Broken and Filled with Glee: A Letter that Ended Up Being to Myself

Have you ever felt like you couldn’t do anything right?

This last month has been rough.

The number of days I’ve woken up feeling shitty about the day ahead, about life, about things I’d let happen and things that had happened and all the things that hadn’t happened but probably would because I’d given myself two words and carried them around like a precious woman carries a knockoff Birken bag.

FUCK UP.

I could sing it to myself with a bluesy-riff. It was a pop song. I was country, rock-n-roll, and just a shitty commercial ditty.

FUCK UP.

And a lot of it had to do with someone whom I thought was good to have in my life. As it turns out, that wasn’t such a good idea. And it’s not because that person isn’t a good person — as I’m quite confident he is. It’s just that he wasn’t a good person to me because he’s not a good person to himself.

That shit is hard to watch go down — someone who’s living a life ruled by a story he didn’t even write but somehow came to believe.

Well, Monday night this week, it ended. I don’t even know if he knows it, but it’s over and done and burned to the ground where there are sad, crackling bits of campfire embers with melted marshmallow clinging desperately to kindling with the hopes of avoiding the undefined oblivion of campsite trash cans that surely awaits.

And while I was on a plane last Friday, I wrote this for him.

Funny thing is, it’s applicable to me, too — in spades, hearts, diamonds and all those clubby motherfuckers that life deals us all.

So — as we’re on the eve of a day of thanks, today, I’m giving thanks.

For myself. My ME. Because for someone who knows full well that life isn’t pretty, it sucks when I re-realize that fact time and time again.

And that is why — my dearest broken and glee-filled me — this letter is for you.

And by you I mean me but you might find that you means you.

It’s high time I developed a better relationship with myself and my ME needs to hear what I have to tell it. Her. Tell HER. My ME is a HER and how much better would I have treated my ME if I’d know she was a HER all this time?

While some words have been changed (mostly pronouns because I am not a dude, though it has been said I have cojones) but the intent has not.

***

You’re not a fuck up. And I don’t know where you got the idea you are, but I get the impression that it’s a story you’ve been telling yourself for a lot of years. 

I’m thinking that it’s time you wrote another story. A happier story. One where you’re the gal who gets things done. Who lives with that big ass Lady Heart of hers out in the open (which is sexy as hell). A story where you’re the hero and not the villain. Because from where I’m sitting, that’s the role you were born to play. 

I don’t know if you’ve figured this out yet, but life isn’t pretty. It’s kind of an asshole a lot of the time. But here’s the thing–our job as someone with a voice and an amazing audience that graces you by reading whatever shit you have to say (good/bad/volatile — seriously, did you post about the midterm elections AND Ferguson – TWICE — inside a single month on Facebook? Yes, you did. And it was glorious.) is to embrace that huge ass pile of unpretty and let others live through your heart bleeding struggles with the bullshit that other people run from. 

And the moments where I’ve seen you unpretty…those are the times where I would move heaven to North Dakota and go down on Ann Coulter just to wrap my arms around you. I want you for all of your unpretty.

For all the things that people have told you that you’ve fucked up.

For all the things you’ve told yourself that you’ve fucked up.

For all the things we’re going to fuck up from this day forward — I want you for all of those.

I t’s been a long time since I’ve felt safe enough with someone to show them all of the unpretty sides of me and I have a feeling it’s the same for you. 

So, here’s what I’m asking: Can we be unpretty together?

Will you write the story you want to live instead of living and believing the story you’ve read all these years?

Because that story isn’t your story. It’s one that someone else wrote and shoved in your face and you took it and said, okay — I’ll play this role and I don’t like it or believe it but maybe it’s right and I feel shitty when I do this but I don’t know how to stop and think and DO differently.

But you get the point. 

And while it’s our job to bring the words and stories of others to life, it’s also our job to know that no one can penjack us. No one can steal our pens and write our stories for us. 

And while what I’ve written if my life story so far is anything but pretty, it’s honest. And I care for you way too much to watch you beat yourself up because you’re living someone else’s idea of Erika. 

Because the Erika I know is amazing. 

And no. I’m not going to mother you. You are fully capable of taking care of yourself. But I will be here when shit is bad and when it’s epic. And for all the boring days in between. Which would actually be pretty epic if I’m sharing them with you. 

Now, stop reading this shit. I say things other people don’t because if I die tomorrow, I don’t want to know I’ve left something unsaid to someone who needed to hear it. Today, that someone is you. Now take that big ass Lady Heart of yours out for a burger. Me? I’m gonna go to Tennessee and marry three people. Which is amazing and weird all at once. And maybe how the Grinch felt his heart grow three sizes, that might be how I feel right now because I said something that needed saying and while I have no idea if you’ll stay or go after hearing it, it’s been said.

But the words are good. And the words are good? Either/or. They are.

And maybe you’ll look back one day and be glad you got this letter from a girl who discovered after way too many years that it’s okay to be a girl and that open hearts are braver than closed ones though being closed is easier than facing the unpretty truth that one day, every heart that’s given itself the chance to be broken…will be.

So, break me. I dare you. Because I’ll be here when you break you.

Break me. I dare you. (A letter to my ME, from me.)
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