Next steps will be tricky

Falling in love with people, ideas, concepts, can be very risky business and dealing with the aftermath of that can be truly devastating but what you do after is I believe the most important part. Do you walk around with regret, anger, resentments? Or do you muster up the courage to work through it and embark on your next adventure with humility? I am still in the midst of sorting that out but what I can share is that I am choosing the road with the most integrity because I will no longer compromise myself for anyone else again. Whether personally or professionally, my priority has to be to create stability and consistency for myself and my children. A mission I have been on for quite some time now.

My latest heartbreak is not one that involves love or romance. It didn’t involve boundary violations or even have unclear boundaries. I am not sure what it involved outside of unrealistic expectation and while I have spent the last few days really trying to process it, I have concluded nothing other than that yet. Blind faith is a concept I have lived by most of my life. I have followed blindly, loved blindly, and I usually was the one who would pivot when things got complicated or I got scared. I would follow blindly enough that when it came time for me to give up my comforts I would bail because taking THAT much risk was not something I was truly ever willing to do. My last relationship was a prime example of this horrific and harmful pattern and after we were no more, I vowed to never jump two feet first without knowing what I truly was able to commit too and perhaps that is even a wrong way to look at it but what I learned is that people get hurt when you are wishy washy on what you want in action even if you tell them, you love them over and over again. I vowed to be truly transparent with others and honest with myself because I never wanted to hurt anyone again how I had.

I have learned a lot about myself in relation to other people and I have been working extra hard on my triggers, my toxic patterns, and each day I continue to grow out of experiences and assessment of myself in those experiences. I know that I still have a lot of work to do and so I will continue to do the work even when it gets hard, even when it means I could lose more people and even when it forces me to look inside rather than place blame. My recent loss has triggered something in me and I haven’t sorted out if it is good or bad since I am still navigating the shock of it all but I am working really hard to ensure that I take the lesson here and not use it is a reason to harden towards people, to not trust people again, to not be willing to follow blindly and leap. Comfort is my jam, I mean I stayed at the same job for over a decade because it was consistent, I knew it well, and it was good to me even when I didn’t give it my all. It afforded me so many beautiful things and I don’t mean material, I mean human. My children were afforded to me as a result of that experience in my life and that is truly priceless.

I don’t know how much I believe in God or not. I have vacillated between believing in him and not but today I woke up feeling less in this latest nightmare and more in a realm of peace. I don’t know how long that will last or if it is just because I watched a beautiful sunrise this morning but in order to move forward, I need to walk into the beautiful light (metaphorically of course) and out of the darkness I have been in for the last few days. God, if he exists, or my spirit animal is challenging me, asking me to step out of my comfort and into the uncertain. Into the land of trusting in my abilities and knowledge to catapult my life forward. I am scared to death. Worried that I can’t do it. That I can’t trust that things will all work out. That I won’t be able to make it on my own or to be able to secure the future that I want and that prospect is terrifying. I spent so much of my life feeling terrified of losing people that taking chances to pursue my happiness was not one I ever really made. I chose comfort and what people felt worked best for me over my own passions and desires and if I am being completely transparent, I lost tremendously as a result of that belief. I have been searching for that passion inwardly but it isn’t the same as what I felt not that long ago.

I don’t know if I will ever find that level of passion again in another person. I do hope that I will continue to foster the passion I have to offer the people with which I have the privilege of being able to work with and learn from. My clients, colleagues I have had the opportunity to collaborate with and people who cross my path and touch my life whether directly or indirectly. Life is about taking it all in. And so much of my life recently has been learning how to do that outside the lens of regret. I want to see life as beautiful because it is short and fleeting. Each day is not guaranteed and no matter how you feel about something or someone if they don’t feel the same way about you then the relationship can’t work doesn’t matter how passionate you are about their mission or not. Life is about lessons and learning what to do with those lessons in the face of utter terror of what the future holds.

You see a person’s truest colors when you no longer serve a purpose in their life. They will honor your relationship one minute and will discard it once they have received from it what they wanted or needed. That is life at times, that is human nature, good or bad. I choose to continue to see the good where none may continue to exist. I truly believe everyone is inherently good. I will continue to assume people have positive intent even if I keep getting burned and I will continue to evaluate myself in each and every single situation to know how I can show up better and be better. I am no longer in the land of absolution. I am in the land of analysis and self-awareness even if at times it is hard to accept what I have uncovered about me. Rather than let it fester and do nothing with it, I am choosing to grow, learn, evolve, and show up better each time and every time.