I Promise Never To Leave You

 I woke up yesterday feeling seriously meh.  It wasn't for any reason I could put my finger on.  I didn't feel physically bad.  Just overwhelmed and sad for no apparent reason.  I thought maybe I'd take myself shopping and that might be amusing.  It wasn't particularly.  But, time spent alone, in the car, listening to music at high volumes, was helpful, so that's a "W" as my son would say.

The pandemic, increased caregiving duties and an extreme career change, brought a lot of challenges to light. About a year ago, I realized I had some long standing abandonment issues.  Big deal, you say.  Everybody has issues.  And I agree.  Everyone has their stuff to deal with.  My issues aren't anymore overwhelming or egregious than anyone else's.  I'm not trying to use them as an excuse for any sort of behavior.  However, I do need to own them.  I need to be responsible for them.  Writing about them, helps with that process, so please bear with me.

In conjunction with addressing these issues, I've been really looking at radical self love and self reliance.  What if, what I'm really supposed to be learning here, is how to trust myself implicitly? To love myself radically? I know that nobody is riding up on a white horse to save my ass.  I need to be my own damn hero.  It finally occurred to me yesterday, that there's only one person who can promise never to leave you and never to break your heart and that person is you.

 This may sound cynical and jaded but let me explain.  I'm not disillusioned with humanity.  Other people don't break your heart on purpose.  Life is messy and everyone you interact with comes into that interaction with their own baggage, hurts and perceptions.  The sources of my own abandonment issues had absolutely no idea what was happening or how their behavior might be hurtful.  I had absolutely no idea what was happening either.

But, a random experience when I was 11-years-old, colored my behavior for years.  I never even realized it.  Here's just one example: I was absolutely in love with my husband when we got married.  But I know now, that other, mostly unconscious, thoughts also lurked somewhere in my brain.  He adores me, I thought (and he did).  He is never, ever going to leave me.  Guess what, though?  It doesn't work that way. You can promise that sort of security but there's no guarantee you'll be able to keep that promise. My husband is leaving me anyway.  It's not his fault and it's not his choice.  But dementia means that a little bit of him goes away every single day.  He is absolutely leaving me.

So, yeah.  Relationships are complicated.  Hearts get damaged in the process sometimes.  I'm not giving up on human interaction or God forbid, love.  Loving fiercely is my MO and I'm not planning on changing that.  But...what if I extended that same sort of love to myself?  What does that even look like?  What if I was so in love with myself that I promised never to abandon myself or break my own heart?  Ohhh...interesting.  Who knew this was even a thing you could do?

This is not narcissism.  This is trusting myself.  This is self care.  This is not about thinking that I am better than anyone else.  No. it's finally realizing that I deserve as much of the expansive love I lavish on other people too.  And while loving and being loved by other people may just well be the meaning of life, I have the capacity for fully loving myself too.  To be my own hero.  To know that I will trust myself enough to make decisions which won't break my own heart.

I don't know who this quote can be attributed to but I have it pinned up next to my basement yoga space.  It says. "The woman you are becoming will cost you people, relationships, spaces and material things. Choose her over everything."