I can’t:

I am 26 years old. When I was younger, I did everything I was promised would improve my life. I got into college, I took out loans to pay for it. I took out more loans each year. My family could not afford to send me to school and my dream college was private. I got a small scholarship and state grants but it wasn’t enough— so I took out loans and went anyway. At 18, you think, because of what you are told, constantly, that taking out massive amounts of loans won’t be a problem. College = career. Or that’s what we were told.  I married young. I got credit cards, I financed cars, I paid for my own wedding. Fast forward to now: I am in debt. Scary, soul killing debt. I am divorced. I was cheated on and hurt and left to clean up the mess alone. I have bills. At 26 and with a college degree I work over 40 hours a week. I make 11.50 an hour. Do the math, that’s circling somewhere around poverty level, my friends. 
I am so sick and tired of the implication that if you are not rich, then you must be lazy. I am sick of the expense required of a college degree these days. I am sick of the debt it left me with. I am sick of the lack of jobs or ridiculous qualifications needed of entry-level career-advancing positions.
I just want to rent an apartment with my boyfriend. I just want to live a life. Instead, at 26 I work to pay bills, and that is it. That’s my existence. A few snippets of bright happiness and that’s all. And I am tired. And I am angry. 

I’m so frustrated. 

How is it different?

I’ve learned something, this year. I didn’t realize it before I was married. I didn’t realize it after my divorce. I didn’t even understand it months afterward. But I get it, now. 

I think that I married the man I married out of comfort and friendship and a might-as-well attitude. I married him because we had been together for 8 years and he had asked me to. I married him because I was young and I thought, in love. I married him despite stirrings of doubt. I married him despite his abuse. I married him because he made me laugh and he held me every night for a decade. We grew up together. I considered him to be my best friend. I loved him.

But he was not the right one for me. I didn’t understand. Couldn’t understand. That I had not ever felt the deep, breathtaking, giddy love that I know exists, now. I didn’t know it was real. I had never seen it, I just assumed that that was all there was for me. Comfortable,  familiar love. It took effort, every day to love that man. I lost myself in those years. I grew weak and fearful and shy and lonely. He did that. I let him.

But I know it, now. I have never felt anything like it and I thank my lucky stars every second for the days I spent howling on the floor, convinced my life was over, assured no one would ever love me like I had been loved again. And I was right, no one will ever love me like I have been loved because I am now loved better. I now know the creeping smile that forces it’s way to my lips, even during the hardest of days. I now know the peaceful sigh of being in the arms of someone who makes you feel safe and light. I get it, now. 

Having a man that earns my love? Is beautiful.

Having someone who makes me realize I’m worth more than I sell myself for? Is life saving.

In college, I was made to feel obsolete and unnecessary. Why I turned around and married someone who made me feel like that, I don’t really understand. It took a year and a half and 8 months of a news relationship for me to realize my own self worth. For me to understand that I am just as much of a prize to him as the man I will forever not stop wanting to kiss, now, is to me.
I’m not saying this to boast or brag. I’m saying this for the women out there like me. The ones who, for whatever reason, believe they aren’t worth love, or the ones who settle for what they can get, or for the ones who allow the transgressions of another to infect their own feelings of self worth. I thought I was nothing when my ex husband signed those divorce papers. I thought I was garbage when he admitted to cheating on me. But I’ve learned, this year, that I am everything that I ever wanted. That I can be that. And that a man never should illustrate my self worth. 

I’ve also learned that I have never been so in love before. That this is different. I asked him last night, “why am I different than any other girl?” We were driving home from a wedding and it was late and we were  sleepy and it was dark. He didn’t see the tears running down my cheeks after he responded and he didn’t see the gigantic smile on my face. I’m not sharing what he said here. It was sweet and mine, only, to keep forever. But just know, when you think you can’t make it anymore? And you’re sad and convinced the end is there? You’re probably very, very wrong.

Because I was wrong.

I’m so glad I was wrong. 

“if you will be my bluebird returnin then i will be your evergreen”

Ten Months. I left Florida ten months ago.
That’s ten months of re-integrating back into the society of my hometown.
Ten months of twisty mountain roads and yearning for the beach.

Ten months and I finally decided to unpack some of my boxes a week ago.
When I got to Georgia I was so scuffed and emotionally bruised that I told myself that I simply didn’t have the energy to look at the small amount of belongings I had left to my name. I stashed them in the basement. Where they sat for ten months.

