The story of how I hit rock bottom

I've loved and lost and as we all know it's better to have loved and lost then to never have loved at all.

 
BUT

Have I ever truly loved?
Couple of days ago I was watching some standup comedians and one of them said something that stayed with me: "we never learned how to love ourselves, so we employ people to do it for us" 

NOW

The day before this, someone popped the question "How much did you spend on a gift for your boyfriend?" And I was ashamed as fuuuuck because I’ve spent a ton of money on my ex. Not only on presents but on him, on his wellbeing on his life, on our life. So, I wrote down the highest number and kept reading the comments and what I saw was that I wasn't the only one who had done that. 

Did I truly love him? Yes, I believe I did!

Did I love him honestly and in a right way? I believe I didn't. 

I've never felt love, growing up, I’ve never been hugged and was never told “I love you” or “well done”. But my mistakes have always been acknowledged and the main subject for having the shit kicked out of me was “WE BUY YOU SHIT SO YOU OWE US YOUR LOVE” and what my wee, child brain registered was that if you buy someone something it means you love them so I bought and I was shocked when he didn't love me back. And I got frustrated and I worked harder, and I bought more, and I got into debt and I bought more, and I couldn't afford to buy a bottle of water at one point because I kept all my money for when we've gone out so that I can buy shit to MAKE him love me. And he didn’t, and I got even more frustrated and I hated me for not making more money and I struggled, and I cried, and I worked and cried while working and I sabotaged my work with depression and frustration. And I loved him even more and I gave everything until there was nothing else to give and I lost my job because of the frustration and the depression and now I truly had NOTHING else to give.

I began being so cheap with myself and my needs that he started to hate me for that. He was annoyed that I wouldn’t buy myself a $10 shirt, he had no clue that those $10 were going to serve me well next week when that movie was coming out. He was ashamed when we went to the movies and I said that we already have 3D glasses (the ones I kept from the movie before). I felt his cringing next to me when I said that, but I kept on pretending that everything it’s okay and that recycling is my nature.

I remember buying a mascara, a $5 mascara and feeling guilty all the way home because those were $5 I could’ve bought him something.

NOW

I don’t want you all to think that I’m holding a candle for this man. I was literally crumbling before him and, when we’ve gone to the seaside with the money that I was supposed to keep for the dark days that were laying ahead of me, had I just been laid off, he said, “I thought you’d be more fun.” and “I’ve worked hard all year, this is my time to relax, please, don’t go being depressed in my vacation”. I had planned a nice trip. I did really want to get out, but I wanted to go away, far away, I wanted to see things I didn’t see, I wanted to be in a train and talk to people but instead he wanted to go to the seaside and “maybe go to my sister later.”

Spoiler alert! He never intended for me to meet his sister, that meant me, actually, having an impact on his life and that wasn’t the case.

Instead we’ve spent 4 luxurious days in Vama Veche, throwing my money at god knows what and listening to him complaining that I didn’t agree he’ll buy an inflatable kayak with 80% of the money we’ve allocated for our vacation.

At this point he was no longer my friend or my boyfriend or an empathic human being, he was a spoiled child, whose privileges were being taken away. Had I still had my job, I would’ve bought him the kayak without a shadow of a doubt.

He cared for me but not enough to put up with my “..or worse” side of “for better or worse.”  

And that was my worst. My depression spiraled me into physically harming myself. I’ve begun cutting, again, I’ve hit myself several times. And when I say hit myself, I mean that I was feeling so guilty and so angry at myself for not being lovable to this man, despite every sacrifice that I was making, that I used to slap my own face. And I’m not joking.  

I’ve threatened suicide, I’ve cried and kicked and begged. I promised to be good, I’ve said “I’m sorry” until I was blue in the face and I was sorry. I was sorry because I was feeling like I was losing the battle, I was sorry because I couldn’t do more. I was sorry for being such a loser, for not being able to sell a kidney to buy him that kayak. Because I was taught that if you buy shit for the people you love, they must love you back and if they don’t it means you haven’t bought enough.

At one point, he was telling me a story about a friend of his, whose wife bought him an apartment in Paris and one week, I remember, for an entire week, I’ve looked up properties in Paris. I didn’t know how I was going to do this, but it had to be done. I know how much he loved Paris and how much he wanted to just have a way to stay in Paris for longer than a city-break and I wanted to buy a house anyway… Instead of Bucharest I’ll just choose Paris.

It is clear at this point that he was never going to love me. He recognized the affection and cared for me, maybe, he understood the comfort that I provided and was not willing to give that up, definitely, but he never did love me. 

