Dear Yesterday

Captain,

Here is some of your stuff back. They are things I mainly liked because of their sentimental attachment to you, which obviously is now nonexistent. But they are also things I'd feel bad just ditching, because they belonged to you long before you met me.

You may notice that this is hardly everything you've ever given me.

Perhaps it's selfish of me, but there is no way I'm giving back everything. Most of it I enjoy completely separate from you, and forget there's even a connection unless someone asks where it came from. Then I laugh a little gleefully because it's mine now, and maybe that's wrong of me. Oh well.

No, there is no diamond ring in this box. I thought about giving it back, but then decided not to. If I had broken it off, I would. But I did not. You dumped me. When I put together this box of your stuff, I thought about giving it back again, but ultimately decided not to.

Oh, you. What an immature little boy you are. Or were, at least. It is unfair of me to assume you haven't changed.

Since making this box, I've discovered you've gotten engaged. Congratulations. I wish you and your girlfriend of three months a happy future, but somehow I doubt that's what will happen.

I'm trying not to be snarky and mean, I swear.

I wanted to thank you. As much as I hate to admit it, you helped me a lot during our years together. You were there for me though a lot of shit and made many things easier to bear. I really, really thought I loved you. And you certainly convinced me that you loved me.

But so many things were not okay with us and I am so, so, so glad you broke my heart before I married you. It was not okay for you to promise me the rest of our lives, because I believed you and gave you everything. I let you suck me dry because I thought I was doing it for love and for a relationship that was worthwhile.

I didn't realize how terrible our relationship was until it was over. You treated me like a child and then got upset when I grew up. You assumed I couldn't do things and then would get upset when I really couldn't. You kept trying to cure my introverted self while telling me how you liked me just the way I was. You talked of all the adventures we'd have together and then decided we'd stay in Birmingham forever, without ever even asking me. You kissed another girl, and I forgave you. All of these things I forgave, and I kept on loving you.

I don't want to hold grudges and cling to the past. But I had to acknowledge the wrongs that happened not only in order to handle it, but in order to learn. I don't want to have a string of broken engagements (like you *cough*).

I'm upset at how replaceable I was in your life. I'm upset at how much I gave you. I'm upset at how much you took. I'm upset at how much I trusted you.

I worry that you'll treat your fiancée the same way. But that's none of my business.

Despite all of these things, I am happy now. I am very happy. I'm happy with what I've accomplished and what I'm doing. I'm happy with the man I'm with now. Part of me wishes you're immobilized with regret and longing, but part of me hopes you're happy too.

Most of me just doesn't care and wants to be done with it.

This is just me, clearing the air and giving myself closure. This is not an opening for us to be friends or to talk or to meet up and settle things face to face. Hell. No. I really don't ever want to speak to you again.

But here's your stuff.

--Dexter

I Didn't Realize We Were Twelve.

So remember how I dated the Captain for almost three years? How we were engaged for an entire summer?

Apparently he unfriended me on Facebook. Because we're freaking twelve, I guess.

Like, I didn't really want to see him or hang out with him or be best friends, but I wasn't going to shun him in public. While I've been honest, I haven't just gone and talked shit about him to all of my friends. I don't think he's a horrible person. He's just a very immature person.

And apparently he already has a new girlfriend.

I still haven't gotten over being dumped by him. I still can't imagine trusting my feelings for another guy ever. How do I know I'm not just trying to replace an old boyfriend? How do I know I actually care about this person as a person and not just a replacement?

These are things I've been worried about, but apparently the Captain has no such qualms. Not that I expected him to. He's always been a bit flirty. A very loving person. Likes to convince himself he's in love.

Okay okay, I don't want to sound bitter. But I am a little bit. Like, I was fine with us going our separate ways. I knew he'd get a new girl eventually. But two weeks later? It's a little hurtful. Honestly makes me want to cry.

I could go into the whole depression side of it, talk about how it just reinforces the idea that I wasn't good enough for him, and that he just couldn't wait to get rid of me so he could find someone better. But I'm not really in the mood for that right now.

I'm not super sad right now. Just super pissed. I'll be super sad in about an hour probably, but right now I'm just mad.

It's just infantile to unfriend your ex on facebook, as well as all her friends and family (because apparently he did that too).

Ugh. I just had to write about it because I got so upset. I was skyping a friend at the time, and told her about it, and she gave an appropriately shocked response. That made me feel better. But I also write to compute things, so there you go.

I do feel a little better now. Honestly this makes it easier for me to be okay with our breakup. I was blind to a lot of problems we had, and a lot of problems the Captain had in particular. I'm still not saying he's an awful person. He's a very nice person, and a very good person to have as a friend. But I can't say I'd recommend him as a boyfriend.

Or a fiancé.

