If we were to go back to a year ago today, February 1st, 2023. I would have said I was on top of the world. I had just returned from Copenhagen, and I was falling in love with photography again. I was traveling more with my boyfriend of almost six years, and I had started actually telling people I was happy.
I wasn’t.
Or I don’t really know at this point if I was, but that girl was never ready for what was to come in the following week. Sure the anniversary was fun, I fell in love, genuine true love, But that all changed on the 9th of February and I don’t think I could have ever truly been prepared for it, any of it. I almost wrote about it a hundred times in the first month, Trying to process the actual loss, the idea of being so hopeful for a future and having it taken from me.
I had in the back of my mind tried to let myself believe in my art, my photography, but it all felt so hollow so empty. I didn’t want to be myself let alone the person I gave up for someone else. So I remained how I was, not speaking truly to being me but to once again who people expected me to be.
I remained.
It wasn’t until the TikTok trend surrounding the song “Right Where You Left Me” by Taylor Swift, took off that I truly realized what I was doing. I wasn’t moving on or feeling better. all I was doing was feeling bad for myself and hurting others that I was pretending I was moving on with. That was until I made the fateful decision to move to New York.
Hell, I wanted to move to New York for years, but that was never allowed to be a discussion. A possibility, it was always how it was and nothing would ever change that.
So I decided I was moving, and tried to keep myself rational. New Year, new place, financial independence but not being alone.
Or that’s what I thought, what I hoped. I hate being alone after all, you might not get that I am an introvert and all, but I hate being alone.
This is why I am now here, at 830pm on a Thursday night looking forward to spending my Friday off…alone because there is no one left. I move in one month. I go to New York all alone, just like I wanted, but I am more alone now than I was a year ago when I felt like I reached my absolute zero.
But now I can’t decide which is worse. to sit in misery feeling unloved and unwanted. Or knowing that the reason I am alone is because, for the first time in my life, I have fully been on my own side. Not letting myself take the shit others choose to throw at me, because Im quiet and they know that I have for years remained because it was easier.
I might still be the girl who remains, but for the first time, I see that staying isn’t a weakness, it’s a strength many will never be able to find.
Sidney Donna 