I broke contact soon after the seaside trip when I realized that this situation of me breaking my back for a love, I’ll never be able to gain, was, in fact, going to kill me. I’ve had help in this endeavor and I’ll forever remember the words of my psychiatrist “Why do you keep insisting? Can’t you see that you’re not being let in? You’re trying for three years.”

Not a week later I really needed him. I felt more desperate than I’ve ever felt, an interview was laying ahead of me and felt stressed the fuck out. This was my way out; this interview was the end of all my problems and I wanted to get it so bad. It was moving me to another country, thus giving him space and the opportunity to miss me, it was giving me a ton of money thus giving me the chance to actually buy that fucking apartment in Paris and a little perk for myself, I was going to see a lot of the world, if not all of it.

So, I called him and told him I needed him, and he couldn’t be bothered. At that point, he was already seeing someone else. But he really wanted us to be friends, I was his best friend, according to him. I called this so-called best friend of mine and I said I need you, I need you now, I feel like I’m crumbling, I’m not mentally stable and I need to go out and have a beer and talk to you to bring myself down to earth, to see my goals again. But he was too busy spending time with someone he’d met a month ago. She wasn’t depressed, she wasn’t needy, she didn’t slap her own face.

So, I texted one more person; my therapist:

 “I’m going to kill myself, I can’t do this anymore.”

And I got up on the rooftop of my building and just as I was ready to make the leap my phone rang. It was my therapist. She told me that I had existed before this man and I will continue to do so after he’s gone. She convinced me to go to the interview and after that to take a BlaBlaCar and join my parents to the seaside.

I did. I went back inside, and I called my mother and I cried and asked her why and cried some more. I got maybe two hours of sleep that night and black eyed and all I went to the interview. I didn’t pass, of course but I did go to the seaside afterwards and I existed without him and sometimes I still do. I remember the love a bared for him and I exist for a solid moment there, I exist without him.

I’ve started writing this because I’ve wanted to say that love cannot be bought, and the moral should’ve been that I’m not saying do not buy shit for the people you love, all I’m saying is: what do you want to achieve by buying that?

But I ended up telling you the story of how I hit rock bottom and how I’m starting to climb back up.

Whatever you’re going through there’s someone else who had already been there. Whatever you’re going through there’s someone else who had it worse.

WHATEVER YOU’RE GOING THOUGH YOU HAVE TO KNOW THAT YOU ARE NOT ALONE!

My parents are insane - The Chronicles Chapter VII

PASSION

A great pop culture character, Angel, once said: “Passion is the source of our finest moment, the joy of love, the clarity of hatred and the ecstasy of grief. It hurts sometimes more than we can bear. If we could live without passion maybe we’d know some kind of peace but we would be hollow. Without passion we’d be truly dead.”

I might have had a revelation today. Ok, I admit, I’m always having revelations but this one is a good one.

I always thought that my mother not being permissive enough had me develop only bad traits and for the majority is true. I have a bad temper because of her, I don’t really like mushy stuff because of her, I don’t really know how to say I love you and not feel fucking awkward. And by the by, the fact that I AM in fact telling some people that I love them is a huge fucking deal and I, most of the time, hold back from puking afterwards, so yes, be proud, you’ve earned it.

I was wrong about my mother; I actually have a lot to thank her for.

Let me tell you why.

I have a LOT of passions. I love music more than I loved any human being EVER, I love to hear the emotions that some other person felt when writing down some lyrics, or just playing around with their guitar. A freaking iconic song (which slips my mind at the moment ) was written when the guitarist of that band was playing around in the studio, it’s just fucking amazing how something so huge can come out of just jerking off in the coffee break. Freaking NIRVANA wrote the song that consecrated them based on a joke, when a chick said that Cobain “smelled like teen spirit”(which was a ladies perfume). That’s either brilliance or it’s faith and out of the two, I don’t know what I’d pick.

I LOVE drawing, I’d spend hours just doodling away. I don’t even care what it is, it could be potatoes with arms, it could be the next Starry Night as long as something comes out of my hands, I’m a happy camper. It’s true, I don’t do that anymore….now I play Candy Crush. I guess you can call that “creating something”, I’m creating a void in my head so I won’t think about the fact that I actually stopped creating shit.

I LOVE to read. For a “hater” like me reading is the best thing that could ever happen. It gets you out of this universe and then anything is possible. You get to go inside of another person’s mind without using black magic or science, you flip the page and there you are, reading their thoughts, feeling their moves, speaking their language, living their lives. You can even talk for two or three people at a time and sometimes the only one who can experience their grief, it’s you and that gives you a sense of power, you’re absolute. In slang terms you’re just too fucking awesome.

