To have and to hold
One of the last things my best friend told me before it ended:
“You are so lucky.”
Those well meaning words that cut as accusations:
“How dare you have something most of us don’t? How dare you parade it around and then keep expecting more!”
The loneliness and guilt that comes when I am told that. I know it well.
The small voice in my head thinks this too. The part of me that is afraid when anything good I do will fall apart at the seams. With one wrong move, Universe will say, “Oh sorry we got the wrong girl, please excuse us as we hand over your dreams to someone more appropriate.”
Someone more normal.
Universe definitely calls me a “girl” in this scenario. Not woman. The universe is Humphrey Bogart a misogynist grabbing my ass, then walking away.
Looking for someone else, not a bastard daughter. It is wild how much this feels true for me. Now that I am on the other coast near my family, I have never felt so forgotten and hated by my family.
Ger this: one of the few times in my life that I can relate to someone, is when I sit in session with my clients. Someone who is in recovery for fentanyl sharing what their childhood and what their life is like now. How they gave up fentanyl, but they can't give up addictive relationship.
It blows my mind how much of what I've been through actually means something to quite a few of us. The ones working hard for their lives, instead of drugging them away. The ones in therapy: running instead to wholeness. I am built for these ones. I no longer feel alone being the morbid Wednesday Adams silently sulking on the holidays.
Claiming my life and future has been brutal and wonderful these last few months. I couldn't foresee how triggering it would be, to be this happy.
A part of me goes numb. Is terrified of living in a home that I could lose just like homes I've lost before as a child and the families I lost.
A part of me wants to go and find some exciting amusement ride to ride on, to forget the pain of having everything I want and at the same time grieving something I never had. Learning how to lean into my joy, when my nervous system doesn't often trust it.
People think it's easy for me to be outgoing or confident or the life of the party. Thats the way I learned how to receive life, never wanting anyone to feel on the outside of it, like I have.
Taking this moment to allow this in:
I receive this. I receive this lumpy couch I am sitting on in a wonderful woman's home, my sister in law. Whose been housing us since we moved here from the West Coast.
I receive the Dogwood Festival and parade today in my new/old hometown. The town I shacked up with my husband in, 13 years ago. I left only to return and make it our own again.
I let this in. I let in this very terrifying reality of wanting someone in mind, body and soul so deeply and also building a life with them and a house with them. Feel tears raising up from my inner child, who is terrified that she could lose all of this very quickly. The beautiful genuine fear of understanding that life is not guaranteed too. I'm feeling the unrest in my nervous system and the moments of calm, when my body starts to orient to a future that I never thought I was worthy of.
I was definitely worthy of renting, being a transient guest in a nice home and a great town with wonderful people we really love in San Diego. I was worthy of countless exhausting, addictive relationships. I was worthy of the very steep highs of entrepreneurship and the very deep lows. I was worthy of transitory, pleasant, pretty coasting living.
Now I'm worthy of what my nervous system is going through to shift to a completely different reality here on this coast:
What it’s like to have and to hold.