Mama I'm NOT In Love: Relationship PTSD
Nah, how do the girlies in books just bounce back after Brock destroyed them?!
Note to reader: This is likely the most vulnerable i’ll ever be. please enjoy this writing dump on love and the loss of it.
I feel like I can still be brought back to the night my entire life changed - for the better? We’re not quite there yet. I remember the moment, I see it play in front of me often and I still feel the earth shattering emotions of…anger, destruction, grief and sadness all rolled into one. I hurt for that version of Breana who put her entire heart out there and got DESTROYED to the point that she lost herself for awhile.
I lost myself in pain and began questioning often if I was deserving of love and happiness, whether or not I would ever get the happily ever after I desperately longed for. Was I worth it and if I was, why was this happening.
Besties, I am not actively in that headspace anymore…at least not every day. I currently live in the space of desperately trying to make myself whole, make myself better. I want to thrive in the space where I am not always transported back to the worst moment of my life or where I am questioning if this version of myself is worth the hassle of loving - I am.
When I started writing out this newsletter some odd months ago I was still in the thick of grief. On one hand,
I was celebrating my sisters biggest win - a baby and I was grieving my biggest loss - a marriage.
I can still remember the moment I made the “announcement” to my sister and cousin on that 3 way call that my husband had dumped me (I am so thankful that y’all picked up that phone call at 2am). In the wee hours of the morning after a night of drinking with family he sat on the bed and said, “I used to worship the ground you walked on, I don’t anymore.” I can remember laughing in shock because hello, we’re fucking drunk and a little high on the edible I consumed, I remember thinking, lets go to bed and pick up this conversation tomorrow when you’ve come to your senses…
isn’t it funny, when our lives are falling apart we assume its the universe trying to play a trick on us so we make jokes and hope tomorrow will be better...
It gets better because of course life wasn't done playing a joke on me.. the man I had devoted YEARS of my life to hit me with the death blow, “I don’t love you anymore.” As I type those words now I can hear the whoosh of breath I let out, I can also feel the lump in my throat, the tears begging to be spilled and the feeling of my chest caving in on me. BUT I can also picture his body heaving as if he’d just been told someone died and not that he was the one who killed her. It’s funny looking back on it all now, funny how easily I comforted him, how quickly I told him I loved him and it would all be ok. Funny how my heart was breaking but all I wanted to do was make him feel better, how my first instinct was to beg him to stay because doing life alone wasn’t something I was prepared to do.
Those next few days felt strangely empty. I was living in a home I BUILT, with a man who looked at me as if I was the shit on his shoe, a man who had been up in my guts consistently for years but now hated my guts. I remember going through the motions day in and day out because I was embarrassed to have to tell people that the 21 year old girl who thought she found her forever, now didn’t. I can remember the voice notes I sent, filled with grief and tears. The screaming, the begging, the unintended weight loss, the thinning hair and the darkest depression I had ever really experienced.
Looking back on those moments now I feel a sense of pride. I made it out, I didn't take myself out because a man who promised me forever rescinded the offer. I love life a little more because I know how quickly it can change, I love myself more because I know how hard I fought to find her again.
Looking back on these moment now I also feel a sense of shame. Shame that something ended that I fought so hard to keep together - even when it felt like I was the only one fighting. Shame that love doesn’t feel worth it to me anymore. That most days I don’t feel worthy of anyones love because ONE person made me feel like my heart wasn’t worth keeping safe. Shame that I still cry when I think about the ending of it all. Shame that I begged someone who had already told me twice he didn’t want me to stay because, “I can love you enough for the both of us”. Shame that there is someone out there who wants nothing more than to love me and show me how proud they are to have me but I’ll always feel too broken to accept it.
I fear love so deeply now that I am traumatized by it. I feel like I am recovering from PTSD and it was caused by one person who promised me in front of our family he would always keep my heart safe and shattered it. But, I am also hopeful that this is just a chapter of my story and there’s something so much greater currently being written.
“But the truth of this life is that there's a lot of pain in it. There's more loss and grief than we want to believe. How we make peace with that is the journey we're all trying to figure out.”
― Natasha Lunn, Conversations on Love
As I reread this newsletter and question if I am going to send it out as is or edit the parts that feel too painful I can’t help but be proud of this version of Breana. The version who is writing through the pain and acknowledging that sometimes life doesn’t work out the way we hope it does. I am not embarrassed anymore that life threw me that messy and heartbreaking curve ball..because while I struck out the first time, I know i’ll hit my home run when I’m next at bat.
I didn't read this new letter when it first came out, and I told myself it was because I wouldn't be able to relate to it, so I would save it for another time. and low and behold my relationship hit an iceberg 3 years into it and has started the slow sink into nothingness. But you know what? life goes on, cus I had work the next morning. Came in to work, opened my email, and this un-opened news letter called my name. And I read it and cried right at my desk because your word spoke to me. They brung me back from a dark place I was heading to. SO I think you for sharing the raw thought and emotions and thus validating every emotion I had swimming in my head for the last 3 days. You are a gift. And I can tell it in your words and your Tiktocs. Keep being you, and I think you for sharing your vulnerability with strangers.