When I was little my mom was always smacking me for not writing the lesson down in class, I would, instead, just draw. I was listening to what the teachers were saying but all my notebooks would read the date, the title, a couple of lines and then just flowers and dresses and hands and attempts at portraits. So every time I would come home from school with such a page she’d just smack me around a little. “How can you do this? Look, your classmate, Georgica is writing everything down.” Despite the fact that he was writing everything down, Georgica was left behind a year so that wasn’t the best policy for passing your classes. HA! Take that, mum. Of course I had a little anarchy in me since I can remember so, naturally I was inclined to not even write the date anymore instead just draw some more.

 I had a pair of jeans that were ripped, at one point, I’ve just discovered punk and loved it because it was nothing like britney spears or n’sync (and yes, I’m just gonna write the names without capital letters because they don’t deserve it). I would wear them every day for about a year, summer, winter, -20 degrees; my knees would be just hanging out, breathing fresh air. So she gets mad at one point and throws away my noise making army boots, my leather jacket AND cuts my pants in half. I was so mad I wouldn’t come out of my room for a week that summer. She eventually smashed my mixed tape; that got me out of the house because I had to make a new one and of course listen even louder.

I was in eighth grade and just gotten my hands on Shakespeare, it was so intricate that I had to read Hamlet three times so I could truly understand what was going on. The fact is that Hamlet was not in the curriculum and I had to prepare for the last exam. Instead I was sitting in the middle of the bed, at 7 in the morning reading Shakespeare and my mother comes in, very upset saying things like “you should be getting dressed, you have to be at school in half an hour and you’re sitting here reading crap.” Crap, yes, she called Shakespeare “crap”.

I was never the child she wanted me to be. I was never perfect and I never did anything on time. I also never did, or said, or dressed like the norms of society dictates us and that killed her.  Maybe she just didn’t want me to suffer if I would be seen as an outcast or maybe she was jealous at my free spirited nature.  But by her denying me all those things I think she drove me to developing passions for amazingly beautiful thing and now they’re in there and there’s nothing she can do about.

I was talking too my workmate today and after I had a huge rant about a song I asked her “what passion drives you anyway?” and she answered “none.” And then I’ve waited, maybe it was something there, something buried deep, something that would make her want to cry or giggle at the thought of, but there was nothing and I felt so sad for her because she might never know what it means to go through and emotional rollercoaster every time you hear your favorite song or watch your favorite movie. She might never now the anger when you can’t draw the other eye or the joy when everything is perfect. She might never understand the itch in your fingers when you want to write something or draw something and you don’t have a pen nearby.

I asked her if anything was ever denied to her by her parents and she answered with “nothing.”

So in spite of mein mutter actually being mein furer she might have actually created in me the best trait that a human being can posses: PASSION. And for that, I thank you, mom.

Also there’s no point in this post and you’ve spent the last 10 minutes reading a crazy lady’s rant. I’ll just go buy some cats now.

A bien tot! 

The world deserves to burn

I have these friends. They try to look like intellectuals so they are debating incidents around the world, political or otherwise. I can see I become a little shorter in their eyes every time I refuse to say something about these things but I don’t refuse because I’m unopinionated or because I don’t care it’s because I think the world deserves to go out in a fiery mess.

The criminally insane political leaders rose to power by the will of the people, the terrorists exist and thrive thru people, rapist and murderers are people, they live, are accepted and fascinate society. And then there’s the other class of criminals, those who shrug their shoulders in the face of all of this and say “Them’s the rules”. And what saddens me most is the fact that that’s how most of us think. We comply with the rules we helped bring to power.

They can’t build enough prisons to contain every soldier who would refuse to go to war, they can’t execute every person in a country who would stand up against execution, against totalitarianism, against mass murders.

Gandhi said “Be the change you want to see in the world.” But the world complies so it fully deserves the handmade apocalypse that’s embarking upon. 

My parents are insane. The chronicles Chapter VI

Dear friend,

I’m really tired talking to a machine all day long so I am going to start writing to you and pretend I have to go down to the post office and mail a letter every once in a while.

I’ve decided to talk to you about my parents who are completely mental.

I sometimes fantasize I leave to work in the morning, something really amazing happens and I just don’t come back home, ever.

Today is the 27^th of December, I had to stay home for the holydays which drove me completely insane. We stayed in because my mother decided to be mad, for no reason at all. She was mad at us, she barely spoke to me or my dad and sat in bed all day long watching TV.

I’ve gotten so used to keeping myself busy over the last three months that I came to a point of not being able to just lie in bed and watch movies and eat junk food like I used to. Which, incidentally makes me feel a lot happier than I used to be. These two days were the death of me. I was so bored I wanted to blow my brains out only so that I could scrape them off the wall and have something to do.

I made the insane mistake to remark as such in a loud voice, in the vicinity of my mother’s ears.

What came next, left me completely perplexed for at least an hour.

