Nic Narrates

I had tea with a friend of mine recently, over which she relayed how she’d broken up with her boyfriend of four years. She wanted to commiserate, to rejoice, to make plans, to breathe some fresh air. She knew I’d understand her current state of emotions. She knew I’d be able to relate. And she was right.

I never write about these things anymore. The reasons are many, but absolutely because they no longer consume me as they once did. I’ve moved on. But it’s strange somehow that I no longer know those people, their voices or their laughter, the mundane day-to-day, the celebrations, the plans for the future. For so long it seemed like such a foregone conclusion to be a part of that life: that I would always be in that place, always know those people, that person. Over and over, the same patterns of place and time and space. Always the same: same words, same plans, same fights and sadness, same push and pull.

At times, I’m amazed at how different everything is, how long it took to get here, and how proud I am of where I am today. I know what it took, I know all the things I never wrote anything about over the years. I know I’d been handed every reason to make my leaving easy, but then I clung to what good there was. 

I can’t help but reflect upon that time as something altogether different now…I see my own complacency. Complacency with the known; a complete removal of the unknown, the possibility of being with someone else, of being alone. I got locked into a pattern and couldn’t seem to find my way out. There just wasn’t anything else. I may have been wronged, but I stayed.

Until I made a choice. I opened my eyes- maybe for the first time in a long time, maybe for the first time since that first meeting. And I saw, I felt the end as fact. Just because it’s all I’ve ever known doesn’t mean it’s all I will ever know. The toxicity of disrespect, of deep emotional harm, of plummeting self-esteem, of loneliness…the familiarity, so ingrained, misleads…until I shook that complacency from my eyes and saw things as they were. I may not have been able to choose who my father is or how he treated me, but I could choose the man I’d love from then on.

The man in my life today once told me I have a tendency of “reaching.” I know how he means it, but I also know that he’s right in more ways than one. In the past I may have reached for more than was there to be reached for, but ultimately I chose to reach for something better with the hope, the faith, that someone else would come along. Someone like him.

Filed under: a thing of beauty, break ups suck more, childhood, crash and burn, crossroads, depression, dirty laundry, family matters, in memory, just say 'when', knowing, letting go, people should be nicer to each other, poor choices, quiet desperation, singletons, things people say, work in progress by Nic