More than me.
I am the one that has continuously and repeatedly broken my own heart. I have done this by making poor choices in my desired mate, insisting that someone who shows up poorly will change, convincing myself that my intended person can and will help me heal, when evidence abounds that they are not capable or willing.
I was walking on the beach on Sunday with the dog. Alone. It was a glorious day. The sun was hot and the water warm by California standards. It was marvelous. I wandered the beach for hours, picking up sea glass and just being present...well, as present as I can be. Of course my mind wandered, to my relationship just past, and then to all the others that didn’t work out. The ones that I tried so hard for and the ones that I didn’t. I was mired in the past and all the heartbreak that finds it home there.
Then out of nowhere, the thought landed in the center of my mind - NO ONE HAS BROKEN YOUR HEART MORE THAN YOU...
I am not gonna lie - it was a moment. I had to sit down. It was a crushing realization. That while it has been easy to recount all the tales of woe where HE or HIM played the staring role of heartbreaker, in reality HE/HIM was only playing the role that I assigned in the first place. It was me all along. Insisting that men who did not have what I needed or wanted rise to the occasion of loving me. And then the supreme disappointment when they failed to deliver, repeatedly.
Then the awful reality where I realize that it is never going to work, and I am heartbroken and so are they.
On the beach on Sunday, I saw all too clearly, that it has been my stubborn refusal to see what is really there. To accept the limitations and see the warning signs in the beginning. It is me that insists that this time it will be different with a man who is showing me all indicators that it will not be different this time, well, maybe it will be worse...and that is different.
I don’t know if you have ever had an experience when you realized that all the pain and suffering you were experiencing was being caused my your own stubborn refusal to accept the reality you lived in, and what was driving your delusions, but I will share with you mine. It was a crushing blow followed immediately by an intense wave of relief.
IT HAS BEEN ME THE WHOLE FUCKING TIME!
All of the heartbreak I have experienced (which is less than some and more than some others) has been because of one central, large defect of mine. Well, actually several defects who tend to make a trifecta of unhappiness for all concerned.
Emotional Unavailability - unhealed trauma
Immaturity - early onset alcoholism
Self centered will - lack of faith
Yep it is those three in conjunction with each other that have led me to this place where I felt so stymied by my own lack of ability to connect. And on the beach on Sunday, I came to a place of peace and understanding about why and how and, perhaps more importantly, what to do about these three ruling me.
I think we have to be brave enough to break our own hearts. And that is finally what happened for me on Sunday. I saw my own actions and their results and I saw that it was me who was causing all this melancholy and disconnection. Not them. Me.
I would love to be able to outline here what is to come next but I haven’t a clue. I just know that I am done manufacturing my own love misery. I am done dating people who are not right for me, and I am done attempting to love when I really have no idea what I am doing.
On Sunday, I saw the stark clarity of what I was doing and why. And I wish that I had a plan, but I don’t. For now, I think I just need to feel this heartbreak - the current one and the one I delivered to myself with the realization that I am the cause of all that has happened thus far. My insistence that things be a certain way, has prevented anything else from happening. But like all self directed will - it never seems to pan out in the end. That thing that you thought was so perfect never stays that way. And for me, I know now that I knew it all along really. I just didn’t want to accept it. And I have a mighty will that I seem to use for all the wrong reasons and purposes.
I have experienced that it does that a great deal of valor to break your own heart...and I would like to point out that it also takes and incredible amount of self acceptance to realize that all the heartbreak you have assigned to others, was actually you all along...
