with them. Even though they’ve been there for you through everything. Your ex didn’t like the relationship you had with them. The boundaries you didn’t set. The codependency you couldn’t relinquish led your ex to hate you….and sometimes them. But not really them. Just you for not knowing how to make your relationship a priority over them. So, they’re there. But you feel so confused and anguished over it all. So you isolate yourself at home. The only place that feels safe. The place where your mom died, where you suffered, where life literally and figuratively passed you by. That place is suddenly the only place that makes you feel ok.

You then decide that maybe changing your appearance can help. Because being overweight never made things easier. The fear of fitting in plane seats, breaking furniture and taking up too much space in a world that never seemed to have room for you anyway, was always lingering in the back of your subconscious. It wasn’t hard to see that weight blocked you from the world in other ways too. Nobody ever liked you the way you wanted. You always felt undesirable, unloved and unworthy. But no one really knew it. You seemed ok. Because you had a funny way to charm people by taking the spotlight off yourself. The charm was all you really had. That and green eyes.

So you think about getting surgery. You know, that one. The one that will make you unrecognizable to yourself but finally visible to the rest of the world. And you feel torn about it. Because you don’t hate yourself. But you feel like it’s the thing that will finally shed you of all the weight you’ve been carrying. Not just the pounds. But the burden of the life that has caused you so much pain. You’re still not sure if you’re ready to let it all go.

You wonder about kids because everyone tells you that you should be having them. And your circle of people are planning for that eventuality. Even the surgery people reminded you that you were getting to that age and it’ll take 2 years to recover for childbirth. But there’s no one to have them with. And you’re getting older. And your body’s cycles are more irregular. Besides, that kid would inherit this loneliness. Because they won’t have grandparents. You’ll pass down your trauma. They don’t deserve that. They’d be pretty cute though. You realize maybe its not in the cards for you. You mourn that realization.

You feel stuck. While everyone is moving forward. And it scares you. It keeps you up at night. It causes you anxiety. You want to figure yourself out, your place in the world, but it’s hard with all this uncertainty. It makes you sad. Sometimes you wonder if the world doesn’t need you. Sometimes you wonder if that feeling of being alone is because you’ve hidden who you are for so long, because you buried your traumas so deep, or because you know, you really are very alone in the world. You’re not sure where the reality starts and the delusion begins.

Then you wonder if it’s all just a phase. Something you have to go through, feel, hurt over. Because that’s what everyone says. But not everyone has had this life. Not everyone has to navigate their own identity. Not everyone has to stop being afraid to be who they are. Or maybe they do. And they just don’t say it. You hope that things will get better. But your faith has been tested so much that you don’t know if you even have any left.