I wish I could tell you that this year has been filled with wondrous moments wrapped in beautiful people and unforgettable glimpses of magic but it’s been quite the opposite. Although, yes, I have had moments that I have grasped onto and that the people in my life have made all the difference in spite of all the ugly and unwanted change that has occurred but the ugly has unfortunately swallowed up all the wondrous moments and spit them out as if they were nothing in comparison.
I’ve had a few life altering moments that all unraveled starting in May of this year.
I flipped my car after passing out behind the wheel and crashing into a parked car, black filled my sight and all I remember is the noise of my car crumbling around me, grasping for air when I came to and worrying of how I could get out of my crushed car surrounding me, dangling sideways in the driver side. I pushed through the shattered glass that was once my driver side window and airbag that had engulfed me, adrenaline rushing through my veins like it never had before, smell of gunmetal and gas as my car laid sideways in the middle of the street. I was 1 minute away from home. No human or help to be found, climbing and pulling myself out with urgency, I finally escaped. I muster up all the strength I can in that moment to climb out, standing in the street looking at my first and only car that I had been gifted on my sixteenth birthday, eight years ago, and in that moment, all the memories filled the air of what had been, and no longer would be. That was only one of the hard goodbyes I’d have to face.
Fast forward to August of this year, my last living grandpa’s health and life suddenly not promised. He had suddenly been diagnosed with congestive heart failure that was altering the man I had once known and no future to be promised. His lungs filling with fluid and collapsing by the second, his breath filled with crackling and his feet swelling with fluid. The hardest thing I’ve had to lay my eyes on in my lifetime. A man I loved, looked up to, and who was irreplaceable, abruptly having to swallow back tears as I saw the end coming closer as each day came and went. He passed peacefully in his home. A goodbye I didn’t want to even acknowledge. Grief lingering in the background of the months to come.
Now it’s November, I decided to move out of my childhood home, my childhood bedroom, another place that held so many memories both good and crippling. I tried to be excited and hoped that this decision would somehow fulfill something within me as I grow further and further into my adulthood. With the support of my family and boyfriend, we did it, I finally moved out. I didn’t realize that the hours and days to come would be filled with panic and anxiety lurking around every corner. Sleepless, anxious, and empty, is all that I have felt and it’s only day four. I wanted to rush back to my home, my peace, the first night I moved in.
I’m trying to be optimistic and open to receiving what this season of my life is supposed teach me but I’m having a more difficult time than I thought I would. I just want to disappear and drown in my bedsheets away from the world, but mostly away from myself. But how do you say goodbye to a version of yourself you don’t want to? How do you escape yourself?
-/ Amy Rose
