Stupid shit I say

We learn at our own pace to make and break connections and emotional ties, and the situation is forced upon us, we seek comfort. But whoa wait, you can’t possibly have comfort anymore, you’re five. You’re a big kid now.

He controlled everything: our dates, my clothes, my friends, my food, my social media, my music, my art, my sexuality.

Everything.

And he made me feel so inadequate, everything I did was wrong somehow and I had to be grateful because despite all of this, all my flaws and shortcomings, he was still with me. He still "loved me".

And then he left me for another person, she was younger than me, skinnier, prettier. She was everything he had always tried to mold me into. She was everything I thought I wasn't. Everything he wanted me to think I wasn't.

And then I broke down because it had finally happened, he was finally done with me and my "bullshit". I cried myself to sleep for weeks. I stopped eating. I stopped everything, because he was so ingrained into my life that I didn't know how to function without him anymore.

I met my current boyfriend when I was still dating this asshole, we were friends and he helped me to rebuild myself after the fallout, to get out, make new friends, focuse on my career, take care of myself and be independent. He had a girlfriend at the time, so we were really good friends back then. Just friends. And he had already done more for me that the supposed love of my life.

And one day, six months after he left, on my fucking birthday, my ex called me late at night, he wanted to know how I was and if I had a good birthday. This was but a booty call, I realized he just wanted a quick fuck when he casually mentioned that he was again single. He had a fight with his girlfriend, because he had wanted to bring his mother to date-night as he used to do with me, and that she had broken up with him when he refused to back down. I was just available, not missed, not wanted, not loved. Just a girl to fuck without much fuss. I felt such and admiration for her in that moment, because apparenty she WAS everything I wasn't back then, she was strong, had selfsteem, she had been backed into a corner and unlike me she had fought back. She realized that he wasn't worth shit and dumped his ass.

And I wanted to be her more than ever, not because I wanted him back, but because I wanted him gone. I wanted to be strong and tell him to fuck off just like she had.

And thats what I did. I told him I was done. That he could go and cry on someone elses shoulder, that I had given him everything I was for five years and that it was the last time he asked something of me. I hung up and blocked his number.

I am now in a happy relationship, I feel loved, desired, appreciated, supported and respected. He loves me, he has show it many times and he continues to do so. We fight and get mad but we can talk it out. Is not "you did this, fix it", is "we are here, lets fix it" and I've never been happier.

Because as an adult, this pervasive notion that there exists a perfect path for everyone, that people should love what they do, and that work is meant to function as a vehicle for fulfilling a person’s grand life destiny is not only inaccurate for many of us, it can be toxic.

The ideal is so ingrained that I have to remind myself constantly I’m not a failure because I don’t adore my job, and because I’m not rocking the world with my work. That is okay.