Yesterday was kind of a spiritual quest for me. It was a day planned for some time. A day that was part and parcel to why she is here. An outward manifestation of all the shit she and I have walked through together. It was a soultion for us both.
After surviving the shit storm that was him, I came up with this idea to get tattoos to commemorate all that we survived, endured and grew through. She was the one that came up with the design. While the details of why this particular design are what we went with shall remain between she and I, I will just say it fits. It describes the whole fucking endeavor in a way that just makes sense, at least to us.
And it just so happened that we got it done on his birthday. That was not intentional. Just a universal nod that we are supported, loved and seen. Which is ironic because he was not capable of doing any of those things.
The new ink I got yesterday all had significant meaning for me. Two that commemorate shit I survived in my past and two that were all me, no rust from past leaks, just all positive and all me.
Interestingly, the two about the past, hurt the most. The two I got solely for myself, didn’t hurt at all. Weird.
I know it may seem weird, this whole thing with her and the tattoos and the overlay of him. But I will give credit where credit is due, he was something that had to be healed and that has taken some time. Not because of the depth of feeling I had for him but because how much past wounds were exploited and laid bare. And while I lay there bleeding out, I had to make some decisions about who and what I wanted to be going forward.
He was an exclamation point on my long dating history. He was a painful, confusing, exploitive debacle that for a long time I could not free myself from. And it has taken me a long time to unwind all of that. What was mine, what was his. And I would love to tell you that he is just a fucking horrible person, and that would be true, but I would also have to own that I allowed myself to be picked by him. He came for me and I went along. Against everything I knew to be right and true and good. I fucking went along with it, I signed up...again.
And I think the hardest thing for me to reconcile is my own complicity in all the bullshit dating and loving experiences I have had. I would love to tell you that I was this hapless victim but that would not be true. Like at all. My refusal to heal those broken parts of me left me susceptible to men like him, for decades.
But the complete carnage that was him caused me to have to look at my shit in ways that I had not ever had to before. To show up for myself and actually give a fuck about who I let into my life, my bed and my soul.
So the new ink is representative of all of this. My part, the pain, the recovery, the ability to use what I have learned and survived to help another. It is deeply meaningful to me, which is obvious I guess because I put it in ink on my body for the world to see. And I don’t just get ink for no reason, everything that is forever etched in my skin is deeply personal and meaningful to me.
And while my entire relationship with him embarrasses me given how public and gross the whole thing was, I have to own my part. I didn’t seek him out, but fuck did I ever get played. And as much as my ego hates to own this, I was vulnerable because of shit that I had issues with for years but just wasn’t motivated enough to work out and on and through. Well, that all changed.
And to some degree I have a good measure of gratitude for him. Kind of like hitting bottom with alcohol, it was totally not fun at all, but look at the life hitting that bottom gave me! And, now I can see that the bottom that was him was necessary for me to have the life I have today. And I can honestly say this is the best life I have ever known. Everything about my life today feels like mine, and not susceptible to the fuckery (not in a good way) of evil people like him.
Tell me, when did your winning smile
Begin to look like a smirk?
When did all our lessons start to look like weapons pointed at my deepest hurt?
I hope she'll be a beautiful fool
Who takes my spot next to you
No, I didn't mean that
Sorry, I can't see facts through all of my fury
You haven't met the new me yet
There'll be happiness after me
But there was happiness because of me
Both of these things I believe
There is happiness
In our history
Across our great divide
There is a glorious sunrise
Dappled with the flickers of light
From the dress I wore at midnight
Leave it all behind
And there is happiness
(Taylor Swift)
And for me, today, there is happiness in all that I do, in all that I live and, to some degree, in all I survived which I guess includes him too. And there is happiness, for me, in the ink that now resides in my skin memorializing for me another survival and another recovery. Which, when you think about it, is yet another gift of living and of loving.
Again...still.
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