I am currently writing this in an aftershock. It wasn’t until I started having these aftershocks that I realized an earthquake actually happened.

The ground has been split by many things that happened simultaneously — at least that’s how it feels. Back to back events with no time in between to process. Now I’m processing, and it’s heavy doing it all at once. 

The processing began when I finished a journal a few weeks ago. I thought finishing meant the end — the end of those emotions, the end of those things that happened to me, and the end of the situations I put myself in. I sobbed for hours when I closed the book, telling myself I just had to purge it all and then I would be fine. The next day, I wrote a post to start a substack, using the journal to show where I’ve been so I could fully step into this new chapter. 

You would think I’d learn by now that that’s not how that works. 

I believed so strongly that I could move onto a fresh start and never have to feel those emotions ever again. But the emotions lingered, and I was busy, so I continued to deny their existence by telling myself the end had already happened. I was missing a critical step, however, one that the ending couldn’t happen without: actually processing it.

I stayed numb while I was busy, then the moment life slowed down, just slightly, I wasn’t so numb anymore. And that leads us to here. 

So here we go… I guess let’s process. 

The snowflake that started this avalanche was me believing I could do a casual relationship. I am by no means in a place to be in an actual relationship, but a girl was lonely. And a girl wanted her ex off of her body to sever whatever ghost still lingered there. So I texted the older man who gave me his number at the bar, and a planned one night stand turned into multiple nights of being told I wasn’t allowed to catch feelings. He was a rambling man, never staying in one place long. There was never a version of the future where we existed. I knew this the entire time. But when have I never not dug my nails in anyway? A month later, after a weekend of kissing in public and being looked at deeply in the morning, I was told that we couldn’t see each other anymore. He was getting back with an ex. 

Because even a rambling old cowboy wants love. And as much as I said I was fine with the situation, I wanted it too. 

That’s the first place I became a casualty to casual. 

I listened to shapeshifter by Lorde on repeat, singing the line, “So I’m not affected” with as much conviction as she does (none at all). Then the next week was the plane rides, the fields of home, and the quiet that never fails to make me existential. 

“Shapeshifter” turned into “Clearblue” with the lyrics, “After the ecstasy, testing for pregnancy, praying in mp3.” There is no greater fear than being a 23 year old girl with little money in her bank account, and thinking there might be a life inside of her stomach. I sobbed for days. Mostly alone, but sometimes my roommate would check on me and let me talk out loud. I told her the reason I was sobbing, after years of never wanting children, was because I had an overwhelming feeling of wanting to be a mother. If there was a child inside of me, I was ready to do everything I had to to take care of it. 

A few days later when I could test, and when the ultimate sign there was nothing there arrived one night, I sobbed for days again — grieving something I never truly had to lose. I think maybe I was just lonely… and a possible extension of me began to feel like connection. 

Then my body gave out. 

I passed out in the work bathroom and still had to keep going. I slept whenever I could. I lost weight with no explanation. I didn’t recognize myself in the mirror. I kept working because stopping didn’t feel like an option. Some of it has gotten better. Most of it still doesn’t have a name.

And then the holidays arrived — the season that always resurrects the grief of losing my best friend. This year it dragged along the unprocessed memories of a relationship that spent every holiday fighting. I never stopped long enough to feel how badly that hurt either.

As I type all of this, this past month feels impossibly long. But while it was happening, I was numb. I had too much to do. I had to be fine. 

At first I blamed all of it on the fact that I couldn’t do casual. I told myself if I hadn’t gone to that hotel room, none of the rest would have happened. Maybe thats true — maybe that first night was the first domino. 

But I’m realizing now that “casual” didn’t just apply to the way I loved. 

I am a casualty to casual because I make everything casual. I flatten my own heartbreak. I joke about the things that devastated me. I call earthquakes tremors and then wonder why the aftershocks knock me down. I’ve spent years pretending things don’t matter just to prove they didn’t hurt me. 

I became a casualty to casual because it was the only way I knew how to survive without asking for too much. But I am tired of surviving like this. Pretending I’m not hurt only hurts more. And if I keep being a casualty to casual, I will eventually disappear inside of it. 

I don’t fully know yet how to stop making things casual. But I know I can no longer pretend it doesn’t cost me. I am not built for small pain. I never have been. And every time I force myself to live as if I am, I become my own casualty.

This is me, finally standing in the aftershock instead of outrunning it. Not healed. Not finished. Just honest enough to stand on cracked concrete and admit the earthquake actually happened.

– Isabel

P.S. I finally started a substack!! While this blog is my baby, it’s also my legacy. It holds everything I’ve learned, and in twenty years from now someone can read it and say, “this is who she is.” But as a Gemini, I have a lot of constant day to day thoughts that need a place to go. That’s where the substack comes in — a place for whatever has my attention, even if it only has my attention for a day or two.To kind of differentiate the substack from the blog, my first post goes hand and hand with the following blog post. You can read the substack as well, or just take this blog post for what it is. But as always, I appreciate you being here while I share all the visceral thoughts that course through me.

https://substack.com/@izmerrill