I'm a free bitch baby
When I lit this love candle my friend gave me, my intentions were certainly not to bring about a blast from my romantic past. Because fuck my romantic past! I’m not tryin to hear any of that noise anymore. The truth is I have been pretty insecure in all my relationships so none of them led to me being very happy.
I am attracted to narcissists. According to psychological
studies, “highly sensitive people” (HSP) as we are known tend to be that way:
“HSPs can feel such intense love
and compassion for people that we can believe our love can heal others. And
often other people are so amazed and relieved by receiving this much love and
understanding, they respond with enormous amounts of gratitude and often
flattery. Sensitive people respond to this praise by feeling good about
ourselves and feeling needed and so we give more. But as this pattern
continues, we end up giving until we’ve got nothing left and getting nothing in
return, under the mistaken belief that if we give just a little more, it will
be enough. But it’s never enough.”
This explains why I have always been left feeling utterly
vanquished at the end of all my romantic entanglements.
But I am grateful for every single one of them. Every guy
that has ever rejected me, every guy who has ever broken my heart, abused me,
taken advantage of me, every guy who has made me feel like I am crazy because I
have feelings and who has subordinated me and left me for dead-
I am so grateful for every one of them because they have
brought me to exactly where I am now. And right now I am immersed in a
beautiful transformation of learning self-love and compassion and it is fucking
freeing. There is nothing, no love, a guy could ever give you that even
compares to how good it feels when you love yourself. It’s like listening to a
Creed song versus listening to the dissension of angels traveling down from
heaven and sweetly whispering the secret of life in your ear.
Reaching this point has been a liberating experience for me
and I in no way hold any anger towards anyone in my past anymore- especially
because I know that I have also hurt people, led people on, rejected people,
abused people, broken hearts, and taken advantage of people along the way.
However life, in all its serendipitous splendor has awoken
three previous paramours from my past and forced me to re-confront their ghosts
(meaning I owe it to myself to explore my role in these relationships to learn
to love better in the future, and not to ruminate on anyone else’s actions
which I have no control over.)
I wanna move on but life is grabbing me by the shoulders,
violently shaking me, and insisting I look closer as I continue to grow. I
guess you can’t ever fully release your past from you; you just have to quietly
carry it with you in your pocket, wherever you go.
One of these people I still confusingly gravitate towards-he
is the ghost of the future. While I have moved beyond the juvenile pedestal I
put him on when I was younger, an overwhelming attraction to him clouds my
judgment. Our recent surprise encounter was unlike any other-friendly and warm
where it used to be cold and calculated. In my heart he is everything I could
want, but my head knows he is completely the wrong person for me. I think
that’s what the future holds for me romantically. Ultimately every bad
relationship I have been in has been my choice and if I continue to make
choices that are based on fleeting attractions and archaic fairy tale stories
that my young beating heart wants to believe, I probably will continue to not
only fall for the wrong people but also not be a good partner myself. Relying
on someone else to give you so much happiness cripples you both and I have to
take responsibility for that in my relationships. I hope to utilize this
knowledge moving forward; letting go of expectations and giving myself the
freedom and confidence to know that I don’t need to be second-guessing myself
all the time, and I certainly don’t need a dude to tell me I’m awesome. And
maybe it won’t always make sense but when you love yourself first, it doesn’t
have to. Things fall apart, but they always come back together.
The ghost of the present represents validation. I always
felt bad around this guy because of how he treated me, so I searched for what
was wrong with me. Sometimes when people treat you poorly you fall into the
thinking trap that you deserve it. There was a point in my life where I truly
thought that I deserved to be treated poorly and so that was reflected in all
my relationships. But I didn’t deserve it. Pain is a warning that something is
wrong and I owe it to myself to say just because someone is a dick to you does
not mean you deserve it. Maybe they will come around at some point in the
future and confirm their dickness, maybe not. The point is you have to watch
out for self-fulfilling prophesies. This is the part where you decide to stop
victimizing yourself and choose to dictate how people treat you. If you think
you deserve to be treated poorly, people will treat you poorly. This is some
subconscious shit people so we need to get it together when trying to push
ourselves into a healthy direction that benefits the greater existing world and ourselves. Learning how to cultivate
healthy attitudes and self-love in relationships benefits us all. That’s why I
am deciding to produce literature on this fact. Even if it means exposing
myself to a certain degree, I want to teach girls how to love where I didn’t
know how.
The ghost of my past is pretty terrifying. I would like to
get rid of it and pretend it never existed. It represents an old me that was
tyrannically ruled by depression and anxiety, worthlessness and self-loathing
the by-products of such that shaped my self-perception. As much as I wish I
could just forget what this third person represents- his contacting me a)
reminds me that old me still exists somewhere and b) showcases the fact that I
am powerless to rid myself of my past. That’s something I have to come to terms
with and with mindfulness I am able to allow my past to exist without existing
in my past. Yes our pasts are often putrid and sticky and completely not
representative of who we are now, but it happened and that will never change.
Unconditional love for yourself means you are willing to just sit with that.
I have to be thankful for these experiences because they
have allowed me to do a great deal of growth. I still make mistakes and
struggle with my inadequacies, I still push people away because I am afraid of
abandonment, I still cry sometimes because of what I have been through- but I’m
ok with it all. And I honestly wouldn’t change a thing. Maybe this love candle
is working after all.
Jessie
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