Never been held in anyone's arms. When you've never been moved it's really hard to move on....

Here I am again. Waiting way too long to get all the feelings from my brain to the outside world. 

I say "here i am again" like I even know where I am. To be honest, I am completely lost. And to be even more honest, I think i have been for quite some time. Forever even.

I have been occupying this space since I can remember. Battling my overwhelming bouts of sadness as they come and go. 

And for so long I thought i had found peace. Found stillness in love. And then that love turned. And I began to feel like I once did. And i tried so desperately to rationalize the pain. To still the swirling pain that was happening inside me. I thought if i could help myself, I could heal and be okay with the treatment, the despair that was being caused to me. 

But I realize now, I sacrificed so much. It hurt so much. But here i am, nowhere, but on the other side of this situation with a different clarity. I've said, falling in love was hard. And i hurt because I fell everyday. Some days into love and some days into total despair. I thought the sadness was all my own. That i was void of normal feelings. That I hurt because I couldn't just take what was given to me due to my upbringing. That everything I had been through up until those moments made me always crave more, crave things that didn't exist.

BUT on this side, I see with brand new eyes. I see a man who could't give me the things i needed. Who refused to hear me, to listen. Who thought i was too much. And I had always wondered in those moments, how to i fix me, how do i become enough. Because in my head, love, blinding all consuming love, should have been enough to patch the holes in me. And when it wasn't enough, i figured the damage was all me. I abandoned the thought that someone could hold me so tightly, the spaces that should have bee filled with love all along that have never been touched, i felt some semblance of wholeness. I had to abandon this idea. Because that meant he was failing me. And that was something i could not fix. If it was me and my failure, i could work forever towards the fixing of it, even if that journey was a lonely one. 

because how could a love like that be wrong. How could something that once made me feel like i could fly suddenly become so sad, so restrictive. Instead of setting me free i was confined to boundaries, Boundaries I couldn't maintain if i tried. And holy shit did i try. Every. Single. Day. But it was never enough. Never.

So I'm sitting here. Months after, remembering all my pain. Remembering all that i had to sacrifice to attempt to be happy within those boundaries. Realizing so many things with such clarity and unsure how to move forward. These realizations consume me at times. Turn me against the healthy version of myself that still exists somewhere deep inside. I cannot access those parts yet, they're buried somewhere underneath all this pain. But i know the exists because sometimes, in some moments, i feel them shine through.

Some of the most intense realizations i have had recently are very much intertwined in the things i had experienced with me. And they are the culmination of all my worst fears and something that i bring with me into my new life. They are the reason i have these feelings to begin with. They are feelings i have shared so rarely with the outside world that i think if i kept them hidden i would never have to face them. To speak them, to write them is to give them life. Something I'm not entirely sure how to deal with once they are my reality. 

Truth is.....

I have never felt real love. I have never known the warmth of love or of kindness of caring or the strength of support. I'm not sure I know what it feels like to be hugged when worried or upset and told everything will work out. because those that have raised me probably didn't have the mental strength to say those words to me, in fear that they weren't true because of their own doubts and insecurities. I've never been allowed to be myself or explore parts of myself i may have hidden. These things were dirty and forbidden in my household. I was never taught to express myself or speak my mind or discuss opinions. I was told what my opinions were. There was no allowance of creativity, expression, love or kindness; all of which could have been mistaken as weakness to the outside world as per my caregivers. I wasn't given freedom, i was given a room with a view, and allowed to watch others fly.

And for these reasons i think that's why i ran into his arms, full speed. He was everything i was never able to be. And for twenty some odd years i was caged, held down by the confines of my past. But his love brought me to life. And filled me with more in months than i had ever felt in decades. But slowly, I realized his values were not my own. And the ghosts of my past still haunted. And in the place where he wanted a quiet wife, existed a damaged woman with so much love to give who in turn, needed extra care and attention. Something that he must have never thought he signed up for. 

And i began to hate myself. For where i was heading.Where i was taking us. Thinking that this must all be my fault. That, as the broken party, i should work extra hard to pull myself together. Because that is what you do. But no matter what i did, nothing helped. I felt my pieces moving further and further apart, feeling myself rip open into a million different pieces, fragmenting. Becoming everything and nothing all at once.Finding myself slipping away. Feeling the vastness of the void. Failing to put myself together, failing to fill the void. Thinking that this was all my failure. That i wasn't able to find the strength to be whole enough for him. Torturing myself, tormenting my soul trying to figure out where i failed.

It is only now, here, that i have found some clarity.

I no longer want to entirely blame myself. because although i was not whole, i do not feel the burden of pulling myself together should have rested solely on me. These pieces of myself that needed to be pulled together, those voids were not my fault. They were the failure of all of those who were to love me. And all of those people after them were just people who didn't have the right glue. 

And the biggest, most devastating, realization is he didn't either. and i spent so much time trying to figure that out. and that try as i might, love as i did, as i did so many other people before him in so many other ways, TRUST as i did that this was the last person i would have to give myself to, wishing it wasn't enough to heal. It wasn't. Because, at the end of it, the glue was love. It was attention. It was holding me when I was sad. It was loving me when I was in any mood. It was taking care of me on days that were good and days that weren't. It was truly loving me better or worse, not just when I was happy self. And no one has ever loved me like that before. No one has loved all my parts. Not even me.

And here is where I begin.

After 28 years. Learning how to love and accept all my parts.

And learning how, after all this time, to let someone close enough to do the same, and hoping they don't hurt me like all the others.