If you aren’t familiar with Georgia weather, let me help you: this means they sat through a winter of temperatures dipping to the single digits, ice storms and frosts. They sat on the concrete floors of a freezing basement, then weathered the seering temperatures of a Georgia summer. Days rising into the high 90’s and buckets of rain.

Everything in those boxes was, needless to say, ruined. At the prospect of starting life again, I took it upon myself to become an archaeologist into my own life. Sitting on the basement floor, I finally let myself peek back into a life that no longer seems like it had ever been mine. But it was. The first two boxes of ruined items were probably the most heartbreaking. The ex husband and I had started a little business the summer of our wedding. I have always had a dream to own a little shop that instills the do-it-yourself-yness tha tI love so much into everyday life. We sold handmade jewelry and pillows and little handbags and clutches. Every single thing we sold, he and I made by hand, together. When my marriage ended I closed that part of myself off. I couldn’t bare to run the business that reminded me of him, and it was hard to keep up with demand when I was alone and working two jobs.

But I was so proud of everything I’d made. So, opening those boxes and only being able to salvage about seven things from the mold that had taken over them…I just sat there and had a mini breakdown. I know it isn’t the end of the world, I have the materials and skills to start over, if I wanted. But I could not physically bring myself to touch those things for so long that the opportunity to ever touch them again expired.

That was hard.

The next three boxes didn’t hurt nearly as much as I thought. Remnants of my life with him that were so hard to trash a year ago meant nothing when I threw them away last week. I didn’t have a heaviness on my heart when I finally threw away the last of the wedding gifts, the knick knacks I thought I needed to take to my new life.
I separated out my best craft supplies, my personal yearbooks and college diplomas (my Young Harris one almost ruined, another heart blow) and a few books, and threw everything else away.

I’ve collected so many beautiful treasures over the years. Furniture I refinished and re-purposed myself or with my ex, home decor items that were quirky and beautiful and had been the products of long, pain-staking hunts and online bids. Souvenirs from trips I’ve taken. But since my divorce and my subsequent slow pilgrimage back to Georgia, I’ve shed nearly everything I ever used to own. I’m down to so few items that I could throw them all in the back of my car and go in about twenty minutes.

Instead of letting that make me feel like a failure, I’m going to decide to let it make me feel free. If it has ever been important to me, I’ve got it. And that’s all I need.

Soon it will be time to start over with the man I love, now. And that’s exciting. Because all that baggage I was carrying around is gone. And that old life that I sometimes can’t believe was mine is gone. And slowly, slowly, that depressed, sad, lost, listless version of me is going away.
So, maybe it took a long time to get here. Maybe I needed my life to implode and shatter to learn what is actually important, what actually matters, will stay with you through even the hardest of times.

What I do know, now, that it took me 18 months to learn, is that the hardest things are blessings in disguise. I’m so glad for the reasoning I had to go get rid of those dusty old last links to a past I’m ready to shed. I’m ready for this new, beautiful life to start.

You Can’t Get Rid of the Babadook

So, something has been bothering me for, oh, about a month, now. Back in April, I had posted a status on Facebook about how stressed out I was because of my newish job. It is a very exhausting position that I actually do like at times, but it involves dealing with people who have recently been hospitalized or who have sick relatives. They’ve been through a difficult time and the last thing they want to hear is me telling them their insurance won’t cover whatever equipment they need to get their family member home and away from the hospital. No one patient of ours  is ever happy or pleasant or even slightly kind, and while I usually keep a cheerful disposition, (even if I’m lying)it starts to wear on you. Like any other modern human, I vent about it.

About an hour after posting my status, a friend posted a status of her own, vaguely complaining about my complaints. She didn’t actually single me out, to be fair, but I told her she definitely could unfollow me on Facebook if I was bothering her. Her response was, essentially,  that I had said I was happy lately and that she was tired of seeing me be negative on Facebook and if I was so damn happy, I ought to act like it… 

Now this friend is a sweet person, and she meant no harm. But the whole scenario sort of dug at me, because I’ve been struggling with the same topic internally for a while. I am happier than I have been in my adult life. In the past year I got to know myself I on a deep, harsh level, I grew from my mistakes, learned how to heal when someone I trusted with my heart set it on fire (multiple times), and I know what it is now to be loved by someone worthy of loving me. So, yeah, sure, I’m happy.

