I Am All I Ever Wanted...

Sigh.  This hits home today.  I am all I have ever wanted, and funny enough, since I was always leaving myself, abandoning myself, sacrificing myself, I was the absolute last person to show up for me. Which left me always wanting more of me, for me.  But I kept giving her away over and over again to inhospitable hosts, people who did not value me, or really even care about me. 

I was talking with a friend yesterday and she commented about her last relationship, “I don’t think he even liked me...”  And I said, “that is EXACTLY how I felt about my last relationship!”  She almost married that guy and the guy to which I am referring, asked me twice, I didn’t answer thereby giving an answer.

How can two smart, talented, educated women be in a committed long term relationship with a man that they both feel doesn’t even like them?  It is far easier than it sounds.

I will not speak for her, but for me, he always seemed to need me but then resent me for it.  And I needed to feel needed, it wasn’t really the wanting I wanted, but needing came in a close second.  And he was sweet just enough to keep me coming back for more.  The delivery of love adjacent feelings was on a slow drip and it was just enough to keep me hooked and waiting for the next delivery...

And this was after a protracted period of time (6 months) where he loved bombed me and showed up as the “perfect” boyfriend. Attending to me, listening to me, loving on me, bringing me little gifts and flowers, making me dinner.  Then quite suddenly and cruelly, coincidentally right after I agreed to let him move in (his idea, not mine) everything changed.  The tables turned and now I was in some sort of servant/master situation where all he wanted was space and we stopped talking about me completely.  Everything I did revolved around him.  All the sweetness and loving evaporated overnight and all my energy was trained upon him and attempting to make him turn sweet again, like he was in the beginning (Thanks Taylor).

But he never did. It just got worse.  So much worse.  I threw him out a couple of times.  Angry and hurt over his callous indifference to anything that was occurring in my life.  Upset by the financial abuse he was leveling at me.  I was duped and now lived in a constant state of delusion.  It was awful.  But my wound was reopened and I was sure that if I could just sort this relationship out, I would be fine.  And of course, I would not be fine for quite some time after I finally kicked him to the curb and blocked him.

I have had to learn to heal myself, I have had to learn that actually all I have ever wanted was me.  And my inability to show up for myself repeatedly was the thing that made all of my attempts at partnership fall apart.  Over and over.  I was so willing to give myself away that I had no value, to me or anyone else.  I just kept trying to sacrifice myself into a happy union.  It was totally lost on me, until it wasn’t.

In the wake of him, I had a lot of healing to do.  And I began, a long stint of just learning how to show up for myself.  To be there for me. To date me.  And I am happy to report, I am good all alone. I am not throwing myself away anymore, into situationships and to men that have no capacity to value what I have to offer.  I now value me, and that has made all the difference.

I also, too, have changed what I want.  I can see that what I default to with men is off.  I have likely missed a great number of great men because I was still leading with the wound.  And so long as the wound was picking, I was going to get the same fucking guy every single time.  And you might ask why that guy?  Because he was safe!  I could want him all I wanted, but he was never, ever going to turn around and be real. He was always going to forever be a fantom and that was so much safer than a real guy who was present.  I have always picked the unsafe man because there was so much safety in that.  I didn’t have to be real or vulnerable or stick around to work things out, he would inevitably leave or force me to leave and so the pattern would repeat.  And while I didn’t love the pattern, it was all I could do because I refused to heal that which was quite broken in me.

Fuck, I see that so very clearly now.

But something wonderful happens when you keep dating the same guy who doesn’t even like you, you come to value those that do.  I mean really value.  Like a lot.  And this only happens because you have learned, through all the lack of love, care and concern you have chosen for yourself, that the ultimate choice has to be you.  That you are all you have ever wanted, and so until you learned to give of yourself, to yourself, your dating choices will forever be marred, disjointed, disliked, and bad.  But, if you choose you, so much over others, one day will come when you are able to choose another.  Not to supplant yourself with yourself, or to substitute or to distract you from yourself, but to augment it.  Another comes along and you, having worked through the broken shards of you, you have reassembled a new whole, one that can be shared, given, offered and loved to another person who can see all the value in the reclamation of your soul and you begin a new journey where you are all you have ever wanted, and now you have that.  Everyday.  All the time, and in as much as this is true, you are now free to want someone else...not because you have to, or need to but because you have healed to the point where another is not an escape, a rescue, a distraction, a mistake, a misplaced sense of trust, but a higher evolution of your living, breathing, loving self...

And this really just happens once you have walked for years in the desert of your making.  Finally, realizing you are the oasis you have always craved.  And that another is not a reward for work done, but instead, an opportunity to share all that you have learned, gleaned, lived, and loved with another soul who has much of the same, yet different journey to offer and create with you.  And so you begin, a new iteration of living, loving and evolving, two souls intertwined, but always whole, the combination of two whole people, living in harmony, well, at least that is what I think happens next...I am gonna have to let you know.

Again, still?

I am gonna have to let you know about that too...