There is a part of my heart that wants to stay closed, protect, shield, and hold back. The rest of my heart wants to be free, to roam, to be, to love, to hurt, to cry, to ask, to give, to hold. Most days lately, the free part wins, and the love pours through me. What I am learning to do lately is to let it pour over me freely too.
A friend recently yelled at me… “How long will you choose agony? It hurts to watch you!” It stung. And keeps rattling around in my head, rolling back and forth. It hasn’t been easy to see what they see. I’m not sure I still do.
For the longest time I acted as though my worth, my value, was in fixing things, making things better, doing the right thing, loving everyone around me, making life the best that it could be for them. I wasn’t perfect at it by any means, some of it was driven by the belief that I am a hurtful person, by guilt of who I’d been and what I’ve done, by sorrows and heartache. Whether I was perfect at all of it, emptying myself for others still meant more to me that others around me felt good and were happy and were taken care of and that I gave all I could and more, than having anything for me, including sometimes taking care of my physical needs. To a large degree that is still true. If I think about a choice of giving to someone else, giving hope, love, comfort, opportunities, support, whatever… I would rather give it all away than have it for myself. Right up until I feel threatened or the need to protect. Then, that protection comes up first and is my first go to… especially when I feel I’m protecting others too.
For me lately, I have been in a question. When does giving, hurt? And not just giving… I have also acted as though the way to be good enough is to change me, and the way to change me is by learning and growing, and the best way to learn and grow is to empty myself in pursuit of being the best I can be, and that is sometimes accompanied by choosing to put myself into positions that stretch me, and sometimes the stretch hurts. Is that the agony she meant?
Or is it the agony of putting the fault, the blame and the pain all on me, as though I am the center of the universe and could fix it all if I tried. Do I think myself so important? Is that it? Or is it the opposite, that I think so little of me and value everyone else more, that I’ll sacrifice myself to fix it all if that’s what it takes. Or is it both at different times.
I don’t know, and I keep looking. Is it the agony of being anything and everything except joy unleashed? Do I choose agony in the small moments that make up my day? Fear, hesitation, holding back rather than reaching for joy and passion and creating it in every moment possible? Is that the agony? And if so… what is it that really holds me back? At this point is it fear? Or is it really just that I haven’t exercised that muscle enough through life and it is habit to reach past joy and on to the “learning”?
I am questioning everything. Am I holding onto “what’s possible” to the point of pain, and letting go of my joy along the way? Am I holding onto my need to make sure I am the opposite of everything Ryan claims I am, the selfish whore who puts everyone else last and makes everything about me… to the point of bleeding out before I stop and take care of me?
Is it the need to protect first? Is that protective mode the agony? Do I just think it’s so normal I don’t know what agony is?
And how does it all connect to where I am at in my marriage. If I stay, and hold onto possibility, and work it all through, then every week am I just choosing agony instead of joy and freedom? Or am I creating the work and emotional toll because I haven’t figured out how to be joy and love and everything possible yet and it has nothing to do with me staying and holding onto possibility?
I feel off balance, unsure of my next step, and it’s showing up literally with disruptive vertigo all week.