But, as a popular Netflix movie intones, you can’t get rid of your depression. Just because things change and your spirit is lifted, it doesn’t mean your insecurities and stresses that mired you down just disappear. And the juggling of your happy, airy heart with your sad, taxed heart gets difficult at times. There is pain in me that I will carry for a lifetime. The girl who misses her brother. The life I put aside when one door closed forever. And while I may have found the man of my dreams, have a steady job that’s getting me back on my feet, and I’m back in my mountains, daydreaming of my one-day happily-ever-after and no longer scared of pinterest lest I see something wedding-related on a board…. that doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to be a little blue every once in a while.

Mainly, I just struggle with acknowledging that pain in a healthy way, one that will help me deal with my demons while living in the beautiful moments a hundred tearful nights gave way to. I’m getting better at it, but some things pull me down.

Take, for instance,  my last name. I kept my ex-husband’s in the divorce, for multiple reasons, some practical and others not so much. But living back home, it causes a few problems. I’m always having to second-guess my own introductions of myself. If I’m with my boyfriend and meeting members of his church, its easier to refer to myself by my maiden name. If I’m at work, I have to remember that I need to use my married name’s initials when signing medical documents. Each and every time I sign my name, flash my ID, or tell someone who I am, I’m reminded of my troubles.  Every time I lie and say my last name is still Herndon, (maiden) I feel wrong for sparing someone the disgrace of knowing I’m divorced. Every time I use my legal, married name, I feel like a fraud.

Just the simple use of a name is something I have to deal with on a daily basis. Divorce doesn’t just end with signed documents and parting ways…it follows you.

And I may be a thousand times healthier than I used to be, I may be happier than I ever thought possible. But I need to stop beating myself up for being sad. I need to stop feeling as if I’m ungrateful for what I have (believe me, I know how lucky I am to have someone in my life who can make me smile like an idiot just by looking at me, ok? ) and allow myself to be a little bit nicer…to…myself.

The tip of your tongue, the top of your lungs, its makin me crazy

April 4th made it a year since my divorce was made official. What a year. What a cluster of years, actually. All the transitioning into wifedom, then back again. All the abuse and the sadness. I lost myself. After he told me, I couldn’t find the light again. I fell into the darkest parts of myself. That’s a feeling I wish on no one. It awakened my depression within myself to a new, bottomless hole. I felt so much unimaginable pain. Not exactly for the end of my marriage, because it obviously meant nothing to the person I pledged myself to…but more for the final loss of the radiantly happy girl I could have been.

A year ago I didn’t think I’d be typing this today.

Let me tell you, I am so grateful I’m alive. I am grateful I pulled myself out of that well of self pity and sorrow and doubt. Many people can’t so easily. And I fall back in from time to time. But. I decided to try to live again, because I had nothing to lose, but the faint whisper of a promise of everythig to gain. I sat on a beach and promised my sister I’d try to start breathing again. It must be pretty hard for him, and I’m sorry he destroyed the friendship he always needed most. Mine.

Its been a tumultuous sea of living, but I’m still here.

He emails me, asking for my friendship, because he’s alone in the world. He emailed me, today. I can’t ever let him in again. I even feel sorry for the misguided man who should have never asked me to be his wife. I was the victim in this, everyone I love rallied to protect me. He fucked up. Badly. Being the person he needed to be isn’t the problem. Marrying me first, then using infidelity to figure yourself out, that was it.

So, yes, I have a sort of survivor’s guilt. I hope he gets the help he needs. I know I still flinch when a hand gets raised too quickly near me. I know my heart still flinches when a man with the most beautiful brown eyes shows me nothing but the deepest, sweetest love.

I’m so glad I pledged to stop thinking about ending my life on that beach last summer. I’m so glad I’m here, now, awake at 5:18 am because I had a nightmare, waiting until its time to wake up and go to my new job and tell my sweet boyfriend about my bad dreams.

I’m so glad I’m here. I’m finding that radiant happy girl again. She surfaces when I manage to be on top of my bills, when I feel my independence growing, when I’m driving over mountains and rivers and through valleys, when my boyfriend looks at me like I’m the best thing he has ever seen and he’s holding my hand and I know he loves me. She’s coming back.

