Life Update: The Moving On Part…

What are you afraid of? These spooky Halloween vibes got me thinking about fear…

When it comes to Halloween, and ghosts, and horror movies, I’m a pretty tough scare.

But I am not a fearless person.

No, as much as I would like to say I am, the real truth of the matter is that I am far from fearless. And if I’m being really honest, I would say that I’ve spent most of my life living in fear and that most of the decisions I have made in my life have been completely, and embarrassingly influenced by fear…

Fear of judgment; fear of scrutiny; fear of failure; fear of rejection; fear of change; fear of uncertainty; fear of not being enough; Fear of all of the negative “what if’s”that I can overthink to death…

Last year I shared the story of my breakup with my fiance and partner of almost 12 years. I opened up about the pain I was facing in the wake of losing that part of my heart, and all the fears I had about the uncertainty of a future that was unplanned.

I shared a little bit about my healing process, and how I slowly but surely let go and found my spark again. How I found blissful happiness in the new chapter of my life that I had once been so terrified of. I opened up about my lack of desire to date and my new found contentedness with singlehood.

Something I haven’t talked about yet – but something that I want to share – is the part that I am currently living and struggling with. The part that has me wrestling with a handful of new fears, I didn’t even know I had…

The moving on part…

Truth; this is the part that I thought I would struggle the least with. I thought if a special person stumbled into my life, it would just be easy to fall into them… I mean it was as simple as breathing the last time, so why wouldn’t it be this time, right?

Well, because of heartbreak… that’s why.

It took someone new – someone really special – to bring to the surface all of the new fears lurking in the dark corners of my mind. To make me aware of all the walls I had unconsciously constructed in the last year to protect myself from the possibility of more hurt.

So yeah, spoiler alert… Moving on isn’t simple.

Well, at least, for me, it wasn’t. For me, it has been scary. Like realllly effing scary, because – I’ll say it again – I am not a fearless person. If the risk is too high, my first reaction is to run in the opposite direction; to seek comfort in familiarity and what I know to be safe; to not even try so that I don’t have to face the possibility of failure, or rather in my current case, heartbreak.

So when the day came that he stumbled into my life… the fear was real. So real, that my reaction to self protect came instantly – almost unbeknownst to me…

The feeling wonderful and yet utterly unsettling at the exact same time. He was different, and I knew it from the moment I met him. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but I remember thinking to myself… This guy is special. He’s going to mean a lot to you.

It was just that unexplainable feeling… that little something extra that you can’t really describe. Something very real between us, and with that came the fear. The very real fear about the uncertainty of what we could mean to each other and how that also meant that somebody could get hurt…

If you had asked me two years ago “what is one thing in life that you aren’t afraid of?” I would have smiled and told you it was falling in love. Call me young and nieve… but at the time, falling into that special someone and loving them with wreckless abandon was possibly the easiest thing that I ever did.

I used to think that if there was one thing in life I was sure about, it was love. But after that 12 year relationship with the person whom I had always thought I would be spending the rest of my life with came to a screeching halt – let’s just say, calling myself fearless when it came to matters of the heart is no longer something I can take ownership of.

Because truth is, at the time I was broken; I was devastated; breaking up wasn’t the plan – It was traumatic and unexpected. It was so much loss in so little time…

It was the loss of my best friend; my partner; my teammate; my confidant; It was the loss of our relationship; It was the loss of the home we built together and all of the dreams we had for our future; it was the loss of the sense of security in life that came with our plans; And for me more than anything it was the loss of the memories we shared together – not because they were gone, but because they were still there. They were so vivid and so painful in all their beauty. But somehow after we broke up, I felt like they no longer belonged to me – like the life we had shared together wasn’t even real. I felt like all those happy memories were something I wasn’t allowed to take ownership of anymore…

One minute we were together, and the next I was alone… and to be honest, I had no idea how to be whole on my own.

The uncertainty of my future was terrifying and I absolutely was crippled by it.

