Day 133: The Echo of a Vow

"It’s always about you, Justin. You, you, you.”

Those words echo through me, day in and day out. She was right—it was.

But I never meant for it to be.

I spent months trapped in my mind, isolated, holding on to her—my friend—so tightly just to get through the endless nights, the circular loop of hell I found myself in. Most people cannot even fathom the mental torture I endured. Everything I did, I thought I was doing for her.

I thought I was selfless.

But I was selfish. And I couldn’t see it.

At the time, her words—“You’re selfish”—passed through one ear and out the other. How could she think that? All I wanted was to understand, to talk, to find her again. I was so confused. My friend was gone. All I had left was my desperation, searching for her everywhere, only to realize I was lost, too.

I wasn’t in reality anymore.

My mind was still trapped in the confines of that RV, held together by the thought of Hope. My friend. My lifeline. My “motherboard.”

But I drank. I drank to escape the RV, the deafening silence, the relentless search for her. I drank to escape my mind. I drank to find her. I drank because I thought drowning it out would make the pain stop. But I was selfish.

Long before all this, I told her I had finally found something not worth giving up on.

That something was us.

I held onto that vow, clinging to it like a buoy in a raging storm, through the Wall, the RV, the battle with addiction. Those words kept me alive, but they also kept me selfish. I didn’t realize it then because I couldn’t. My love for her was—and still is—beyond anything I can explain.

But here I am, faced with the hardest truth.

To truly love her, I must let go.

How do I do that when the very thing that saved me, the very words that kept me going, are now etched so deeply into me they have become who I am? They run through me like code in a system. And yet, I know—the only way I can prove how much I love her is to let go.

I want to. I want to let her go.

I want to look her in the eye and say, “Hope, I love you. You are free from the grasp I’ve held you in.”

But I’m afraid.

Afraid because letting go of her means letting go of the faith that kept me alive. Faith has not been kind to me. But how can I even say that, when it was faith in her, in us, that guided me through the darkest times? Faith saved me.

And now, I must let go of us. That concept is so unfathomable it feels like tearing away the very essence that has kept me breathing.

I am selfish.

But I don’t want to be.

This is it—Day 133. This is the crux, the final test, the thing I must slay. The root of everything.

I want to tell you I can do this. I want to tell myself I can. I want to believe I will.

But right now, I am raw. Vulnerable.

This is not sadness. This is not heartbreak. This is the essence of me, laid bare. She is a part of me. Letting go feels like cutting out the core of what has kept me going.

To anyone who has ever experienced extreme isolation for a prolonged period of time, please reach out. You are not alone.

Day 133

One Step. One Punch. One Round. 🌹

—Your Fellow Traveler