Anyone who has ever gone through a serious break up probably knows the long process it takes to truly "get over" that person. In the first days, you forget that you aren't together and reach for the phone to call them before you remember you can't. It makes your heart hurt down to your finger tips where you ache to dial their number. And it doesn't really matter if you were the break up-er or the break up-ee. If you truly loved that person, whatever the reasons, it just flat out sucks.
Weeks and months go by and you might still be fighting. Everything you see, think, or do seems to rip open the fresh wounds. You might see them in the grocery and it shakes you to the core.
Because there is anger, annoyance, frustration, pain and then, hopefully, a tentative forgiveness until you talk very little or not at all.
Somewhere in that time I assumed a new identity. Instead of referring to myself constantly as "we" I began to say "I". Me. I scarcely knew what that meant. I had been in one relationship or another for so long I had never developed a full sense who I am; what I want.
I was afraid. Of doing the wrong thing. Of someone being disappointed in me. Of being alone. But if this season of of life has taught me anything it is this:
Stop waiting for other people to tell you it is okay to live.
And I will be in Scotland on my 26th birthday. And Germany before it and Ireland after. And I am going to stop waiting to start living. Every decision I have made has been influenced by someone else. I guess that is the way it always goes but the problem is that I have been dangerously susceptible to not believing in myself. And I do now. I believe in myself.
Me. And that's okay with me. How freeing.
