Bittersweet
I purchased a book in the airport today waiting for my flight to board. It’s called Bittersweet. I haven’t read it yet. I glanced at the front and back covers, and the word resonated with me in the moment.
Bittersweet. A moment in which happiness and sadness occur at the same time. Feelings of pleasure accompanied by suffering or regret. I think that is what I feel at this moment. I’m heading home from a bittersweet experience. One in which I had fun and created memories while simultaneously realizing that it was just a moment. It was always intended to be just a moment. That was the plan. And as the experience comes to a close, I feel grateful for the time spent while feeling immense sadness.
I knew this was a risk going into this experience/experiment. I knew things would be the same when I returned home. This was just a cease-fire. A time to press pause and see what would happen if we left everything at home and coexisted for the sake of simply having fun. And it worked. Far better than I expected it would. We put boundaries in place and then talked and laughed the days away. I will not regret this moment in time. It was a success in my book.
Yet amid this success, I stuff down sadness and hold back tears. Because I will receive no empathy. My kindness will be defined as temporal. My words and feelings will be met with me-toos. I will remain locked in a cage of someone else’s brokenness. The community of friends and family who once loved me will never let me out. I will always be their antagonist. I will always be their enemy. There’s no going back. The pictures have been painted. The stories have been told. The book will be published without retractions.
I will always be my beautiful, kind, and generous self in the shadows of his life, but the joy and light I bask in every day will never be seen by the people who have seen his paintings. I am a genuinely good person—despised and hated by those who once loved me. Judged and written off because of someone else’s flawed perception of reality. The experiment was a success AND I am still the antagonist in the book that he’s writing. Bittersweet.