‘tell me that you’re alright, yeah everything is alright’

So I know it is no secret that your twenties are supposed to be hard. It is basically a promise that is instilled in little humans since birth…”yo, your twenties….they gonna blow.”

But I’m almost at the end of my half-way marker year, and mine have….I mean…what’s a sufficient word? Hurricanado? Can one hurricanado for five years? Because I think if you took the destruction of a Florida hurricane, with the velocity of a Georgia tornado, add some glitter and roadkill…I think it would paint the same picture. I’ve watched my brother die in front of me. I’ve gotten a useless degree. Two actually. I’ve walked down an aisle. I’ve signed 80 pages of paperwork ending my marriage. I learned what it is to actually be in love with the right person..after the wedding ring indention finally disappeared from my left hand. I’ve raged and I’ve lived in more places than I care to count.

(Oh wait right quick mad loud shout out to Alanna and Carolyn, you stalkers)

And, I’ll be 26 in a month. I just can’t imagine what else on Earth I could possibly have waiting for me on the landslide down to where life ends (i.e…my thirties.)

But it isn’t just me fucking up and blundering with every step. It is everyone. I haven’t lived one single moment of my entire adult life with savings. I head toward that next paycheck like my life depends on it, and it normally does. Jobs? Bah. Who here, whatever your age, is working their perfect dream job that they are actually not overqualified for where they pay you a living amount? Raise your hand. (If you raised your hand just now…I’d probably talk shit about you to your face. Why are you even here. Go away. Just kidding. Please stay. Go you.)

The thing is. I let every rock that lands in my path crush me sometimes. The weight of it. The stress. I will tell you right now I rarely sleep. I’m alway running late for work. And I’m not the only one who fails at the facade of surviving my twenties. My baby sister? Her current troubles make my divorce of an abusive gay cheater look like nothing. My boyfriend? He’s brilliant and witty and educated and smart and makes my quick as a whip sass seem like idiot babble. But currently? He’s twenties-ing.

Yes. I have sorority sisters and childhood friends and older friends who are riding life like a majestic sexual unicorn. They are winning. They have babies. They have straight husbands. They have jobs that they don’t have to drag themselves to. They probably don’t have three different meals’ worth of Wendy’s wrappers under their driver seat.

They can do it!

But they are not the norm. They are not the majority. And I think we all forget that. We all get caught up in the promises (lies) of a future we thought we’d have with our pre-fancy degrees and pre-student debt selves. Before those of us who graduated when the stock market did a big fuck you wound up working at tourist attractions and gas stations, getting paid minimum wage and dealing with the worst creation known to man: humans.

But. Things get better. Or that’s what I keep telling myself. And they did. And they do. And they will. They will.

Five points to Gryffindor if you, without cheating, tell me who/what this post’s title was stolen from. Hint: I’ve seen them play live four times, and never on purpose. Don’t let Harry Potter down.

How do I do this?

Post-Divorce living is hard. Hard. Scary and tough and you are in pain for what seems like eons. You listen to Brand New and you drink wine alone. You dress like a tart and you go dancing with your girlfriends, drunk and wobbly, til your feet hurt and you find yourself crying in the car because a man was angry at you for not dancing with him. You date loser after loser, just so you don’t feel alone. You get hurt over and over again. You compare every guy to your ex husband. You wonder if you’ll ever find some light.

And then you do. You find yourself. You realize you are doing it. Living. Alone and on your own. Sure, you have no fucking idea how to do it or why or where or what you are doing or how you’ll end up. But you function. You flounder and stumble, but you move on.

And all of a sudden, someone walks into your life and the air goes out of the room. Awkward flirting, clumsy dating, sweet first kisses…and he’s yours. And. You come to the realization that this one is different. You don’t have to lock away your heart…you don’t feel tortured, you aren’t forced to listen to death metal to drown it doubts after each date… This one…he’s just…right.

Enter post-divorce-anxiety-broken-girl syndrome. You can’t turn off your brain. You second guess. You seek hidden meaning. You worry. You drama spiral. You warn him you are a mess. He finds you crying in a parking lot one day.

And he still doesn’t go. He doesn’t leave. He gives no reason for the second-guessing and the worry. He treats you as he would a wounded, wild animal. Gentle but honest, sweet but practical, loving but wary.

And your heart bursts.
Do you really get to be this happy?
Does it really not matter that nothing else in your life is sorted?
Do you try again?

