I want to wake up to butterflies and unicorns dancing in my head. 

But apparently, I process things even while I sleep. Every morning I wake up, and the first thing that comes to mind is the people or issues I’m struggling with emotionally. It’s so frustrating! I want my damn butterflies and unicorns, not these painful things that slice my heart into pieces.

But I guess healing has absolutely no rhyme or reason. And grief is a confusing roller coaster of emotions that I can’t try to control (especially if I don’t want it to control me).

To get through it—to get to the other side of whatever it is—I have to let it surface, process it, and get it out.

I guess a more optimistic way of viewing it could be, looking at it as if there was a rainbow, and the goal is to get to the other side. 

Honestly, I just want to be there already.

I’m so freaking angry; I’m angry that I wake up this way, that these feelings impede on my days and who I am.

How can I really be myself completely when part of my heart feels dead? It has been eroded by betrayal, rejection, and abandonment. It’s from the people who said I love you—those who claimed they would never hurt me. And that’s the worst part. These situations typically surface from people with the same blood running in their veins.

When I think I have some relief in sight, something else comes up. The pain is constant in my day. I understand this was a lifetime of people who affected me and my core, but I’m so over it.

If I look back, I was trying to run before these situations even got to where they are now. I was stuck in that vicious cycle—the one of codependency, or maybe attachment. I don’t know an exact name for it, and I really don’t care.

All I know is I’ve constantly felt pulled but unable to move forward on my own. An obligation was placed continuously into my head by a guilt-ridden conversation that was twisted to somehow make me believe I needed them.

Whenever I muscled up enough courage to place a boundary, it was so difficult and lonely. Guilt? Oh, yes. It’s like I committed a flippin’ sin.

Let’s make up a story as an example: 

What if a family member chooses to drink and drive with kids in the vehicle or have a sleepover and hides that damn cup full of courage somewhere in the kitchen? Here’s one better, how about when drunken words come out of someone’s mouth to innocent, young children?

They’re going to absorb and question these things. I gather all of that would be okay because it is how they chose to live. But are you supposed to just shut your mouth and continue to allow these behaviors to affect you and your kids? And how would you keep the kids away from their family members? 

My struggles feel convoluted and hard like that. I’ve had no backbone in the past. I guess repeatedly falling on my face has left me with no confidence in my own thinking or choices. I always fall back into that cycle, whether or not I agree with it. My lack of self-worth has continued to keep me in that circle of unhealthy trust.

Today, I can say I’m mostly free from it. Yes, there have been final falling-outs—ugly fights have ended in decisions I never expected to make.

And that cycle continues to haunt me; the suffering is still in my thoughts. But I know and have complete faith that I will get to the other side of that ROYGBIV.

Nonetheless, some days are still an absolute struggle. It’s not just losing someone; it’s choosing my own beliefs over theirs and losing that life with the actors who played in it. It’s grief beyond measure. Words can’t describe it appropriately.

Currently, I am in a different place in my life. I live in a beautiful town I love and have started building the life I always dreamed of, so it’s really difficult to permit myself to be angry during this beautiful time.

Yet, the pain still comes, and feelings I don’t want to acknowledge still surface. I just want to live in my joy as I have had to fight so hard and so long to get here.

Unfortunately, I have to allow the ugly to show up—whatever that looks like. The most important thing for me is acknowledging and accepting that these feelings are valid, they are mine, and it’s okay not to feel like myself. No one can tell me they are not accurate or guilt me into hiding them because I am overly emotional.

This is me; it’s who I am. And, frankly, I really like me! I shouldn’t have to hide or be someone I’m not to please others. No one should.

With a consistent effort to heal, I will keep feeling one step at a time. I will keep taking uncomfortable steps toward this optimistic rainbow to get to the other side.