Don't wake me I'm not dreaming.

I could hear myself saying the words to the story and felt helpless as my tongue moved faster than my brain. Why was I sharing this? Why now? His eyes were filled with sadness as I laughed away the discomfort of the details. He asked only one question, which opened up the hurt and pain of that particular incident. The look on his face was intriguing to me: concern, sorrow, awe. His hand gripped my leg tighter as I told him about the recovery. And he somehow seemed to inhale and exhale simultaneously as I finished. He said nothing, and the vulnerability of my confession hung in the air, as I exclaimed sheepishly that he now knew my secret; it was something I rarely told anybody. He pulled me closer to him, with both arms. And as the silence became thicker, I fearfully asked him what he was thinking, my voice barely audible.This, he huskily whispered back. And a perfect, passionate, beautiful kiss filled the holes I always opened when I talked about that day, that time, that moment in my history. It conveyed so much without uttering a word. 

I thought about that kiss the entire drive home. The look in his eyes right before our lips touched. The protective warmth of his arms pulling me in. The reassuring breath we both shared when it was finished. If that kiss had been cinematic, the camera would have panned around us and twirled as beautiful instrumental music came to its climax and then softly fell into melodic notes as our lips parted into a soft smile. 

To him it may have just been an ordinary kiss with any ordinary girl. But this kiss was my balm of gilead.  It made me feel helpless and whole at the same time. There are moments of rare beauty in my life, unparalleled by anything else. He may fade away or his life path may diverge from mine. But I will always have this kiss, this memory to pour itself into the holes and fill the void that inevitably emerges when I talk about this chapter of my broken past. I can't tell him how much this kiss and moved me. Partially because I sound a little crazy. But I had to write this moment down, preserve it. I needed to capture the details on paper before I go to sleep and convince myself that, upon waking, this kiss was just a dream. 

June, after dark.

It's June. It's almost the first day of summer. Exactly one year ago today I arrived in Utah, hopeful for a new beginning. And I have one. But it's not the beginning I thought it would be. 

In starting over, I was completely broken again. I didn't think that would happen. I have spent so many years building up walls that breaking them this last year has only strengthened my desire to keep them fortified. 

And I'm laying here honestly wondering if I will ever be able to let anybody in again. I've met somebody new. Somebody I really like. And I want him to know me. So much. But the walls are so thick that I'm having a hard time letting my guard down long enough to even feel anything. Except I know I feel something. I just can't let my heart process that.

Maybe time. Maybe that's what I need. I've survived every heartbreak until this point. Letting myself feel and possibly fall and potentially hurt again won't kill me. So maybe I need to remind myself of that. Every minute of every day. Because I do really like this one. So much. 

Loving yourself more.

If somebody would have told me yesterday that choosing yourself could hurt this much, I wouldn't have believed them. There are all these songs and posts about the wonderful vindication that comes from loving yourself enough to stand up for yourself. But there's rarely anything detailing the morning after. 

Yesterday I abolished the grey with Tyler. I told him I couldn't do things that people who date do without actually dating him. I said it was too hard on my heart. And then confessed that I had been in love with him the entire time we had been in the grey. I asked if he wanted to date me, and his reply was uncertainty now but most likely in the future. I knew I couldn't just accept that. I couldn't massacre my heart again and go back to the grey in hopes of keeping him in my life for the possibility of the future. So I made things black and white: we are friends, or we are dating. 

I think that was really hard for him. And I'm pretty sure he has no idea how ridiculously difficult it was for me. I expressed my desire for our friendship, our very freaking best friendship, to stay the same. And begged him not to disappear. He said he needed a few days for things to process. I felt searing pain at those words. I think all fear of losing one of the only people who has ever truly known me became glaringly apparent when he said that. But I respect him enough, hell, love him enough, to not initiate contact. I told him that and if he decided he wants to talk to let me know and I'd be there for him. 

And then I cried for a really long time last night. I cried until I fell asleep. I'm not upset I chose loving myself enough to not put myself through pain any more. I am deeply proud of myself for that. The pride I feel, though, is drowned out by the intense sorrow of losing somebody I care about more than I think I've ever cared about anybody in my entire 29 years of existence. And it hurts to know that me, as a person, loving him that much, may not be enough for him without all the perks. 

It's easy for people to say things like, "well then he doesn't deserve your love anyway," or something similar. And that may be true. But nonetheless. It's still there. 

Which is why a large part of me woke up this morning and was disappointed that I had. And the one person in my world that understands that feeling better than anybody is the one person I can't contact anymore. And the one person I wish I could. 

How do I handle that? I was not prepared at all for yesterday to be goodbye. How do I freaking handle that! How does the world just keep spinning and I'm still here? How! How did I lose my heart in my attempt to protect it? I feel nothing. There's just this void. A huge empty hollow where you used to be. How am I supposed to get up and go to work with this hole in my chest? I wish somebody could just tell me how. But I know nobody can. 

Everybody's trusting in their heart like their heart don't lie.

I have so many feelings right now that I'm completely numb. I am in overload and can't necessarily process the emotion. I thought zoning out to my favorite songs would help. But each chorus keeps disappearing before I can mentally grasp it. And somehow, in my brain, I keep singing along with each verse...but the words are fleeting. 

