There was a void in me. It grew and expanded in my adolescent and early adult years that were filled with crushes that didn’t crush on me. The void — let’s call it longing — shrunk a bit after my first kiss. Then it grew twice its original size, weeks after our lips parted. He disappeared after his best friend died suddenly. One day he was planning to come visit me at college and then,
Poof!
—he was gone without a trace.
I learned early on that love could be haunting. Romance could come and go as mysteriously as a ghost.
Timing is everything.
Fast forward a few years: I was 23 and I’d never had what I thought society would deem a real relationship. One day, in a moment of quiet, the words,
I want a relationship
conjured themselves up from deep place inside.
The gentle thought,
I want a boyfriend,
rose up in my consciousness as if it were the words of a mystical spell being cast upon me. My whole self swept up in a pink cloud of desire. The cloud was light — so light I felt like I was floating above my body and that scared me in an oh so enjoyable way.
A few days later I met him — my first boyfriend. The feelings were so intense, that I stumbled over my words. I felt self-conscious of my every move — because he was watching me so intensely. The energy was as potent as that pink cloud of desire that had swept me up a few days before. The sensation was so new, so overpowering, I didn’t trust it. It was so dream-like that instead of opening to it, out of a survival instinct, I pushed it as far away as I could.
My distrust manifested as hesitation. He reached out to me in a timid, junior high sort of way (maybe he feared the feeling too?) and we became friends. I made him court me for many months. Sparks would fly here and there and I would store them up — collect them in a jar and gaze upon them longingly when I was alone in my room at night.
Falling in love is a bit of a tease, isn’t it?
We have no control over our feelings — our senses. What we do control is how we respond to the tease.
For many months I tried to control myself through hesitation and doubt, until one day I couldn’t hold back anymore. One day the feelings of longing swept through my body like a tidal wave and lit up my heart like a 4th of July sparkler. The moment I asked him to kiss me, I had what so many would call a relationship. It happened so fast because it had already happened; we had fallen in love with each other the first night we met. We surrendered to the fall bit by bit, piece by piece, with a gentle and long drawn out courting phase.
We had all the signs and symptoms lovers display. We had that rush of oxytocin at the mention of each others name — hearts racing, genitals pumping with desire, minds suddenly at ease. Our senses were on fire when we were in the same room — so much so, we couldn’t keep our hands off of each other for very long. Our bodies were like magnets.
We dated for months and fell deeper into each other. We were that couple who exhibits public displays of affection because they can’t not touch each other. We were that couple who looks at each other with that deep soul gaze while we are eating burgers and fries and wearing sweats. But my heart kept saying, I don’t know about this. Can I trust him? Date after date after date. It was exhausting. And yet, when we were together, it was enlivening. My heart and my mind wrestled one another.
He and I spent over 2 years pushing and pulling with the dance of relationship until we both lost trust in the strength of our love. Then we spent 3 years holding on and hoping until it crumbled — that hope — into bits and pieces we each collected and held onto. We held on because we thought we had to. We held on because it was less painful than letting go.
When the heart speaks, listen.
We are taught not to listen to that little voice of our heart’s longing. We are taught to wrestle with it — our voice against the should’s and could’s and musts imposed upon us from the day we entered our mother’s wombs.
I wrestled with my heart the 2 plus years we dated. I wrestled because I thought I had to. I fought and pushed because something in me was confused — and didn’t trust my hearts lulling voice. I continued to wrestle in pieces of moments for years to come. I wrestled with the desire for him when I felt weak and untrusting of myself. In moments of vulnerability, I desired him, because he was something to hold onto. I had been taught to cling. I had learned in voices talking at me, to me and around me (think school, family, the media).
Little did I know, love doesn’t have to be latched onto with a death grip. Love, when it’s honest and open and carefree, clings to you with the gentleness of a baby koala hugging a tree. Love, when it’s honest and open and carefree, won’t ask you to hold on. Love will ask you to loosen your grip so you can let it expand and grow.
Moving on.
After him, I thought I was fine. I felt like I was the strong one — bound and determined to find someone I could trust fully and completely. I looked and looked. I dated and I got into relationships, but in each one, I felt that hesitation. In each one, I was unable to trust fully. I was looking outward because I was too frightened to turn my gaze inside.
It was them, I thought. I went to therapy to figure out what was drawing me to the wrong partner. I psychoanalyzed myself as much as I psychoanalyzed all of them — the ones I couldn’t trust with all my heart.
Hours of psychotherapy with the right therapist took me back to myself, not to them. In between inhales and exhales of my story, my vulnerability took me to this moment of being open and honest with you, dear reader.
It all comes back you.
It’s not about them. It never was. I thought, as maybe you have to, that ending one relationship with the wrong person would make space for the right person to walk in. I was missing something though — something monumental — doing the inner work. For years I was confused about what the inner work was exactly. Did it mean following self-help book recommendations? Did it mean hours on my yoga mat? Did it mean journaling all my feelings out?
I’ve discovered it meant all of that and none of that. I’ve discovered that I could do anything and nothing and it wouldn’t change the heart of the story. The book of self is a constant unfolding. It’s a page turner — a create as you go novel where anything goes. Once I realized this, that quiet voice of my heart became confident and boisterous. It bellowed:
You will never be fully able to trust another. How could you? They are as unpredictable as you are, and that is a wild and wonderful thing.
When we embody the faith in our own character’s unfolding, love becomes a playground to enjoy for as long as it feels good to our hearts.
When we embrace that little voice with the gusto our small child self did, then we learn to trust. Trust isn’t about holding to a fixed, solid version of someone or something. It’s about appreciating and honoring the unending process of change.
The romance we embrace when we trust our soul’s voice is a love affair with self. We may choose to share our journey with another — for a heartbeat or a lifetime — but the faith in the outcome lies within.
Looking back, I see that my hesitation in my first love was well-grounded. At our cores, we were two very different people who ultimately wanted different futures and had different core values. We were young — still discovering who we were and what we wanted out of this life. Our dance was imperfect — perhaps perfectly so.
If I didn’t have the memory of that intense relationship to remind me what the voice of my heart sounds like, I might not be here today, grounded in a deeper sense of self-understanding and love.
If I was listening to the untrusting voice, I could say:
Well, we were young we didn’t know ourselves yet. And hold onto regret or view myself as a childish fool.
Instead, I choose to say:
I used to think I would change into a specific version of myself that I could love. I used to fight my heart when it wanted to move on because it felt as if things weren’t in alignment. It thought I needed to hold onto that fixed version of myself for dear life rather than let her go and open to the version of me that is right here, right now.
There are no mistakes in the universe.
After my first love and I broke up, I went on a years-long journey to start to date my long-term love in this life — myself.
It’s getting easier for me to trust because I know it is all about me. As long as I listen to my heart, I will keep picking the right partners. I will be honoring my soul’s voice. As long as I keep following that humble voice of the heart, I will have faith that the person in my life is there for a reason.
Listening to that voice opens our hearts and deepens our sense of gratitude for this life and the blessings and gifts disguised as relationships. Because perhaps every lover and every love is no accident.
“Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.”
~Rumi
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Previously published on medium
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