The 552 Days
Day 552.
Today I stopped running.
I couldn't understand why.
I found myself pressing the button to end my run.
I was not tired. I was not done. I was not hurt.
I couldn't understand why.
I found myself pressing the button to end my run.
I was not tired. I was not done. I was not hurt.
I stopped running on the treadmill because my heart was not in it anymore. My legs were incapable, and I stopped right there and then; 16 minutes and 35 seconds into my daily run.
I have never stopped my run.
I have never not met my goal.
I stopped.
And I felt light.
And weird.
I didn't have a breakdown, I just needed to sit. And I did. I breathed in, sat down and looked at myself in the mirror.
Sweaty, gross and ugly.
Somwhat thin but nevertheless,
not good enough for myself.
not good enough for myself.
Thighs too big and
Face too round.
I felt like maybe I should be crying.
But nothing in me wanted to cry.
I felt like maybe I should kick something,
but I wasn't angry enough to throw a fit.
I felt nothing and everthing all at the same time, and I didn't know what to do.
I couldn't understand myself in the moment.
I felt like my mind was a book in a foreign language. One with characters that twisted and curved, one that I have never seen before.
Who I was was an alien to me, and I couldn't recognize what my mind was trying to understand, what it was trying to unravel.
So I moved on.
Because that's what I know to do best.
You taught me that;
most painfully and most tortuously.
I moved on through my day, eating, laughing, talking, and living like I do so well.
But the thought of my body shutting down, me not being able to complete what I had started, what I do everyday in one small moment scared me a little. I would be confused for a moment, shrug it off and continue on.
When the night came and my favorite part of the day arrived (sleep, thank GOD.) I lit my candles, put on my matching pajamas and opened my computer to blog.
In the midst of this blog, I found myself unable to finish, to truly annunciate my feelings. So I took a break.
Opening Netflix, I have been falling asleep to How I Met Your Mother, so I turned it on.
And in less than 10 minutes, it hit me.
It was the episode after Robin and Barney broke up; where Robin's mourning period was finally discovered by the gang, and it was revealed all the times when we thought Robin was fine, she really wasn't.
Every stupid thing Barney said, we watched as the gang laughed along. Every time he talked about other girls like it was a joke, or someone he wanted to "bang", we laugh, because honestly, it's funny!
But we forget what goes on after that. We forget what really goes on behind the scene:
There is a rightfully crying Robin.
A rightfully broken Robin.
A rightfully hurt Robin.
And in that moment, when Robin finally told Barney how of course when he made a hard effort for another girl, it upset her - I understood what had been nagging at me and what my mind was nudging at me to unravel.
The thing is I haven't really cried since September. and if you know me, I cry a lot. Like a lot. I have the emotional capacity of a little pea, and I will cry when I step on an ant, or when my roommate kills a moth. I am an emotional human being who only thinks irrationally, who pours her out to anyone and everything that she can. She falls and falls and falls again, loves to love, and picks up the pieces of you again and again, because frankly that's all she really knows how to do in this world.
She can pick up the pieces.
But she can't even pick herself up.
The thing is, for the first time in this year, I realized how hard I have been trying to keep all the hurt from this one difficult heartbreak surpressed and like it never really affected me. Then I realized and watched how I ran away every time I got the chance, and stayed, when I knew it was bound to break. Nothing worked out and it was completely my own fault.
I couldn't figure out just quite why.
Until last night.
To my 552 days, moving on from you has been the most painful, gut-wrenching, heart-breaking, bone-shaking, head-fucking, shit-dumping experience of my life.
You have pushed me through bone-shattering sprints to hell and back.
And for 552 days, I have pardoned my hurt because I felt ashamed, because I felt like I was not enough and how I felt shouldn't matter.
I wanted to be okay like you were
I put you on a pedastol and excused your actions because I wanted so much to learn to be the kindest, to be the most grateful and to be the most gracious.
You played the main role to the movie of my life. And who isn't the star to their own friggin life?
In the 552 days and all the secrets were out,
I never once reached out to you.
I never told you how I felt.
I never told you about all the moments when I felt like Robin Sherbatsky.
I didn't know I was allowed to grieve, because clearly, you didn't need time to grieve. You gave her more than you could give me.
And you know what? At the end of the day, that really, really hurt me.
And it broke my heart that you never stopped to think about that, and that you never took the simplest action to ask me how I felt about it, to give me a heads up, to give me teensiest heads-up that this might hurt.
