Emotionally Bankrupt

Ever feel emotionally maxed out? Like all the hurt you’ve ever felt is bad credit card debt you wish you could just get rid of? Or when you take your trash out to an apartment garbage to find that it’s just full of shit. Standing there with a full bag of shit. Feeling like a total asshole because you either have to take it on a fucking long ass journey to another trash that’s fucking full or leave it on the floor? Like it’s not your fault there was no where else to put it. So you leave it but then…Feel guilty! Feeling like shit all fucking night so you end up going back and putting it back on your damn porch just to smell up your life. Luckily for me I had self garbage pick up.. but man I can totally see that happening to me. 

Because let’s face it, I always get the shit end of the stick. My luck has definitely been tarnished. Hell maybe my luck is fake gold at the end of my lives rainbow. (laugh cry emoji). But seriously. Ever feel like you just wanna file emotional bankruptcy? Because damn. All the crap that has filled my emotional piggy bank is everything but wealth. A clean slate would be ideal. But maybe the wealth comes from the hard stinky ass lessons. Maybe feeling emotionally bankrupt is what’s needed to light a fire under our asses to get fucking moving forward. To allow ourselves to actually have what we want by fucking going and getting it. To stop letting dickheads wreak havoc inside our prestige pallaces. Maybe becoming emotionally bankrupt is actually evolutionary. 

For me it had to be. Like goddamn, I’ve been told my autobiography would be fire. The trauma, the failed relationships that led to this emotional bankruptcy is astonishing. The heartbreak that lingers through my bones that fucking feels like arthritis on a damn cold day. For me it’s more like any day that it creeps right in and there’s no damn medicine I can take to get through the aches. I tried wine. It only made me do more dumb shit. The whole anger wishing unhappiness on those shitbags only led to my very own unhappiness. Because honestly, what makes me happy is seeing people happy. To think that I had that green eyed monster living somewhere inside of myself was not going to cut it. I may have green eyes, but not those kind. That’s just not who I am. So wishing anyone anything but happiness led me to become someone I didn’t like. I became lost on a stink ass journey of picking up garbage like it was treasure at the fucking dump. All because I was so damn guilty of leaving my garbage at an already filled reservoir. So instead of letting go of the damn garbage, I made myself feel bad for so long that I carried that garbage with me. Why? To become best friends with the crap? Fucking maybe. I guess I just learned to be okay living in the cesspool. When that is NOT OKAY. 

Look, just because shitty things happen to us does not mean we need to be okay living in shit. We gotta pick up the shit, and leave that shit where ever the fuck we take it. The junkyard ideally. But the problem is, we carry all the shit emotionally until we are mentally living in our own dumping ground. We deserve so much better than that. Life is always going to throw out shit. And a lot of times we are gonna take a hit. I’m not saying no one gets hit with shit. We all do. How we handle the shit, and how we come out of the shit is what makes us who we are. And sometimes we just get lost in it. I think that’s what happened to me. I went through so much at once that I felt like I was drowning in the swamp that I called my own life. Who I was in the moment didn’t matter because I was only focused on survival. When trauma strikes, we aren’t worried about our character or what we look like in that moment. We are only focused on getting through it. Because damn, when it hit me, I honestly mentally felt like I was walking on death row. Just there. The funny thing is, although that trauma that happened to me wasn’t because of me, I held on to it like it was me. Defining me for all the years I carried it. The guilt. The shame. The embarrassment. The heartbreaking reality that my life wasn’t going to be where I dreamed it to be. Who the fuck was I? 

