I’ve spent far too much time trying to be someone that I’m not… and it’s cost me more than I could afford to spend.
I’ve been trying to be a stronger, more enlightened version of me. I thought I was doing it with the best intentions… showing up to every relationship, every interaction as the person that I want to be, unconditionally loving, unconditionally supportive, unconditionally understanding. The problem is… that’s not who I truly am.
I don’t always understand and I can’t always be loving and supportive. Sometimes I have needs for support, love and understanding that, without those needs being met I can’t show up as who I want to be.
And the problem is that I either don’t know how to ask for what I need or when I do ask people can’t see the need because I don’t know how to show that I’m in pain except with my words. They say that the words a person speaks makes up only 7% of communication; the rest is made up of voice tonality, body language, etc. I don’t know if that’s actually an accurate statistic but if so it explains a lot about why I don’t feel very supported.
You see, when I express that I’m struggling, the person I’m speaking to only seems to pick up on about 7% of the intensity; and they support me accordingly.
I’m incredibly grateful for every bit of support I receive… and most of the time 7% is sufficient because my personal reserves are high enough that I can show up for myself unconditionally lovingly, supportive and understanding.
But today my reserves are non-existent and I feel a pain that makes me want to crumble, but I never learned enough emotional skills to even know how to break down… so I’m stuck in this limbo of feeling deep anguish inside, lacking the capacity to support myself, while still looking just as strong and impervious to the outside world as I normally do.
Right now I just want to be human. I just want to be able to cry, to feel the pain that is real for me; and, if possible, be held and loved in the process. I feel like I’m setting myself up for failure though because the person I most want to be held and loved by is also running on low reserves and, in the moment, has been the trigger for much of the pain I feel.
She’s not the cause, just the trigger. The cause has been around for as long as I can remember. From the time I was 4 years old I would write poem after poem about unrequited love. At the time there was no specific person attached to the feeling of loss or rejection… but I still felt it. Since that time several people have filled that role for me. Currently there is someone whom I am so deeply in love with, an incredible woman who’s capacity to love exceeds anything I’ve experienced before. A woman who loves many people with deep passion and devotion. But for some reason, that I fail to understand, that deep love that I see her direct towards others, that I once felt her direct towards me seems to have lost its steam. In its place a wavering desire to connect has emerged and I’m left riding a roller coaster I didn’t realize I was getting on, feeling the thrill of the moments when her love is directed at me followed by that pit in my stomach when I fall as her love is replaced with frustration or questioning.
Just like with a roller coaster the climb up was amazing, but I hadn’t expected the fall and now that I’m falling, it’s every bit as scary as any roller coaster I’ve ever seen…
August 16th, 2011
