Originally written on December 2, 2020
It took a long time for me to untangle the mess that found its way into my heart. I didn’t know how to recognize the feelings that were going on inside me because I had ignored their existence for so long. The nuance of different emotions were lost on me. A I trudged through the waist deep muck that I had let slide in all around me I didn’t know that I could ask for a ladder. I could walk along side it learning what it meant while observing it from a different vantage point.
I had never really dated or even considered it during high school. I had fantasied about boys meeting me at my locker and asking me to the prom or the big party that weekend. I had my first kiss when I was 17 and didn’t have sex until I was 18. Both of those times were fueled by alcohol. They left me feeling ashamed and vulnerable while hiding behind a laugh. These were my funny stories that I could tell. My friends could relate. Aren’t we so messy and hilarious and modern independent women at age 18! All the while I was shrinking inside feeling more lost than ever.
I never had a picture of a “romantic” first time. I didn’t want to put a moral value on virginity or think that I was dirty or bad for having sex. But something inside me was starting to knot up. My thoughts were quickly pushing into a different direction. How could I avoid feeling this way. Not to feel a sense of homesickness, nausea and discomfort all happening in my heart. I would drink too much because I thought it made me funny. I would end up on the floor of someone’s dorm room or apartment smelling like old sweat and eating crackers trying to keep the vomit down. I would make a mess all around me so that no one could see that I was the mess.
This lasted for years. As I persisted the knots within only became more intricate. More developed. They became a part of me that I didn’t even realize they were there anymore. In the back of my mind I always felt like I was a joke. That people didn’t like me or they only wanted the fun one, the messy one, the drunk version of who I was. Up for anything. This became a knot too. A complex one. Like when you throw a bunch of necklaces in a bag, shake them up, and pull them out in a dainty metal ball. That’s who I was. A ball of necklaces. Beautiful and useless.
I struggled to untie those knots. I’m still working on it. There are moments when I cringe to think of the things I’ve done at the harsh words I chose to say about a friend because I felt invisible. The number of times when I made it through and maybe I shouldn’t have. Sometimes I can feel the knots building back up. Sometimes I can feel them finally releasing.
