Searching for the Good in Goodbye

This summer has been shitty. From being plagiarized to being stuck in what seems like a dead end routine (that leaves me feeling as if I’m in a never ending episode of The Twilight Zone), this summer has left me wondering if Mercury is still in retrograde or if the universe (and whoever runs it) just hates me. My self-induced stress has left me creatively blocked. I haven’t written, danced, taken a photo or even smiled in a while. The icing on the cake was the abrupt ending of my seemingly happy relationship. I’m trying not to write this from a petty or heartbroken place, but let’s be real. Breakups are shitty.

They’re hard. Going through a breakup is so much more than realizing you won’t have a consistent sex buddy, a #MCM, or a title anymore. It’s the loss of time and energy spent within your relationship. It’s the loss of the intimacy you once craved for. It’s forcing yourself to disconnect from the memories, moments, and even songs you’ve dedicated to one another. It’s the process of going from having butterflies when you say his name to being able to walk past the person you used to love as if they never existed. You’ve not only shared yourself physically, but you’ve shared secrets that you swore you would never share with anyone else. You’ve shed the tough exterior that you show to the world on a daily basis and brought your true self filled with insecurities to the table, only for it to not work out. It sucks.

Needless to say, I have been crying and stuck in a cycle of my “What did I do?” thoughts all week. I’ve been driving myself crazy with questions neither of us seem to have an answer to. Was she prettier than me? Skinnier? Bigger ass? Longer hair? Did she dress better? Or was she simply just a better person than I am?

Lately on my commute home from work, I’ve been stuck listening to The Internet’s “Just Sayin/ I Tried”  as I stifle my tears and re-read our last text messages. But for some reason, today was a different. I caught myself smirking and saying  “Oh shit girl, you didn’t cry today.” I saw a slight glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel and began to put things into perspective.

For some reason, it’s taken me all week to come to the realization that I’m young. Still young, dumb, and naive. And as I’ve told my friends during their moment of sadness over a fuckboy many times before, these are my golden years. These are my Broad City years. These are my Girls (the show) years but with more than one person of color. I have learned. I have loved. I have loved hard. I have been loved and I have lost. And I will be the fuck okay.

A wise woman (and my momma) once said,  “You can’t keep a man who doesn’t want to be kept.” If I could go back in time, I would find her and simply say “Thank You.” I am young and though my feelings may be hurt and trust might be broken, I will be okay. Not today. Not tomorrow. But soon.

Healing takes time. But if I choose to wonder what I learned from this relationship instead of what I did wrong, it’ll be easier. I’ve learned how to communicate and how to actually listen to an issue and try to fix it. I’ve learned how to apologize when I am dead wrong. And for that, I’m grateful.

Though at times it may seem as if everything is going wrong, if I have hit my rock bottom then things can only go up from here.