Oh You Know, Just Still Quarantined

How's your quarantine going? That's how I feel about mine. So grateful my sister really knows how to capture a moment. 

But let's get real, I've felt like blah for double digits months at this point. 

After my therapist commented on how long my hair was and I told her I really can't wait for a haircut but I'm not a moron willing to risk my life or others' for it, we finally had a conversation where she didn't want to hang up on me (at least I don't think).  

There are no easy ways to explain what it's like to be used, to be a placeholder for someone else, to not know what was going on behind your back by someone you trusted, and the horror that followed that terrible evening. 

Sharing my impending birthday with the human that I was cheated on with just adds to how fucking amazing quarantine is. You'll read more about my thoughts on this in Life's Better In Yoga Pants. This is quite the 180 from it will be "just me, you and Lily (<-cat) next year." 

Because I love science, my therapist sometimes lets me put things together and learn on my own. She is obviously the professional with more medical degrees than I will ever have so her answers are clearly correct and final, but I've been right about many things (yay but also boo). 

It was the first time I've gotten on the phone and didn't question her reasoning of the NPD and BPD. Being home alone leaves me a lot of time to go down research rabbit holes and sometimes things just fucking click. The stars align. And I've been more accepting of that lately. No one wants these things to click. No one asks for abuse or to be used, to be gaslighted. But when it finally clicks, there's a minuscule amount of weight lifted off of your shoulders. 

I know that I'm a good writer and when 10+ eyes are on something, and their hearts are breaking just reading it and their feedback includes the words powerful, strong, honest, sad, etc, and the only person who negatively reacts (which we all know was an inappropriate reaction to the contents) to it is the recipient, I know what my therapist is saying is correct. 

And her interpretation of my last blog post was spot on.  It helped restore my confidence as I was listening to her explain what she thought it was meant to mean.

No, it doesn't make things less painful or sad. It doesn't change anything. But it helps some days.

[A dinner image instead of brunch]

What feels like many moons ago, a great friend of mind stared at me as a bawled my eyes out over brunch and made it very clear that "you are not the type of girl to be controlled."

And that's true and can be echoed by my friends, parents and therapist. And myself. 

We already know it's repeat behavior. But cycles can be broken. It's like consistently running the same pace in a race that you want to PR in. Then boom the cycle gets broken and you cruised your way to a new goal. I hope she did break the cycle (don't forget I'm on team they got 👰). I hope she never has to envision living the rest of her life the way I will. 

Since I gave you a running analogy it's only fitting I talk about running, as runners do. 

I was supposed to be using this canceled season as a time to figure out which speed workouts I like the best and what we'd focus on for fall training. 

WOMP. 

I have been in 0 mood to do an actual speed workout. However, I have been adding tempos to some of my morning runs, like today's 3-miler that looked like a warm-up, goal half marathon race pace mile, and an easy-ish mile. To be honest, my paces have been looking pretty good from what they were. 

I'm sad that I won't be on the starting line to my goal half marathon in one week. I was excited to see what I had in me after a strong training cycle. But I know this added time means I'm just getting better, faster and stronger and when I do get to race it, I get to make an even fast goal. 

Silver motherfucking linings. 

[Meet Chloe - my baby sourdough starter]

I'm really excited to see my book come together more, including almost nailing down a cover artist. And since beaches are closed for the summer, it's now going to be your perfect balcony read. 

XO,

Lynette