feels like freedom

I started going to therapy again. And then on an impulse, on the last sunny day before winter came in full force, I grabbed my tripod and hopped in my car and went out for some Self-Portrait Therapy. The day I took these, November 5, will always be special to me. It was the last day of my OG 365 project in 2010.

On that day, 9 years later, I went back to my roots. In the words of Maggie Rogers, “I walked off you. And I walked off an old me.” I shook off the flashbacks and the nightmares and the email that came out of nowhere on an otherwise innocent Friday morning. I got in front of my camera at a park I have taken pictures at a million times, and it was like, for 20 minutes, the darkness fell away. 

“Shake off the dreams,” my therapist told me. “He doesn’t have that power over you anymore.”

The day after I went to therapy, I had a flashback to a night I’d rather forget. The night when a man asked me if I loved him—a sweet question, right? Not when there’s also a punch to the shoulder blade coming your way when you hesitate, just for a moment. And then you eventually do whimper out a “Yes” because you just want the hitting to stop, and you know that if you tell him what he wants to hear, it will.

And it hit me: that’s not love. It never was. True love, real love, will never be a power struggle. Love worth fighting for will not leave you bruised and broken and frozen in time, reliving these moments over and over again.

Somehow, through all the brokenness, I have found that true love. The one that saves his last Reese’s Peanut Butter Egg form the candy stash for you when you’re stressed and it’s busy season. The one that makes your coffee in the morning when you have to work early. The one that constantly fights for you and your relationship and your love. 

I shook off the darkness. I walked off an old me. It was the first day in a very long time that I have felt like myself again. And I hope more of those days are in the future for me.