I think back years ago and that girl is not me. That girl was enabling, naive, gullible, extremely trusting, and way too caring. Oh and SO emotional. (I still am a softie.) But definitely not as trusting as I was. Well, after everything I’ve ever believed that had no fucking merit, it’s just what I’ve incurred over the past few years of believing in others. But that’s just it, I can see lies. I can see through all the bullshit. I actually hold people accountable for their words and only believe their actions. Maybe that’s not so crazy after all. Maybe being too trusting was the problem. God, being too trusting can lead you off a damn bridge. Remember our mothers didn’t just say that saying for nothing. And for fucks sake, being too trusting can lead to being sold into sex trafficking. No fucking thank you. Not today satan. Being enabling only allowed me to accept intolerable behaviors. No fucking thank you. Being too caring just made me feel guilty in the end. Because I cared too much. You know what I realized by putting a guard rail on those qualities? That I have standards. Yes doll, fucking standards. Doesn’t mean that I don’t care, or I don’t trust or I don’t believe. All of those things are still who I am. A god damn good hearted decent person. But choosing the fucks I give to people who fucking deserve it is smart. And this beauty always had brains. I was just so caught up in those negative qualities that I didn’t see then because I was so caught up in them. I thought that giving myself away to people was some kind of reward or something. But the truth is, I needed to give myself to me. Because I belong to me. I learned to respect myself enough to fucking realize that I don’t have to be what someone else wants just to get what I want. Because after all, I never got what I wanted by that, or by settling. I only got emotionally bankrupt by doing that. 

Turns out the lows are essential. But we never realize that until we are maxed out. I felt that when everything I carried weighed me down to the point of no return. It was like treading water in a swamp full of piranhas. Either get bit, or get the fuck out. That kinda fight or flight made me realize I was finally running away from the wrong path. The same path I squeezed onto started to hold on to me by bringing one isolating thunder storm after another. Who was the one that kept getting struck by lightning? The sad, caring, gullible, naive, emotional girl. You know what happens when you actually stand up for yourself? It makes those giants that hurt me look like fucking clowns. Not the scary ones either. More like the ones who come to your table at Chili’s when you go to have a cheap steak dinner. Rudely interrupting your five dollar margarita to make a balloon that ends up looking like the dudes small ass dick that you cried over for months. Deflated and boring. But fuck. It hurts like hell to feel emotionality bankrupt. But after all I’ve been through and survived, I can finally wash that slate clean. And it’s fucking scary. It’s scary not knowing where you’re headed. Maybe the fear of the unknown is harder to face than comforting hurt. But it’s also exciting. Making anything possible. And nothing is going to break you because you are a bad ass for freeing yourself from that ache. You may be emotionally bankrupt for maxing yourself out on the bullshit. But that’s where you’ll find peace. They don’t say when you hit rock bottom there’s only one place left to go and that’s up, for no reason. 

For me, emotional bankruptcy felt that way. I may have hit a dead end on a rollercoaster traveling at max speed, but I’m still here. I may have grown up on that ride. But I’m still smiling now that I’m off of it. Still caring, just not too much. I’ll still say kind things and tell you you’re pretty. Still emotional, but only when the Cowboys lose. Still trusting, but only when it’s earned. Trust isn’t a one way street. I learned that shit when I walked across and got hit by a bulldozer. But hey, I’m still trusting. Still a girl that follows her heart and wears it on her sleeve. I still cry watching Hallmark movies. I still laugh when I’m faced with stressful situations at work. Still a mama bear that will do anything for the people she loves. Still drink cabernet with my girlfriends and stay up way too late. I’m still carefree and speak out loud when I should think first. A little bit classy and say way too many curse words. My heart is full. No matter what shit comes my way, I’ll always come out stronger because of it. That shits in my DNA. It’s not my fault people suck. Khloe Kardashian said best. “Peoples moral compasses are broken.” And it’s so true. Just because mine is fully functional, doesn’t mean I’m going to magnetically gravitate towards some epic thing. This ain’t Stranger Things. Maybe sometimes we just trail off and get lost. For fuck sake maybe I like to take scenic routes. I do admire a good view after all. But maybe our new journey begins the moment we let go of all the baggage we carry. Maybe sometimes we get some luck after all and our baggage explodes. Making us realize that we are emotionally bankrupt. But thank God for being able to file bankruptcy. So someday you can find your happy ending that you deserve. Because now you totally can. 



Written by Epiphany Tiffany.