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September 2024

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9.23 Being 24…

Being 24… During this year of my life, I’ve challenged every thought in my mind. I’ve settled for less than I deserve and been thrown away more times than I can count. I’ve loved and lost a lot. Yet resilience flows through my body. Learning, loving, and living are what my life entails.

I’ve spent more time thinking than truly living. Being lost is my biggest vice—not knowing how to navigate my life while hoping to find someone who may want to live a life with me. This month has been full of dating, and I’ve realized there’s no rush on falling in love and having a family. I’m still a baby when it comes to this thing called life.

The rush is societal pressure and all the movies shoved in our faces growing up. We see our old classmates rushing to have kids and settle down, entirely forgetting they’re supposed to live their lives too. As much as I’ve been a sucker for love, it does not define me.

I am someone capable of thoughts, feelings, correction, reevaluation, reconsideration, resilience, and redirection. I am evolving every single day. So why would I ever feel the need to add a man to my less-than-perfect life? Having fun is all I want to do. Maybe I’ll mess up again, but recently I ran into an online therapist who stated that healing is about reopening your “healed” wounds a million times and learning how to heal yourself each time it happens.

“Your wounds are going to open and close multiple times in your life. They are going to heal and then be ripped open again by something you didn’t expect. That’s normal; that’s expected as we grow and change, adapt to different experiences, meet different people, and get into different relationships. Different things heal those wounds, and different things reopen those wounds. The purpose of healing is to spend time understanding how to ride through that phase, how to survive better through the openings, and how they close back up again. You’re not doing it wrong if it still hurts.” — Sam, the therapist on TikTok.

My all-or-nothing addictive personality has been fixated on the completion of me while reading the instructions wrong. There is no antidote that will fix a person and make them whole; instead, you will always be actively running, putting life’s fires out. You are not meant to be engulfed in the flames; rather, you are made to live through all things that try to hurt you. Resilience and strength, but more so faith, are essential.

There are brighter days ahead, even if those brighter days are on fire. You are the one meant to put them out and walk across the ash to your brightest day. I can go from a low point in my life to seeing the path clear. There’s no more drowning involved or months of wasting away. A revelation in my life occurred, and I realized that everything that has happened was meant to happen.

The fog lifted, and I was met with clear skies. The clarity hit me: maybe you aren’t so messed up. Maybe all the mistakes you made were simply because this is your first time living life. Who knew? Not me. Unless there is some perfect correlation to your life at the right time, you can hear all the advice in the world but never fully indulge in it.

There’s something beautifully painful about certain people and things leaving your life. It’s like a beautiful vase shattering; you often think about its beauty and reminisce about what it used to be. But by God, if something isn’t for you, it won’t stay. The pain comes from the attachment, and little did I know I was blind to the beauty of reminiscing. I can find myself so attached, clinging to, praying for, and hoping it’ll stay while also staring into the beauty of what has gone. I scream at myself to let it go, let it leave, because it’s not yours to keep. The beauty is in the future. You can miss every single part of someone and still keep them in your heart. I finally made that connection.

Send them light and love and let it go. It was never about forgetting someone or having to be 100 percent healed, where you don’t miss them when you see them. It’s more about loving them and knowing they might love you too, but in this life, you cannot be together. We are all meant for so much more than we realize. What was once broken is not fixed; it’s simply healed enough to know the difference between why the answer was always no. The door was closed, the key was thrown away—God told me no; He told me to wait. The sense of relief I feel and happiness is overwhelming because deep in my heart, I knew this wasn’t meant for me. I handcuffed myself and left claw marks in everything I loved, hoping it would stay. But it didn’t.

I questioned God, I questioned love, and I questioned myself entirely. I’m so lucky to have been rejected, to have felt embarrassed or ashamed, because those feelings helped me find my heart today. She was confused, tired, hurt, and very angry, but the door is open for my future. This feeling is like no other. Overwhelmingly beautiful, this life is mine, and I get to make it something every single day. I get to run free and be wildly insane, inappropriate, happy, sad, or mad. I get to make my life my own because of all the things I’ve faced and all the times I’ve had the door slammed in front of me.

