Complex

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From the outside, I appear indecisive. Juggling complex emotions from one sleeve to the next. I live within the nuances of a typical rom-com, where I am the misguided protagonist seeking affection from the most unlikely of sources. But it's more complex that that--and I think we are our complexities; just as we are our scars and our journal entries, and our fondest memories. 

I'm learning that the truth hurts but that honesty is the better policy. After being on both sides of complex stories, and a lifetime of trying to amplify my achievements--of trying to appear as wonderful as I felt I was suppose to be--I am deciding that I have to be enough (warts and all). So I will set the record straight and I will find a way to be myself and to nurture that person not the person she thinks you want her to be. I'm coming to terms with her and realizing that, until I love her, for her, no one else will.  

But this is a complex notion that leaves little room for daddy issues and body dysmorphia or the tribulations of an INFJ. I am flipping my current idea of self-satisfaction on its head and letting myself be my moral compass and my judgement be enough. At least in theory (and may that be the first step). 

In the bathroom of a bar in Brooklyn, I let ugly words reverberate inside me. Words that weren't so ugly after all. He said "Find someone better than me" and I heard "You are not good enough" until the sounds settled in the pit of my sober stomach and I realized he was doing me a kindness.

I am the girl who waited. I have always been glad to be someone else's cheerleader but rarely cheer for myself. Not until recently did I cook good meals just for me or plan my solitary adventures. I started believing I needed something else to fulfill me in undergrad, when my world was changing faster than I could compute and I didn't know how to breathe alone anymore. By the time college had ended, I saw through the shiny veneer of a companion and started to rip off the bandaid. That was a slow and painful process and now I know why smarter people yank it quickly. That adhesive is a bitch. 

When you begin to heal, first your body stops the bleeding, then your immune system kicks in to fight infection; your body produces a thin layer of tissue for new skin to grow and, when it scars (as it always does), the scarred skin is more fragile and less flexible than the surrounding areas. We only see the finished product--but it's a lot more complex than that. Like people.

There is no time-limit on our healing. 

And, when we rush it, the immune system kicks in, to fight through infections---to remind us that we have not yet healed. We are not cold just on the mend. 

On my walk home from that Brooklyn bar, I realized I should thank you for deciding that you are bigger than me. For taking the power back and turning me away. I only wish you had done it sooner but I recognize that you, too, are healing from wounds more complex than your half-smile has ever let on.