There is a well-known proverb: When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
Well, life just knocked me down with a monstrosity of a lemon. Everything in my life has turned sour. There’s not enough sugar in the world to make this lemon sweet, and the purest of water would simply get spoiled by this freakin’ badass lemon I’ve got. So I say f**k it, I’ll eat this bloody lemon. Maybe it’s exactly what I need.
All these silly metaphors aside, my life has been properly shattered recently. Yes yes, you got it, it’s the matters of the heart… It’s been similar to the ice bucket challenge for the soul: a shock to the system and painful as hell at first but it must be excellent for you afterwards. Can’t wait.
For someone who has a life-long infatuation with darkness and melancholy, the end of something as big as a relationship with the love of my life brought along an extra set of dangers. I finally got permission for self-destructive behaviours that others around me often even encourage in this presence of sorrow. I finally had a good reason to be depressed, all previous hormonal imbalances and neurodivergence aside.
Even if the relationship continues to transform into something else, and perhaps even something more beautiful and nurturing like a deep life-long friendship, it still is a certain kind of death. Death to my vision of a future together. Death of a part of myself that will forever belong to that person. Death of a piece of my heart that will forever be damaged, or transformed into another quality of me that I’m scared to even think of.
Death of a relationship that defined me, defined my life, for so long. Death of a relationship that was supposed to be my last…
It’s been a very long time since I posted an article on this blog of mine. I’ve started to feel like the topics I have something to say about are too heavy and too private. Being in a relationship, I felt like I was responsible for my significant other’s privacy and integrity. But inevitably, I started to walk the path away from my own integrity and the whole premise of my life, not to mention this blog. My life has challenged my perception of and admiration for radical honesty and openness. Once again, my identity was muffled as I lost myself in a romantic relationship that has become the most important thing in my life, in my world.
If things had to change, now is the time.
I am now transforming into a new version of myself, I am birthing a new self, a true self that has been somewhat covered up with layers upon layers of mental clouds, masks, and a myriad of external distractions.
Myself, the one that I was so eager to devote to this relationship in the form of pure unconditional love for another, yet somehow managed to inadvertently sacrifice instead as if in an occult ritual, boiling myself to the bone in my own cauldron.
And this is a piece of my darkness for you.
I’ve always believed that the mission, purpose, and meaning of my life is Love. And even though this Love hurts like hell right now…at the bottom of my heart I know…that this is the belief that I don’t ever want to lose. But what’s even more unsettling for me to understand is that Self-Love must be the foundation of any kind of Love. And this I find to be the hardest thing to do, the hardest relationship to keep.
Now that the birthing pains have somewhat subsided, and rivers of tears have washed away most of the lemon juice out of my eye sockets, I’m looking at the world around me like a newborn: clueless, confused, yet curious.
It’s scary, lonely, and awfully unpleasant. But there is that ever-present feeling I carry in my heart that everything happens for a reason and this too is a part of a bigger plan that keeps me wanting to stick to it and see what in my world will happen next.
I’m such a beautiful mess. I’m a caricature of a hopeless romantic in distress.
When it comes to lemons, positivity may go a long way, but it has its place and time.
Especially time.
I’ve said some stupid stuff to grieving people before. Now I feel that I know better than to shove that lemonade sugar into a person’s in adversity mouth. Let them witness themselves that lemon for what it is. Let them explore the lemon, smell it, touch it, hear it, feel it, squeeze it, and discover its various assets and characteristics. Let them learn to perhaps even love the lemon, with all its sour and bitter flavours. But until then, I say f**k the lemonade. Because there are situations in life where no amount of any kind of sugar will make it sweeter.
There are situations in life when you just have to eat your f**king lemon.
