Things can go wrong. Catastrophically wrong. You could be completely fine one day, going about your life, minding your own business – then you meet someone. And it’s not just anyone, because you’re actually pretty good looking and you meet people all the time, but this person … you just can’t explain it. He’s sweet. He’s cute. He’s nice (in a good way) – but so are a lot of guys you meet and you can’t understand why you are so drawn to him. And then you sleep with him.
I’ll spare you what happened next because it gets pretty predictable, but rest assured that it wasn’t good and I felt something inside of me shatter. This past year had been difficult. Honestly, with everything I had to go through (financial and professional instability, getting attacked in front of my apartment, losing beloved family members, etc) this year, having this guy stomp on my heart was the icing on the Worst Year Ever cake. I began to feel that I deserved the way he treated me. What would he see in me? I can’t even keep my life together.
It wasn’t until a few months ago that I felt myself recover. I hadn’t spoken a word to him since July, my professional life was finally coming together (this is seriously the best job ever), my friends really cared about me and I got a new hair cut. So, you know; feeling good, looking better. By last night (aka my birthday party) I felt on top of the world – right up until one of my good friends, completely oblivious to my romantic drama (bless his little heart) walked into my party with him – and shit got weird.
Honestly, I’m more mad at myself than I am with him at this point. Obviously, showing up to someone’s birthday party uninvited and acting like a jerk is a dick move, but the fact that I let him ruin a night that was supposed to be about ME is on me. I felt like all of my accomplishments, all the people that cared about me, all the awesome things about me didn’t matter because he didn’t like me. Everything that I worked so hard to build (myself) began to feel shaky, like it just wasn’t enough.
So I guess what I’m trying to say is that I spent all morning listing things that are really great about me (like the fact that I kept it together enough to not cry last night) and repeating them until I believed them, casually reminding myself that it’s only like his opinion, man. And I’m going to be adding to that list as much as possible and re-reading it – and memorizing it. I am pretty fucking awesome and you are, too, and we should all try to remember that.