--Dexter

Jilted

In my last post, I talked a lot about all the crap that has happened to me. I also described the moment when The Captain showed up out of nowhere and asked me to marry him.

Well, one week from today, he broke up with me. Told me he didn't love me anymore. That he probably hasn't for quite a while.

This is a difficult thing to write about, because he will probably read this, and I don't want it to sound like a letter to him. I need to write this for myself, and it's hard to do so knowing that certain people are going to read it.

I am very upset with him, because I loved (still do, probably) him with all my heart and planned on growing old with him. I was willing to sacrifice a lot for him, because I loved him more than anything else in my life. He talked about how he didn't want me to give up my dreams for him, and I would try to convince him that he was my dream. And he was.

But there is no denying that he and I had gone through some problems over the past six months are so, even before we got engaged. He would comment on how much I'd changed since I'd gone to college, and that it was hard to get used to. Yes, I have changed. I know I have. But it's for the better. I'm a little more independent, a little more capable of taking care of myself, a little more functional. He found that odd. He wanted to take care of me more than he thought I wanted, which wasn't necessarily true. Yes, he nagged about a lot of inconsequential things, and yes, he never realized how much I was actually accomplishing without his help. He didn't realize how much I'd grown up, which caused tension between us.

But ultimately he was my stronghold. He helped me learn all those things. He helped me learn how to love myself, how to function. He gave me a lot of my self-esteem. He built up my trust over two and half years and he knew practically everything about me. Everything that doesn't get on this blog, everything that doesn't get told to my other friends. And in one morning, he broke all of that down.

I feel like I'm starting back at the beginning. I don't like leaving my room, I'm afraid to go out, I have no self-esteem, I'm too depressed to even get up. And this happened right before school started. His timing has never been great.

I have so many friends here and back in Birmingham. So many people who care about me and ask how I'm doing and make sure I'm okay. My best friend from high school came and stayed with me for a few days, and if not for her I don't know what would've happened during those hours. Another friend brought me coffee and then continued to come over just about every day when I asked. Others have banded together to go after the Captain (but I told them not to). They make me laugh.

But they're not around all the time and all it takes is one moment of silence to make me feel alone.

What do you do when the person who taught you how to love yourself doesn't love you anymore?

What have you done to become unlovable?

These are dumb questions, and I know the right answers to them. The right answer is that I have done nothing wrong, that I am still the same person as before, that my self-esteem should not hinge on one person, that a person who can break me into so many pieces doesn't deserve my love anyway. That I am a strong independent woman, that I am a pretty girl, that I am a pretty good dancer, that I get good grades, that I have a lot of friends who love me, that I'm capable of doing something with myself after college besides marrying the Captain. That God has made all this happen for a reason, and that I have learned a lot from this experience and have not wasted the past three years of my life on a boy who promised me everything and then took it all back.

Those are the right answers. But those aren't the answers I tell myself.

I have done something wrong. I shouldn't be so independent. I shouldn't have left for school. I shouldn't have been so vocal about my dislike of Birmingham and my dreams of going somewhere else. I changed for the worse. I should have relied on him more, not tried to be myself. I am a needy nuisance, an annoying person to be around. I am not pretty enough, I'm not even a good dancer, my grades are only adequate, and people only hang around me because I ask them to. I wasn't physical enough, I don't like sex. I'm not romantic enough.

I'm mentally incapable of holding a full-time job, so I will end up living in my mother's house in Birmingham and hate myself for it. I will never stop cutting myself, never beat it. I will probably become an alcoholic. And one day I will take my own life because that last straw will fall and break and my feeble world I've built will shatter for the last time.

Those are lies, but they sound like truth in my ears. They play on repeat constantly, no matter how much I try to drown them out with music, TV, school, friends. I can't block them out.

The right thing to do is to make this sound inspirational and talk about God and maybe quote a Bible verse and talk about how I don't know what will happen in my future but that it's for the best and maybe that I can't wait to find out what God has in store.

But I'm not there yet. I'm not as strong or good as my blog makes me appear. I know how to manipulate my life to make it sound inspiring. I don't lie. I just sit down and write until I feel better.

But I still don't feel better. Nothing has changed. Sometimes I really don't know if it ever will.

Change

Lately, my life has been incredibly topsy turvy. True, I made it through sophomore year, which in the dance department is well known as the roughest year ever. I made it through though, and with decent grades. But that doesn't exactly mean life has been easy since then.

As many know, my dad lost his job a year ago and since then my family has gone through a steady decrease in money. To add to it, only a few months later my dad left my mom. This has made life rough. My mom and my siblings moved to a new house that was more affordable and my mom works several jobs. They get by just fine, but I can't rely on them and I can't ask them for help when it comes to money, no matter how much they want to help. So I try not to ask or even mention my own problems.

