"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
-Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit
On the first day of 2022, I tweeted one of those the-energy-I'm-coming-into-the-new-year-with pics, and this was the pic:
That tweet was a year and a half before Jonathan and I broke up, but if I had to pinpoint a beginning to our end, that was it. Clearly when he not only neither liked nor acknowledged the tweet but, once pressed, admitted it made him feel uncomfortable, I should have known that things weren't right because what kind of guy in an almost-two-year relationship is uncomfortable because his girlfriend tweeted a picture like the one above? It's not like I was spread eagle on the bed with "for Jonathan" written in lipstick on my inner thigh. I'd say as far as quote-unquote sexy photos go, and if you want to talk uncomfortable, you can't imagine how very uncomfortable it makes me to publicly call it that, this photo is extremely tame. It shows my shoulders and collarbones and nothing else (and lest you think he was uncomfortable because there's more to the photo than this - or less, if you know what I mean - that's also not the case). So, again, I ask you - what kind of guy in an almost-two-year relationship is uncomfortable because his girlfriend tweeted a photo like the one above? A guy who's uncomfortable with the relationship, that's what kind, or at least a guy who's uncomfortable with certain people on Twitter seeing evidence of it.
But I digress. I digress because none of this matters anymore. 2022 was three years ago, Jonathan is not only no longer my boyfriend but also no longer my friend, not even like the kind you talk to every once in a while and no matter how long you go in between, they'll always be a part of your life (go ahead, ask me all about how I completely ignored the happy-birthday, he-hopes-I-have-an-amazing-day-:) birthday tweet he sent me at 7:33 in the morning on January 17), and the point of this very late New Year's post has nothing to do with Jonathan at all despite how what I've written so far may make it seem and, well, also what I'm about to write next, which is that
retrospective realizations aside, that photo (you know, the one my then boyfriend of a-year-and-a-half completely ignored and was made uncomfortable by) really was an accurate depiction of the way I felt. Do you see how happy I looked? That's not pretend. Do you see what it says on my chest? Not exaggeration. Every bit and piece of me belonged to Jonathan; people who read my blog, you think I've been so focused on him because of our breakup and everything that went along with it, but for three years I was entirely focused on him; Jonathan was, quite simply, my sun, and I was happy with that. Actually, scratch happy. Jesus, Mary, and the wee donkey, I was fucking thrilled.
But that was then and - fucking duh - this is now, so let's stop looking behind us and look at the present or at least the much-more-recent past, a bridge to the present if you will, or better yet, a stepping stone, since we're about to go back a mere thirty-one days to New Year's Eve.
When I tell you I came into 2025 on my ass and on my knees, that I scooted and hobbled and crawled my way toward the beginning of this year not only figuratively, but literally, I tell no tales. The Vegan Picadillo Debacle of '24 reinforced the tone that was set forth not only by the Sobbing-on-the-Kitchen-Floor Incident of New Year's Eve '23 but also by the new reality of having my mother living nearby, cemented by the more than six months of bathroom-and-bathroom-related fiascos so unbelievable, if the chain of events were depicted in fiction, the book would be criticized for being too unrealistic - that many horrible things couldn't possibly happen to one person! people would say to which I'd say, yeah, right (as I thought to myself that the possibility that I'd soon be standing in the ocean and washing myself with a live fish was seeming more and more likely) - and maintained through a work schedule so rigorous, I'm pretty sure I could stack up all the papers I graded last semester and take a nap on them Princess-and-the-Pea style if I had the time (which I don't because who has the time to stack two hundred thousand papers when they're busy grading them?)
and so (!!), if I were I to have tweeted one of those the-energy-I'm-coming-into-the-new-year-with pics on the first day of 2025, this would have been the pic:
However horrible you think I look in that photo, however exhausted, however beaten, battered, and just plain miserable you think I look, trust that I feel worse.
I won't go into the story because it's getting a post of its very own, but I will say that that photo, taken at 1:42 pm on December 31, is the aftermath of an 8.5-mile run with a pulled calf muscle in the scorching sun, a run so brutally painful, I had to scoot up the stairs on my butt when I got home, RICE for two days, and for almost a week, I could barely walk. I'll also say that as I was hobbling along on that run, refusing to quit, nearly crying from pain, I thought to myself that this was the perfect way to end the year, the culmination of everything I'd experienced throughout the year, the physical manifestation of the anguish I'd felt, still felt, and as bad as that pain felt, it felt justified, it felt right, like the way sometimes I really want to go to a show just to get pushed around.
In the same vein that if my life were a novel, people would say it's not realistic, if my life were a novel, I'd be writing right now that after that run, after the turning of the calendar that midnight, I woke up a new person, ready to move on, to finally leave my past in the past. Poetic as that would be, it wouldn't be true. What is true is that I woke up just as miserable as I'd been waking up, maybe even more miserable since two-and-a-half weeks down the line I had to go on a trip I no longer wanted to go on that I'd scheduled months earlier both so I could run in a new state and also so I could run away, albeit briefly, from my life.
