A major part of this purging I’ve undergone this past month and a half was really not about getting rid of all this STUFF. Yes, this STUFF needed to GO. But this process really was about getting down to the accountability of how I got here (overwhelmed, stuck, unhappy) in the first place. I wasn’t being accountable for my life as a grown-up, and it’s ironic, considering all I wanted to be when I was a kid was grown-up.

I made the difficult decision to end my almost five-year relationship because I wasn’t being accountable for my role in what wasn’t working. He never interfered with my process, he never held me back from doing anything I wanted to do. In fact, he unconditionally supported a lot of decisions I made, even when it meant being a gazillion miles apart from each other. But I was looking for him to solve my problems.  Of course, that wasn’t his responsibility, but it didn’t stop me from being angry at him for not being the man I wanted him to be.

It’s a terrible thing, this conditioning we receive that men can somehow save us from __________.

I thought was above that, but here I am.

I had a bad attitude all the time. It affected how I thought of him, spoke to him, and was with him. I became a person I didn’t recognize and it damaged our relationship.

Sure, he has his own STUFF to work out and work through and his STUFF interfered with our relationship at times, but it didn’t give me the right to behave the way I did.

I couldn’t figure out how we could stay together and fix what was broken with us and do what I needed to do to get my shit together, so I had to choose Us or me.

I chose me.

It’s been incredibly painful, because so much of the us was me, and the worst part is that this relationship was the only thing I’ve ever been the most clear about wanting to hold on to, while I bounced in and out of every other relationship and experience in my life.

While my head says it was the right decision, it’s all I can do to keep from coming undone.

But life is for the living, and I’ve got to keep up and keep moving forward.