When I think back, to exactly this time last year...Memorial Day weekend 2013...Jon was moving in. I was delirious with happiness, utterly blinded by the certainty I felt in myself, in us, in our future. When I inventory where I am today...Memorial Day weekend 2014...I am six weeks single, living in the suburbs with my parents, completely resetting the trajectory of where I thought my life was going and certain of so much...less. It's been a hell of a ride, one that left me vacillating wildly over and around and through the entire gamut of my personal range of emotion. This has taken the air out of me so hard it's stolen every word I could possibly have written, and in that void has been silence, and it's only now that I finally feel like I can start reclaiming this particular aspect of myself, untainted: my voice, my words, my record.
Such a huge part of me screams every day, pleading for the chance to go back and tell that girl a year ago (that naive, happy, stupid, trusting girl, GOD I MISS HER) what I know now. To take her and shake her and make her hear this: "Stop! Think, harder! Put up walls! Ask all the questions, even the ones you'd never think to ask because despite everything you cannot even fathom what you're in for if you don't!" I would do so much to be able to keep her safe, bubble-wrapped and polished and up on the top shelf thinking life is something in the neighborhood of a fairy tale. I want so much to make her aware of how badly someone can set her reeling, without her having to feel it for herself and lose that innocent, trusting, optimistic shine.
Another, smaller, quieter, but assertive little part of me just wants to go back and give that girl a hug. To pat her on the back, pour her another mimosa and tell her that she's doing everything right with this leap, this move, this relationship. That there's nothing wrong with having faith in someone who's never shown her that she should do otherwise. I want to fist-bump her for her confidence and excitement and optimism. And I want to leech some of that off her. She doesn't know how the tiniest fissures can become cracks, and grow into chasms; she hasn't yet learned that there's no such thing as a sure thing. How smug and proud and satisfied she is, that girl of a year ago, in her shitty apartment with a view that takes her breath away and a boyfriend who does the same. I want to tell her that she needs to buckle up, to be ready to hold her breath when she suddenly lands underwater, and that she will lose so much and still come out with a pulse and a mostly-intact heart. That there will be higher highs than she has ever experienced, and lower lows than she thought she had in her, and that through it all she'll stay on her feet somehow and keep a smile on her face, most of the time, believe it or not.
As for the me of this Memorial Day, I'm still warring between the overwhelming desire to erase and heal by forgetting and the certainty that, in all this uncertainty, I've received a revelation. I'm white-knuckle-holding onto the truth of all that I learned through this experience...these 2+ years with Jon, this plethora of firsts and this finality of the last. I'm resetting in more ways than one, and so things around here are going to change a bit. The girl who started this blog was the girl who was certain and filled with faith and shielded by her own naiveté. The girl who I am now...Version 2.0...has a long way to go.
Here's to a summer of self-discovery.