Oh, dear friend Serenity, I don’t even know from where to begin our tale. The last couple of months have been tough. But I believe in you and me and that we both can heal together from self-or other people inflicted-hurts in our past.  Like my treasured boyfriend loves to say, “it’s 2020, it’s time of the new beginnings” and I do wholesomely agree with his words.

But what if you still have to forgive and let go of the things in order to prepare for 2020? I believe that universe doesn’t understand time and its concept. It doesn’t understand aging. It doesn’t understand that sometimes months may go by and we end up feeling stuck in the same rut that feels like it’s never-ending.

Ever since the end of September, I’ve been learning how to forgive others. The answer didn’t come instantly to come. At the beginning of  this journey I believed that if I let my heart wallow in tears, it would help me and become less daunting. I was wrong. First and firemost step, that by forgiving others, it means that you have to forgive yourself and it means that you have to take care of yourself as well. You have to be kind to yourself and feed your thoughts with love.

The more you self loathe and punish yourself in the back of your mind- the more faulted you may appear to be. Sometimes you overlook red flags- because you want to believe in the best of other people. Sometimes you listen to other people’s stories and feel their sorrow. But you try not to compare yourself to the others and still believe in the brighter side of the dark.

It’s okay to be naive. It’s better to be open-hearted. It’s okay to love freely and with all of your might. It is okay to trust. What is not okay, is you start to close down yourself after a one bad experience in your life. It has happened to me too. After I was hurt, I started to close down myself from the entire world surrounding me, thinking that it is better to shield and protect myself from the future experiences.

I have grown up from this experience- but my heart ended up more fearful than ever. Almost like it tells me to avoid everyone I meet. No, it’s not the intuition, it’s just the scare that I may end up being hurt again.

I was once 19 years old and in love. I loved with my entire heart that I chose to fight the entire world against me because I didn’t understand why they’re so against being in love. I even once asked my mother if she’s ever been in love with someone in her life. Explosive fights happened. And I didn’t understand what everyone knew more than I do.

Not all of the love relationships in our life turn out to be fairytales. Even fairytales we chase after – usually leave open endings and us wondering what happens when they get married. In my experience, I’m glad that I didn’t get married, but he used to call me his wife and I used to call him my husband. We were planning our future. But by the end of everything, I started to think that it is all in my head and this is all one-sided. That it was never the same to the other side.

He wanted for me to stay at home. I was unable to have my opinion without him trying to enforce his own down my throat. I was lost and confused after our every single argument, because I felt like I was blowing everything out of the proportions. Lots of the times I have told him that “I don’t know what I did do to deserve him, because I can’t find anyone better than he is” – something that was implemented into my head by him.

Always speaking about how he is better than everyone else. How everyone respected him at work because of his opinion. How other females told him that he can’t be real and can’t exist. Telling me that it is okay if we can’t come to an agreement this time around, it is expected that it might not happen once in a while, 99% of the times we still agree with each other.

Even when we won’t agree with each other, just to put everything to rest, he’d say, “I’m glad that you can see my point of view and you come into an agreement with me”. Even if this is not what I said. Always an upperhand.

I never knew his family.  He never opened up to me in a real life. We never shared video calls with someone. Long distance relationships hurt for this matter.  Makes me wonder how real our love was to him.

Around that same time I happened to meet somebody else too. Was it cheating? I hate this word because I know that I would have never let myself to get this close to somebody. I still have the boundaries. And that meeting was not meant to happen. But I was swayed away. Only to have someone open up me to the parts of the world that I was starting to miss out on. Someone who sort of distracted me from what was happening and I was starting to find my smile back on again.

I still believe that, thanks to this person, I found the freedom and enabled a power in me to break up with my ex. However, the first months went very well, However, that other person disappeared from my life too, making me chase after them and wonder what happened wrong, what did I do, did I say something wrong and why did this happen. Because it felt like they both disappeared from my life around the same time. I hardly mourned my ex.

Until it hit me one day. And once it did I grieved, I was angry, I was frustrated when it was all over. I realized how much I overlooked. How many things I let it happen right under my nose and I never tried to stop them. I was too afraid because I ended up voiceless. I was no longer the Serenity everyone knew me to be. I was friendless. I didn’t recognize myself in the mirror. I had to learn how to love myself. I had to learn my interests again. It felt like I stepped back in life once again and now I had a lot to choose from. Like a little kid at the candy store. To become the Serenity from today.

My heart was so broken that it is still mending even today. But I know that I don’t want to give up. It is all okay. I am safe and secure in this world. And it will only get better. Because one – or two people – hurt me it doesn’t mean that I have to let them to continue doing this to the day. Once I sat down to converse with myself and wondered what would be the best revenge and I came into a conclusion- it is when I’m in love again. Not with somebody else. But with everything around me. Then I’m in love with living and I find the worth inside of me.

Today, I pour out all of my love to my boyfriend and my friends, into the writing, into constantly trying to step out of the comfort zone.

Now to the second step… I learned how to be grateful for these experiences too. Life is like food. It can’t be salty all the time. There were beautiful moments shared too. And in this letter, I do want to thank my ex for opening me up to creativity and the world of musing. And to never stop dreaming.

And to the other person, I remember when I wanted to talk to them so badly, but I realized that probably the reason why they ended up landing in my life so temporarily- is because to offer me a helping hand. He was the one who had encouraged and pushed me back into the world of writing, helped to see my worth, and the one who introduced me back into the world.

But neither were my person. I am grateful to the universe for them both, though. But it doesn’t mean that they were not meant to be in my life. They just had their own reasons why I had to meet them. So I can become the better version through some heartbreaks and having to work on myself.  And I love them for this. I wish them the best of luck in what they choose to do. I want for them to succeed in the future and to be happy. But my heart and I say, that it is time to go separate paths in this life.

I believe that the most beautiful and meaningful I loves you come out when a person truly means it. When they say it most unexpectedly. When they don’t have to say it everyday, but you know that it is there. Sometimes these three words can be used to simply manipulate you and to make you stay. The most meaningful I love yous are t

Love doesn’t have to be perfect. Sometimes love will hurt and teach us the most painful lessons.  My relationship with the love is that I’ve always been in love with love. I always dreamed of finding ‘the one’. I always loved all of my loves (and crushes) more than the other I just meet. When I love someone, I loved them dearly and with all of my entire heart that I want for this to be permanent. I want for them to stay and to have a place of their own in my life.

And probably as a Queen of Pentacles type of personality (ha, if anyone reads tarot cards here!), I invest all of my effort and time into the love to make the most of its experience. But bad experiences shouldn’t hinder the good ones that are always to come.

Today I woke up and realized that it is time when I write this letter down. First to myself, and first to the others. It is time to let go and be thankful for everything what I have experienced. I believe that if not for these experiences I would have never had ended up where I currently am.

Even to this day, I am learning how to be more open and accepting, to say more ‘yes’ to the world.  And I know that I will be fine one day. It is my time to shine. I’m currently in love and happy. And anticipating of the beautiful rewards in this world.