you. not wanting me. was the beginning of me wanting myself. thank you.
~the hurt
$0.35 for a subway ride in New York City. An ex once told me, his father gave him $0.35 in totality every day for school. This was 20 years ago. It was just enough change to ride the subway, his mode of transportation growing up in Brooklyn, New York. No money was given for anything beyond transportation. Including lunch, sports, band, or any of the other day to day activities required for a gifted student in academics and the arts.
You may get the impression they were low income and struggling. This was farthest from the truth. His family was a two parent, two income household and not struggling by any means. They lived in what is considered a middle-class lifestyle for the city.
I suppose that does something to a child. Igniting the spark of unimportance, unworthiness, unloved, laced with a poverty consciousness belief. Many of us came from that generation of neglect, growing up in the 80s and 90s. This generation is what my teenage millennials describe as the neglected generation.
Neglect, on any level, by your caregiver causes deep emotional wounds. We were taught to bear the burden as women, of the male counterparts’ wounds. This was our wifely duty. I did so, by ignoring they existed. Believing my love would heal anything except death, I buried my head in the quicksand that was my marriage.
I imagined having the ability to heal anything that arose between us, and together we would build this amazing life full of love. I made it my soul’s mission to save and heal that man. The three of us had a tormented relationship. It was the first affair he had. Himself, his wounds, and me.
What I learned was devastating and began my journey into my own self-awareness. I would never be enough to save or heal his trauma. No one could. The love of the four children I birthed was not enough. The death of our fifth child was not enough. There was this dark, gaping void that expanded day by day and year by year.
I know now what I didn’t choose to acknowledge. I see what I could not see then. My love and our children were only worth the cost of a subway ride.
There is no roadmap to the depths of one’s wounds. We hold pain and trauma inside the deepest caverns of our soul. Obscured so deep, we forget its buried there. We choose to pretend the wounds do not exist. It feels safer than the alternative. Facing our darkest shadows.
The fierceness and devotion you possess will do no more than any other self-sacrificial technique. It is not our sole mission as women, to heal men as we have been taught. To accept their behavior regardless of the hurt they inflict. To stand by them regardless of the sacrifice of our self, dreams, our soul being for the sake of children and marriage. Our love is not enough to tolerate the external expression of their wounds. Living an unnurtured partnership, that feels more like slow death than life.
Once I was asked is love enough?
In my 20’s, the answer was emphatically yes. In my 30s, the answer was unequivocally no. Now, the answer is, love is enough if you turn it within.
Love will only be enough if you adopt radical self-love, self-acceptance, and deep compassion within yourself. Love can truly save but, only if it’s the saving of oneself.
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Originally Published on Medium
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Photo by Joanna Nix on Unsplash