Am I enough?

Things have been going well for me. Moving forward, getting things done, trying to put everything in their place. I’m trying to change things I have control over and let things go I don’t. Life is all about what you make of it, I’m trying to make it great. Maybe that is the perfectionist in me talking… So as I struggle with the anxiety and trying to come to peace with myself and where I am, I have thought a lot about how my past is still influencing my present. I mean it is a given to a certain extent. We are who we are because the past has led us here. All the parts that make up who we are, it was made from all the places, the people, the memories from our past. The past brings us to where we are now. But it doesn’t have to dictate the direction we go. It doesn’t have to tell us that if we failed in the past, we will fail again. We get to direct our sails in any direction we can and really it is up to us to decide. Humans are capable of change, believe it or not. I have hope in my heart that I can make things different for myself. Not so long ago I found myself in a dead marriage that I didn’t even realize had died. I was so consumed in my own stuff that I didn’t see what was going on around me. Truth is I didn’t care. I had been hurt by him so much and so often and I just didn’t care anymore. Not like I should have. I didn’t look at him the way a wife should look at her husband, I know that now. I didn’t think he was the best thing ever, the person I was meant to be with forever, my best friend. I didn’t think I deserved that so it didn’t faze me that he was none of those things. It’s so sad to me that I put myself in that situation and that it ended so badly. I realize how much of the fault is mine and how badly I don’t want to make the same mistakes again. At the very core of who I am, I’m terrified that A. is going to leave me. Not because of what he is or how he treats me or a gut feeling because of him. It is based solely on my past and my self esteem issues. I know that, I’m conscious of it but that doesn’t make me self sabotage any less. I can see myself doing it, I can see myself shutting down, it’s ugly and I don’t want to watch but I do it. It’s like I can’t stop myself. Like this hurt inner child runs this show and she’s gonna do whatever it takes to protect us. To protect my heart and make sure it doesn’t get blown up again. She’s kind of a drama queen like that. I love that little girl in me, I do but she has got to stop this. I don’t want to lose him because I can’t get out of my own way. The truth is I am crazy madly in love with A. He is everything I never knew I wanted in someone else. Every time I look at him I think he is the best thing ever. He is my favorite person in the whole world and I cannot get enough of him. He treats me better than I have ever been treated before. He makes me so incredibly happy. I catch myself smiling for no reason at all besides the fact that he loves me too. I know this kind of love doesn’t happen all the time and to get that person to feel the same about you really doesn’t happen often. I know I’m lucky, I know what I have is special, I know that I want to be with him forever and I love him with my whole heart. But there is this fear that in spite of all that, in spite of my best efforts, that it won’t be enough. Because I’m not enough. As the title on my blog tells you, I have always struggled with not feeling like I’m enough. It is one of those core values, core beliefs that I have carried with me since the beginning of time. It’s something I have the hardest time shaking. Even when I love myself and want an awesome life for myself. There is this small, nagging voice reminding me of that fact. It’s not a fact, I know that, I know what I am capable of. I know that I can do great things with my life and I know A. is just as lucky to have me as I am to have him. Sure I mess up but I also am giving this all I have. Maybe that is the problem. Maybe I don’t have it all to give to him. Maybe my heart was more critically broken then I thought. Maybe I don’t have it in me to truly love him with my whole heart. Maybe I just love him with all that is left of it. Maybe with his help, his love, his tenderness we can find the other pieces or fix it or transfuse some other pieces to make it whole again. Maybe we can do something together to make me whole again. Because for the first time in my life I have someone who I know backs me up 100%, who will always be there (as long as I let him) and will help me pick up whatever pieces are left. Because he believes in me and loves me that much. Trust me, I know how lucky I am. So here I am. Putting that negative sentiment out of me in hopes that if I give it a voice and hear how crazy I sound that I will be able to overcome the nagging voice I can’t seem to shut up. I’m hoping by saying what I’m afraid of that I can get it out of me and move on. I read somewhere that if a relationship does fail it’s going to hurt either way. If you put 100% in, if you trust them completely, if you love them like crazy at least then it stands a chance. If you half ass it, if you don’t give your partner the best of you, if you cut them down, there is no way it could last. I mean seriously, how could it? Me pushing A. away, not giving him a fair chance, not being open and myself, me shutting down and not communicating with him is not going to help us. If he leaves me because something I did it’s not going to hurt any less than if he left even when I gave him everything I had, when I gave my best effort, my everything. One just leaves me with way more regrets. So why not have no regrets. The hurt is still going to hurt. I have no control over what he is going to do all I know is I will never give up on what we have. And that has to be enough. I have to be enough. As I let my worrying and anxiety go, I have to know I don’t have control over what is going to happen in the future. All I can do is try my best, learn from my mistakes and hope for the best. I have found the one that my soul loves and I can’t give that anything less than all I’ve got. I don’t want to live with that kind of regret. I owe it to that little girl inside me to prove that voice wrong. I need to show her that we are loved and enough for someone to stay for a very long time. I won’t give up on us

