I remember waiting on the call. The not knowing but being so confident that I was doing the right thing. Not to say that I wasn’t, but I could have never prepared myself for how that day would change my life.
When I was diagnosed, it came one week before my 26th birthday. I went through the final 6 months of my 25th year telling everyone “25 hit me like a train”. I had no way of predicting the wreckage ahead.
At the peak of my existentialism, my partner of 8 years told me that he had met someone else. That this new person made him feel so attractive and liked - more than I ever had before. I was happy for him, but that was short lived when the selfish wave of “what about me” ensued. It was at that moment when reality sat in - the reality that my own company was the only thing I could be sure of in terms of a life long commitment. This was too much on me and cowardly, I begged him to stay. We agreed to continue our relationship as an open one.
A month later, I was diagnosed. He was supportive and tested negative. I was thankful. He’s the only person I told that year. For months to follow, I watched the fall of this new relationship of his. To see a person love themselves through someone else is so heartbreaking bc the hard work they thought they put in was all an illusion. It was gone faster than it arrived.
Having to give advice to the man you plan on spending the rest of your life with as to why some 3rd party couldn’t love them the way they used to ask you to was brain altering. It changed my entire perspective on love, life, and what I was willing to accept just to not be alone.
That December, I healed a big part of my childhood. I realized some things that weren’t my fault. Forgave some people as well as myself. Made peace with the diagnosis, kinda. I tried to the end the relationship in January; he wasn’t having it.
A rekindled relationship has come and fallen and a crush has been birthed and laid to rest since then. I’m still here. Somehow more broken than when I found myself at the start of winter. When you are cracking your consciousness, you don’t notice it at first. After all, cracks can still let the light in. Somewhere along the lines, I let myself slip through those cracks. I could no longer recognize the big picture and could only see all the details of where I’d gone wrong. Im still here. Obsessing over details. Wishing I could patch this or that. Cut this weed or that one.
In life I think we are given a few options when going through trauma - flight, fight, freeze. In December, I would’ve told you there’s no wrong way to handle it. Some paths just take longer than others. But from where I am now, frozen in fear. I feel like the 6 year old hiding under his bed wondering when his mom will return home. I feel alone, scared, and traumatized. I don’t know what else to give, and I’m too scared to ask for anything. I don’t see a way out from here, so I guess I’ll stay still until I do.