Healing and Hurt

I’m feeling okay today. If I could describe what it feels like, it would be like this really heavy trench coat on my body. Like someone made a weighted trench coat, but it’s too heavy for it to be regulating. How do you stop longing for and missing two people who felt like soul mates? Even if I can’t be partners with my ex, having her in my life means a lot to me. And while it hurts to lose that kind of connection with her, having no connection would have shattered me complet

What fun would life be if a good day didn’t end with a pit of grief? It’s fine. It’ll pass. My heart just hurts. I’ll watch Heartstopper and cry about the beautiful queer love unfolding and about the grief I feel deep in my chest, that I wish could be resolved by a hello, a how are you? A conversation. Life doesn’t feel fair sometimes. This grief doesn’t feel fair.

My dreams last night have made the grief I’m feeling louder than usual today. I’ve cried more than I normally do. And crying can be a release sometimes, but when it’s paired with this intense wish to be able to speak to her, it makes the tears feel useless. Like they have nowhere to land. They aren’t cathartic, they’re just proof of how much I miss her. I really fucking miss her. My heart is hurting. My two-week break from therapy will be over next week, but I think the focus

I’m tired of holding this termination. I really am. I feel like someone placed it in my arms and then used adhesive to attach it to my skin. Like they wrapped a platinum chain around it and my arms so I can’t put it down… no matter how badly I want to. I want to physically push it out of my body. Because there is no resolution. There is no fixing what happened. There is no answer that will change things. And I’m tired of it hurting. I’m angry that it hurts. I don’t know how t

I don’t understand why I feel like a pancake being flipped over all the time. How I can feel okay and then suddenly be hit with so much shame that I want to melt away. Or disappear entirely. Why does that happen? Why does every mistake I’ve made in my entire life replay in my head all at once, like it’s being dumped on me in bulk? Why do I feel like the worst person to ever walk the earth? Why do I hate myself this much? Is it because I keep fucking up? Holding all of this in

I have so much shame wrapped up in me as a person. Especially from this last year, and letting myself go there today. Letting myself recall everything. It just floods me with different voices yelling different things. Part of me wants to be able to hold empathy, while another part is pissed that I would do that. That I would put myself in a position to have my empathy used against me. As if holding empathy means I’m at fault. Because another part of me spirals into self-blame

You know what I hate the most about my bad therapy experience this year? That it left me with a bitter taste toward the profession at large. When I hear the words clinician or therapist, I sometimes scuff internally in the same way I do about religion. And that bothers me, because I’ve had a long-standing issue with how I judge religion and people who are religious. I find it hypocritical to lump an entire group of people together in my mind and treat them as one and the same

I’m sitting in deep and heavy grief tonight for many people, many situations, many reasons. I’ve talked about all of them. Many times. So many times my own eyes, ears, thumbs are tired of going over it. Because talking about it doesn’t stop it from hurting. So I’m not going to recount who I’m grieving. What situations I’m grieving. The reasons I’m grieving. I’m not going to talk about all the love trapped within me that I can’t express. I’m just going to let it stay heavy. An

I spent the day with my family. I drank beer. I laughed. I had fun. My aunt, the one who always baked for every family gathering, passed away last month. Today, my uncle found a bag of her cookies in the freezer. I don’t have a word for what that felt like. To taste something made by someone who is no longer here is different than tasting it while they’re alive. It holds weight. It asks something of you. I noticed a subtle lemon flavor I had never noticed before. Maybe it was

This is what I mean when I talk about shifting. I think maybe I’m always shifting because if I stayed in this level of pain and distress without any breaks, I would probably go crazy. So something in me moves. Pulls away. Goes numb. Goes quiet. And then comes back later like nothing happened. But right now it feels like my entire life has blown up. I don’t recognize myself. I don’t know who I am. I feel dead inside. It’s not dramatic. It’s flat. Empty. Like all the parts of m

