Honestly I’m sick of thinking of more things to do to distract me from being sad. Trying to replace that default setting with a redirected return to your own life hurts too. It doesn’t even feel right. You really have to consciously choose jogging over texting. Smoking instead of calling. Reading and going to sleep instead of thinking. It sucks. Plus all those kinds of activities are soon over and then you’re back to being sad, not that it’s unfamiliar. I mean, it was always at the core of the cycle. Good sometimes, mostly bad, generally sad.

But the only other option is to hit them up and go through the same thing all over again. Maybe in shorter spirts as time goes on. Just long enough to see that you could have it. The connection still exists. Opportunity awaits for you to return within the same parameters. As if it has to be the same type of toxic as it was before, no promises even of anything better, it’s no change from within, no nothing, a standard invitation to agree to settle back in. But familiar loops of destruction do eventually get boring.

-Rachel Wagner 2020

Other pieces I wrote on this topic: “Ya girl got anger issues” & “Pregnant in Grad School” & “Not Your Babymother”