Sweating Out a Single Summer

In high school, I was gifted a best friend necklace that split in two. In our Tumblr aesthetic with skater skirts and Doc Martens, the traditional broken heart didn't work for us. Instead, we represented ourselves with a separate yin and yang. Jessica, with the bright yang around her neck, represented light in this world. She was dealing with her own inner darkness during these teenage years. While it threatened to consume her with an undeniable hunger for her pure intention to face the world with kindness, her goodness outweighed it all.

Around my neck, the yin. There was not a statement made about this. I almost want to say that she gave me the option to choose which I received. But I really did identify with it. The shiny darkness that laid on my collarbone for years before the cheap metal wore down. While there were small lights in my life, I truly was surrounded by tar. Slow-moving, burning hot blackness. Suffocating bleakness.

Nearly a decade after I received this jewelry, the metaphor still stands poignant in my mind.

I fear this might be a symptom of my crippling main character syndrome, but the bleakness continues to swirl up and around my body, choking me as it tightens around my neck.

All I've ever done is push through.

This spring, I made the decision to let go of something I've actually been trying to offload for over a year. Possibly two. While this break was a long time coming, I think the act of trying to silence my intuition was the most heartbreaking moment of it all. It its wake, it has left me questioning all of my decisions, my moves, the words I speak and the sentences I write. It has left me in this gigantic trust gap within myself. That doubt is all consuming.

There is not a conversation I leave without worrying I said the wrong thing or had no business being a part of. I'm stuck thinking that I have accidentally gamed the people around me. A liar with incredible skill, tricking those dumb enough to fall for my act. Which leads me to believe that I can't really trust the people around me either.

At the present moment, I find myself on the verge of tears. Any moment I find myself in a quiet stillness, my eyes sting at the salt that threatens to pour out of me at an alarming and powerful rate.

I'm really captured by the idea that I have a brand new life out there, somewhere and sometime along in the future. With different smells, different schedules, new routines, different emotions and hopefully, a different feeling at the end of the day. This unrest inside of me feels like a torrential sea storm with swells larger than a flimsy man-made object. Heavy water violently thrashing from every angle. It's swallowing me whole. Water is filling my nose and my throat, cutting off vital oxygen. I'm choking. I can't get to the surface. It's all closing in.

But I remember the anticipation of a new first, the unknown, new closeness and new emotional vulnerability. Most of all, new people. New versions of myself I have yet to meet. The me from a year ago would be hopefully be excited to meet the me in July 2025. The me from a decade ago, when I was originally gifted that yin, would also –hopefully– be excited to meet the current me. There was so much bleakness then. In a way that distorts those memories like palms against a fresh oil painting. I feel that way even now with the grey memories coming out of this summer. Flat with very little depth.

But when I think of moments with my friends now, there are shiny stickers on the border of these frozen memories.

So I try to remember that there's something new ahead. And I make an appointment with a psychiatrist that my therapist recommends that doesn't take my insurance. lol.