“You’ve never been with a good guy before.” My mom’s voice was stern, unbreakable even, as her poignant observation pierced me. Savage – I initially thought. But moments later, my mind was bombarded with movie clips of my past boyfriends, almost-boyfriends, awful dates and most horrifically, the person who I now refer to as that one guy.
Unsurprisingly, the only ex-boyfriend/fling who didn’t show up in the flashback of horrors was the one I had truly forgiven. He was someone so removed from the rest, that I knew my mother’s comment could never be alluding to him. Although it took more than a year to forgive him, I’ll never forget the surprise of finding a bouquet of roses delivered to my dorm all the way from Alabama. I’ll never forget him taking the time to visit me during the school year either. Moreover, I’ll never forget that he was once my best friend. It was late at night and I was sure he’d be sleeping. But that didn’t stop me from calling him immediately. He answered quickly. He was shocked by my words as I apologized for my past actions. And in those perfect five minutes, we forgave each other. The second that I hung up, I felt just that much lighter – until I didn’t anymore.
There they were, the faces of the unforgiven. There was my first boyfriend from a crazy religious family who told me I was demon possessed after sharing that I once struggled with depression. After that, some guy I barely knew from a party. Then, a 25-year-old Cornell grad student who was so upset that I was not interested in sleeping with him, he decided to leave me with the check for his dinner. There were several others. Yet the final one to yank my attention was that one guy: the deployed soldier who I fell for… who was secretly married the whole time that I let him be the center of my life. I carried this gang of heartbreakers everywhere I went without even knowing. They were the reasons behind my anxieties over relationships and the justifications behind my lowered self-esteem.
They were monsters. I couldn’t forgive them, yet I so desperately needed to for myself. I felt like I was dying as every man that I resented slowly ate away at me. I thought I had cried enough tears to grow a garden, but nothing grew from my wounds except for fear. Despite how much they had hurt me, reflecting on how beneficial my previous encounter with forgiveness had been is what ultimately pushed me towards mercy. I decided I was going to tell God and the birds and the rest of creation that I was done with these soul ties. When the time came for those ties to break, I broke. Tears rolled endlessly and screamed “I forgive you.” It was as if a tower inside of me, nearly the size of my spine, was now shattered to bits. I broke but it was an indicator of creation: me creating a clean space for me to feel alive again.
Today, I take in fresh air as I continue to rebuild everything I lost from two jammed packed years of heartbreak. That doesn’t mean shadows never attempt to knock on my door again. Rather, it means that I kick them out every time. I am finding that the love story I’ve been chasing is within myself – in the songs I sing, in the poems I write, and in the art I paint. When time permits, I take myself out on dates. I explore downtown Ithaca, discover new gorge trails, and dine at local eateries all while soaking in the joy of redefining myself. I am a new creation and I am certain that one day I will join another new creation in this crazy life.
Wherever this rebirth takes me, I will hold on to this: “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” – Proverbs 4:23
