Five months.

As of yesterday, it has been five months since I moved out of the ex's house and into my apartment.  In most ways it feels like I've been gone for so much longer.  Maybe because that relationship was unraveling for so long before I acknowledged it to the world.  I looked back through things I'd written from the month before I moved, and I was just talking like everything was okay.  It's so bizarre to me that I hid everything so extensively, pretending it was functional and healthy.  For so long, it was anything but.

The first month after I moved out was so hard.  I remember feeling so depressed, so sad, so sapped of energy.  I remember crying all the time, barely having the motivation to walk the dog. I remember going to bed each night mourning the empty space beside me, and waking up each morning and remembering that I was alone, and feeling so lost.

I am so grateful to have escaped that dark cloud.  It followed me for so many months in that relationship.  I became the worst version of myself I'd ever been...the most insecure.  The most isolated.  The most dishonest to myself.  I was holding myself back in so many ways, rationalizing the ex's bad behavior, making excuses for why I was sticking around for it, and worst of all, after I moved out and thene we broke up, trying to justify in my head why I wanted him back after how poorly he treated me.

I know I'm not blameless for the path my life took with him.  I know I played into it, and I taught him what was acceptable in terms of treatment of me.  And I know I'm not perfect now, and that I'm probably making a lot of mistakes.  But there's a difference.  The mistakes I'm making now are my own.  Only mine.  No one else gets a vote.  If I screw something up, I have only myself to blame. 

People can lecture me, and scold me, and tell me I'm going wrong.  But ultimately it's my call, and I still relish that fact every.single.day.  It may seem like such a small thing to people who've lived their lives that way for a long time, but for me it still feels new and precious.  It's the gift I was never brave enough to give myself until very recently.

Five months.  Cheers to me.  :)