I remember sitting in a bath full of water thinking about you, us, and the fact that it had been four weeks since we last said goodbye.
Or rather what I thought was the last time we were together.
Shortly after, I learned what it meant to say goodbye for the last time: that cold sweat on my back, a knot in my stomach and the blank stare on the bathroom ceiling.
I was living my own counter-utopian nightmare. Nothing made any more sense.
I was a stranger to myself. The war that I had declared had burned me from head to toe.
All I had left were big brick walls. Empty and impossible to invade.
Unfortunately, it was not a nightmare just because of the pain of separation – no.
I could only pray for a sweet pain like that.
Instead, it was a nightmare because you made sure to hurt me in every way possible.
You made sure to erase all traces of beauty that you had seen in me, all because you had selfishly imagined that beauty was something that you had created in me.
Yet it was not something that came from you. It has always belonged only to me. And she was taken from me.
You made sure to drag me into all the circles of hell. I was not aware of what had happened to me.
I was so afraid that I allowed myself to believe all the lies you told me.
You convinced me that I was not worthy of you, that I was not worthy of anyone, and that I was not even worthy of living my life.
I suffered; my soul felt like going through another dimension and losing parts that belonged to it.
I was sick. I had never felt such pain before.
As if a part of me was missing and there was nothing I could do about it. I was supposed to mourn something that wasn’t even dead.
I couldn’t even tell which parts it was. All I knew was that all possibility of feeling joy had been taken away from me.
I couldn’t even cry. I was so numb.
It was from there that I began to be reckless. I wanted to force feelings.
I wanted to untie the knot of my pain, let it scream and then let it go.
I wanted proof that my pain was real. I wanted proof that my suffering was not just an unhappy love story, a failed relationship, a bad break up, and that it was just passing discomfort.
It was a loss of soul.
After you, I had to pick up all the broken pieces of myself and put them back together thanks to what I considered myself to be.
The pieces kept flaking, falling and cracking until I realized the hard truth: that I would never be what I was before.
This sudden realization hit me like a slap in the face. I was no longer what I thought I was and I would never be either.
There was no cure, no therapy that could have brought me back to life.
I was changed forever.
At first, I was devastated. The horror of losing something forever had taken over me, and I couldn’t make peace with myself.
I had realized that this empty shell was now me.
I was filled with fears that I had never known before, I had new insecurities and even my beliefs had changed.
She couldn’t feel safe anywhere.
She watched others live their lives with the ignorance that she envied them and became skeptical and paranoid.
She hated herself and hated her body too. Whenever someone tried to establish a real connection with her, she erected an extra wall to protect herself.
Joy of life and humor have been replaced by nights of drunkenness and meaningless friendships.
Love was replaced by unwanted kisses and erased numbers. Peace had become an unknown thing.
I had no choice but to let it live and try to understand it.
After a long period of indifference which only stifled me, I had decided to rectify things in an honorable way with my new self.
I had sworn to accept it with all its misery as I had accepted it formerly.
I started doing everything I wanted to do, without the need to apologize. I allowed myself to be everything I needed to be at that time.
I allowed myself to feel sadness, hatred, excitement, disgust, fear, anger, fascination, attraction …
In short, everything I needed to feel. And I was not prejudicing myself about all of these feelings.
It was from this moment that the walls began to collapse little by little.
When the horror of losing the person I was before started to fade.
This is where I started to make peace with myself.
I started to accept who I was, with everything that came with it.
It didn’t matter. I started to see my life as something precious that was worth living. I finally gave myself the right to go ahead.
I started to find lots of pieces of myself that actually didn’t even need glue because they could fit together perfectly.
Slowly but surely, I began to realize that I was building my own masterpiece. I had managed to reinvent myself.
I said no to any attempt to put out my fire.
I understood that I had to grow up to make room for everything I could become in the future.
The parts of my soul were never really lost in fact – I just had to hide them from the pain because they were so precious.
My own pain taught me that I had the power to turn it into strength.
I finally recognized that I was the only alchemist in my soul.
