Dear Jay,
It may have felt like a long and ardent road but, after years of subsisting in a haze of opacity, you’ve discovered there is an opportunity to find yourself at peace with those ever-present desires to be loved, to be seen, to be understood. I know you spent most of your life expecting to receive that devotion of love from that one person that would manifest as an angelic apparition, only to then materialize as your savior, hopefully as a tall and kind human with a warm smile and strong shoulders. You would have always expected it to happen because you have always known you deserve it. You are a good person with a fondness for caring for others. You’re smart and all of the hardships in your life have prepared you to know who to choose when the time came. When you felt fear in all of the chaos of your upbringing, you were certain your life would be different in the future when you had the opportunity to change it. Your conviction to find the stability you lacked as that scared and abused child would assure you never had to long for love or safety when you found him. You were so sure you would find that safety in the arms of that person destined to nurture your heart.
So you fell in love. As often as possible, with an array of nice guys that made you laugh. There were plenty of times you had such a longing for one of these guys to fill that gaping hole in your heart that was gradually excavated by instruments of destruction and neglect that plagued your childhood that you neglected to realize with many of them; it was not real love. You simply acquiesced to the feeling, becoming whatever it needed you to be for the sake of safety. Even when you found the safest one, the man that you could count on to ensure stability and consistency to contrast the cycle of volatility you were so rightfully fearful of repeating, it wasn’t enough. How can it be true love if you were constantly giving up every bit of yourself and diminishing your own needs and desires for the sake of permanence? You sacrificed that insatiable desire for affection, connection, and passion and traded it in for the perceived admiration of those who surrounded that soulless woman who seemingly had it all together.
Formidably, the ever-romantic that has spent a lifetime longing for security in someone else has found it in her spirit. In your exploration of self, you discovered that your conviction to be true to yourself is the safest place you can be. You’ve learned that there is such peace in internal validation that even when you make mistakes, you know you are still worthy. When you were ready to nurture the relationship with yourself, you realized you could stop searching for outside sources to validate your worth. You understood it is vital to your existence to continuously explore your desires and not hide them for fear of rejection or judgment. Learning to check in with yourself to ensure you are allowing life to give you what you need and want has opened the doors to let other people share in your ardent love for yourself. Solitude feeds your soul with the reaffirmation that you can love yourself better than anyone else can. The most beautiful part of this journey has been that you know the exploration of you never ends. You know there is always room to learn, grow, and evolve. You also know you can take your time and just revel in the being.
Finding someone that can love you without asking you to continuously give something up of yourself will be a gratifying experience because you have shed that misguided feeling that you need to get it from someone else.