Yes, I know. We established in this post that chasing happiness doesn't work. I wasn't exactly doing that - chasing happiness - when I scheduled the trip, just hoping to avoid what I knew decidedly would not be happiness, and that, people who read my blog, was spending the weekend of my fiftieth birthday in this house. For months leading up to it, starting right after Jonathan's birthday, really, because I had become used to shifting from Jonathan's-birthday-is-approaching mode to a now-my-birthday-is-coming-up frame of mind when we were together, and as you're aware, that didn't end when we broke up, I was dreading it. I wasn't dreading it because I was dreading turning fifty; I was dreading it because I was turning fifty and my life is my life. As a result, at some point in October, I decided I'd take a break from it; I'd get away from this place where I knew I'd spend my birthday sitting around feeling sorry for myself thinking about ghosts.
I decided to plan a trip. I made a list of all the states I hadn't run and started doing research. Since my birthday is in the middle of January, it couldn't be somewhere with freezing cold winters which left three states: Hawaii, Arizona, and New Mexico. Although I almost ended up going to Hawaii, after looking up a lot a lot a lot of things from vegan food options to official runs to coffee shops and taking travel time versus the amount of time I'd get to spend wherever I ended up into consideration, I ended up choosing Arizona. I then invited some people to go, got the yeses I was looking for, and thought I'd achieved what I set out to achieve. Something big. Something fun. Something that would make me forget that I was turning fifty by myself.
Well. One of my favorite sayings isn't about the best laid plans of mice and men for nothing; alas, the big, fun trip I planned was turning out to be the opposite. We'll skip all the details of what went wrong with the trip in the months leading up to it, why I was dreading it, and what went wrong on it (although maybe we'll revisit it later) because I'm really not in the mood to go into it. What we'll talk about instead is the psychic.
So there was this psychic. There's a little bit more to the story that maybe one day I'll go into if I ever feel like talking about the whole Arizona thing, but for now, what's relevant is that there was this psychic but when I say there was this psychic, what I mean is there were two psychics because they, they being the psychics my friend found, worked in a pair. My sister, my friend, and I talked to these psychics for an hour, but since it was my birthday trip, they mostly focused on me. While we sat with them eating the blandest Thai food known to man, trying to avoid the twenty-seven degree weather on the coldest day in Sedona (did I mention I chose Arizona to avoid the cold?), many things were said, but the three most important were that I had a fear monger on me, which they removed, that my ex-boyfriend's mother had done some dark stuff to me, which they did as much as they could to remove but weren't completely able (this is where the fish-as-soap comes in), and that while my friend and my sister each had their soul, spirit, and heart, I didn't have my spirit or my soul, both of which they restored.
Now, I don't know how valid these psychics were, and I'm sure some of you are thinking, I know how valid, but valid psychics or not, they gave some really good advice, and if anything, I got $220 worth of pretty helpful therapy. Also, valid psychics or not, I don't question their validity because whether through power of suggestion/ placebo effect, that hour of counsel, or something else, the things they said and the things they did worked.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying I went from Angelus to Angel once my spirit and soul were "restored," but since my trip - my miserable, miserable trip - I feel different. I feel less lonely, and I feel less lovelorn, and I feel like I'm finally seeing things with a clarity that for so long I'd been unable to achieve. I also, and God, it's so embarrassing to admit this but you know me - it's all humiliation all the time around these parts - haven't looked at any of their socials since that night (except when I had to a few days ago when I blocked their Instagram accounts). This might not sound like a big deal to you, but to say I had a sick fascination with their accounts - especially the puta's - that's mild.
That psychic session was on a Monday (January 20). Afterward, I felt exactly the same. Sad, frustrated, lonely; agitated about my trip. The next morning, too. Agitation abounded. The day after I got back, though, that was a Wednesday, and Wednesday means run club. It was drizzly and cold, I was exhausted from traveling and from the time change, and for the first time ever, I didn't want to go. But I did.
The drizzle turned to rain as I ran, and as hackneyed and dramatic as it sounds, when I ran through that cold rain, it felt like a baptism, the cleansing rivulets ushering in a rebirth (and a horrible chest cold, but we won't talk about that). I smiled and I laughed as I bounded down the street (I bounded slowly because of my calf, but I would still say I bounded instead of ran). It was a spiritual experience, and for this girl who has regularly eschewed spirituality, even saying that says a lot). And now? Now, post-baptism run? Post-psychic meeting? Post-the blocking of the socials? Now, if I were to tweet a the-energy-I'm-coming-into-the-second-month-of-the-new-year-with pic? This would be the pic:
Maybe I'm not elated or ready to jump for joy like I was in 2022, but I'm also not battered and broken. For the first time in a long time, instead of bits and pieces of the one I used to be, I feel like an entire human being. A vastly different human being than I used to be, for sure, but complete - a little older, a little rougher, a little more worn. A little more velveteen rabbit. And I suppose I can live with that.
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