Any and Everything

July 2, 2025

This past week has had me so busy that I can’t see straight. Busy can be good, but not when you have been as tired as I have. It is like performing. I can feel myself “shutting off.” That is not what I enjoy doing, but it is a defense mechanism of mine—a very well-used one. I struggle with “going with the flow” because I constantly want to get off the boat and sit on the shore. I know that is not possible. I have to keep moving in a direction. I was stagnant for far too long already. I’m going to my hometown this weekend to spend time with my dad for the holiday.
Probably a good thing since July 3rd was Josh’s and mine’s anniversary. It will be good to be around family. I get a touch of melancholy around specific times, which is one of them. It is hard to recall good times when there were so many bad times towards the end. I made a reel centered around domestic violence that I had aimed to post. I didn’t even include the bad pictures. There are some photos, but not the awful ones. I keep those for myself. I am not even sure why I do that… maybe to remind myself what I have come through. I refuse to show anyone those. I don’t even look at them. Sometimes I wonder why I even documented all the instances. Probably because I knew I would leave one day and need proof of what was done. I had no idea he would be the one to go, or how he would exit. I haven’t decided if I will post it yet or not. Those are not times that I am proud of, but transparency often helps my process of letting things go.
I find myself wanting to be alone a lot lately. I get in these moods. I feel bad that I subject others to that, but this is my time for once, and I deserve to be true to myself. It still sucks feeling like I am defaulting on people who care about me. That isn’t what it is. I need time to process my thoughts and live without feeling like I must do it for others. That could be why I hate when people who know me in real life read my journaling. I won’t hold back much; they feel they must address it or act differently. Or maybe, I don’t like people knowing my inner thoughts and subjecting me to their opinions. It doesn’t change my perspective on things. I listen, but at the end of the day, my thoughts don’t typically change; if they do, it takes time. I have to be the one who takes the introspective initiative to evaluate how I feel and see things. Sometimes they evolve, and I think I was correct in how I originally saw things.

This week in our public chat, we are expanding on last week’s topic. We were able to cover death pretty well, but we didn’t get into breakups/divorce. I have never been divorced, but I have had some instrumental breakups in my life. Recently, I have chosen not to enter into such relationships. I tend to separate myself from such feelings. I think I have been through enough, honestly. I am not ready to subject myself to the mercy of any of that. It isn’t a choice; it seems natural to sway away from that. It doesn’t matter how ready someone else is if you are not. I have built a metaphorical fortress around myself and did it without knowing I was doing it. I know it is there now, but I didn’t realize that’s what I did for a long while. This topic has also brought to light that these past couple of years have been the only time that I have not been in a relationship ever in my life.

Of course, I have been in some relationship since I was 13; it started innocently. I had no idea it was even really developing. Sex was not a factor in that at all. Well, not till much later. Our families had been close friends since our grandparents were probably in their twenties, so I had always known him. You would have thought his brother and I would have been involved because he and I were the same age. We were more like siblings, though, and Jay was always away at boarding school, so I only saw him in the summer. Our parents made him take me out one summer for my 13th birthday since he could drive. I think it was more to get rid of us than to push us on one another, but we ended up having a good time despite our 3-year age difference. We spent most of that summer together until he went back to school. Then we wrote to each other all the time from there. He would come back on random weekends, and we would get to see each other. This went on for a couple of years before he demolished my feelings for the first and last time. I found out he was talking to another girl. Looking back, I should have known. I learned a lot from all that. He moved back to go to college in our hometown and immediately wanted to pick things back up. I will admit I was an asshole. He deserved it. He was an entitled asshole, probably still is. The year before I met Robert, we started fraternizing with each other again. I think people thought we were sleeping together. I was 16, almost 17. We didn’t sleep together till after Robert passed away. I did it more out of my grief than the idea that I wanted to be with him. It was a way to escape. I never forgot how I felt when he did what he did to me years before that. I was honest with him that I was passing the time. I broke him that time. It didn’t feel good, and he held on till I met Josh. He was sure we would end up together. I knew we would not. We had so many differing core values that it didn’t make sense.