You never thought about me, and that in the equation of you and her, I could be a possible consequence too. You never thought about how I could have been affected, and how much that would hurt me.
And 552 days later, I finally realized how after what had happened, it built me to become afraid. Afraid of love, afraid of you, and afraid of who I am. I became afraid that like how you treated me, I could never be considered in someone's equation either. There will be someone better for them, just like there was for you. They will move on, and make you feel like you were not special, just like I was to you. They will block you, push you so far away that even if you thought about wanting answers to the questions that have sucked at your soul, and broke everything that you are, you can't even get the oppurtunity to. Like you did.
And I didn't know that. All the heartbreaks of this year, they didn't stem from the universe not working out or God hating me, they stemmed from me, from the decisions that I made out of a hurt heart, out of the hurt that you and her subjected to me without even noticing.
I wish you could make it right, but all the wishing in the world won't take away the misery of the 552 days.
And at the end of the day, maybe moving on without answers is the most frustrating thing in the world, but maybe,
maybe I learned that it is okay.
Though what you did was never okay, I'm glad that I never reached out. I'm glad that I learned to try to be the kindest, that I had a hard time moving on, because at the end of the day, I really did love you. I thought the whole world of you. While I was moving on, I always considered how you might feel instead of thinking about how I feel. I let you feel like the man, I let you make yourself feel like your hurtful actions were okay. I validated what you did with her.
When I moved on, I stopped doing that.
When I moved on, I stopped doing that because I realized that that is not my job.
It's not my job to right your wrongs.
It's not my job to validate your relationship.
It's not my job to make you feel like your actions don't have consequences.
It's not my job to make you feel like you getting together with her was a pure, loving act.
It's not my fucking job to make you feel like what you did wasn't unfaithful and unacceptable.
Because at the end of the day, I can't make you into a person that you are not.
I don't use the word "I" a lot because it makes me excruciatingly uncomfortable.
But today, I decided that "I"? "I" am pretty fucking powerful.
At the end of the day, you taught me that you are not the person who declares me unlovable.
You don't declare that I am not special
that I am unwanted.
that I am replacable.
I get to declare that.
And I get to declare that about myself, slowly and surely.
Maybe I can't declare that about myself today or tomorrow,
But one day, I will declare myself lovable, special, wanted and irreplacable, without needing the validation from you or any other people.
But nothing in me wanted to cry.
I felt like maybe I should kick something,
but I wasn't angry enough to throw a fit.
I felt nothing and everthing all at the same time, and I didn't know what to do.
I couldn't understand myself in the moment.
I felt like my mind was a book in a foreign language. One with characters that twisted and curved, one that I have never seen before.
Who I was was an alien to me, and I couldn't recognize what my mind was trying to understand, what it was trying to unravel.
So I moved on.
Because that's what I know to do best.
You taught me that;
most painfully and most tortuously.
I moved on through my day, eating, laughing, talking, and living like I do so well.
But the thought of my body shutting down, me not being able to complete what I had started, what I do everyday in one small moment scared me a little. I would be confused for a moment, shrug it off and continue on.
When the night came and my favorite part of the day arrived (sleep, thank GOD.) I lit my candles, put on my matching pajamas and opened my computer to blog.
In the midst of this blog, I found myself unable to finish, to truly annunciate my feelings. So I took a break.
Opening Netflix, I have been falling asleep to How I Met Your Mother, so I turned it on.
And in less than 10 minutes, it hit me.
It was the episode after Robin and Barney broke up; where Robin's mourning period was finally discovered by the gang, and it was revealed all the times when we thought Robin was fine, she really wasn't.
Every stupid thing Barney said, we watched as the gang laughed along. Every time he talked about other girls like it was a joke, or someone he wanted to "bang", we laugh, because honestly, it's funny!
But we forget what goes on after that. We forget what really goes on behind the scene:
There is a rightfully crying Robin.
A rightfully broken Robin.
A rightfully hurt Robin.
And in that moment, when Robin finally told Barney how of course when he made a hard effort for another girl, it upset her - I understood what had been nagging at me and what my mind was nudging at me to unravel.
