I'm really not sure what to say about the one year anniversary but I feel like I need to say something.
It was a quiet, uneventful day. My co-worker brought her kids over to visit Max (they're the ones I adopted him from) and they and Max had so much fun. We took Max on a long walk together and when they left, he tried to leave with them; afterward he just sat at the front door and cried. I took him to PetSmart and ran a few errands, then spent my evening watching LOST on Netflix and cleaning/organizing things around here.
So all in all, not a whole lot to talk about. I expected it to feel . . . I don't know, more significant, but I didn't actually think about it much. I mean, in the back of my mind, I was aware, all day, of the one year thing but overall, it wasn't too big a deal. I thought about calling him more than once but every time I dialed his number I hung up before I even pressed talk.
It's hard to believe it's been a year. Past that, I don't know what to say, really. On the one hand this feels like a deadline: if it's been a whole year then it's definitely time to give up and stop hoping and just move on with my life regardless of how strongly I feel I'm not quite ready to do that. On the other hand this has somehow made me feel more hopeful, in the sense of maybe now it's been long enough. Maybe now enough time has passed that we can sit down and talk things out and go from there.
Sometimes I look at the past year and I feel like a failure. I feel like there's so much more I could have accomplished if I'd worked a little bit harder or devoted myself a little bit more. This is really pretty limited to my weight and physical health--sometimes I look in the mirror and I think to myself, Do you know how much you could have accomplished in a year if you'd just eaten better and worked out more? And yeah, it disappoints me.
At the same time, though, I know that I have accomplished tons in the past year. Reading blog entries and FB statuses from this time last year is proof that I'm really a completely different person now than I was then.
First and foremost, my mental health has improved by leaps and bounds. I'm healthier now than I ever have been as an adult. I feel like I'm in control of my own mind, I'm not as angry or as bitter, my sense of self gets stronger every day. And even more than that I'v been able to commit to my treatment. I take my medicine every day, I go to my doctor's appointments, I get my lab work done when I'm supposed to. All great things that I definitely wasn't doing as much or as well before. I don't have anxiety attacks anymore and I can sleep without sleeping pills. I feel capable. I do still have bad days but now when I do, they're normal bad days in the sense that whatever made them bad is a legitimate thing to be upset about. Does that make sense? Mostly I don't blow things out of proportion anymore, and one little aggravation doesn't ruin my day.
I'm also just . . . I don't know. At this time last year I was mentally a mess, I didn't own a car, and I was making $8 an hour working in retail. Now, I'm mentally healthy, was just able to buy a car on my own, and I'm making almost double what I used to be plus working actual full time hours. It amazes me, because a year ago, I wouldn't have been able to have a full time job given my mental state.
So really, the best thing to say is that I've done well. I've done as well as I could despite the fact that I got my heart broken and that I'm still heart broken right this very second.
At the end of the day, I still miss Ex-Fiance. And I still love him. And I would still really, really like the opportunity for a second chance.
I want him to know me like this. I want him to see who I really am. That girl that made him miserable . . . that wasn't me. That's *not* me. And I know that I'm at a point where I could be in a relationship and do it successfully, and I want it to be with him. I still feel, very strongly, that I could be happy spending the rest of my life with him.
So that's that. Either way--with Ex-Fiance or without Ex-Fiance--I feel like I have a bright future and I'm glad to be alive and healthy.
I remember, just after the break up happened, I was in the back room at the Kingman Hastings with one of my co-workers. We were talking, and I said something about how scared I was that things might not work out with Ex-Fiance in the end. And my co-worker said, "So if that happens, then worst case scenario is you survive and come out of this knowing you can handle anything." I honestly think it was the most useful thing anyone said to me at that point and I've carried it with me and repeated it to myself and now it feels more true than ever.
I'm looking forward to summer. To my life. To all the things I have yet to accomplish.
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