The failure of our relationship ate me up inside; it tortured me. I felt completely responsible for the downfall of our relationship and for a very long time, I couldn’t forgive myself for letting my fiance and I’s relationship fall apart. Mostly because I didn’t want to forgive myself. I felt like I had failed. Like if I had just been a better partner in every possible way, that things would have turned out different.

I didn’t think I deserved to be loved.

In a way, I was punishing myself. Punishing myself because I thought I deserved it. Avoiding anyone who might want to get close to me because I thought that I didn’t deserve their affection – that even if they thought they wanted to be, soon enough they would realize that they didn’t really want to be in my life. I truly believed that so much that I couldn’t even fathom the idea of somebody ever wanting to love me.

So instead of healing that part of myself, I just left it untouched. I slowly picked up the pieces of my broken heart and managed to mend it back together enough to be happy and feel whole in just myself. I got to a place where I no longer let the guilt consume my everyday. But because I still felt responsible, I never really wanted to “forgive myself.”

No, getting on a path to finally let go of that guilt … that didn’t happen until later – until a couple of months ago actually.

Figuring out how to make peace with my relationship ending and all the things that I desperately wished I could go back and change seemed impossible to me. I felt such intense shame and regret for all the moments where I let myself become the worst version of myself that I felt like I should always have to carry that with me. And oddly, I was okay with that. I was okay with carrying the weight of that because like I said, I thought I deserved it.

But then he came along…

Oddly to me, he wanted to be close to me and strangely, he didn’t seem to agree at all with the life sentence of guilt I had placed upon myself. And even stranger, he was patient enough to wait for me to come to a place where I could see his point of view.

Being in his presence allowed me to realize that in order to let him love me and to let myself truly love him… I needed to feel worthy of love; I needed to find that place within myself where I felt worthy enough to stop letting all of the things from my past that I cannot change haunt me for the rest of my life.

So I slowly stopped letting the guilt and the blame punish me; Slowly stopped letting it dictate whether or not I was allowed to be happy again… I slowly forgave myself; slowly made peace with the fact that I am not perfect; slowly started to realize that he didn’t need or want me to be – because he loved me for all of me…

It wasn’t easy for me to get to this peaceful place; this place where I finally feel healed enough to grant myself the courtesy of fully living again. The place where I feel worthy of love…But somehow I made it here.

But still, there is fear because… where do I go from here?

How do I re-learn how to love without fear? Without the fear of falling in love or making the same mistakes or worst of all, the fear of getting hurt again…

No, I am not fearless in this whole moving on part… But I am compelled to live through the fear – to keep moving forward in spite of it.

Because, how can we ever fully love someone if we don’t push through that fear? If we don’t trust enough to let our guard down; If we don’t allow ourselves to be vulnerable; If we don’t have faith…

Logically I know these things – I know what I need to do to love and be loved… But it’s not always easy.

Because what if it doesn’t work out?

This is my biggest fear right now, and it’s what makes me want to run away. When I realized I was developing true, deep feelings for someone again… that’s when it got really scary. And it makes the whole “loving with reckless abandon” part seem impossible.

I am aware that I am letting the fear hold me back, and yet I still have not found it simple or easy to be vulnerable after heartbreak. I mean, there have been those initial moments where it feels easy – moments where loving him has made more sense than anything in my life else ever has…

But that’s when the real fear sets in…

The idea that “this is too good to be true.” and then I start to spiral. I think things like… “don’t let yourself fall too hard” or “don’t let yourself enjoy his company too much, because one day when it isn’t there, that will just make it harder…” , “Remember to stay independent of him”. “Only let yourself love him just enough so that when he’s gone it won’t hurt too much…”

And then I start to think…

Wouldn’t everything just be better if I was on my own?

Because I’ll catch myself being extremely emotionally unavailable; catch myself avoiding intimacy out of fear. And then I feel selfish. And broken. And damaged. And like I shouldn’t be in a relationship. Because how unfair is it for me to put someone through the ups and downs of my emotional unavailability?

