Lying in a heart-broken puddle on the cold tile floor.
~ Photo: Vintage Marilyn Monroe ~
I was 15 years old, heartbroken, crying my eyes out on my bathroom floor.
The door locked, the window cracked to let out the stale smell of smoke. I was extremely fragile puddling on the cold tile, sobbing my little heart out for I don’t even know how long. In my adolescent mind, my life was over. My parents knew everything, all the lies, and all the truth. I didn’t even know what to say. I called my boyfriend for comfort who decided that was the best day to break it to me that he had found someone else.
“Is this some cruel joke?” I asked the ceiling.
Met with silence and the quiet fall of my tears, I sat crumpled on the floor. I wasn’t getting up. I wasn’t leaving that place. I refused to face this new reality.
How could I go on (as dramatic as I could possibly be)? My mind raced to find solutions and explanations between sobs. I felt as if I was practically wailing and my mother was the cruelest person on Earth. Any freedom I had had been stripped from me and that just wouldn’t do. I knew I wouldn’t be able to survive.
I could have pushed my fists into the ceramic beneath me, but that probably would have hurt worse. I looked at my legs outstretched and slightly bent supporting my weight, my back up against the wall. That’s exactly how I felt, pushed up against that wall. It was all my own doing of course, but I dare not admit it.
There was no way in hell I was taking any responsibility. And so I didn’t. I was too broken to at the time.
The tears began to dry up as they always do. Emotionally wrecked and exhausted, I could still hear my whimpers although few tears still fell. I sat there motionless unsure what to do next. My mind still trying to wrap itself around everything that had unfolded that day. Anger, resentment, betrayal, sadness, a feeling so painful of being all alone.
How could I bear this?
No sooner had I asked this question for the umpteenth time than a voice quietly responded, “you’ll be okay.” What the hell? I don’t want to be okay. How could I possibly be okay? And the voice quietly replied, “you’ll be okay.” Could this be true?
I asked this of myself, of this voice coming from deep within. And sure as day, it came again, “you’ll be okay.” I sat there, unable to move for a moment. I wanted to deny hearing this altogether. I wanted to pretend that this had never happened.
“You’ll be okay,” it came louder. Ugh. I hated this. Deep breath. I knew I couldn’t escape. I met it with resistance, this voice. And I slowly peeled myself up off the floor daring to peek in the mirror to see my swollen eyes and puffy cheeks. I saw every single emotion I felt on my face. My eyes told the story of surrender. I stared at myself. I knew it. I knew it in the deepest part of myself.
I would be okay. I could face this. I could survive.
Years later, that voice has never left me. I’ve hated it and loved it all at the same time. I still go to my bathroom to cry. I still slide my back down against the wall like I did that day, crumbling to the floor, I cry my heart out until the voice comes. It always does. It never fails.
Sometimes I wish it wouldn’t so for a brief moment, I could lie broken just to know what it feels like without the echo of you’ll be okay creeping into my conscious. But I suppose that it not what is intended for me. I’m meant to endure, to rise, to ultimately be okay. So, I guess I listen. I try not to fight it. I carry on because that’s what my soul wants me to do. That crazy soul of mine that’s been speaking to me since I was a child.
You’ll be okay.
*****
{Assurance.}
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