Something about this time of year makes me want to step out of my comfort zone and make changes in my life. My birthday always leaves a cage around my heart that leaves me anxious and struggling to accept myself. At 18, I got my first tattoo days before my birthday after moving back home from Savannah. Nineteen brought Julio and all the mess and chaos that followed after. When I was twenty, Justin and I moved in together. In 2015, Justin and I got engaged in an attempt to try and save our relationship after everything about Julio came out. Last year, I tried to get a new job and when that didn’t work, I chopped off most of my hair.
This year, I bought myself a god damned engagement ring and when it gets here, I’m giving it to Justin and I’m just gonna tell him, “Whenever you’re ready, babe.” Something I’ve realized since the first time we got engaged and then called it off is that you don’t just wake up one day and suddenly find yourself in the fairytale you always dreamed about. Our first engagement was a grand gesture of commitment. It was us saying, “I’m choosing you forever. We’re gonna fix this and come out stronger on the other side.” Repairing our relationship shattered our idealism of each other. It forced us to look at ourselves, as broken and fragile as we have ever been in front of each other, and accept the other person for their faults and promise to put in the work toward forgiveness.
Forgiveness also comes with its fair share of letting go. Matt is leaving Hardee’s, maybe for good this time. Ever since finding out, I have been riding the emotional roller coaster and hoping to God I can at least make it off the ride before I puke my guts all over the place. We’ve been doing this dance, him and me, almost since I started working at Hardee’s. 5 years later and it feels like I’m saying goodbye to a part of my heart that never got the chance to flourish.
4 summers ago, I was lost and broken and Matt was there. Justin was refusing to speak to me instead of actually confronting me about what I was doing with Julio, and every time we had a fight I would walk up to work, eyes puffy and voice cracking from crying. Matt and I would sit in his car, chain-smoking and talking until I was okay again. That was our chance. In his Frankenstein car, cigarette smoke and the eventual sound of laughter wafting from the cracked windows, that connection between us blossomed into something powerful and dangerous.
Moving forward and leaving him in the past where he belongs feels like the ultimate test of faith. For the last 4 years, he has been the standby in my life. The placeholder. The prospect of an “us” had always floated around in the periphery of everything. We had our chance in that smoke-filled car and both of us were too scared, too comfortable, or too exhausted to reach out and take it. I stayed with Justin to work on our relationship, and he settled down with an old friend and they have a beautiful baby girl together.
He grins every time someone hiccups because they remind him of me. It’s hard for me not to see anything with a tiger print and not think of the one he has tattooed on his forearm. We have learned how to passively care for one another and honor the boundaries the other one has set to protect their own relationships. Saying goodbye feels like the next step on the right path to forever, no matter how scary it may feel.
This feeling of being on the precipice of a huge life change is terrifying enough to curl your toes and just reassuring enough to make your heart feel like it’s flying. Remember to forgive yourself, too. Give yourself Grace for your fuck-ups and reckless, heartbreak-fueled decisions that you can’t build your life around anymore. Forgive yourself for giving a man the power to define your life. That’s what forgiveness really feels like: the power of taking back your own truth.
Once you take back your truth, live inside of it. Eat, sleep, and breathe it because it's that truth that will decide where your next steps lie.
My truth? I can do anything I want to do. I just have to want it badly enough to put in the work to get there. (And you can too.)