But I'm pretty damn poor. I was going to take some classes over the summer, but had to drop out of half of them because I can't afford them. I'm still enrolled in one, but if I don't get a job soon I will be living, well, frugally, to say the least. I still have to pay rent and buy groceries and pay for my medication and a whole bunch of stuff.

So life has been pretty dismal in my eyes lately. Not only has all that stuff been going on, but since school let out, I've had nothing to do. Don't me wrong, I'm loving the break. Sleep all day, play all my games, read my books, it's great. But I'm an active creature, no matter how much I love to be stationary. If I don't have enough to do, I start to go crazy. I end up with nothing to do but think, which means I'll think about how much life sucks, because that's just what happens when you have major depression. You don't sit there contemplating sunshine and rainbows.

So, yeah. I've been majorly depressed recently. My relationship with God has been on the wayside, and even though I acknowledge that, I haven't done a whole lot to fix it. But despite this... God still cares about me. I can't believe how much He cares about me. In such a dark time of my life, He suddenly sent me such a HUGE care package of love.

The other day I was at book club (best thing ever) at T-Bones, and we were sitting around waiting for some late members. I turn to look and who should I see but THE CAPTAIN. No, he's not in book club. Yes, he lives three hours away from me. No, I was not expecting him at all.

"What are you doing here??" I started to ask, but just as the words left my mouth he was down on one knee, a little black box in hand, smiling like the sun.

"Sarah Dexter Givens," he said.

"Why are you here??" I was still asking the same question.

"Sarah Dexter Givens," he continued, "Will you marry me?"

"How did you know I was here?" I was really caught up in that. He was laughing and smiling and I'm not sure what I was doing besides asking the same damn question over and over again.

"Will you just answer my question?" He asked finally, still laughing.

"Of course!" I answered. "But how did you know I was here?"

"Will you take the ring?"

"I don't know how!" Ladies, if you feel like you're an awkward person, know that you will not magically become suave when this moment comes. "I've never done this before!"

"I'm glad!" He took the ring out of the box and started to put it on my finger.

"Wait! Which hand is it? Is it this one? I don't know!" I turned to my friends for help, who were laughing and grinning just like The Captain. One of them told us, and The Captain slid the ring on my finger.

At this point I just leaned over and buried my face in a hug, because everyone was looking at me and I was very happy but also very self conscious and I just wanted to hug him more than anything. It was awkward. It was beautiful.

That same day, I got called for a phone interview at a job that opens up in June and a friend told me about another job that would be open in just a few days, where she could probably tell me exactly what I needed to do to have a good chance. A few days later (today), I got notified of another job (my dream job) and I have an in-person interview in just a few hours (I'm crazy nervous). Then I got an email requesting another phone interview for another job I applied for a few weeks ago.

I swear, if none of these jobs work out, I'm going to scream.

But anyway. It has been a magical couple of days. God sent me blessing after blessing and joy after joy. This is a heck of a lot of change in my life, and I absolutely hate change. I don't adapt well. But sometimes change is necessary, and I'm glad it's happening. Dare I say it, I think I'm ready for it.

I don't know, we'll see.

--Dexter

PS. THE CAPTAIN IS MY BETROTHED!! :D :D :D :D

Positive Affirmations

Ever since I was in the hospital, I've been doing positive affirmations, but I've been doing it my own way. Positive affirmations are when you look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself something good about yourself, basically. "Whispering sweet nothings to my reflection," is how I once put it. Although the point is that it's not nothing, it's true.

I'm not exactly one to say things to myself in the mirror, but I do do them. When I do my Bible study, I always finish with writing down my positive affirmation. And let me tell you, it is hard. The first month or so of it were full of times when I almost didn't write it down, when I couldn't bear to put down the words, when it took me several minutes for me to scribble it as fast as I could. Because I just don't believe it at first. Of course, that's why they exist. To get you to believe the truth.

My very first positive affirmation was "I am brave." I was recovering from sexual assault as well as confronting my lifelong anxiety problems, so I had a ton of fear to deal with. I told my reflection it was brave a few times, and wrote it in my prayer journal daily. Eventually, I got to where I could write it pretty easily. Eventually, I got to where I believed it. Eventually, I got to where it started to show.

After a while, I needed to add a new affirmation. My second one was "I am beautiful." I have always entertained the fantasy in the back of my mind that I am secretly gorgeous and fabulous and all of that, but of course I've never believed it. I've always been afraid to try because I feel like I'll just show off how ugly I am. But I started writing it down along with "I am brave." It was just as hard as "brave" had been. But it got easier. Now it's second nature. Now, I can even look in the mirror and be okay with what I see (on good days, of course).

Today, I added another affirmation. "I am loved." It took me a long time to write it down. My faith has been somewhat stagnant recently, my personal Bible studies off and on. It feels extremely arrogant and presumptuous to say that I am loved. It feels like I am forcing other people to love me, like I am telling them that they love me and they can't do anything about it.

