"I want you" - "I need you" - "I choose you" There was a time when I longed to be wanted; I craved the words, "I need you". Then I realized that 'want' comes from a space of emptiness and 'need' was coming from my own perception of lack. I wanted nothing more than to be enough for someone. How absurd when my cries were from a space of emptiness and lack proving I wasn't enough?!
I began to do the work, primarily focused on awareness; noticing when my patterns could potentially emerge, pausing, and making a different choice than one I would have made in the past. My entire world and worldview shifted as well as how I interacted with others. The thing about being self-aware is you begin to become more self-fulfilled, more self-nurturing and learn the healthy balance of self-love thereby giving you the opportunity to truly show up and love others in the healthiest ways for everyone. Every interaction with other human beings becomes more fulfilling, even if it is simply because it offers a new awareness or opportunity for growth. This is about the time the opportunity to know a certain kind of love knocked on my door. This time I was ready to face any fears head on as they would come up and begin to mindfully explore this new road with absolutely no attachment to an idea, a fantasy or a desired outcome. Here's the thing about dating when you have worked on all of your own 'stuff', you can be completely open to standing in witness of how things unfold. For the first time I wasn't the girl jumping to the end of the book to see how it ends before reading the entire thing, I am the woman who picks up the book excited to see where this journey takes me, perfectly willing to accept a surprise ending or explore an infinite amounts of chapters. Here I am discovering what it's like to choose someone every single day. I would read the quotes about love being a choice and love being a verb but never appreciated it in the real sense, the a posteriori sense. But now, now I see that the choice alone is a verb. Our overall wellness is a choice as well as a union of the mind, body and spirit; this goes for our relationships as well. Each morning and throughout the day my mind may choose him, other times my heart and often my body wants a say as well. When I'm with him they all choose him at once and it's like music; different types of music, sometimes the playlist changes or it's on shuffle but for each day and each experience we share, even in quiet stillness, there is always music. Now desire is born from the space of my own fulfillment and the recognition of the fulfillment he has within him. Desire comes from all the little things that make this person who they are, the shadow and the light, creating this beautiful package. Desire comes from the appreciation of being accepted as we are with no projections from our past. Desire comes from the relief of getting to know someone who doesn't truly need anything from us but chooses to sometimes be the one to graciously give and sometimes graciously receive. Desire will be easy because even the scariest moments will somehow make you feel even safer and you will feel a sense of ease as you get through them together. Desire will be the celebration of sharing an exciting experience with someone new, ready for wherever the road may lead you because no matter what, you will always have these moments that you are sharing together. When we recognize others we are recognized. When we validate others we are validated. What we offer is what we inevitably receive. Life is cyclical; seasons, planetary orbit, love...
October is a big month for delving into the shadows and after I read about the potential impact the Dark New Moon in Scorpio may have had on us I began to self-reflect on my own love for shadow work. This New Moon reunited me with memories from my past so I went with it to see what I was meant to learn. As I layed in my bed in that space between being awake and asleep (research Yoga Nidra to know more) I felt my body sinking down, deep into the earth, into the past, into the bed of the one man who was once my ideation of love. I was the addict and he was my heroine and as I surrendered to this memory I was forced to face one of the greatest paradoxes of the love addiction cycle and that is not only was I addicted to the euphoric highs but also the devastating, soul crushing lows... Life offers experiences that move our emotions like a pendulum and when in any kind of addictive cycle that pendulum swings almost violently from one extreme to the other. To cling to and pursue (even by avoiding - the opposite extreme of the same addictive cycle) an idea of a person, the fantasy of what "love" is supposed to be is to feed the addiction. Have you ever noticed that if you read any "great" love story, the more painful and agonizing it is the more drawn in we become? We become addicted to the intensity, the euphoria can't be as high if the lows aren't hellishly low so when we see the opportunity to thrust ourselves into our fantasy we take it, and we revel in the glorious manifestation of that Oxytocin release and revel just as much, if not more so when things go "wrong", when we are betrayed, when our fantasy is betrayed. So we look for any way to get that hit again, that Oxytocin high and the cycle starts up again, either with that one person we have idealized or surrogates in the meantime. Everything in life is filled with polarities and we create our own paradoxes based on our unmet needs, our fears, our empty and obscure hopes. We curse our pain, we curse ourselves for finding ourselves right back where we swore we would never be again. Why do we do this? I suppose it's different for each person. For me, I'm a deeply intense person that desires peace; I am a walking contradiction, but the thing I fear most is being suspended in the in-between of life. I crave all the richness life has to offer, I get too eager and swallow every experience whole and then need countless hours alone in order to find my balance again. Breaking any kind of addictive cycle means we must recalibrate, find a new homeostasis. Finding your homeostasis isn't just about your physical body finding its healthy balance but also your mind, heart and spirit. So for me, I have released any idea of what relationships are "supposed to be" and am open to learning about what they are in each moment. I remain as present as possible and then share what I've learned after a cycle of learning, processing and integrating has passed. This will prompt many questions for each person and with my experience and training I find greater joy in helping others find their own answers than any other work I have done. Know that your balance, what is healthy for you will continue to evolve as you do and people will come and go as you grow. The change of people in your life is a mere reflection of the work you are doing and how it's paying off so be patient, trust the process and trust yourself! And by all means, allow yourself to grieve what was, no matter how unhealthy it may seem to you now. Free of judgement, blame, rationalizations for self or others, just be with your grief and love yourself for caring that much about your heart, your health and your safety. This isn't looking back, this is processing what was, allowing it to move and make room for what will be. |
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