I was once told that the three most challenging life changes for humans to go through are break ups, job changes, or moving. Following grieving a relative May of last year it seems sufficient to say "breakups" should actually mean grieving the loss of loved ones. That better encompasses what I feel certain is equally painful, even if it's a different kind of hurt when someone chooses to leave your life rather than being taken. "It will be hard every day and it won't get easier, but eventually after some time you'll find little moments, little pieces of your life that remind you of him. They'll be silly and dumb or they'll be sad and you'll cry for hours, but they'll still be a piece of him." The Beast in the Jungle, The Haunting of Bly Manor. In 2018, I was getting married, happily, but still felt so lost in accepting and loving who I am. My external superficial growth was at war with my internal growth. It was an incredibly difficult experience, but four years would pass before I reached solace, strong self awareness, and confidence enough with the path I was heading down.
I felt immense value in my work ethic, in my morals, in how I balanced and carried myself, in my beliefs, and in my genuine relationships. It felt easier to get through the countless moves, job changes, and grievances I continued to encounter. I understood and recognized those are all small potatoes in the scheme of how much worse things could always be. The moon has phases and it's gravity controls the ebbs and flows of the oceans' waves. Our lives have phases that control the ebbs and flows of how we compose ourselves.
I could definitely handle casual dating knowing my self worth by then, so I pursued a young, tall, handsome man who I'd been acquainted with for a couple months. He ended up having some trouble understanding when my mental health started to slip again following the loss of a loved one a few months in, and that I unknowingly seemed to still have grief, and PTSD buried deeply from my divorce. "The memory itself was injury anew. Her heart would shatter anew, burning in her bosom a searing ache that she hoped would be quenched by the cold muddy waters of her new manor, her new home. Thus she would sleep, and she would forget, having forgotten she would wake." A Certain Romance of Old Clothes, The Haunting of Bly Manor.
In hindsight, looking back through my journal it was evident my awareness of his red flags, it was evident losing the life of a close relative was heavy, and it was evident I chose to ignore the red flags completely being swept away in love following those circumstances. "I looked at you, and I almost forgot myself for a moment. God knows I've tried not to think of you, but I've thought of you often. Thinking about the places we would go if we were ever to leave Bly." (Jungle)
He was the first person I fell deeply for following my divorce. For a year we dated, connecting well on many levels, but my self induced love story ended totaling what felt like: Justine-0 and Challenging Life Changes 5 years, dozens of moves, job changes, and grievances later with the clock still counting.
I seek justification through people I love so that I can differ what I actually need to change verses what qualities I wouldn't change for anyone. Those who adopt me into their lives despite my stubborn, sometimes bitter nature, do so because they see value. When needed I have plenty of love, loyalty, and support from them. That must mean I'm not all that bad. "Where would we be, we wretched people without the generosity of others?" (Jungle)
They know my character and they see how I compose myself regardless of any challenges life brings me. They know that I don't care about money or power, and probably should care more about money, at least. They know how much I struggle with understanding my beauty inside and out. They know that I have made strides to where I am now. They're aware that honesty is my greatest strength and my greatest weakness.
They know I'm loyal with a heart of gold. They know that I am a deep, genuine lover because it breaks me so much more than moving, or changing jobs when I'm grieving. "Grief, I've learned, is really just love. It's all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go." Jamie Anderson
I let grief victimize me and fuel my rage so that I never hurt the same way again. I put up walls and set standards. That doesn't make me moody, or damaged, it means I created boundaries for myself. More than once I let my guard down to share with others the incredibly unique spectrum which I feel the world through. There were times that pushed people away, or made others hesitant to remain close with me because of how challenging it is to translate my emotions into behavior let alone conversation. Even after being coaxed, in more than one situation, to trust that I couldn't possibly be hurt the same way by someone who wasn't even the same person who caused the hurting before, the let down ensued. "Need, loneliness, and rage; a fate that befell anyone trapped in Bly." (Romance)
I acknowledge my faults all the same and that my alignment has never been solely "good". If I allow my evils to, they would make me feel remorse where it isn't warranted which I have already suffered enough from (probably resulting from a Seventh Day Adventist upbringing).
