A Lesson Finally Learned?

I don’t even know how to start this but I know I need to. 2025 started with a breakup that tore right through me. 2026 has started the same way. What is it about the middle of January and beginning of February? It seems this gap of time are the moments when no more can be taken.

How does one write about how their mind has been fucked with for the better part of 2 years? By two men who are vastly different but also reflect parts of myself. Every time I say I have learned my lesson it happens again, like a test to see my resolve. I cave every time. Sweet words, attention, gifts, time. Small disaggreements here and there, then fighting every weekend, stepping on boundaries, making horrible choices and decisions. This is how gaslighting works. Tearing apart someones reality until you control them through your own narrative and putting yourself above them.

“It really hurt me when you said/did that” “you saw it wrong, that is not how it happened or what I said” over and over that violin plays. Over and over I let myself be manipulated until I lost myself. Until I looked in the mirror and the woman staring back at me was not recognizable anymore. My eyes were dark and puffy all day, my skin was dull, I gained at least 40lbs, and I was falling asleep in the middle of the day at my desk. But he was shining. Losing weight, happy, vibrant. I couldn’t see I was being drained, I couldn’t see how much was being taken from me.

Have I learned my lesson? I don’t know if that is the right question anymore. I feel like I am learning ways to regulate, I am learning emotional maturity, I am learning to set and stick to my boundaries. Someone once told me that there are two sides to every story and then there is the truth. What happened this weekend is my story against anothers but the result has left me in a space where I am regaining back who I am. A space where I have a broken heart that I am mending without trying to reach out for answers as to why, without trying to reconnect and beg and plead for forgiveness so the pain will stop. I am just feeling it without letting it destroy me.

So, yes. I think there was immense growth through these experiences. As well as a reflection of who I used to be. Especially who I was in past relationships. I saw so much of my younger self in the man I was just with. It showed me how not everyone could handle such an energy and still love and care. It reflected memories of how I was with my last long term partner. How I must of looked. But most importantly it showed me how he must have felt. I think we have the wrong idea about Karma. I think saying you will get what you put out is too simple of an explanation. I think we get what we put out so we can learn empathy, so we can heal and grow, so we can squash that ego and say “I’m sorry my words/actions/behaviors hurt you” and then repair. I think we go through these experiences to grow up.

You can’t repair with everyone. You have to be in the right headspace, the right stage of growth to be able to get to this, and then you have to be at the right stage to end it even though there will be immese fear and pain. That is what I am facing now. Letting go of someone I love and care about for my own mental health and well being, stepping into the fear of being idependent and surviving on my own. Facing my financial choices over the past couple years and how it has put me in the pickle I am in now.

The unknowing can create such a debiltating fear, especially when it is linked to our home space. It will cause you to hold on to relationships just to keep the lights on. This is one of my biggest fears as a mom, not being able to provide for my kids. Losing everything I have worked for. In about a month I won’t have a job and I could only pay half my rent this weekend because my partner was suppsed to cover the other half. I am further in debt due to Christmas and needing a bigger bed. I don’t know what I am going to do, I don’t know what to do. I can feel that part of me that runs, that part that wants to leave Maine and never look back. I feel like a fish out of water, flailing and flopping in the air as I try to breathe in a place with no emotion.

One lesson I have learned is that sometimes to get the peace we so desperately need we have to experience great pain and loss. I haven’t been able to write anything for months, yet, here I am writing. The second all his things were gone and the anxiety I have been living with has been dissipating, my mind unlocks and everything is crystal clear. I don’t know what the fuck I am going to do but I can tell you this, I see the world differently now and I am proud of myself for finally learning how to emotionally regulate and soothe myself when under intense emotions. I may have done it with shaky hands and voice but I didn’t scream, I didn’t beg, I didn’t abandon myself to keep a connection alive that was already dead. I felt the intense emotions and I moved through them without becoming them.

I would have never been given the opportunity to learn all of these lessons outside of a relationship. I will miss so many things, but as my nervous system relaxes and my body detoxes all the caffeine, nicotine, and pot I am left in a state of sorrowful peace. It is strangely peacful, sad, and enlightening. It feels good to be writing again. 2026 I am devoting to myself and my daughter, and my son when he needs me. He has his own life he has to live now and I am cheering him on hoping he comes out on top. I know I have said this before but everything feels different than it ever has. This last relationship has shown me how important it is to walk away when disrespect is present and now acknowledged. I think I also had to realize my worth and that I deserve everything good and loving in this world, but that it starts within me.