Validating My Experience and Honoring My Feelings

"Just be positive" isn't the answer.

What really works is no longer gaslighting myself about how I truly feel.

And that how I truly feel is an indicator of what I've experienced.

I've been treated like a girl at the edge of an abyss, willingly pushed in over and over on purpose.

She just wanted to be loved,

and when Josh (someone she truly loved) left,

her world crashed.

She resented how much she could love someone

who willingly left her

and when the nurses said he cared,

it was like love was unreachable,

this distant fairytale.

I don't believe that love is possible for me at all if I'm honest,

but I don't have to change my experience.

I have every right to feel this way,

and knowing this is

monumental.

The positive guru shit never worked,

but actually honoring where I'm at does.

I may not always treat myself kindly,

I might not still be able to say I love myself

past some intellectualization,

but compared to years and years ago,

this is progress,

and even if no boy ever kisses me again

because I genuinely do not have capacity to love again,

I can find those glimpses of love

and hang onto them,

knowing that I didn't deserve this pain

but I'm here anyway trying to be a good person.