Granite and Glitter

I sobbed as I watched Letters to Juliet today. My heart splitting open, and all the things I had been holding poured out in oceans. I have been drawn to romance movies for a couple of weeks, and today they finally broke the granite cocoon I have been hiding in. Love, softness, and the fantasy of romance are all I have wanted to watch as of late. I don’t even know how to explain the space my heart has been in, or the darkness in which my soul has been hiding.

The thought of love used to excite me. It was the one hope that kept me searching for love in my own life. To find my bonded mate. To find a love that would last to my dying breath. This last relationship was more abusive than any I have had in 20 years -- an almost perfect mirror of my first marriage when I was 18. It hurt me in a way that I am still recovering from, and left me in a space I have never been in before. A space of never wanting love again, never wanting to be seen or touched, never wanting to have someone know my deepest fears or pains, never wanting someone to meet my children, and never wanting someone to hold my heart ever again. I don’t want the good memories with someone either. Those are the ones that hurt the most and haunt my mind. Memories of the last man I lived with for 3 years still cling to my passing thoughts. I wish they would just disappear. But I recognize that I cannot delete my past, and without it I would not be who I am today.

I am happy alone, at peace. I feel safe. In spite of all this, my Spirit team has relentlessly kept in their pushing of me to be uncomfortable. To do things that would help open me back up. I pushed back. I didn’t want any of it. But they found their way to open me, like they always do. My trust in people is deeply fractured, and I realize that the only way to start mending it is to actually be around people. More than that, the trust I have in myself is also fractured. I am noticing that it is becoming stronger the more I am around others. So I keep taking steps out of my home and into the world, so I can heal. I realize that I can’t do this alone -- I need others to get there -- and this is requiring a bravery from me that I never knew I had. It is also stabilizing the trust I have in myself as I set boundaries, listen to my intuition, and retrain my nervous system.

I still don’t want a romantic partnership, and I may never again. The thought in itself makes me feel physically sick. It is deep friendships I want to cultivate now, and peace in every aspect of my life. My mind still wonders why people do the things they do to each other, how someone can hurt someone in the same ways they have been hurt, knowing what was done to them. I am trying to see the light in the world again, and I can see it, even if it is as small as a glinting piece of glitter. I am moving towards it, with hope. At the end of the day, that is the one thing that truly keeps a person going. Hope. It has been so long since I have written anything, and feeling the keys under my fingers brings me great joy, even if the topic is a tad morose. I will keep writing, I will keep sharing, I will keep connecting because I know it is one of the only ways to heal.