Your Knight Isn’t Coming, You Need To Save Yourself

You must save yourself.

These past few months have been nothing short of brutal. I wake up most mornings with what feels like an elephant of anxiety sitting on my chest; all I want to do is close my eyes and fall back to sleep. Because I know what this reality holds. I know what this new life is and I reject it wholeheartedly.

Still.

It has been a year since my husband left. We were taking some space; separating. It wasn’t healthy for us to live under the same roof as one another. Not for us and not for our two children. So he moved out. We packed his clothes in garbage bags.

And just like that, he was gone. He never came back.

An entire year has passed, and in that time I have had 3 relatively serious, intimate relationships. Each one ended with hurt, grief, anxiety, and heaps of denial. Every time a relationship ended I found myself alone again, I felt broken.

But the thing is, while I was in these relationships, I was happy.

Blissfully happy. I felt high. I loved being emotionally intimate and close with someone again. I loved the physical intimacy and above all, the connection. I thrive on intense and meaningful connection. It feels like a drug in my system. I seek it out with intention and purpose. I can get most people to open up to me in ways they never would with anyone else. I really believe that connecting with people is my super power.

Maybe I don’t like who I am on love.

I feel like this weird juxtaposition of explosive love and deep insecurity. I love in a big way, but with that love comes this intense needy and clingy behavior. I want to be saved; rescued. I want to completely lose myself in relationships. Love can make you blind. Love can mask the real work you need to do. That scary, difficult, hard work of finding yourself; figuring out who you are, separate from any outside relationships. I was seeking external validation. I was longing to disappear again. My subconscious was driving my behavior because that behavior has been ingrained in me for decades. I am a relationship addict.

Here I am, once again on the other side of unrequited love. Making the same fucking mistakes over and over again. I keep promising myself that this time will be different. That this time I will be strong and faithful to me and no one else. This time my explosive love will be directed inward.

Because I am worth it.

I will never lose sight of who I am. I will never get lost in another relationship – of any kind. I will stay in complete integrity with myself. I will do my utmost to be present in every moment. I will not judge my thoughts. I will not judge my emotions. I will walk with my heart open; and my eyes wide open. I recognize that I will face difficult times; and with those times will come difficult emotions. I recognize that my difficult times and emotions will PASS. I will work hard. I will try harder.

I will make mistakes and embrace those mistakes as learning and being brave enough to have tried. I will approach life with a gentle awareness and a curiosity that sparks within me a newfound appreciation for all that I am, all that I have, and all that is coming my way.