I remember it like it was yesterday. My then husband had just told me he wasn’t in love with me and in simpler terms, did not want to be with me anymore and like any person who has severe abandonment issues - I begged. I begged that man to stay with me because I was terrified of starting over and losing everything I had spent my life working towards. A life I had spent YEARS building and sacrificing for. Not that any of that really mattered because in the end, I lost it all anyway.
I had never felt so alone. In one drunken moment the life I thought I had was gone and I had no one to lean on so I did what most people did during a major life event, I logged into tiktok and I pressed record. Let me set the scene, the rain was falling, the bedroom was shrouded in shades of gray and I was laid on the bed in a fetal position - the same bed we had just sat in the early hours of the morning, huddled together in shared sadness when he destroyed every hope and dream I had. The red light was flashing as I recorded my pain, packaged it up with a cute voiceover and pressed upload…
In that moment all I could think was, ‘Ah, that feels better’. I had transferred my misery and pain onto the masses - and masses it was. The hard launch of my marriage ending garnered THOUSANDS of views with way too many likes and well meaning comments. The sense of belonging was so high I didn’t know if I’d ever come down. Yet, when I shut the app and walked back into the destruction of my life, the pain was still there, eating me alive. Here I was suffocating under the weight of yet another person abandoning me while they got to gleefully move forward and leave me stuck. So, I logged on again and dumped my pain into a 2 minute video of tears that spoke of deep sadness layered with so much loneliness because I just needed to matter to someone - or anyone, even if only for a moment.
Isn’t it funny how at our lowest we’ll seek community from anyone who will ease the wounded person inside of us. Titkok did that for me, I was able to connect and share my pain with others and they lifted me up but once the song ended - as it usually does, I realized i STILL had to deal with my broken marriage offline, that the problem was still there no matter how far I tried to run.
What I have learned from that fateful decision is, I love sharing my story online because I know there are people out there who can connect with me, but there is also something to be said about learning to share my story with less pain and more triumph. I’d be lying if I said the pain doesn’t feel as fresh as it did the first day especially when seeing a search screen that says, ‘breana reads husband’, ‘breana reads crying’. I mean, it still haunts me and makes me second guess my decision to sell my pain and trauma to my online audience and while I have NO RAGRETS (anymore), I’m REALLLLLY looking forward to seeing searches that read, ‘breana reads happiness’ soon.
I’ve always appreciated how honest you are about your pain. Because in you, I feel seen and less lonely. And I’m sorry that that’s what pushed us together, but I’m really happy that it did. 🩷