Schatje. My favorite Dutch word. Google says it means baby, but this is false. Jesper explained to me that the 'je' at the end of a word makes it small. Schatje means little treasure or little darling.
I've been thinking about the guy who called me that. Not because of our year-long long-distance relationship but because of how we met.
We met at Varsity apartments the night after my second trauma. I didn't want to go out but my roommate at the time insisted the best way to get over a guy was to go out and party to forget him. She didn't know what he had done to me or that my PTSD was festering inside of me. I was ready to implode.
I was sitting in one of the high bar chairs on the patio and Kevin sat next to me in one of the low wooden patio chairs. It is the only time I can remember having to look down at his 6ft frame.
"Hey, it's a party! why do you look so sad?" Kevin always brought the energy to the party. He could get anyone to dance, skull a drink, or smile. "You don't really want to know."
"I wouldn't have asked if I didn't." "You really don't want to know."
"You can tell me anything." "It's really fucked up. No one would want to know this stuff."
"I do."
It had been festering inside me so long I vomited my story on him (not literally). Starting with the original trauma that was Trevor at 17, the emotional abuse that was Ryan, all leading up to the disaster that was Luke. His eyes never glazed over and he listened for the better half of 20, maybe even 30 minutes about the trauma that I had been stuffing down inside of me.
"I know what you're going to stay, 'You should date nice guys'' for the first time he cut me off.
"No. But if you are looking, I am a nice guy. I think you need to love yourself more." He wasn't wrong by any means. I was exhausted after letting that all out and I went back to my room to sleep. A few days later, I asked him to come over to hang out. He showed up almost immediately with a beer in hand. I talked his ear off for another hour before he left.
I was so unbelievably oblivious because I believed that he couldn't be interested in me after hearing about my trauma. I believed that I had been friend zoned and that friends was all we would ever be because no one could love someone that was as damaged as me.
Later I found out he left a party to come see me because he thought I finally wanted to get with a nice guy. He wasn't wrong. I just needed more time to heal.
He was the first man to love all my sharp edges. He got me to eat healthier. Most importantly he was the start of loving myself.
When life in Australia went to shit, suicide wasn't an option because I loved myself too much. It wasn't an option because that was in opposition to how much I loved him. We were miles apart, he still loved me regardless of my PTSD. Even when my PTSD got the best of me, he was patient and kind. He was the start of me being honest with my whole story.
The last lesson he taught me was about being present. Often the depressive and anxious symptoms of my PTSD would constantly be pulling me into the past or future. I was rarely able to be present. That was how I hurt him the most. Most days for me being present requires patience that I honestly don't have. But damn do I try.
I can definitely say that I have mastered the self-love part of all of this and that it has been a crucial part of getting through this thing called life. Some days I need other people to love me and that's okay. We need other people because we aren't always capable of seeing the bigger picture. It took Kevin to tell me I needed to love myself for me to figure out that was what I needed most after my trauma.
I am still working on the being present because it is so easy to get lost in Facebook posts and catastrophic future thinking. It is easy to be blinded by what use to be and miss how beautiful the things that were. It took him telling me that I was rarely present with him to realize just how much I was missing. He would kill me if he knew but he is the word 'elsewhere' in my tattoo because part of me will be elsewhere because of him. At the same time, I have not let my wondering heart get stuck in the memories of what was. His memory is the reminder that I need to be present now.
I choose to live because I love myself and I am loved by so many others. I couldn't imagine my life without the impact of Kevin and I hope that I left him better the same way that he left me.
Keep living because there is someone waiting to love the parts of you that you believe are broken. We need to love ourselves before we can let others love us.