I’ve not been fine

I’ve not been fine

I’ve not been doing fine. I tell everyone “I’m fine” but the reality speaks very differently.

This year has been possibly the hardest in terms of my emotional and mental wellbeing. I’ve struggled every day. Some days it just felt too much and I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want to feel this way anymore.

I still don’t. 

It’s funny; I said it out loud and people didn’t hear me. This isn’t strictly true but the very few people who did reach out were some of the most unexpected. People I haven’t seen since school and college.

Now people say “I’m so glad you’re doing well” but they never actually ask me how I’m doing. They just assume I’m doing well. They don’t really know and I don’t think they really care either. Close friends and random people I’ve met over the years just say “I’m glad you’re doing well” and they say it fast enough that they don’t have to actually learn the truth. 

The truth is the opposite.

But people don’t like that. The negative doesn’t fit the narrative.

Some of you may know that my ex; the man who out of the blue completely shattered my heart and my World; works with me. 

Normally he gives me warning if he has a work trip that might overlap with me. Normally I get a heads up. This time, I got my days wrong. 

I turned up at the hotel as always. I agreed to meet the crew as always in the hotel bar. Well, when I walked in, I saw him. I saw that familiar face. The face I’d stared at hundreds of times with a smile on my face. The same face I had pulled close and kissed so many times over the years before. That face that was etched into my brain like a tattoo that burned me from the inside out. The pain of that face had become unbearable. 

He was sat there.

He was surrounded by the women on his crew and he was laughing. It’s like the pain I had felt for the last year hadn’t even fazed him. I was alone in my pain because he was happy. 

He didn’t acknowledge me. 

Not even a ‘hello’. 

I felt rage building inside of me. A wave of complete devastation just washed over me. I meant nothing to him. He was more concerned with chatting with the other women around him. I was a ghost he had forgotten from his past. It’s like I never existed.

Suddenly, it all hit me.

The realisation that this is what I’ll always be worth. 

When my Father left, I tried everything to seek validation from him. I just wanted him to acknowledge my existence. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. To have my existence acknowledged. I never got that. 

He was wealthy enough (a multi millionaire in fact) to even find loopholes to avoid paying child maintenance. When I was eleven I wrote to my Father and his reply simply said

“I’ve put you in my past and you need to do the same” 

He finished by signing the letter

From Paul.

Not Dad. 

Half of his blood runs through my veins but he had put me in his past so I should do the same. My Father went on with a life where because my sisters and I were out of sight, we were out of mind. Nobody in his life knew we existed except for his family who had disowned him and loved us. 

At twenty five, I flew to Singapore to go to his office and force him to face me. Sadly he wasn’t there but I left a letter and spoke to his secretary. I left my contact details on his desk with the letter. 

I heard nothing.

Out of sight, out of mind.

He had put me in his past so I never really existed.

Is that what my ex had done now?

Now, sitting in a bar in Florida and he couldn’t even acknowledge my existence. The man I had loved so fully and who I thought had loved me back. I have spent years working through therapy and working on myself to make sure I could offer the best version of myself; to make sure I was open to healthy love in spite of the damage my Father had left me with. 

But I fell in love with a man who cut my scars open again. These scars that I had spent years and a lot of money healing. He cut them open again so deeply to bleed out. Then he put me in his past and forgot I even existed. 

How history repeats itself over and over again. 

No matter how hard you try. No matter how much money you spend on therapy. It’s never enough.

I’ll never be enough. 

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