Dear: Alexandra,
It only seems fitting that you write your last series of blog posts before turning 29 next week in the form of a letter addressed to yourself. This is probably the hardest thing you’ve ever convinced yourself to write, and who knows what’s going to happen after you press the “publish” button here on WordPress and all of a sudden this letter no longer belongs to you. Once you’ve put this letter out into the universe it will be an official letting go of a bunch of shit that you’ve been holding on to your entire twenties. A bunch of shit that no longer serves you, and is in fact weighing you down. I want my last year of my twenties to be of liberation, so that when my 30th birthday rolls around it’s not filled with dread. I’ve never really been afraid of getting older because I’ve never thought of myself as old, and I still don’t feel that way. I feel like my life has only just begun, and there’s still plenty of things to learn, see, and do, which is why I feel like this letter is so important. I have no idea what the future will hold, but I know that if I want my life to be full of happiness, love, and abundance, there’s a lot of shit that I need to let go of. I need to break your heart Alex, and let go of this idea of who Alex is. I need to be brave enough to admit all of my faults; to let myself be truly vulnerable. This is the first step to acceptance and growth. As I’ve mentioned in my previous post, you can’t change your reality for the better until you accept it first. You need to be honest about exactly what you’re dealing with in order to make a lasting change.
So here it goes. Ever since I’ve made reading, writing a journal, writing my blog, meditation, podcasts made by people I admire, and yoga more of a regular practice (I pretty much try to do most of these things daily), I’ve made great strides in my own personal self-healing and overall growth. I’ve learned a lot about myself, and the things that I convinced myself were true, but aren’t. I’ve really done my absolute best to dig deep, and to be present. I’ve realized a lot about the language I’ve been using to describe myself, not only to myself but to others. I’ve realized that I am a pretty good story-teller, and I’m pretty good at convincing others of my shit, including myself. However, when I say that I feel like so much has changed in the last two months of 2018, I really do mean it! But if I was truly honest, this wave of change began way before my New Years Eve breakdown. I felt the reckoning coming for a while. The people who know me the best, know this to be true as well. I’ve been saying that I want to change, that I want to be better, and do better for myself ever since I’ve moved to Toronto in September 2016. That is when I would say that I was asking for change the most. Even in my blog posts at the time, if you read them, there was a promise of change. The problem was, I really didn’t know how this change would look like, or how it would feel. Or I knew how all along, I just wasn’t open to the idea just yet. I was still very much trapped in fear, trapped in my own Ego. If you want me to get super real, I haven’t been as happy as I thought I was when I was attending school at Laurier. I convinced myself that, that was the happiest time for myself, and so I’ve held on strong to this version of Alex for a long time. Until now, when I’ve finally realized that this version of Alex no longer serves me. She never really existed. Well she did, but not as how you would like to remember her, and so here is the breaking of your heart Alex.
This past Tuesday you did a Yoga with Kassandra video in your Toronto home, and it was a Yin Yoga meditation focusing on the Sacral Chakra of Creativity and Sensuality. This is the third chakra video that you’ve followed made by Kassandra, and every time you have discovered something new about yourself. Generally, in these video she has come up with a mantra pertaining to each chakra, or if you’re focusing on one particular chakra all of the mantras said throughout the practice deal with the different aspects of that chakra. When you did this particular video, the mantra “I am open and receptive to connection and intimacy,” didn’t sit right with you because you knew that you’re weren’t ready for connection and intimacy just yet. If anything you had no real desire to talk to men in a romantic way at all because you felt as though you didn’t have the energy for it right now. Which is all really true, and totally okay. But why? Especially when most people know that what you want most in the world is true love with a romantic partner. You want a family of your own and someone to fight alongside you through life. So why do you feel as though you’re not ready for this right now? Well, you’ve told your friends that you want to focus on yourself, your finances this year, and your business. This is true, and you are already doing this to better all these aspects of your life, but why aren’t you ready to for romantic love?
