Tues. 1/26/21
Aloha! Do you, too, think that’s a beautiful greeting? What’s a word that helps you to feel welcomed?
As mentioned in previous posts, I am getting in touch with my emotions on increasingly deeper levels. It’s been quite a wild ride! The ‘pendulum effect’ has been in full swing (pun intended:)) so emotions can go from one extreme to another. As I become more accustomed to them, the width of the arc will lessen until they’re more like gentler waves instead of tsunamis. (Does that make sense?) I’ve been becoming so sensitized lately that it seems like everything effects me in one way or another. Even listening to music, which was the one thing I’ve allowed myself to love and had been my security blanket, has become an emotional minefield. A couple songs that didn’t use to bother me became problems several years ago once I started associating them with certain traumatic events, but I still loved pretty much everything else. Lately I’m getting to the point that during the more emotional times, when listening to the radio would have once soothed me, now so many random songs can evoke unpleasant memories or even longing for things I haven’t experienced yet, like fun, adventurous exploits and positive romantic love. Even songs I passionately adored since the first time I heard them can now be triggers. For example, “Don’t Me You Love Me“ by Night Ranger can cause a heart twisting reaction these days and yet I had previously passionately adored that song since it’s release in 1983. I’d practically go into ecstasy whenever they played in concert. But now that I know WHY I loved it so – between hating to hear ‘I love you’ from my mother (see post ‘Real love’ dated 10/21/20) and believing until recently that love was crushing and painful and I didn’t deserve even that, whenever I hear that song it reminds me of too much b.s. and I turn it off. At times I don’t even want to listen to music when I’m emotional because so many songs are causing a deeper pain instead of expression. Thankfully, when I’m in a better heart space I can still get stupidly geeked on it, turning up the radio and singing too loud and head bopping or banging to pretty much anything. Can’t wait to get back to consistently loving music the way it deserves to be! 🙂
A couple of years ago when I was at Milestones a therapist explained a significant reason why I was holding myself back from feeling real love. It’s because once I begin to experience it then I will also have to grieve the pain of the God-awful perception of what I thought love was for so long, and all I allowed to happen +/or didn’t experience in that ignorance. I understood what she was saying but didn’t think it would be that big an issue.
Oh, silly me.
This past weekend I spent some time with one of my prayer warrior friends I hadn’t seen for a while and then with my soul sisters after not having been together as a group since last fall. We all had a fun time together, laughing and telling each other we loved each other and all that. Then before I even got home my soul was weeping. Took a while (and too many potato chips and other crap food ingested) before it occurred to me, I was mourning the love I never received from family and others, and all the good I’ve rejected because I just didn’t know what it was or what I deserved. I’m still struggling with the notion that I deserve genuine care and am having a hard time receiving it. I’m amazed at how deep and persistent that wound of self rejection goes. And I see how, in the past, even though I never felt those self & love rejecting feelings, they were still driving my psyche. After any seemingly positive social interaction I would obsess about it for hours or even days. I’d get depressed, eat and sleep too much, and negate anything that I initially thought was good as I’d try to figure out what I probably did that must’ve ticked them off since I’m barely tolerable (or so I thought). That’s a large part of the reason I do so much on my own – it’s mentally exhausting to be constantly denigrating myself before, during and after social interactions. Now that I can sense where all the negative self talk stems from it can be acknowledged, and healed.
As far as romantic love is concerned, until this last year or so I never really thought it was a big deal. I honestly believed people who grieved deeply over broken relationships were making too big a deal out of it. Before I got married I rarely dated in spite of being asked out frequently. Friends convinced me to start dating and I did go out with several guys but realized there was a problem with the way I was relating to them so I quit, until I met my ex-husband. Yikes! (That will be explored in a later post.) After God got me out of that mess I was just grateful it was over and thought that was the end of it. I’ve just recently started to actually feel the emotional effects of that situation – the grief from letting myself get involved and believing I deserved to be treated that way, the undiagnosed P.T.S.D. from childhood that was compounded by it, and the after effects I live with because I just didn’t ‘get it’ in time to stop the train wreck. I truly believed that in the over all scheme of things, the marriage wasn’t that important, but it was, and I’m finally dealing with that, too. And I’m understanding why people do feel deep loss when relationships end. I know I never actually loved the ex, and it still f*ing hurts. Can only imagine what it’s like to lose someone you truly care about and actually wanted to have a lifelong relationship with because of love, not fear, compulsion or resignation.
I hope and pray you get to experience the wonder of real love in all it’s forms.
Thank you to YOU, who took the time to read this.
See you Friday?
Today’s song is one that always reminds me “What A Wonderful World” this really is, how beautifully God created it, about how the good still outweighs the bad. And it’s gotta be Satchmo’s version! (What a great smile that dude had!)
"What A Wonderful World" I see trees of green Red roses too I see them bloom For me and you And I think to myself What a wonderful world I see skies of blue And clouds of white The bright blessed day The dark sacred night And I think to myself What a wonderful world The colors of the rainbow So pretty in the sky Are also on the faces Of people going by I see friends shaking hands Saying, "How do you do?" They're really saying "I love you" I hear babies cry I watch them grow They'll learn much more Than I'll never know And I think to myself What a wonderful world Yes, I think to myself What a wonderful world Oh yeah - c. Written by Bob Thiele & George David Weiss