But it is true. I am loved. I am loved by God, I am loved by the Captain, I am loved by my family. By my mother, who I've honestly never quite understood and I admit I've questioned her love before. I am loved by my siblings, who I've also never understood. I am loved by my father, who I had never once questioned before but now have suddenly started to doubt. I am loved.

I don't know what the heck is going on in my heart and soul right now, honest. I do my Bible study at random, sometimes going weeks without opening my Bible. I don't always make it to church. I love God. I know He loves me. I don't doubt Him at all. Maybe I don't feel good enough for Him right now (which is silly), or maybe I've let myself get too caught up in my personal miseries.

Whatever it is, I'll get through it. You'll get through it. I am loved. You are loved too.

--Dexter

Testimony

I'm now in my third week in Ireland. The first week we were in Monaghan with the Clarkes, then we met up with the rest of our team to do Holiday Bible Club in Ballygawley, and now we're doing the same thing in Kilmore.

 

After club we've been spending time with the teenagers, playing games and trying to break the ice. Every night one of us ballet girls shared our testimony, and it was finally my turn tonight...

 

All week the people in the Kilmore church have been encouraging us to really wear our hearts on our sleeves and be really open with the teenagers to encourage them to do the same and put them at ease with us. So when I found out I'd have to share my testimony, I wasn't sure what all I wanted to say. Normally, I do a very edited version that vaguely alludes to the possibility of something wrong in my life, but don't actually say it. Never have I shared my complete testimony with a group of people.

 

Plus, Katie, Libby, and Brianna were all there too. I hadn't talked to any of them about my depression. Would this be a good way to let them know? Or would it be cruel?

 

I kind of fought with myself all week about it and tried to figure it out and ended up stressing myself out. Last night, I was up late Skyping The Captain, explaining it all to him and asking advice. He encouraged me to say everything.

 

But so much of my testimony is so fresh, such an open wound. Normally when people share testimonies like that, it's after years and years have passed and they're all better now. I'm not all better. Years have not passed. Weeks have passed since the last really dramatic thing happened in my life, and it certainly hasn't been even a week since I thought about doing something to myself.

 

But The Captain kept saying that this opportunity was perfect and I couldn't pass it up. That I would probably help at least one person in that room. I said I'd try. I honestly didn't know if I'd be able to do it.

 

But I did.

 

I started out with the basics, and then when I got up to age 15 the unedited version came out, because that's when I first tried to hurt myself. That was when the room got deathly silent, and half the people looked up from their crisps and didn't take their eyes off me, while the other half suddenly found the floor very interesting.

 

I got through it all without crying, though I did almost tear up when at one point. My voice did get pretty shaky and by the end my face was really warm. But I got through it. The end was a little awkward, and I was just like, "Well... my voice is tired now..." and then after Katie reminded them that they could talk to us or ask us questions whenever, I was like, "Well... I'm going to go get some water now... so talk amongst yourselves." Then ran and got water and then hid in the bathroom for a while and cried a bit.

 

When I emerged to the kitchen, Kenny and Colin were both there and I walked in before realizing it. Kenny's pretty cool; I had talked to him a lot during the evening and confided that I was really nervous about having to speak to the teens. He'd started out watching me in a kind of encouraging manner, but as soon as I hit the 15 mark his gaze shot to the floor. I don't think he'd anticipated that when I'd told him how nervous I was.

 

Colin came up to me first and told me I was a very good speaker, which surprised me but encouraged me a little bit. Then Kenny moseyed over and said I did a good job. He didn't really say anything else, but I can't tell you how much I appreciated it.

 

And then Katie showed up and I kind of avoided eye contact for as long as possible, but we finally exchanged looks and then smiles and then she asked to give me a hug and I said yes and so we shared a hug. She, Brianna, and Libby were among those staring at the floor during my testimony, because none of them had expected that bombshell.

 

After all of that I felt kind of scared to face any of the teens... I felt like they were all staring at me every time I saw them again. But then it also felt like they were all a bit friendlier with me. They were all genuinely disappointed when Elise made me leave early due to my still-present headache and previous upset stomach (although it was mostly just upset because I was nervous).

 

I really hope I did help someone, that it wasn't all for nothing, me bearing my soul like that.

 

I don't know what all has changed between me, Katie, Libby, and Brianna. Katie's the only one that acknowledged it in any way, and it's probably just my imagination that Libby and Brianna were a little weird about it. It's likely that they didn't think much of it, because we aren't super best friends and so they might not think they'd had any business knowing. Katie, on the other hand... I don't know if it will ever come up in conversation again. I'm still nervous about that.

 

But I'm glad I did it. I do feel better, now that it's out. Now that I've said it once, maybe next time will be easier.

 

Our trip is almost over! I'm sad, but also happy... because I really really miss The Captain.

 

--Dexter