Taking Another Dip: Hello Love, Here We Go Again

We never truly consider that happiness and success can feel much scarier than failure or sadness.

We got what we wanted, and now?

Was it really what we wanted?

You know that subtle feeling that something — you can’t quite put your finger on what exactly- but something, is just a little bit off?

That’s me my friends, desperately trying to figure out just how I am feeling.

The crazy part is that I literally very successfully help people understand how they are feeling and to manage those emotions for a living.

I need another me to coach me.

Noneed to panic, as any grounded and respectable 37 year old woman would do, I booked a therapy session for tomorrow.

People say they are afraid of failure, when in reality, they are much more scared of success.

The truth is, right now, I’m happy.

I’m happy with my amazing job, I’m happy with the prospect of what’s coming, I’m happy that finally He has decided to be with me and has turned out, as I had very much hoped he would, as a wonderful man who seems to be ready to take care of me, to dream with me, to build with me.

Yet I have just finished baking my third cake in two weeks and as I’m sitting here, compulsively eating with and additional 5 kg on my thighs I can’t help but wonder: what is going on with me?!

Don’t let fear mess with your happiness

Somebody once told me this illuminating sentence:

Fear is a projection of previous pain onto a future that doesn’t yet exist.

A wise reader commented on my last post pointing out that what I’m experiencing is likely fear, and that it’s preventing me from enjoying this moment that I have longed for, for over two years.

(You are correct, I just had not realized this at all). I had not realized I had any kind of fear within my body, in fact, on the contrary, I was feeling invincible and super strong.

How deluded!

But this fear was expressing myself in a completely new way: numbness.

Have you ever gotten exactly what you were hoping for and more and as a result became completely emotionally numb as a result?

Voila. That’s me.

I have exactly what I wanted (not precisely let’s be honest but close enough), and I am perfectly willing to let it go to waste just because I am scared.

Literally I feel like I You will be numb after hearing two years of stories of me wanting this man and now that this man is perfect my heart has gone into the freezer.

I have been so scared over the past few weeks that I had stopped experiencing any feelings at all. That is, of course, until fear found the worst possible time to remind me I’m still, in fact, human.

I was sitting in the most inconvenient time for feelings to actually resurface: in the middle of a workshop in front of a bunch of strangers. Thankfully, I was attending this writers course, not coaching it.

I hate crying in public, to be clear.

I also rarely cry at home alone, but I just couldn’t hold back those tears.

In the space of an instant I went from the invincible emotions-proof superwoman to begging the guy unclogging the sink to wait just a little bit longer to use the pump and let all of the feelings I had so carefully stuck inside the sink out.

Breathe in, hold your breath, count to four, think of something, anything, anything else but this.

I kept repeating in my mind, but I knew I couldn’t push it back down for one more second. As I was about to start speaking, I exploded.

I cannot share what I just wrote. I’m sorry.

I mumbled.

The group insisted. I read it. I moved past my fear, which was not that of reading what I had written which had absolutely nothing to do with Him or with me, it was a mere writing exercise.

It was there, it was beautiful, it was as powerful as I had remembered it, it was like a wave of cold ocean water that catches up with your feet despite you trying to run not to wet your toes and freeze.

Emotion.

You’re back my friend, now I’ll have to deal with you.

Can you really just ‘forget’ the past?

Here’s the thing, once you get burned one too many times, and you’re someone who is a genuine believer in love (no matter how many times you catch yourself telling people you’re over it), the prospect of falling once again, on top of it for someone who has personally burned you multiple times, is daunting.

Even if you know that this person is special, that they are potentially a good match, a solid partner, a great father for your children, how can you just put all of the hurt and pain behind and move on?

I keep dreaming He will break up with me once again. The fear keeps building up and I know that this is a genuine possibility.

I fear history repeating itself.

I also dream that He finds this blog and decides to leave me for writing all of my feelings, positive and negative, in a spur of the moment way on the web, even if anonymously.

Also, does anyone actually want to read all of their partner’s disastrous dating past?

The truth is that I know with certainly that to move forward and have a chance of success, a chance at joy, I need to leave the past in the past.

Easier said than done.

So here I am my friends, making a list of the conversations I need to have before I can truly embrace the future:

Where we want to live (it’s inter-continental for now)
How we want to raise our kids (education, ways of being, religion)
What we both want from life

Having said this, he’s coming to meet my family next week, I guess I have taken a step towards potential happiness or the dark hole of disappointment after all.