The weight of the grief around not being able to talk to L has been heavy. This weekend has been heavy. I’m having a hard time. I know logically that there’s nothing wrong with feeling love. I know that love, in itself, isn’t a moral failure or a mistake. And still, I can’t help but feel wrong for feeling it. As if loving too deeply is some kind of flaw. As if my heart didn’t get the memo that this chapter is closed. There are moments where I don’t want to let the love go at

Sometimes I feel like I’m on the verge of a complete mental breakdown. I don’t know if that’s the beginning of a panic attack or if it’s me just completely losing it. I feel like a balloon floating in a room, bouncing from wall to wall, from floor to ceiling. I don’t feel grounded. I don’t feel like I’m standing on anything. I feel like I’m just drifting, with no way to pull myself back in. I feel like I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what I want out of life. I don’t know

I’m still struggling. And I think I might be for a long time. I know I’m not great at showing how much I love people. I’ve never been good at translating what I feel on the inside into something visible or reassuring on the outside. But that doesn’t mean the love isn’t there. The depth of it is overwhelming sometimes. And I don’t know what to do with all of the love I still have for her. I don’t know how to hold it. Today I donated plasma. Then I spent time with friends. I fo

I keep going in and out of feeling like I’ll survive this. When the panic attacks hit, it feels like I won’t. I don’t know how to explain that it’s panic and grief mixed together and I feel like I can’t live without her. I don’t know how I’m going to get through this. I don’t know that my panic attacks have every been this intense before. Usually they are silent. More mental than physical. Lately they’ve been both and I think the shingles pain being in my chest might be exace

I’m trying my best to hold it together. I wrote last night’s post in the middle of clustered panic attacks, so I was really in the thick of it and just going through it. I’m honestly glad it doesn’t feel that intense 24/7, but I do feel like I need support that I don’t really have. Part of it’s my fault, I’m not opening up to anyone to be able to receive support and part of it is that I just don’t feel safe enough with anyone in my life to be able to open up and receive suppo

It hurts to need support and not be able to open your mouth to let someone in. My session didn’t really help today and it’s not because of anything other than the fact that I go to talk and I just can’t. I can’t let someone hear me. I want to so badly. I want to say “I need help” “I’m struggling” “my heart feels like it’ll never recover” “I feel so close to giving up” But I can’t. Instead I want to run. Hide. And now I’m stuck alone. Crying. Panicking. Feeling like I have nob

I feel like I’m short circuiting. Where writing used to feel like something that helped me, now I feel like I can’t form thoughts or maybe it’s that I haven’t been allowing myself the time to think. I don’t know how I’m going to tell my family. It hurts even thinking about having to say it out loud. I don’t want to. But being asked where she is and having to pretend like everything is okay hurts just as much. I feel like I don’t bring anything to this world. I know that sound

Lately it feels like my whole life has been one long search for words I can’t seem to find. How do I explain the kind of heartache that doesn’t just sit quietly in the background, but pushes outward like it’s trying to break through my chest? How do I explain that it feels like my lungs are collapsing in on themselves, like I can’t get a full breath no matter how hard I try? How do I explain that every part of me wants to promise I can be the man she needs, but I can’t give a

Nothing makes me feel more worthless than losing the one person who made the world feel even remotely manageable. It’s like the minute the relationship ended, every horrible belief I have about myself came crashing down all at once. I feel like dead weight. Like I’ve been holding her back from a better life. Like she’ll finally be able to breathe now that I’m not her husband. And the part that destroys me is that everything in me wants to beg her to stay. I want to fall apart

I don’t really have words for what I’m navigating right now. My brain feels foggy and far away, and everything feels a little unreal. But the biggest thing sitting on me is the loss of a 14-year relationship. Fourteen years. It’s hard to even wrap my head around that. I keep drifting in and out of myself. One minute I’m “fine,” and the next I feel like I’m floating outside my body watching my life collapse from a distance. I don’t have answers. I don’t even have a clean narra