When You Choose Not To Feel The Pain Anymore

You told yourself that you would open up to a new relationship. You were ready and willing to see what was out there. You were ready to feel anything, whatever it was. You met this amazing guy and thought he was the weirdest but most fascinating and beautiful person you’d ever met. But time passed and you thought wrong. He got away without any caution.

You became this stupid girl chasing the love of her life, the girl who almost gave everything she had gotten, the girl who always ended up suffering, getting crazy over some guy she knew way back in college. You cried yourself to sleep several times and kept asking yourself, “Why am I not good enough?” And when you got up, when you washed your face, when you looked into the mirror, still, you kept on telling yourself the exact same thing: “I am not good enough.”

People who cared about you didn’t know how you were. How cruel it was to be left by the person you loved so much. You didn’t show any of your grief, you didn’t want them to know, you didn’t want them to pity you for your suffering.

You stuffed it down for months and no one knew about it. You ran from situations that could cause you to lose, to feel pain. You only wanted to feel good things. But at the end of the day, as you went back to bed and looked back at everything you tried to run from, you still knew that you were not okay. You stayed out of relationships for fear of the eventual loss and bad feelings, not realizing that you were missing out on all the beauty in between. You were surrounded by what if’s and let them be the walls that guard you.

You started avoiding your friends, you stopped going out. You thought at some point that maybe you were already suffering from intense depression. You knew you couldn’t go on anymore. You felt like you had reached the end of the road. You yearned for death, to be at peace, and to be free from this mental and emotional torture each and every waking hour.

Until one day, you finally woke up thinking that maybe it’s about time to start again.

You sat down at the nearest cafe. You took a sip, remembered how the last coffee you had with him actually tasted. You allowed yourself to feel pain again, to sit with it, to build yourself up even though you may one day lose again, for whatever reason. You came to realize that even though your heart broke down, your spirit always stayed strong. It felt strangely good and freeing to be able to cry again. You decided not to hide it, not to push it away. You felt this pain because you loved so hard, you felt so hard. You used to hold it all. You thought it was all inside you, but the truth is, you only carried it with you. And that’s okay.

Maybe you just needed a little push. Maybe you just needed to try and open up yourself to people again. Maybe you needed to try this new cafe, a new pillow case, a new hair color, a new ice cream flavour, or maybe, you just needed to lose 20 pounds to realize everything.

You woke up the following day, washed your face, looked yourself into the mirror, and said: “I am enough.”