What was my motivation for such a strange action? Well, two-fold. First, my partner encouraged me to download an app for iPhone called Moves. It's a pedometer/tracker thingy that tracks your movement, places you go, how long you spend exercising. The first day, it showed me going to rehab and warming up on the treadmill for 15 minutes and coming up with a grand total of 2,108 steps for the day and indicated all of my activity throughout the day had burned 80 calories. Well, that's not going to help me lose weight. So I felt I needed to take a walk.
But the second and more important reason for my random walk out the door without a destination or even my wallet was that I needed to clear my head.
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I mentioned in my other blog that on our Familyversary, some close family friends decided they no longer wanted friendship with my family. Over the ensuing month, tensions rose to what felt the breaking point for me and mine. We were hurt and we didn't know what to do about it. Almost every last member of my family has abandonment issues and we couldn't help but feel abandoned by folks that we had called friend. More importantly, we had called them FAMILY.
So we set about moving on. But you can't really move on until you've let go.
And I didn't even know what I was letting go of.
A week ago we got a message from a member of the other family requesting a re-establishment of contact. I had just realized five days prior that I had lost something when I lost that relationship and I realized what it was.
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Historically, I am an extremely trusting person. As my son said in a recent conversation, I tend to run around handing out my trust willy-nilly to anyone I meet. But I haven't been that way lately. In fact, I held back quite a lot of trust in my current relationship, to the point where I was questioning myself constantly. Holding back trust is not who I know myself to be.
Then, starting in May of this year, I decided to start dating again. I am polyamorous after all and that typically denotes that one would have multiple partners. But I have not been having a lot of success dating. When I'm asked why, I come up with reasons, but ultimately I realized, the problem is not anyone but me.
Back in April, a part of me died. The part that openly loves and trusts anyone without any reason given--until such time as a person proves they're not worthy. Okay, maybe it's not dead, maybe it's just huddling in the corner of my mind, bruised and bleeding wondering why the hell it would want to get back in the world. And it's snarling like a wounded animal anytime anyone tries to get close.
This has caused me a crisis of character. This piece of me is absolutely fundamental to my being. So much so that people tend to not believe that I've had a rough life at all because this open love and trust is not characteristic of someone who has been violated as much as I have.
So who could have known this situation would be the straw that broke the camel's back?
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I mentioned the conversation where my son said I tend to run around willy-nilly handing out my trust to anyone I meet. The rest of that statement was my son telling me that I was no longer living in a fantasy world wherein I could do such a thing.
"Welcome to the real world, Mom," he said.
And I replied, "I don't like it, son. This real world does not make me happy. I've lived in my fantasy world for so long because I'm happy in it. I intentionally create myself that way to be happy. Isn't happiness important?"
And that's what I'm missing. This fundamental part of my being--open love and trust--it's my HAPPINESS.
And I can't let that go. I can't let anyone take that from me.
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Last night, on my walk, I wasn't thinking about anything in particular. I was just letting my mind wander. I stopped to take pictures of things I found interesting and/or beautiful as I'm wont to do on walks. And as I turned the corner of a path, out of my peripheral I caught color. It was the setting sun. I turned and beheld it's beauty. I took a picture.
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| Sunset |
And then, it hit me: It's time for me to let go and move on.
This situation has been spilling over into every corner of my life (as situations are prone to doing) and I see it affecting my other relationships. Relationships with people that I love and hold dear. Relationships with people that love me just as powerfully as I love them. For the preservation of myself and my relationships (current and future), I need to move on.
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What does moving on look like? Well, I'm not going to instantly get that trust back, I don't think. And I may always trust a little less than I did before, life is change and change is growth.
But what I can do, what I will do is stop acting like what someone else does or does not do surrounding me means anything about me as a person. It has nothing to do with me. It never has and it never will.
Just like my success or lack thereof in dating has had nothing to do with those other people and entirely to do with me and my own perspective.
I have power over just one human being on the face of this earth: one heart, one mind. And I carry it with me everywhere I go.
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