Not Me

I feel like a novice trying to figure my way through this break-up. I'd never broken up with anyone before. And that would be because I never dated anyone before this relationship. I guess there's a first time for everything. But it seems like there is almost a protocol to breaking up that many people want to share with me. Do this...don't do that. I feel stressed trying to decide what path I should be taking through this.

And the hardest realization I've had over the last few days is the feeling that I'm not myself anymore. It is so ironic. My boyfriend wanted to break up because he wasn't who he wanted to be anymore and felt like our relationship contributed to that. And now the break-up has made me into who I don't want to be. It once again feels so unfair that I seem to keep drawing the short straw of not getting what I wish or want. I know that is probably a selfish way to look at things. But I don't have the heart to even judge myself right now.

I no longer cook. This year I have had so much fun and joy in cooking, finding new recipes, experimenting. But it's so different not having someone to cook for. The joy is no longer there trying to make something just for myself. And it just brings up too many wonderful memories that are painful to remember.

And so the little that I do eat isn't even food I usually choose to eat. I'm eating stuff that makes me sick or that has no nutritional value at all. I'll buy produce and food at the grocery story with meals in mind, but once I get home I never want to make it. Food is sitting in my fridge and going bad. And that isn't me either. I don't waste food.

My kitchen can be a mess and I don't care. I have no motivation to clean pots or even to put away a cutting board after using it. I'm usually very obsessive-compulsive about my kitchen, having to clean everything immediately after using it and wiping all the counters clean from any little crumb. Now things just sit there, a constant reminder of my lack of motivation every time I walk by.

I hate the time alone with my thoughts so much that I try to drown it with anything that will occupy it. One evening last week I kept watching Greys Anatomy episodes...one after another. I would finish one and decide that I was still too awake and alert, so I'd start another. Over and over until I was exhausted enough to fall immediately asleep. I never used to sit and just watch TV, and I almost never kept up with any popular tv show. It's not me. I was the one who would just shrug when conversations came up about them.

I don't want to go do things outside. Even typing that sentence seems shocking. The outdoors has been my comfort zone for my entire life. Now I look outside at the sunny day and it just seems too happy to walk out and taint it with my sad feelings. That's not me. I love being outside.

As the work day ended this evening and my coworkers exchanged what they were looking forward to once they got home, the only thing I could come up with was, "I get to go home to my cat." Then I fought tears all the way home thinking about how pitiful it was that I'm just going home to my cat. And how much I deeply miss going home to someone, getting to talk through my day with someone special to me. And it is definitely not me to not want to be with my cat and to see my time with Mowgli as depressing.

I'm not me right now.

I've had really difficult experiences in the past. Really hard things. And some people tell me that I'm prone to these difficult things happening to me somehow. I've always believed in the verse where it says God won't give us more than we can bear, and I've always been able to bear it. But this feels like the limit. I want to plead with God, "no this one is too much. You mis-calculated this time! I wonder if I will ever not feel this physical pain, just smothering my chest every time I think about what has happened and how much I miss him.

But I do know that God hasn't changed from the God that brought me up and out of all those other hard experiences. I was maybe able to see the light in those experiences better than this one. But He's still the same God. And even if I'm completely blind with no light right now, He will still lead me out. That is what I'm trusting in. Even if I don't feel it. Because the same God who was with me then, is with me now. And the same God who led me in, will lead me out.

And maybe it's okay that I'm not me right now because ultimately I don't want to be me, I want to become Him. If I wasn't changing from the person I was a year ago, I wouldn't be growing. We'll see where he takes me...