My mother started screaming at me “If you would’ve taken us to the mountains you wouldn’t be bored now.”

I said “Mom, why didn’t you say you wanted to go out?”  Especially since the day before I asked her if she wanted to go to the country and she refused with a barely mumbled “No.” that got me figured she was in one of her moods and just wanted to stay in.

As a response I got more yelling “Because you’re you and you would’ve said you don’t want to, or that you have stuff to do. You’re the one how should’ve said something.”

I really feel like I need to mention the fact that I’m not a mind reader. Of course if I had said something she wouldn’t have wanted to go because nothing was planned out from a day before.

So let’s see what we have until now, shall we? My mom wants everything to be perfectly planned out without her actually saying anything and when she does open her mouth is just so she can reproach to you that you didn’t do something you didn’t even know about.

Now what am I supposed to do with that new discovery except for actually blowing my brains out?

Love always,

Laura 

WAKE UP

Yeah, I tried my best to come up with a title for this post and this is all I could find mostly because I’m baffled by what’s happening to Romanian women, and women all over the world, no doubt.

I have a thirst for traveling and I feel like crying that I can walk thru the streets of New York, see the fabulous  French cafés, or experience the colors of India only on Google street view … for now anyway.

And no, I haven’t been to other countries to see if this crazy phenomenon that’s happening on my homeland, it’s happening anywhere else as well, but I am writing this for every woman out there who thinks she needs to sell herself in any way for material stuff.

I came over a post, today, that gave me chills. I realized how many powerful women fought for us in their own – at that time – insignificant way and how many of us do not exploit the legacy that they have left us.

And here’s the post http://news.distractify.com/people/powerful-photos-of-women/?v=1

The only thing a woman wanted was to run in the Boston Marathon and she had the strength to do so. Maybe we should take a minute and wonder if it wasn’t for her, would we have women athletes at all?

This post started out of my own anger an outrage but while I’m typing I’m thinking it’s not only about that, It’s about our future, it’s about our dignity, it’s about having something to be proud of.

We are the most magnificent creatures on thin planet. We have the power to bring life into the world and we let ourselves be manipulated by the idea of fame and money.

We stare at the TV every goddamn day and they tell us we’re not good enough, we’re not pretty enough, we don’t have enough money to be our own person so we sell ourselves, we starve ourselves, we dye our hair and paint our nails, we buy shit we don’t need for the prospect of being a better us, a perfect us. To achieve an idyllic perfection that nobody can achieve and we lose ourselves in this whole conundrum, we get deviated from doing great things.

I wanted to write something especially for the women in my country. For the past five years, or so, there has been a Muslim migration and a lot of women have been seduced by whatever those men have to offer them and now every day. Every fucking day I see Romanian women, white women, subject themselves to that whole hijab thing, covering their faces, not being able to do ANYTHING but raise the children, not being able to leave the house except with the children, not being able to peruse a dream or a passion because the religion of the man you chose to marry, forbids it. I’d like to think that these types of marriages took place out of love as well, maybe they had a calling, maybe these women were born to be mothers and nothing more. But that’s too optimistic so I won’t get my hopes up.

Most likely these marriages took place because of a desperate need for liberation and freedom. And yes I know that doesn’t sound logical when you say it out loud. But the way I came to this conclusion is the following: many people think freedom is money, happiness is money, things that give you any kind of satisfaction are things that you need money for and these men can provide only one thing: MONEY and the only thing that money does in this case is lock you up, clip your wings and wipe the smile from your face. And I’m not writing this because my run around with religion or because I’m a racist.

WAKE UP, YOU ARE SELLING YOURSELF so you can buy a pair of shoes that I can’t afford and I can guarantee you that I’m happier with my 35 lei pair of sneakers that you are in your 400 euros pair of Jimmy Choo’s that nobody is able to see anyway.

I’m not saying having fancy things is wrong. There’s a saying in my country “the fox that can’t reach the grapes, says they’re bitter” and this is not the case. FIGHT! Earn your own money, buy the things you want and feel proud walking down the street, be happy, be yourself, BE FREE! Because right now you’re nothing but a housekeeper who’s paid in fancy stuff and I’m sure the goal behind marrying into a religion that ostracizes women was exactly the fear of not becoming a housekeeper.

And if this doesn’t convince you, than think about this: there are women in Muslim countries that are fighting tooth and nail against this, women who are fighting for your freedom, women who are beaten and raped and eventually killed only so that YOU can have your free will.

Ladies, stop subjecting yourselves to torturous changes only so that you can be what society thinks you have to be.

 YOU ARE THE SOCIETY! You can set the impossible standards or you can cut them loose. You and only you can let you be yourselves!

Next, I’ll post some pictures of powerful and beautiful women from the article I told you about.