I think to myself it’s not fair. And I’m not mentally capable of being in a relationship – that I’m not ready to be in a relationship…

But then I wonder… Will I ever be ready? Or will pushing through the fear be what takes me to the next chapter? To the next level of happiness?

Everyone told me that I had made it through the worst of breaking up; that every day it would just get easier and easier – better and better. And they were right. That did happen. I felt amazing in my single-hood; amazing in my own skin. For the first time in my life, I felt whole and complete in just myself. I had finally found a ray of confidence and a peace inside of me that had never been there before.

I had become so content and comfortable living in this new space of me, that I didn’t feel the need or even really want for a relationship. It was a new way of picturing my life, but I was 100% content with the thought that there might never be anyone else. Completely and utterly happy with the idea of a future of singlehood and maybe never sharing love with someone again.

Somehow in the span of a year, being single had gone from being terrifying to being easy – from being unbearable to being my preferred choice. I didn’t even want to date anymore. I was so over it. I was complete and happy as I was and I realized that I didn’t need anyone beyond myself to keep it that way.

What I didn’t realize was that I also let that thinking become something of a safety net. I had built up a fortress of walls to protect me from getting hurt again and not dating meant stability and complete control over the life I had built; it meant no possibility of uncertainty or heartbreak.

The funny thing is, self-protection and self-sabotage can sometimes go hand in hand.

I know you don’t dive into a relationship thinking that it’s not going to work out… but these are the exact thoughts I find my mind defaulting to. I can’t help but go straight to the worst-case scenario, and let my mind circle round and round with all of the “what if’s”…

Because, what if I do let you in?…

What if I allow myself to be loved by you? What if I feel safe with you? What if we share things never to be shared with anyone else? What if it’s made up of one a kind moments that make your heart pound? What if we grow together? What if we are strong apart, but even stronger together? What if it’s wonderful? What if I’m happy? What if it’s easy, and hard all at the same time? What if I let myself fall in love with you? What if it’s scary once in a lifetime kind of magical? What if it is all of those wonderful things?

I mean on the one hand, that would be pretty amazing, wouldn’t it? But then I can’t help but think about the other side…

What if it doesn’t work out? What if I lose you too… ? What if because we are together, I forget how to stand on my own? What if my heart breaks again? What if this time I can’t put it back together…

It’s strange being aware that fear is holding you back from joy and yet you feel powerless to do anything about it. It’s unsettling to know that you don’t want to live your life like that, but at the same time, you feel too crippled by the fear to move through it. So you don’t – you just accept it, and let it take you for a ride that you don’t really want to be on, but you do it anyway because all the “what ifs” just don’t feel worth it.

So my reaction is to run. Run as fast as I can because logically being alone is a hell of a lot easier than having to deal with the torture of potential heartbreak again… Right?

But then he stumbled upon my fortress…

Someone kind and completely unexpected. He stood in front of walls I didn’t realize I had built and tried to get to know me through the cracks in my walls. It was natural and easy. It was wonderful.

Then one day he kindly asked if I might open the door to my fortress…and just like a reflex, I told him no – Like the hardest of no’s. Not because I didn’t truly want to let him in… but because I was too scared to.

I was actually letting fear steer me in the safest direction – the direction with no risk of heartbreak, but also the direction with no reward…

It took some time, but eventually, I realized that I have a choice…

Fearless I am not – but I do have the power to choose whether or not I live through my fears. I have the choice to let the fear control me or to use it to fuel my fire; use it to propel me to greater places, because ll I know is this… “it’s better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all…”

It might be cliche to say, but I really do believe that.

All I know is that someone special came along – someone with the patience and understanding not to break down my walls, but to instead stand by my side and show me that it was safe for me to take them down one by one when I was ready.

All I know is that when I confessed to that someone that my “baggage was pretty heavy”, they told me that was okay because would help me carry it.

All I know is, in spite of the fear, I gave them the chance to prove that promise.

I am constantly second guessing myself. Constantly wondering if I made the right choice…

All I know is, the day I let him in…

I did something right that day.