Christmas Present

While friends and family were excitedly preparing for the upcoming holiday season, I was packing up the house that had held all my dreams and getting ready to move into a rental. Escrow was due to close around Christmas, which I would now have to navigate alone, drowning in sorrow.

The recession had sucked up more equity than the home was worth, so I had assumed a huge financial debt that felt crushing. It was one more devastating jolt to my fragile ego after a debilitating breakup that knocked the wind out of me and shook me to my very foundation.

Forced to get a second job to survive, I flew to North Carolina just before Thanksgiving to interview for a management position with the owners of a clothing manufacturer specializing in home parties. Thankfully, I got the job.

December was a whirlwind. I spent the first week in Chicago with a gaggle of giggling fashionistas excited about the new clothing line being debuted and their upcoming holiday plans. Feeling detached and unable to connect to the joy and warmth around me, I made my best attempt at appearing happy. 

My head spun so fast that I barely registered most of what happened. Dashing between meetings while confabbing with a cadre of women I did not know was daunting. Plastering a smile on my face and bobbing my head was all I could manage.

At each break, I squirreled away in my room, plugged in my laptop, and pored over every possibility of a rental I could afford, that would take two medium-sized dogs.

The clock was ticking. I only had two weeks to find a rental, pack my house, and move in addition to managing nine women I had just met while helping them set up home-based fashion shows all over San Diego. 

I moved in the first week of January 2015. My ex was nice enough to loan me his truck that day. Bone-weary and bleary-eyed, I summoned every ounce of courage and got brave when he came to retrieve it late Sunday afternoon.

“I feel like you took advantage of me.”

Walking to his truck, he turned, looked me in the eye, and delivered the emotional gut punch that shattered me, then drove away. “I did take advantage of you.”

Breathless and reeling, I made it into the house before collapsing. How was I supposed to manage a truth that ruptured my soul?

A whirlwind of thoughts like chattering monkeys released into chaos began the relentless critique, reminding me of every damn time I had swept something under the rug hoping we could repair and rebuild. Casting reality aside, I had clung to the fragile hope that love would triumph over anything, even the undeniable truths I chose to ignore.

It would have been easier if he had died because then I could have mourned the loss without questioning his love or my worth. 

Instead, he was living with another woman. To twist the knife further, she wore the engagement ring that had once been mine. They were living in a new condominium he bought by lying about his assets to obtain financing.

It was as though I had been erased from existence, becoming a ghost in the world we had once shared.

The list of transgressions was long and varied. But we were both at fault. I had been overly kind, immensely generous, much too forgiving, and inordinately naïve to see the harsh truth before it was too late. The sad fact is that I should have known better.

They say that time heals all. That is a lie.

  Even eighteen years after the devastating wipeout that gutted me, I am not fully healed. The scars remain, faded, a reminder that some wounds take longer than others to heal. The sharp edges of pain have dulled over time. Some of my precious memories that were too hard to hold onto have blurred. Time has eroded the overwhelming anger and softened the edges of anguish. But it still lives on in the deepest part of me, that quiet soft tissue that remembers things until the day you die. And maybe even then it still remembers - on and on for eternity.

Praying that I will not reincarnate with the same heart-wrenching burden and have to do it all over again is the only way I know to try to save my future self.

Like PTSD, no matter how many lavender-scented baths I take or how many videos of cute puppies running through green fields of flowers I watch, the shell shock lingers in some primal animalistic corner of my being.

Bubbling to the surface when I least expect it, memories of my last great love swim to me in my dreams like a boto Encanto, the legendary Amazonian River dolphin – boto – who transforms into a handsome man at night to seduce women.

After surviving an eight-year marriage and divorce from Hell, I had opened my heart fully, ready to be carried away by the current of love. An overwhelming passion swept me away from the shore of reason and objectivity, opening up a spectacular vista inside me, turning a black-and-white life into a brilliant watercolor, vibrant, lush, and celebratory. The following shock wave of disappointment and heartache torched that canvas beyond recognition.

A broken heart may not kill you, but in the dark long, lonely sleepless nights that followed, I begged and prayed that the tireless, uncompromising pain would finally subside and leave me in peace.

The agony of my past stays buried deep enough that people see the happy, smiling, functioning me. It only rears its ugly head when I leaf through my old journals or decide to draft a book about it. 

Shaking my head at these thoughts, I ponder, what kind of crazy overtook rational thought when I made that decision?

Right now, I am working on the last chapter. Wading through those old memories of heartbreak when I found out that my fiancé had cheated and lied to me is now like flipping through an old photo album. Late at night a scrawl of sepia-toned pictures takes shape in my mind’s eye, reminding me of many good times filled with hope, love, and laughter. Moments when the world seemed full of promise, joy was abundant, and life felt light. And then there was more than enough bad to last a lifetime.

Remembering the pain of all that happened can still be overwhelming. It was both the happiest and saddest time of my life all crushed together in a mush of exhilaration and then defeat beyond imagination.

Not having the luxury to wallow, I had to keep putting one foot in front of the other like a crazed zombie. Alive. Dead on the inside. There was no time for sorrow to consume me. Survival became my only priority.

Uncovering the root of my error was the turning point. Recognizing where I had gone wrong did not erase the pain, but it gave me a new way forward.

Growing up, nothing I could do was good enough to suit my demanding stepfather and I carried that scourge like a plague. No matter how hard I tried or how much I gave, it was just never enough. His standards were unreachable, and his expectations were endless.

I grew to understand how it flavored every relationship I had with men, affecting the way I trusted, loved and allowed myself to be loved. Like a pandemic, it spread through every corner of my being, poisoning my capacity to trust, to be vulnerable or to truly embrace love. It extinguished any chance I had for true happiness.

Over the years, as I worked to heal that wound, my therapist used a multitude of excruciating exercises to untrain my thought patterns. Learning to let go of what I thought was real and accepting that much of what I had learned and accepted about myself was a mirage seemed impossible concept to grasp. It was like relearning to read but in a different language. My tongue could not make the right sound, no matter how hard I tried. 

I remember him telling me more than once, “It is a lifelong process of one step forward and two steps back – like swimming upstream against a strong incoming tide. You just have to keep cutting through the chop until you see the shoreline.” 

Luckily, I have become a good swimmer.

Freeing myself from other people’s sins was part of my journey, but finding deep forgiveness was the biggest enlightenment. It was not just forgiving those who hurt me, but also learning to forgive myself for feeling worthless, wanting more, needing to be understood and valued, and even simply wanting to be loved.

           Today, I no longer walk around like the living dead. Loving myself is not a chore, it is an honor. Truly embracing myself is a sacred act of acknowledging my worth, accepting my flaws, and celebrating the journey of becoming who I am meant to be.  

I had lost myself in a fractured version of love, searching for acceptance in warped reflections that were not my own. I chased the shadows of who I thought I needed to be, only to find that the light I sought was always inside me.

           This Christmas I will be spending time alone again, but now, I embrace solitude as a space for reflection. In the stillness, I find the chance to reconnect to my heart, silence the noise once drowned out, and remember that I am worthy. In those quiet moments, I rediscover the love I have always deserved and fill the spaces where doubt once lived.