This has become the real war of my mental health journey lately because I do feel guilt. I feel wasteful, and I feel ashamed when I'm in phases where I'm not doing better than I want to be to the point it causes ebbs and flows in the lives of my moral support system. "Her gravity it seemed, her invented gravity that held her to the ground that kept her in purgatory, it would hold others too." (Romance) By choosing to pursue a career path where I can communicate a fuller spectrum of how I feel, how I love, what makes me feel alive, what drives my motivations, passions, and charisma, I became all too familiar with phases where familiarity turned to uncertainty. My stubbornness told me not to value my life based on how much money I make. Lately, though, I value my life based on how much I've struggled to get here; times when my hunger was fed only by stress or anxiety, and my depression was soothed only by impulsive decisions, socializing, or sleep in between the working machine I became confined to as a cog in the wheel of. "I have this feeling that I'm walking through this dense overgrown jungle and I can't really see anything except the path in front of me." (Jungle) I chose to eliminate coping through self harm and to promote self love having understood how my gravity affects others long ago. There come days where trying to stay connected to my inner self-morals and spirituality feels unfamiliar to me; feeling only an essence of someone who's supposed to feel satisfaction by doing the activities they are usually familiar to love. That is what it feels like when you've burnt the candle at both of the ends. "She would sleep, she would wake, she would walk, as if woken from a nightmare. She would walk back to her home feeling each time that it was a dream." (Romance) I'm aware of the pull my gravity has and how at times it weighs my life down, however, I also feel that within that gravity there is excessive authenticity and love. I see that everyday in the tolerance my family and friends have for me. When I realized there are more people who hurt when I'm hurting than there are those who have indifference or apathy to seeing me hurt, I finally began to empathize with how those who have love for me perceive me. I've never lacked a social life even though I keep my circle small. I've never lacked adventure, or nurture. I have always had a surplus of creativity, and compassion. My gravity pulls muses, mentors, and admirers of people I perceive as stronger than I. Their commitment to root for me reminds me that I am not a burden, though, I often feel it. Still, I lack confidence, I lack contemplative bravery, (impulsion has always ran through my veins), and despite how hard I put up a fight, "everyday we're living our lives and I'm aware of that, but it's like I don't feel it all the way. It's getting harder and harder to see me." (Jungle) I mentioned earlier that I unknowingly had PTSD deeply buried from my divorce. I developed a habit of tucking my memories away rather than being tucked away in my memories. "Forget, forget, and forget, and with the forgetting an ailment altogether monstrous." (Romance) Though, they are painful, varying from good to bad, it is important to feel through those memories until they don't feel the same any longer. Feeling through those memories is also what is stemmed from the fruit of the garden that reminds me that I am human. Whatever my beliefs may be, society, my parents, family, friends, enemies, lovers, or despite whatever anyone believes is true, we are all flawed. We all make mistakes. We all feel pain and so too do we inflict pain whether that is our intention or not. Hopefully it is never our intention to hurt others, though. "I'm not strong enough to walk away from those people, the most important things when I'm drowning them." (Jungle) That is selfish, but it's also love. Love is versatile. It's destructive and pulchritudinous. Times it will have you crying in your heart "take me with you...drag me down like you did the others." (Romance) And love will; take pieces of who you are when it leaves by choice or is taken from you. It will leave places in you that make you feel hollow. The hollowness can turn you cold and bitter. It will keep you bedridden, sick with heartache with hopes to never love another again. "She would sleep and she would fade and fade." (Romance) It’s so unbearably heavy at times, but when gravity gets unbearable it will collapse into a super nova to create a star. There is so much strength in love. Seeing what limit love takes others helps set the standards for how we hope to be loved someday. It also translates through how we learn to give love. It makes us feel alive. It connects who we are, with who we've been, and who we hope to be. It intertwines through others, through who they were before you, and who they will be after you're gone. "All things fade, flesh, stone, even stars themselves. Time takes all things, it's the way of the world. The past recedes, memories fade, and so true does the spirit. Everything yields to time. Even her soul." (Romance) Even though my hope is that no one be trapped in my gravity, I have immense trouble letting go. For I too become affected by the gravity of others. It's lasting effect ensures me how real what I felt was. My instinct is to dwell on what I know to be real and true.
Maybe my struggling happens because I have a wary sense of self worth. "I was the reacher, and he was the settler." I would say constantly in my relationship which led to marriage and divorce. One day, when I've changed, perhaps I will be able to, "let them be. Let them live their lives the way they should without anything hanging over them. They deserve that. We all do." (Jungle) I'm still learning who I'm becoming and that I should never settle for anyone that doesn't love me fully; someone who believes water is easy to clean up when I am the spill; that offers to feel for the both of us when I've tucked away my memories to avoid having to feel through them; someone who is able to take things one day at a time; that admires qualities I have like being the type who‘d "leave the door open at night just a crack...waiting for her lover to return." (Jungle) That's just how my gravity is even if they didn't want to stay or come back because it doesn't have to be worth it to them if it's worth it to me. Somewhere in that spectrum I realize I'm that way because I know that I'm worth it to me. In the mean time, there are still so many who choose to actively orbit my gravity whose gravity that I am also drawn to. "We are two separate parts of the same body. When one of us hurts, we both hurt," my latest infatuation told me before severing ties. Yet, it is true. All things are bound despite the losses we feel everything becomes converted. "More time will pass and the water will wash away the features of her beautiful perfect face. But she won't be hollow nor empty." (Jungle)
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