You Can Tell Me When it’s Over, If the High was Worth the Pain

What I’m Wearing…

* Pastel plaid sundress – has a ruched top, with tie straps – could also be worn strapless, like a tube top (it’s sold out, but this is a cute alternative: pastel gingham scrunched dress // and I’ve linked more in the shopping widgets below
* Cropped white sweatshirt layered over (has been a favorite for years now – also see: where have those years gone? 😳 – you can see all the other ways I’ve worn it and my other colors here)
* Vintage pink Prada nylon bag (I bought this bag in 2003, but used it the entire summer 2023 and 2024) – this little nike crescent bag is similar and cute! You can find vintage versions, but the Prad Re-edition is pretty cute as well, though very expensive – even compared to what I paid for this 20 years ago – also, the vintage version is bigger, I know this because I have the re-edition in gray and it barely holds lip gloss, let alone a wallet (PS. I bough the gray re-edit used, years ago – for way less than it’s selling for now 😉 and honestly, it’s far cleaner than my pink one, which I’m terrified to wash, even though it’s nylon – I used the shit out of it in the early 00s).
* Nike Air Force Pink
* Phillip Lim tortoise shell sunglasses (I think I’ve had these since 2016 🤔 and I finally retired them this summer, but I still love them – I can never find them reselling anywhere, so either there was only one pair made or they’re loved so much, no-one gets rid of them, which I understand completely)

* Title: Taylor Swift – Blank Space // It’ll leave you breathless, mm, Or with a nasty scar… Got a long list of ex-lovers, They’ll tell you I’m insane… But I’ve got a blank space, baby. And I’ll write your name 😇

As I was scrolling through the thousands of photos on my phone over the weekend, randomly looking for something in particular, which I cannot recollect in this moment, one of those “THIS DAY LAST YEAR” carousels popped up, and even though I was timid of what emotion may rise from whatever memory I captured, I tapped on the little movie my phone had made for me. Photos of this outfit were included, even though it was from the year before, 2023, the summer when everything was different, though it looked the same on the outside.

I was knee-deep in PTSD after living through the winter blizzard, that took place just a few months prior. Each day when I went for a walk, I had flashbacks of the weeks I was trapped in my house—shoveling paths to nowhere, trying to calm the panic of not knowing if I could get out safely with my dogs if something happened. And by “something,” I mean the very real fears at that time: my roof caving in under three feet of snow that had frozen into ice, or my gas meter (or a neighbor’s) exploding and setting the house on fire with no way to escape, a massive tree toppling over from the weight of the snow, slicing my house in half. These weren’t far-fetched thoughts—they were happening around me—while I waited desperately for a snowplow to clear the roads so deep in snow that my car had become invisible.

When the snow finally stopped and I knew a plow was coming, I remember standing on the mounds of snow layered on top of the hood of my car, shoveling two feet of snow off the roof of it, realizing how insane the whole ordeal had been. My summer walks were filtered with those flashbacks of dark, winter nights, alone and terrified.

I had to get out. I kept seeing memes about not being able to heal in the place that broke you, and that took on more meaning than I could understand a the time.

But just as I was making plans to return to where I came from, I discovered I was in the middle of a betrayal so deep, my body sensed it before I knew the truth. My intuition halted my forward action to go backward and instead, and thankfully, my mom offered me her Lake Arrowhead house, Le Dome, while she and my stepdad moved full-time down the mountain. When I moved in, I thought I’d be there for the long haul but. . .

The following winter in 2024 felt “normal”—completely manageable snowfall, by comparison, but each time I shoveled snow, I realized my breakdowns weren’t about the present, but the trauma from the year before.

Living alone in the snow is not the same as living with someone in it. In fact, it’s entirely different, especially after experiencing what felt like a life or death situation all alone.

By February, I decided to walk away from my business—mostly because of the relationship I couldn’t escape while still tied to what we had built together. I thought leaving the business might free me, but it didn’t. A month later, I chose to leave Lake Arrowhead altogether and find a house closer to my parents down the mountain, just to start over. I think I shared bits of this here, but most of the reality lived privately on my Substack—for my own safety.

By last August, I was packing my belongings yet again, for my move down the mountain after closing on a house just ten minutes from my mom’s. I was afraid and honestly having a really difficult time leaving my life as I had known it for twelve years behind, but I knew it was right. When I look back at the photos from the summer before, all I see is a girl who was lost—trapped in an emotionally abusive relationship, partnered in a business that drained the life out of her, after trying so hard to keep both alive, I was dying for their survival.

I wish I could go back and whisper the truths I know now into her ear, though I doubt she would have listened. The future version of her—me—knows she had to live through both the life behind her and the life ahead in order to grow. At the time, it felt like a cyclone: years of chaos on repeat, daily stress, disrespect and fake emergencies; it was Groundhog’s Day for nearly eight years.

Looking back now, it’s a complete fog. It doesn’t really add up. I know I was there because I documented it. I know I existed, but I wasn’t really there. Dissociation. Compartmentalization. Blocking memories. Gaslit into believing what I knew was wrong could somehow be made right. I wonder where the years went?

I now know I needed that experience—it cracked me open in a way nothing else could have—but I look back with sadness, wishing I had left sooner. I tried. God, I tried.

Seeing those photos the other day didn’t bring nostalgia for the place I left almost a year ago—the place I called home for twelve years, where I once hoped to build a family, where I endured a divorce I never thought I’d face, where I opened a business that held on even through a pandemic, where I partnered with two horribly toxic people, and where I stayed in a relationship that broke me down piece by piece.

Do I miss it? No. Not for a minute.

Beyond the more recent life I felt like I had no other choice to walk away from in order to protect myself, I also walked away from the life I had prior there, the one where I thought I’d get my happily ever after, the one where I bought a beautiful house then had to sell, the children I never had, the family I never raised, my sweet dogs I put to rest there, the apple tree I planted before walking away.

The endless string of horrible memories I drove by every day. . . my favorite place, where once dreams were made, had become a flashback of nightmares and sometimes I wonder if it was ever as beautiful as I made it out to be, or if I had magic rose-colored lenses? Seeing it now doesn’t feel like happiness and sunshine, it feels like everything I know about it that I didn’t know then; another liar in my life who love bombed me in the beginning then took it all away in the end.

Do I miss the lake? Not really.

The forest? A little.

The mindset I lived in back then? Not at all.

My friends? Yes.

But mostly, I don’t miss it at all. I don’t miss it because sometimes it feels like it almost didn’t exist. Wrapped in layers of grief and horror now, some days I wonder if I created it all just to catapult myself to here, to now. Maybe my mind tucks it away to protect me. As long as the past doesn’t creep into my future, I think I can let it stay there.

I don’t miss it.

I never want to go back.

I never want to see it again.

Happy Tuesday Lovecats!

* Find all my Style Posts here
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