That was the breakup that broke me, I guess you could say. The first real one is always the “pivotal moment,” and it seems it mostly happens in our teens. Well, for me, I was a teen. I hold grudges, too. I don’t try to; it is just in my nature. I usually don’t retaliate or anything of that nature; I move on. However, I typically do not deal with whoever inspired my grudge ever again, looking at how I was taught to deal with emotions, which was not to. I suppose that led me to the way I do things. I am not scared of feeling or getting too deep, but if I see no need to go there, I don’t. It saves so much time, energy, and pain. I haven’t met too many women who can walk away as quickly as I can. I do realize that. I don’t usually latch on. Doesn’t mean that I didn’t work with Robert and Josh. There isn’t usually anyone I think about when they aren’t around. I can admit that, even though it is not an admirable thing to say.

The only real breakup I have under my belt is Pavel, the Russian man from California, whom I briefly saw after Robert died and before I met Josh. Yes, I was talking to Jay, but not in that way. He wanted it more, but I wasn’t going down that path again. I made that abundantly clear. That breakup didn’t hurt, though. I have said it before, I think that in every relationship, there is a test that is given. A natural one, not one that either party implements, and the results show you everything you need to know. I had been to see him a few times. It was a good time. He was asking me to move and be with him long-term. I liked visiting California, but didn’t see myself living there long-term. It came time for him to go and meet my family. I didn’t press or complain, but I ended things when he hesitated to do that. I had to because it was just a waste of my time. He sent me messages and did other things even after Josh and I were together. I had to insist he leave me alone. He did eventually move on. Other than that, I didn’t have many breakups that I would consider valid. We all have immature brief interactions, but that is all they are, moments in time.

After Josh, I had a period where I entertained certain people, but feelings were not a factor in any of that. My view on people warped for a while. I think that is normal within the process that I was experiencing. So there weren’t any “breakups.” I don’t know if they would consider it a breakup, but I always made it clear that I would not be in a committed relationship. I wasn’t ready, and I am still not prepared. I am still figuring myself out. I don’t want to subject myself to that again, honestly… My “breakups” have been traumatic. Not Jay or any of them, but my marriages. Those are what I consider the ultimate breakup, ones that change you in a way that you will never be the same again. The loss is very different than just going in different directions. It manifests as physical pain at times.

Breakups do shape how we deal with things, and you can truly see people. Some people act fanatical, and others disassociate. I feel like we all have to experience them to learn things about ourselves. They are never fun, but instrumental in our development. We learn a lot from them. I learned that I tend not to get attached as easily as I could.

My mom was never alone. I never knew that woman would ever be single. I don’t want to be that. I don’t want my self-worth to be reliant on anyone else. I don’t think that defined her self-worth. I think she was just afraid to be alone. She had her demons. My sister and I can’t even recall exactly how many times she was married. I do know one was annulled. Maybe experiencing that led me to the fact that I enjoy being alone. I would rather spend my days with myself. Now, this could also be attributed to my late marriage. I was never alone, but felt like I was. That is something for me to think on for a while.

I do know that a lot of my friends have had terrible breakups and divorces. Some are extremely nasty, and others are amicable. But these are my experiences. We all have our unique ones. I can look back and see things I did that I would not do again. But that is all in retrospect. It is easy to speculate. I try not to do that too much because we all do our best in the moment, and feelings get messy more than they are cut and dry. We can look at others’ relationships and give advice on what we would do, but at the end of the day, we don’t know because we are not them, and we don’t feel the way they do in those moments. I feel like it is important to point that out. It is why I don’t judge people for certain things. How can I?

It is time for me to enter the land of the living. I just thought I would get some things down on paper (so to speak). I am trying to improve my journaling skills. It is helping me. I hesitate a lot these days because I want to be very clear. That is hard for me sometimes because being “matter of fact” can be easier than letting your feelings roll out unadulterated. I don’t let them all out, though. I am working on that. I feel like I am in a labyrinth and trying to figure out how exactly to get to the end. Or rather, how to make sense of it all.

I hope everyone has a good day, and maybe I’ll find the notion to write a bit again before the week is up. If I get it out and down on paper, I have some stuff that I can work through. We shall see 🙂