Trust

I don’t trust myself. I’ve known this for a while but I don’t think I realized how far it reached and how many aspects of my life it affected. I mean it’s hard to trust yourself when you lead yourself willingly into a life that you should have realized much sooner was a mistake. That you can make yourself believe that a bad relationship is good enough, that you at some point didn’t care enough for yourself to make yourself happy. That you could wake each morning exhausted from the fight and still keep your self believing that this whole deal is ok. So it all makes sense to me that I wouldn’t trust myself when it comes to picking out another dude. But why it is so far reaching in so many aspects of my life? I’m understandably a little gun shy. When you’ve made a devastating mistake before, it makes you really scared to make another mistake and makes you really cautious in other aspects of your life. I mean yes you have survived something like that but you also know how terrible and debilitating that feels. It’s a place you don’t want to go back to, you want to avoid it at all costs and you do whatever you can to ensure your safety. It all makes sense to me. But when it comes to myself not trusting myself in other parts of my life I’m confused. Romantic relationships can be messy and emotional and to an extent I was ok with cutting that part of my emotional life off because I didn’t trust myself to make a good decision. I know I was needy and I need someone to prove to me that there was nothing wrong with me. That I wasn’t the one at fault for the cheating. That I was desirable and lovable and wanted. But I knew that I couldn’t put that on some other dude. That was never going to make that part of me ok. I had to heal that. And now I feel so grateful that I took that time because now I’m with an amazing guy who loves me more than I ever thought was possible. I gave him a chance because I was healed and I didn’t need him to love me or want me or make me happy. He just does and it is such an added perk to my life. But I digress. I need to learn to trust my gut and do what is best for me. I need to know that I have the intellect and abilities that I will be fine with the decisions I make. I have to be able to trust myself enough to know that I can make a decision and that I won’t always fail. And if I do happen to ‘fail’, if in my mind I made a mistake, I know that I have what it takes to make changes to pick myself back up and start over. I’m good at starting over. I know I can create the most beautiful life out of ashes. I have done it before and I can do it again. I’m strong like that. I can’t always believe I’m going to fail, that the worst will happen, that everything will fall apart. You know what? Sometimes it doesn’t. Actually most of the time it doesn’t, so why not embrace what could go right instead of what could go wrong? I need to be able to trust that I have done the right thing in my life and sometimes things will go my way. Sometimes you have to have faith in the universe that it will put you where you need to be and that things will work out. I forgot all about that. I was relying solely on myself and it was daunting. Sometimes timing, luck, karma, the universe, God, my guardian angel, will align and things will work out just like they should. After all the bad that has happened it makes it hard for me to believe that the good can also happen for me. It’s silly really. Life is all about that balance. Maybe it is time for that balance to be good for a while.

Love and not settling for something like it

“Love comes to those who still hope even though they've been disappointed, to those who still believe even though they've been betrayed, to those who still love even though they've been hurt before.”

