I watched a TedTalk today that popped up on my feed (thank you metadata for intruding on my inappropriate arguments) and it came to hit me in the head with the weight of a fucking brick. Good god did it ever.
I love TedTalks, I spend a lot of time going through all of the different sections, learning new concepts and cares that we should have further knowledge on within our world. This was a section I had never taken the time for, one that I avoid frequently out of fear of resonating all too closely and shaming or hating my drunken unfiltered alias that exists in the darkest parts of my soul. This was a psychology sectioned video that focused solely on attachment styles in romantic relationships that come to surface via past experiences with parental/family relationships. Boy oh boy, if you know, you know just why this is the thing that I avoid the best.
(Forgive my poor quoting but you can get the gist)
“The things we do for love. What have you done in the hope of being loved and cared for? ….. Like texting an ex in the middle of the night, or pretending to like Gilmore Girls…. Or when you didn’t set your limits or express needs and feelings out of fear of being rejected.”
This was the opening statement. It caught me immediately. Fear of rejection. Fear of being told that your feelings are invalid or unfair. It has taken me a long time to fully grasp the overflowing BS that my feelings are in fact valid. How to handle such feelings are still in progress. A shit progress, but progress is still progress?!
“We’re not worthy of love, and should be grateful for this kind of abuse”
Let me go back to a text I very recently received from a dear friend… “What has you so attached to this guy?” Ironically, this worthy of love sentence defines that perfectly for me. I do not believe that I am worthy of better, of more, of the things that I want for myself. The sole idea of that to me is batshit crazy, and believe me, I know crazy. It seems so wrong, so unprecedented that I would actually, god forbid, ASK for better.
“Setting her own needs aside, blaming herself for their bad mood and feeling grateful for any kind of love, even if it comes with abuse. Because love is uncertain.”
I do not see a new person on the way that I can develop these emotions for. Coming from a past of multiple father figures that never fully understood the role I required, gave me a very short view on just what IS going to improve on the next try. I have learnt that I need to accept what I am given, because the “new versions” are not going to be the betterment that you so desperately hoped for.
What I have begun to realize is this:
I historically have pushed away the ones that did not hurt me. The ones I can say today that I genuinely, wholeheartedly loved. I fucked the relationship up out of fear that I do not deserve that kind of love. I did not believe that I am worthy of such a thing, how reckless of me to want something healthy, something GOOD. So instead, I succumb to the bullshit of what I think I deserve, or what I think is fair given all of these faults that I have allowed to weigh on my shoulders for the last 26 years. I chase and yearn over the men that fill the need to feel wanted, and allow them to do so so narrowly that I have given them every reason to treat me like the bag of shit that I think I deserve.
What is so beautiful about this, as morbid and hateful as it may be (I’m sorry to those that feel personally victimized, but hey, if you quack like a duck…) it is actually incredible to find that stumbling upon a simple video and finally wracking my fucking nerve to watch something I am so fearful of… may have actually brought a sense of enlightenment into the faults in myself that do genuinely exist. Because of this, I am seeing where so many of my past relationships have fallen to their death bed, and where I have played my part in digging the knife further into it’s metaphorical chest.
I am certain of my worth. I am learning to establish that within myself and how to ask that from others. This is progress. This is movement.
Self-awareness. Growth. Discussion. Enlightenment.
It’s all worth it in the end. Even though it’s damned well terrifying.
Neesh Media 