A Short Reflection About Me, Him, And Us
By Seema Kapoor
We all have demons and spirits that help us maneuver our way through our lives. They are formed at an early age when we are taught how to create habits and relationships and bonds with the types of people we gravitate towards as we get older. All the destruction, the fear and the toxins seep through the cracks when you get to be a teenager and permeate through to your 20’s and finally knock you on your ass and devour any happiness and love you try to harbour.
It’s a painful and stressful lesson that you are called to learn but not everyone is ready to answer that call. Not everyone can hear its urgency or even know that anything requires change. Instead they go through life, asleep, taking everyone and everything for granted, live through superficial experiences only to toss them away, when it or that person no longer serves them. But maybe you find someone who is the same way. That has been through the same type of heartache and the turmoil mirrors yours and maybe you both try to answer life’s call together. Or at least see each others’ stories and maybe you’re not alone after all.
ME:
I was taught at an early age that I was unworthy of love, affection, and respect and that the only way to achieve any of it was to constantly twist and turn until I was something that someone could keep around and maybe even love. I was always taught to treat my feelings as weak and that they were not valid or a part of the human I should be. I was to hold things in until someone was ready to acknowledge them through the lens they wanted to see them and me through. Crying and emoting was seen as being beneath me and I learned to dry up my tears and to forego any real type of way to release or harness everything I was feeling. I felt like a caged animal, raised to be one way but aching to bend the bars and be something completely different.
HIM:
He was taught that he was never good enough and that he needed to release himself through violence and aggression to be heard and acknowledged. He moved 15 times, through 12 different schools and was never given a solid foundation to learn, love and live on. He was ripped out of things he started to know only to be forced to get to know something completely different. Values, a sense of being and a secure self was never established nor was it seen as being important. He grew to want to run away to find something that was already inside of him but never quite nourished. His insides grew crooked and contaminated with fear and anxiety. Stay quiet, stay moving and nothing will be seem as bad was the way he went through life.
US:
Him and me meet and it was electric at first. We were thirsty to uncover everything about each other and were willing to rub each other raw to find something we were both missing, craving, in ourselves. Eventually, we saw each other for what we truly were and stepped on each others’ feet, throats and legs to be heard. We were constantly dueling to get an upper hand and our egos were at war with themselves and each other. Fire and fire were burning and no one could understand the reasons why. My old self was digging itself into my current life and after much struggle to fight what I had failed to acknowledge, I was defeated and I surrendered. What were the habits I held so dearly that I was unable to be vulnerable and love myself or another? For so long, I had been treated like a complete invalid, void of heart, soul and feeling and I was met with someone who was just as damaged, just as unwilling to acknowledge themselves as lovable. So how we do stop fighting and find the peace we want to see in ourselves and each other? Where is the connection, where is the spark that we saw in each other? Knowing that I must stay in the moment and engage but also watch myself from a higher place and bring myself up, is key. That, to keep balance is a struggle everyday and I have no idea where to start.
Worthiness comes from an inherent sense of hope which isn’t a fleeting feeling or an emotion that changes with the tides; it is more like a way of life, thinking. So I come to our dark and stormy relationship with a glimmer of hope not for it to get any better or for it last longer or for you to see me and yourself as what we truly are. No, I come to our bond with the hope that you and me, the broken and shattered ones, deserve each other. We deserve nothing but our incompleteness because it is through the broken shards we find that all-encompassing and complete love.