The thing is I haven't really cried since September. and if you know me, I cry a lot. Like a lot. I have the emotional capacity of a little pea, and I will cry when I step on an ant, or when my roommate kills a moth. I am an emotional human being who only thinks irrationally, who pours her out to anyone and everything that she can. She falls and falls and falls again, loves to love, and picks up the pieces of you again and again, because frankly that's all she really knows how to do in this world.
She can pick up the pieces.
But she can't even pick herself up.
The thing is, for the first time in this year, I realized how hard I have been trying to keep all the hurt from this one difficult heartbreak surpressed and like it never really affected me. Then I realized and watched how I ran away every time I got the chance, and stayed, when I knew it was bound to break. Nothing worked out and it was completely my own fault.
I couldn't figure out just quite why.
Until last night.
To my 552 days, moving on from you has been the most painful, gut-wrenching, heart-breaking, bone-shaking, head-fucking, shit-dumping experience of my life.
You have pushed me through bone-shattering sprints to hell and back.
And for 552 days, I have pardoned my hurt because I felt ashamed, because I felt like I was not enough and how I felt shouldn't matter.
I wanted to be okay like you were
I put you on a pedastol and excused your actions because I wanted so much to learn to be the kindest, to be the most grateful and to be the most gracious.
You played the main role to the movie of my life. And who isn't the star to their own friggin life?
In the 552 days and all the secrets were out,
I never once reached out to you.
I never told you how I felt.
I never told you about all the moments when I felt like Robin Sherbatsky.
I didn't know I was allowed to grieve, because clearly, you didn't need time to grieve. You gave her more than you could give me.
And you know what? At the end of the day, that really, really hurt me.
And it broke my heart that you never stopped to think about that, and that you never took the simplest action to ask me how I felt about it, to give me a heads up, to give me teensiest heads-up that this might hurt.
You never thought about me, and that in the equation of you and her, I could be a possible consequence too. You never thought about how I could have been affected, and how much that would hurt me.
And 552 days later, I finally realized how after what had happened, it built me to become afraid. Afraid of love, afraid of you, and afraid of who I am. I became afraid that like how you treated me, I could never be considered in someone's equation either. There will be someone better for them, just like there was for you. They will move on, and make you feel like you were not special, just like I was to you. They will block you, push you so far away that even if you thought about wanting answers to the questions that have sucked at your soul, and broke everything that you are, you can't even get the oppurtunity to. Like you did.
And I didn't know that. All the heartbreaks of this year, they didn't stem from the universe not working out or God hating me, they stemmed from me, from the decisions that I made out of a hurt heart, out of the hurt that you and her subjected to me without even noticing.
I wish you could make it right, but all the wishing in the world won't take away the misery of the 552 days.
And at the end of the day, maybe moving on without answers is the most frustrating thing in the world, but maybe,
maybe I learned that it is okay.
Though what you did was never okay, I'm glad that I never reached out. I'm glad that I learned to try to be the kindest, that I had a hard time moving on, because at the end of the day, I really did love you. I thought the whole world of you. While I was moving on, I always considered how you might feel instead of thinking about how I feel. I let you feel like the man, I let you make yourself feel like your hurtful actions were okay. I validated what you did with her.
When I moved on, I stopped doing that.
When I moved on, I stopped doing that because I realized that that is not my job.
It's not my job to right your wrongs.
It's not my job to validate your relationship.
It's not my job to make you feel like your actions don't have consequences.
It's not my job to make you feel like you getting together with her was a pure, loving act.
It's not my fucking job to make you feel like what you did wasn't unfaithful and unacceptable.
Because at the end of the day, I can't make you into a person that you are not.
I don't use the word "I" a lot because it makes me excruciatingly uncomfortable.
But today, I decided that "I"? "I" am pretty fucking powerful.
At the end of the day, you taught me that you are not the person who declares me unlovable.
You don't declare that I am not special
that I am unwanted.
that I am replacable.
I get to declare that.
And I get to declare that about myself, slowly and surely.
Maybe I can't declare that about myself today or tomorrow,
But one day, I will declare myself lovable, special, wanted and irreplacable, without needing the validation from you or any other people.
Day 553.
This was the day I told myself it was okay to feel what I was feeling, it's okay to want to understand. It's okay to not be okay.
This was the day that I decided that I declare I am strong, I am lovable, and that I, I have a purpose.
This was the day I told myself it was okay to feel what I was feeling, it's okay to want to understand. It's okay to not be okay.
This was the day that I decided that I declare I am strong, I am lovable, and that I, I have a purpose.
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