"Love me to the moon and back"

I have been reading a lot lately. Seeking answers within the words of others to help guide me. To help me figure ME out when I feel so often that I am an impossible puzzle with a wide range of missing pieces. I have had a love hate relationship with reading my entire life. I was never the reader who enjoyed reading school assignments until perhaps I reached my graduate program, but I wasn’t the pleasure reader either. I recall two books that gave me the utmost pleasure to read that brings back significant memories, from lord knows how many years ago, but they were The Celestine Prophecy and The DaVinci Code. Both James Redfield and Dan Brown are exquisite authors in the way that they write and their ability to tell stories. They captivate the reader to continue to share their journey uninterrupted and fully immersed. I will admit that Dan Brown did not keep me engaged enough past Angels and Demons, but I truly developed a new passion for reading with these two authors.

I find my reading selections a lot more “self-helpy” these days. My need to continue my journey for self-discovery has me reading books like Attached by Amir Levine, The Human Magnet Syndrome by Ross Rosenberg, The High Conflict Couple by Alan E. Fruzzetti, The Way of Integrity by Martha Beck, and so many more. I have touched each of those books with the hope that they will provide me the road map I need to find happiness, acceptance, coping skills, but most importantly a better understanding of myself and the why’s behind my patterns and behaviors. I want so desperately to find inner peace, to find the happiness I seek, to wake up every day and find the sunshine even when its raining like it is today. Sure, I can find the beauty in things, today I am alive, I woke up to snuggle my little girl, I will be spending the day with my children discovering them and learning them as they continue to change day to day. But I must be willing to admit that within those extremely important realizations, I am feeling hopeless and defeated and I am struggling to reconcile that. How can I recognize the beauty and still feel so profoundly sad?

The last couple weeks, I had a newfound faith. I had developed a profound belief that things are in fact meant to be. I had lost all hope in that belief, but I slowly had my faith restored and in the blink of an eye, that faith is lost again. One could argue that the only person I have lost faith in is myself and that I am focusing too much on outside stimulus rather than what I provide for myself in the way of self-love and self-acceptance, but I will not allow anyone to diminish my belief in how motivating love is and how much it does provide us with the courage and the strength to keep going. Love for our children, love for our careers, love for the people we love all of it provides us much needed strength to continue to evolve ourselves. Take that away, and while you will continue to move forward, the way to get there gets a lot more challenging because the absence of love makes it difficult to move forward.

I am afraid to admit this, but I awaken when I love and feel loved. It brings out in me the most motivated, passionate sides. The stakes become higher when you allow your heart to drive you forward. There is a risk in loving someone or being loved by someone because you don’t ever know when that love will stop existing. So, it is profoundly important to find love within yourself so that when the external love stops, you can still love yourself. Seeking validation from someone else rather than finding it within sets you up to feel “not good enough”, to feel “inadequate”, to feel like you aren’t accepted for who you are and where you are. Self-love at least cushions the pain of that love leaving because it allows you the ability to keep on loving yourself. On the flip side of this, I am an anxious/avoidant so I also have the potential to run away from love, from the people that show me that love can be good and wholesome and that makes this even more difficult.

There is an emptiness this morning. A void that wasn’t there when I woke up yesterday. It’s a void that I felt for months, that had started to fill up with hope and belief and today it is empty, and I am sad. The weather I am sure has something to do with it. This weather isn’t good for me. It truly depresses me, sinks me, suffocates me, so I hope that one day I can see the true beauty that the rain possesses. I know deep down that the rain is as much a part of life’s beauty as the sun but for me the rain represents an awareness that I still have a lot of work to do to find acceptance and love for myself outside of anyone or anything. That while love is motivating and gives me the necessary life force to move forward with dreams and goals, that I can do that for myself. I am starting to realize that I am the only person that I can rely on. I am blessed with beautiful friendships, with incredible people who love me and accept me but in the end, the truest relationship I will ever have is with myself. If I allow myself to abandon myself every time that I lose hope or faith, I am not loving myself well.

Romance, passion, intimacy, all those desirable life forces can be found within. They can be provided to us by us and that guarantees their permanence in our lives. We cannot take those things away from people when they are firmly a part of them, when they are imbedded in each of their cells. We can only take away from people what they don’t provide for themselves. It’s a cold, hard, realization but it is at least an honest one. Two weeks ago, I had lost all hope and faith and it was restored by an act, I dare not even diminish it by saying it was a simple act because it was not, it was a life altering act, that was thought out and carefully considered. As a result of that act, a part of me opened that had been lost, today I am struggling to not close myself off, to not recoil and retreat. To not see the end but rather the beginning. So, today I chose to write, to focus on loving myself, to watch my children, to sit in my pajamas in bed rather than do “something” to stop my mind from reeling in discomfort. I am taking care of myself believe it or not. Even in this unpleasant mood I am loving myself well.

“Love you to the moon and back” I will remind myself of this each time I am at risk for not loving myself well. Today may not be my best day but it is a day that I was not guaranteed, and I will not take it for granted. I will appreciate its beauty even when I struggle to see it and I will channel that beauty to leap forward when all else seems impossible. I deserve that much commitment to myself, not just today when I am feeling shitty but every single day that I get to wake up and try again.