My wounds have bandages over them; they may fall off, but I know how to put them back on again. I know how to heal myself when I’m bleeding. I’m my own saving grace, and by God, no one is going to stop me from loving myself. She’s so much more than I’ve realized—she is me. I am her, and we are one. Resilience flows through my veins, no matter how much I’ve been shoved down. I get up and fight. 

Being 24 is beautiful. Serina is beautiful.

 

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9.9 Empty hole

It’s not sadness that I feel; it’s exhaustion. I’m searching for someone to love me because I still can’t love myself. I’m searching for a workout challenge to complete because my life feels so incomplete. I’m searching for connections with people who aren’t worth connecting with. It’s the hole inside of me, dying to be filled. An analogy I’ve always referred to is about me running around town trying to collect my pieces—a puzzle piece of me. Now it’s a gaping hole. I’m dyeing my hair back to the old me as if I can revive her. Every day is a struggle to find the mask to cover up this hole I feel. At times, it’s less visible; the wind doesn’t chill my whole body, as if the hole is recovering. Other times, it’s out in the open, where people get to see through me, and I am completely exposed.

Tell me the solution, I beg. Would it be committing to everything my mind desires? Would it be me studying for this one exam I’ve been putting off for two years now, or maybe completing 75 Hard? Would the external fix my internal hole? Or could it just be a blanket waiting to fall off? I’ve asked so many people from their late 40s to early 30s for their perspectives, but the answer is always the same: They have no idea how to live their lives and completely believe everything works out in due time. I can’t wait anymore. I can’t accept their vague “oh, it’ll get better eventually.” I’m starting to cry every single day. The hole is getting bigger, and everything I loved is falling out—therapy, working out, 75 Hard, my hopes and dreams, even wanting to live. Call me dramatic; call me whatever you see fit. To have no idea how to live your life, let alone to have no one who wants to live a life with you, is possibly the worst feeling of all—to have nothing you love, no passion, no drive. Every day I wake up and wonder why. Why am I awake? Why do I get up? What do you have to do so badly that you need to wake up? Why is the sun shining in my face? Why are the birds singing? Why is all I can conjure up? Every day I wake up, I work out, go to work, eat, sleep, repeat. The hole still remains, yet to be filled. My only answer is why. It’s exhausting. I am still searching, and I have no idea why…

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9.3 Tuesday night

It was a Tuesday night. The roads were wet. I was beyond tired but determined to work out at the gym like I always do. I got in my car and drove. It felt like any other Tuesday night: the same faces at the gym, the same machines, the same weights. But this time, you were there. I hadn’t seen you in over a year.

Seeing someone I once loved so dearly shook me to my core. Anxiety overtook me, and I felt fear building inside. There you were, with someone else. I couldn’t tear my eyes away. It was like a car crash involving someone who used to be my whole life. How could I not stare? The familiarity of you—the backpack I bought you, the way your hair was combed, the shape of your face—made it impossible not to look.

I fled. I thought I could stay and face these feelings, but instead, I ran, desperately trying to call anyone who would pick up. My cousin answered, and I screamed about you, about the girl you were with, about my anxiety. This feeling was like no other—a brutal collision with the reality that our story had ended. The tiny hope I clung to evaporated instantly.

I’d been lying to myself, telling myself I was fine, but I’m not. It’s as if God had to show me the reality I refused to see. I prayed my thanks through tears, recognizing that while it hurt, this pain was necessary. I can’t say I haven’t missed you, but seeing you this way made it clear why I needed this moment. You’ve been on my mind all month, but now I see that the person I held onto no longer exists. We no longer exist.

There hadn’t been a “we” for a long time. Denial wasn’t just a river in Egypt; it was the very water I was swimming in, convincing myself that one day we’d fall back in love. I’m grateful, sad, in shock, yet I’m still okay. This was necessary to close my heart. The love I gave you is now a part of our history, forever closed, stored on a high shelf in the corner of my heart. It was a Tuesday night, the roads were wet, I was beyond tired, but you were there, and our story was closed forever.