I found this quote the other day and it totally spoke to me. For some reason, for the first time in a long time I feel like I could let someone in and let them love me. I feel like I could actually love someone else in a romantic way and that seems so huge to me. And I’m not all that terrified, which is even more alarming to me. I think it is because when everything first happened I thought I was done forever with guys. The hurt was too much to bear and I was never going to allow someone to do that to me again. But I suppose something changed. As I processed and looked at the world around me I realized that there are good people out there and true love is amazing and why can’t I have that in my life? You only know until you try and why not try? If it works out the pay off is huge. If not I don’t think anything can hurt as badly as I hurt before. And I survived that so my strength will see me through it again if it needs to. And its not that I think I could love this new guy specifically because I don’t know if I know enough about him yet to decide that or spent enough time with him yet but I think that I’m open to it in my future where ever that is. I finally feel like I have control over what happened in my past, I've made my peace with it, the part I played in it all and how I can make it different in the future. I know that there are no guarantees in love and I know that I can get hurt if it doesn’t work out but for whatever reason right now where I am in my life it feels worth it. And I’ll try and hope for the best.

Being with a new guy reminds me how much I like the feeling of having someone in my life that wants to be with me. Someone to wake up next to, to hold my hand, to snuggle with while watching a movie, to laugh with about stupid silly stuff. Someone to ask about my day, to kiss me passionately, to make me blush and feel excited. Someone who makes me feel like there was a part of me that needed a tiny spark lit to ignite this part of me that was dead. A part I could live without and still be perfectly happy and content but a part that can make life just a little bit sweeter with. A part that had died a long time ago and a part I never thought I’d have in my life again. A part I don’t even remembering having with my ex-husband. Maybe I never did. Maybe I didn’t care enough to then because he was just good enough. Maybe I did have that but it is all tainted through the painful lenses I now see our entire relationship through. I just don’t know.

To be honest I don’t know if I ever remember being loved. Maybe I haven’t been or maybe I didn’t let it in or maybe I don’t remember it because of the damage caused. I guess that damage can undo all the good intentions of the past, the few acts of mercy and love, the few times I felt like I was special to someone else. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t disposable and cared for. Not that any of that mattered or matters now. The truth is I didn’t love myself enough then to care. Whatever partner at the time had to prove so much to me and it wasn’t fair to them. They had to show me why I deserved to live, deserved their affection, they had to make up for so much that was never their fault. How is that fair to put on another human being? Not that it excuses their poor treatment of me but isn’t that just setting up for a disaster? For someone else to let you down? Someone else to break your heart?

Now that I have my distance, clarity, and the healing started it all becomes so clear to me where the path I was taking was going to lead. I see now how I would always be short of happiness because of who I shared my life with, because of how he treated me, and because of how little I loved myself. Because of the blatant disrespect I dealt with all the time and how I put up with it, making it acceptable. I could be happy within myself to a certain extent but he was always going to be there affecting it. I was silly to think he wouldn’t. I know that now without that in my life, I have never been happier. Now that I have my future to be anything I want it to be, the freeing feeling is amazing. I never want to go back to a relationship like that again and I won’t. I want one that makes me feel alive and beautiful and happy. But the great thing is I already feel all that within myself finally and the right guy will just enhance that. He’ll see what everyone else chose to overlook. He will see inside how amazing I am and the rest will be history.

My past hurt will not hinder my hearts ability to love. Whether that is romantic love, friendship love, whatever, it will not hold me back. I see where my fault was in relationships and I just want to love and be loved and be better next time. My heart is so big and I want to share that. That is my nature and that is something that is the very core of who I am. I am the empathetic, caring, loving, sweet girl. No divorce or death or hurt will change that. And I don’t want the past events of my life to make that impossible again. I read on a Spark blog from someone that had a quote about how you have to deal with the past to get on with your future and I believe that. You have to deal with the crap so you can move on. Not dwell in it, but sort it all out, make it all right in your mind and then move on. Don’t let it define you after that. So I’m doing that. I’m going to let love in when it finds me and not be so scared of someone loving me. If it happens it will be beautiful and I deserve that in my life. I deserve to be loved and I won’t settle for good enough ever again.