Let's Chat, Shall We

Day Twenty One

August 20, 2021

Lovelies,

Hi... I'm struggling y'all. Not just emotionally, but mentally too...

I lost one of best friends today, someone who has helped me through some of the hardest times in my life, pulled me out of the darkest corners of my mind and showed me what love and happiness felt like.

He also happens to be the father of my child.

He's not dead or anything.. his girlfriend has decided that she doesn't want either of us in his phone and he made a choice...

Now, mind you, my child is two and a half, and she's only just found out about him yesterday morning...

I dunno... This is going to sound selfish, but I've got to put it out somewhere...

I miss his friendship like crazy, and I love him to pieces. He says he loves me too at an "immeasurable" amount, but multiple times a month he would cut all communication with me and then come back, expecting me to just carry on like normal...

I'm battling with my self worth, and believing what I truly deserve... I took a giant step forward and blocked him on all social media accounts so he can't get a hold of me anywhere...

I called Bryce to vent and we spoke about all the things I've been through and I told him just how done I am with everything. How the only thing I really can find the honest energy for is my son, and he sent me the song attached after we hung up, and it got me thinking... (the lyrics are going to be out of orders)

"And all of those things I didn't say, wrecking balls inside my brain.
I will scream them loud tonight.
Can you hear my voice, this time?"

Just the last line alone... for so long I've stayed silent because no one was listening, no one could hear me...

"And it's been two years, I miss my home.
There's a fire burning in my bones."

The man I was with was a liar and a narcissist... He was the complete opposite of a person that I ever imagine myself being with in life, and I forced myself to stay. I forced myself to shut up and just let him do whatever made him happy.

For two and a half years... Eventually he had us move two hours away from everyone I knew, everyone I grew up with. He didn't care how I felt about it, it was what HE wanted...

"Losing friends, and I'm chasing sleep.
Everybody's worried about me.
In too deep, say I'm in too deep."

I went almost three years without seeing any of my friends because he made me feel guilty about wanting to spend time away from him, with the friends I grew up with...

I haven't had proper sleep in two and a half years, in fear that he would do something to me in my sleep... In fear that I wouldn't wake up first and have him everything he needed to start his day.. I was afraid to fall asleep first, in fear that I was missing something that he was expecting of me before I went to bed...

In my sleep I was body conscious, I never was truly asleep... and still, I have trouble sleeping around anyone. I hate to cuddle, I hate to be physically touched. I find words like "hot" and "sexy" to be disrespectful when describing a woman or a man, to an extent. Very rarely will I describe a person as "sexy"...

This next one is a little weird, but whatever—

I hate nudity. The guy I was with was a nudist and expected me to be naked half the time, and if I wasn't he would get upset about it. If I complained about being cold, he would say "well, if you were naked more often, your body would be used to it." If I was naked, it made me uncomfortable on how he would look at me, and I would walk around in fear that he'd touch me in ways I didn't want to be, which happed far more frequently than I care to admit... if I did have clothes on, sometimes he would proceed to "playfully" rip them from my body, and if I protested, he would get angry with me.

I hate to see people yell at their children, and I hate to even spank my own child when he misbehaves because it reminds me of how he treated my son when he was only one and a half... The day my son wouldn't stand in the corner and he proceeded to take his diaper off and smack his bare bottom... at the age of one and a half... and then got pissed off at me when I backed my son on it, telling me that when my son grows up to be a brat not to talk to him about it...

I just.... there is a lot of things that I put myself and my own son through for the last two and a half years that I'm having a really hard time forgiving myself. Granted that my child really doesn't remember any of these things, it's the fact that I put us in that situation to begin with, not realizing it sooner...

I've been listening to this song nonstop and I've come to realize that it really is time for me to take my own life back and live it the way that I want to. The way I've always wanted to. My therapist tells me I need to advocate for myself and speak out, but I'm not going to lie, y'all... it's hard. It gets harder and harder every single day...

I'm going to try and come back to this again daily, even to post just one paragraph... I can feel silence settling inside me again, and it's beginning to scare me...

So, this is my fight song, and I'm incredibly thankful to have you all here for the ride.

All my love,
-Nic