How to not immerse yourself in a person out of fear. How to know its okay to fall. How to stop being scared he’ll disappear. How to believe him when he says he’s not going anywhere.

These are problem thoughts I don’t wish on anyone. When someone finds you, sees the beauty in you, hopes to keep
you….but you are so broken you actually think of yourself as not worth loving. You are so broken it gets in between this beautiful thing.

I hope I can let go of the past…because this future could be so bright.

“Can I be close to you…”

When you tell someone you are a mess they ought to pass up.

And they tell you that you are nothing like that. And they don’t just tell you, but show you, so you know they mean it. And kiss you so that your knees melt…

You keep them.

And you realize that all the hell of your past doesn’t even matter anymore. Not really. Sure, you are a stronger person for it. Yes those hard life lessons rocked you and changed you. But letting go of that pain suddenly just became the easiest thing. This weight just slipped off my back when I wasn’t paying attention.

I’m so excited for this adventure.
I can’t even explain how I feel…which is hilarious because I usually have no problem doing so…

But…a girl could get used to this. I had a moment the other night where I thought….”So this is what it must be like. This is what it feels like. To be treated so sweetly that you gain the faith back in yourself you lost long ago. This is it.”

Nothing crazy to fret about these days, dear readers. So very sorry not sorry.

“So its gonna be forever, or its gonna go down in flames…”

Taylor Swift is a magi. She’s so on point she’s a genius. You have to go down in flames a lot. A lot. A lot a lot. But, damn. Damn. When. It doesn’t. And it has the makings of something good. Damn, do you just feel this weight lift. Damn. Oh, my, damn. *smiles like lunatic*

Life is not sorted out.
Living situation is not sorted out.
Making a living is still in a rut, not sorted out.
Freaking out about getting life together.

But. Something good’s a-happenin, and my face is starting to hurt from all the genuine smiling going on up in here. I am not vain or self absorbed, but I do know that I deserve what’s been happening. I fought to keep breathing for an entire year. I let all the darkness swallow me up and I almost let go. But I didn’t. and this…this…is worth it.

Are we in the clear yet, in the clear yet, good

My sister got very perfunctory tonight. Insightful, deep, and slurring her words only a little, she explained us as sisters, as women, as hurt girls so beautifully and sadly. I just held her hand while she hit the nail on the head over and over with her words. I can’t even get it right, now, like some half-remembered dream.

Two fantastic girls, railing against the world, gypsying around, one of us throwing her heart out to unwitting, but hungry, alligators over and over again, the other guarding her own with all her ferocious might, remembering the words our mother told us repeatedly growing up: there are no Prince Charmings or Knights to save you. There’s no one else in this world to look out for you, but yourself. You must rely on you alone (and maybe your sister.)  To trust another person to save you….it is too hard, it isn’t safe.

I myself have ripped what was left of my heart to shreds this year defying that warning. Seeking comfort, love and shelter from men who always wound up giving me the “I don’t want to hurt you, but…” all year. Tiny bursts of hurt that brought me back to that car ride with my ex husband each time I was let down again.

She sees me cry over boy after man after boy. And she just wants me to understand that I have to love myself before I can ever expect to find the right one, someone worthy of a Herndon girl. Someone who loves us for every ridiculous thing we have to offer.

And the fact remains that true happiness doesn’t come from someone else loving you. You have to find it within you. I’m so lucky I have her to remind me of that, again and again. The best broken record I will ever hear.

I wish I was as strong as this girl.
I wish neither she nor I had to go through what we did in this long, hard life we’ve survived to understand these truths. We fill up rooms with our overflowing personalities. We love hard and we love deep. We can’t help it. Maybe it was never having much of an outlet for it growing up. But if you are a part of our lives, know we love you dearly. Hurt girls….either they let their pain consume them, or they try to live in spite of it.

Here’s to living in spite of it. Instead of becoming bitter and cynical, let us always play our music a little too loud, laugh a little too much, talking about our brother to keep him with us always, and always have each other to lean on. Let us skip rocks with sweet boys who hold our heart, let us kiss the wrong men and laugh through our tears about it later. Let us make mistakes with the ones we can never admit how much we care about, how much of our heart they own, but let us never again drown because some dipshit didn’t know what he had when he had one of us right in front of him.

So grateful for these random moments when we are together. I love you, Caitlin Melody.