A couple of weeks ago an online oracle spat out a message along the lines of: "You will come in contact with a piece of fabric, whose smell will remind you of something. It will be quite unsettling; not just the smell, but also the way in which you'll encounter this piece of fabric, which will be quite inexplicable."
I immediately thought of my BPDex's shirts, but since I had been meticulous in getting rid of my ex's belongings, I completely dismissed this "prophesy" as entertaining nonsense.
As you may know, I'm currently moving house, and guess what? Today I moved a chest of drawers, and underneath (!) there was one of my ex's t-shirts. The chest doesn't have legs, so I do wonder a bit how the shirt got there. I have very little stuff in my drawers so it's strange that I should have missed it.
Anyway. I thought of that random oracle message and smelled the shirt. But there was nothing disturbing about it. It was just a musky man smell, not unattractive, and completely detached in my mind from my memories of my BPDex. I might as well have been smelling a stranger's shirt. Which he was, in a way.
I threw it away along with a teaspoon of salt, the way the Japanese do it.
In other news, for the past six months (it's almost been half a year now!) I had been avoiding the train station where he lives. Which was silly, because it's a convenient place to change lines. Today (before I found the shirt) I decided that enough was enough, and that I was going to change trains where I damn well pleased, and if he was there, I was going to ignore him; if he were to come up to me, I was going to tell him to leave me alone, that my heart was engaged elsewhere, somewhere were it is understood and appreciated. So I changed trains at that station, and nothing at all happened. As was to be expected.
This morning I also happened to see my narcissistic ex-best friend. It's now dawning on him that my moving away will also mean my moving out of his reach for good. Ever since I cut him off two months ago, my life has taken a huge turn for the better – to an unprecedented degree. I feel I've lived more in the past two months than I had in the ten years before that time combined. No wonder I was so miserable for years, if not decades!
If you're struggling with detachment, let me tell you that there is nothing, I repeat, NOTHING to be afraid of. If you're afraid of loneliness, it's only because you've been surrounded by people who didn't appreciate you for most of your recent years, if not your entire life. But there ARE good people out there who will love you and appreciate you for all that you are – people who will be delighted to have you in their lives. These are your people. Find them. It will mean having to get dressed and having to leave the house. It will be daunting to talk to strangers. But trust me, it is all completely worth it. And this is from an introvert.
I never thought it was possible, until I cut out the last emotional vampires in my life – who I once thought were the bedrock of my existence. They weren't. It was they who kept me small and tethered for years, weighed me down, and belittled my greatest achievements out of envy and spite. It took a BPD relationship for me to figure this out. And I'm grateful that it happened. The destruction of these very foundations was the necessary precursor to the joy and growth that is happening now. I couldn't see it at the time, and I resisted it, but now, at the other end of tunnel – boy, am I glad that everything went down the way it did. No regrets.
Much love to you all.