"Is something wrong?" they keep asking. "Everything," I think. But "Nothing," I reply. And smile. 

I have this thing, where no matter how much I am hurting, I can't ever tell the person that is hurting me. I don't want them to feel the hurt I'm experiencing, so I graze over it. I realize this is extremely dysfunctional. And is probably the reason my heart is completely stitched and patched back together from its multiple massacres. 

I took a shower, and it warmed up my outsides, but inwards, I'm still ice cold. So, today, I'm just content with feeling numb. Cause that's the only word I can use to describe this right now. 

You're waiting here for somebody else to break you from the inside/you've been so composed/we all know there's always something tearing you apart/it's always so much longer than you counted on/and it hits you so much harder than you thought/but you don't worry, you don't worry/cause you've got soul. 

One is gold.

Tonight Jared came and visited me. I haven't seen him in almost 8 years. As we ate dinner, I felt the comfort of being in the presence of an old friend. The irony of our friendship is that Jared told me when I moved away from Rexburg 9 years ago that he doesn't keep in touch well and has a hard time caring about people. But there we sat tonight, as good of friends as ever. I speak with him often, despite us being in different states. And perhaps we are still friends because I'm incredibly persistent, but it's also a possibility that Jared realized friendship like ours is pretty rare and that's why it has lasted so long. 

It was good to reminisce and remind myself of the good times we've had. And it was even better to have great conversation and laughter with somebody who means so much to me. I felt humbled tonight and grateful for having such a caring person in my life. 

It's late but I had to blog before bed so I have a reminder when I'm in the midst of despair: my life is full of excellent people. I need to remember that. 

There is this familiarity that I get only when I'm with you. Like our souls know each other and it's a sigh of relief to be in your presence. It's comfortable, easy, love. I miss you in a way that I know I'm going to see you again...with surety and confidence that one day you'll wake up and decide to acknowledge what you already know: that I'm it, your person, the yin to your yang, the missing piece, the happily ever after you deserve. 

But we aren't together. And...Maybe that's why all the greatest love stories end in loss. You don't realize it's that great until it's gone. Until you're on another first date and conversation stalls in a way it never did with me. And you try to mend it with another first kiss that isn't even half as passionate as ours was. And your laughter was hollow...or forced. And slowly you begin to realize that what we had wasn't a Disney movie...but it was better because it was real, and raw, and tangible. That my love for you is so endless and deep that it can't compare to anything else. 

I don't know how to not feel this way about you. To turn my heart off and tell my soul that this is it. Because deep down I know it isn't. You want our story to be perfect. But life isn't perfect. It is messy. And we are messy. And things between us are messy, but together we are beautiful. And that's all I've never said to you a thousand times but have wanted to with every breath I take. 

Faded.

I should be asleep right now, but I can't manage to shake off the caffeine that's boiling in my veins. I haven't written in awhile. Mostly because I have disliked my thoughts. So I focused on trying to get better. I realized the PTSD is never going to fully go away and that these past few months I've been battling it pretty hard. Winter just isn't my season.

Sometimes my mind is so black and white that it's hard to accept the shades of grey within myself. It's hard to not be perfect. It's hard to, in recognizing I'm not perfect, not give up and self-destruct. It's interesting to me how easy it is for me to accept the imperfections in others, to feel empathy for their trials, to understand their struggles...and all the while not tolerate my own.

Tonight Tyler and I had the same discussion we've had a thousand times since breaking up and trying to be just friends. It's hard when you love somebody so much. Things between us, when we are together, are effortless. We can have difficult conversations, laughter, passion, and a chill time all in one night. Reminiscing about our first date reminded me how simply effortless things were from the beginning with him. And it makes it difficult to accept the fact that we are not together right now. But what I couldn't tell him tonight was simply the truth: I would rather us be what we are now than not have him in my life. I've thought so selfishly about all the ways he has helped me that it was refreshing to hear him tell me tonight that I have helped him keep his sobriety and that he can talk to me about pretty much anything. It made me feel less of an idiot to know he values me being in his life, too.

I guess I should go to bed since work comes early tomorrow. Maybe if I close my eyes sleep will come.

Solo.

I've avoided blogging. I've avoided a lot of things lately. I need a vacation from myself. I have been having multiple panic attacks a day, over the tiniest of things. I can't seem to cope. And that is frustrating. Because I don't allow anybody to care for me or help, and all I want is somebody to take care of me and help. 

At work I have drowned myself in data and spreadsheets because I need to space everybody's problems out a little bit. My job is to literally problem solve. And it can become overwhelming and exhausting and just ...difficult to solve problems for everybody else when I can't solve my own problem. 

I often think about why I pushed off having a family for so long. And why I was so afraid. And now it's come to a point where that may have passed me by. That's a real thing. I honestly could be alone and without children for the rest of my life. And it makes me so angry at myself, for being so dumb, for being so afraid, for being so selfish. 

And this is my life. I love somebody who can't love me back. I fix problems for children that aren't mine. And I fall asleep alone. I wake up alone. I eat lunch alone. I go to the store alone. I am surrounded by millions of people. And I am more alone than I have ever been. And somehow, I made that choice. So who's to blame? Me. And most days it makes it hard to look in the mirror at the face carrying all that around.