Photographs in Sepia Tones

You know these unbearably cheesy songs on the radio telling a story of love and of heartbreak? I despise them, they never got me and honestly said, I never thought they would. After all the „Ice Princess“ (as I was lovingly christened by someone who once knew me very well) never falls in love, no one could get close to her let alone under her skin and into her icicle of a heart. Where I belong is Rock‘n‘Roll and there is no place for such lyrics and cheesy chords… but in life there sometimes is.

I learned that the more cokey you get the more life will throw what you deem “impossible” at you, in glee no less.

To say it‘s been a year of heartbreak would be an misconception. It was a year of finding myself again. A year of escaping the confines of a town so small that every corner held a memory that knocked the breath out of me to the point were I had started to consider moving away. Suddenly those stupid songs on the radio hurt, something they never did before. Apparently I was broken… a scratch in my otherwise pristine vinyl that hence forth changes the sound when played forever.

You must know, I never searched for love, I never imagined that for me. The Norman Rockwell picture perfect family was never in my cards, nothing I strived for. To this day I don’t. But I had to accept that someone got under my skin like no one before or after ever will again. I‘m not saying this in despair of what I‘m going to be deprived off, I had that experience and sometimes one experience is enough for a lifetime.

Today, I‘m grateful for the experience of these emotion even tho I tried to erase them for months, wipe it from my minds eye forever trying to fix the vinyl record again if you will… but that never works now does it? For a year I tried to literally paint over it with everything you can imagine… but trying to erase something will only make it stick out more is what I came to find out.

When I tell you what I did these last 12 months you wouldn‘t believe it anyways but let me tell you, it was a lot of escaping, a lot of soul searching but most of all it was putting myself back together. I allowed for my life to be one with someone else and the void he left was soul crushing. Go ask Adele, she has some decent songs on the subject and seems more qualified then me. I‘m just telling you that if you suffer from any kind of unwanted (and it‘s always unwanted) heartbreak go to Adele, she will sort you out. Travel, a whole lot of Adele and rediscovering myself and what I want from life is what did the trick for me.

Cards were stacked against us

So there they were, 12 months of lessons I had to learn but desperately tried not to. In therapy I had to face the fact that I had put on a role to survive because I had gone through an ego death. The pain I felt had drowned me in restlessness and sleeplessness and I deepened myself in work. And so I had to compensate with a newly created version of who I once believed I was.

So many told me „The old Jess was back“ but she wasn’t, she couldn‘t be. You can not revert to an old version of yourself back when everything was still OK. This ain’t Windows Systemrecovery we are talking about. I‘m a newly refurbished version at best. An always evolving version of who I am but I will never be an old version of myself. And I might not be perfect but I like myself a lot more now than I did whilst with someone who once meant the world to me – an epiphany that took months to come but it came and I can guarantee it will be the same for you too should you go through something similar.

One year ago I left what I called my “safe haven”. Today 13 months after the fact, it still hurts, the vinyl remains scratched but you know what? It actually sounds better with a few scratches. Gave it a whole lot of character and I think Adele would agree.

The photographs in sepia tones that dominated my life are long gone. The color scheme hurts my eyes even so I reverted to what I always loved most: black and white. So even tho it looks like the color vanished from my life it has actually returned.