We know it’s not because you’re incapable of love, because you have many loving relationships with your friends and family, but for some reason you’re constantly experiencing a Ground Hog Day scenario when it comes to your boyfriends. In many ways they all seem to be similar versions of the same guy, you’re only truly conscious of this fact now through your own self-reflection and meditation. But why are all these guys so similar to one another? Well, that answer came to you as clear as day after you reflected on your conversation with your roommate about her sister’s manipulative ex boyfriend. She was telling you how her sister was finally being honest about how terribly manipulative, and emotionally abusive her boyfriend really was, and that she had no idea that this was even happening. In fact, your roommate had believed that this guy was really great because on the surface he seemed great. You said that you could relate because your university boyfriend turned into a manipulative, and emotional abusive ex boyfriend. You went into detail about the shitty things he said and did during your fourth year of university, that I don’t need to repeat in this letter. However, after you left that conversation on Thursday night, you meditated on what you said and realized that every time you brought up the terrible things your university ex boyfriend did, you only talked about the things he did post break-up. If anything you never, admitted to yourself, or to anyone else that he was actually not a great boyfriend either. And if you did, you didn’t fully believe it. Sure, you both were very much in love with each other, but that love did blind you to the toxicity of that relationship. There were warning signs, and you know it. You knew it all along, but why was it so hard to admit that he wasn’t a good boyfriend? He was your first true love, but he was also a big lesson as well. He used you as an emotional crutch because he had a lot of his own shit that he was going through that he was never able to be honest about with you, or anyone else, including himself. That doesn’t make him a bad person, though this is something that you’ve told yourself ever since you broke up because it helped with the pain. He did a lot of hurtful things to you, he would guilt trip you, he cheated on you, and he would constantly depend on you for almost everything. It was exhausting and yet you still loved him. I know you felt stupid after the breakup, and after you saw just how terrible he was treating you post breakup. You were so upset with yourself for not knowing that he cheated, and for allowing him to manipulate you and make you feel bad for him as a means of keeping you around. But even still, you had and always will have love for him and THAT is even harder to admit.
For a while you hated him. You hated him so, so much. Now he doesn’t really seem to affect you, or so you thought. Yet here we are. It’s okay Alex that you loved him, that you still have love for him, and that he hurt you terribly. It doesn’t make you any less of a person. It doesn’t make him a good person, or a bad person, just human. You are both human. You were also very young. He made mistakes, he was in pain and unfortunately there was nothing that you could do to help at the time. He would never have been able to be the guy you needed him to be, and the love that you had for each other was real but it no longer serves you. It is not the love you need, nor is it the love you deserve. Whether or not you find true love, even though it is a wish of yours, may never come true if you don’t acknowledge the process healing you had to endure during your twenties. This is your final goodbye to your university ex boyfriend, who was in fact not a very good boyfriend to you at all. It was a toxic relationship when you were together and it was even more so when you were out of it. You loved him, you hated him, and now you have forgiven him. Now you know that he had his own pain that he unfortunately was inflicting on you because he did not know at the time what to do with it. That sucks. It’s not right, it will never be right, but it happened, and it’s going to keep on happening until you realize that it has nothing to do with you. This bullshit happens to many people all of the time, but it doesn’t have to define you either. Let it go. It’s over, and now you can truly move on in a very real way. You may have thought you’ve moved on but you didn’t. It wasn’t until you woke up after that conversation with your roommate where you realized that you’ve only been speaking about the negative aspects of your relationship with him from the breakup onwards, but your rarely ever speak about the hard times when you were together. That’s when you knew that he wasn’t his best self with you as much as he should have been. Nobody is perfect, but we can strive to be our best selves the majority of the time, especially when it comes to those we love. And for whatever reason he just could not do that for you. That’s hard to admit, because you loved him so, but it’s the truth. Now that you know all of this, and you have put it out into the universe, it no longer has power over you.
It’s weird to finally realize that by trying to not let it have power of me, it actually had power of me all this time. Pretending that it wasn’t there only made it more present in my life (all the boys I’ve dated who were just not right). Now that I’ve realized the power of presence and meditation, I can finally free myself of the burdens that I’ve been carrying through out my twenties. Goodbye university boyfriend, goodbye forever. Now that this part of you is gone, you can now be fully open to the possibility of true love, the love you’ve always wanted for yourself but could never figure out why it wasn’t happening.
You’re welcome.
Alexandra Rinaldo
Alex Rinaldo 