Left myself on read somehow: Sure, a love story

Please note: these insights would be unavailable without my therapist

Dear Tinys,

It's not exactly gratitude I feel. Not yet. Right now, what I feel is hard to name, but it seems like it's in the family of gratitude.

I'm going to take another route in and start with a dream. It's a quick recap; no need to bore anyone with my wild subconscious. Omar and his new whatever she is (the one he was living a double life with since last summer, hidden from me, that one) showed up at my little blue house here in Valle de Bravo. They came to gloat in my face that they were getting married.

I woke up unwell, distraught, feeling a sort of despair even. I know it wasn't real. They're not getting married. But my subconscious was trying to communicate something. I texted my therapist about it, and he told me dreams like that are a gift for exactly this reason. They're a window into a wound that needs comforting and compassion.

It didn't feel like a gift. It felt like I couldn't breathe, throat-narrowing, chest-tightening pain—it took me a while of softly staying with it and breathing and breathing and breathing before it subsided.

I've been wondering why I ignored for so long all the ways Omar was failing as a partner. Why I continuously made excuses for him. Why I settled for not even a little bit less, but for something far, far from what I truly want in a relationship.

I'm not saying he didn't love me or treat me well in certain ways (in a lot of ways, for a long time). He did. Especially earlier in our relationship, when my priorities and desires were different. While he's never been much of a natural giver—I think because he's not instinctively thoughtful or caring—he did learn, a bit, and he did give me plenty. Also, at the time, I needed less I suppose, and what he gave was enough. And I thought he would undergo lots of emotional and relational growth over time. He didn't. I did though, and I began to want more from him, not just the same old immature kind of love.

Imagine that my body is a house. There's a potent anger that's been hanging out in various rooms these days. There is it on the couch. There it is standing with me in the fridge as I eat cheese out of the bag. More than anything, I'm angry with myself.

I don't know if I ever would have left him.

He left me. I showered him with adoration, affection, support, devotion, loyalty, and real, real love. Not being much of a shower-er, he didn't shower me with anything. But he left me. Why wasn't I the one to leave? Why was I willing to abandon myself for that? Why would I settle like that?

I'm on a mission now to understand that why. It's a slow and careful excavation of myself. I don't want to make the same mistake again, to stay with someone longer than I should. Or to choose a partner who isn't giving me what I want from the partnership. Life is too short for that. Uff, to think I was willing to miss out on what I actually want out of life…forever?

You know how things seem to appear only when you're looking for them. Things you might have glossed over or completely passed by before, you suddenly pay attention and notice. I saw something on Instagram, an astrology thing about Aries (I think Venus in Aries, actually, which is me). It could have easily come and gone like anything else, but it started to live in my head after I saw it. It said that Aries may seek elevated social status in romantic love. It could be (and often is) perceived status—so, if we perceive an elevated status, that's enough. Being loved and prioritized by someone of elevated social status makes us feel special and worthy.

Say and think what you want about astrology. You don't have to believe in it to hear me out. I saw that square of insight, and something clicked. Whether or not it has anything to do with the Aries personality as a whole, it clearly has something to do with me.

As I've mentioned before, I have a primary worthiness wound; my unconscious way of being is to feel like I have to earn love, and it specifically plays out in my romantic life. In my exploration of this wound, I've started to realize that if I don't have to earn love, I could feel less attracted to the person. I could perceive it as something being off or wrong about the connection. If someone is freely giving me love, maybe it's not as valuable. And then, maybe I don't want it anymore.

It doesn't matter that my conscious, rational brain totally rejects all of this. That's not where it's coming from. It's far deeper.

I guess from there, it's not hard to make the jump that if someone with perceived elevated status is even giving me crumbs of love, that actually starts to feel super valuable and special to me. Even more if the person, like Omar, who is not much of a giver, is giving me far more than he gives anyone else. In a situation like that, yeah it feels like I have to earn love. And that reinforces the illusion that it means more. That it's real. That it's proof of my worth.

So this not only has to do with why I stayed with Omar, but likely why I felt so "cosmically" connected to him in the first place. I always put him on a pedestal of greatness. His talent, his capacity to become a star. I saw it in him right away. To me, he was this other level of special.

In the mythology of our relationship, that status is tied to our origin story. I first really started to fall for him in Mexico City, September, 2014. I had met him a month earlier in Playa del Carmen, where I was living. He invited me to Mexico City right before moving to Barcelona. I stayed with him in his parents' house. I went to his band's last show, which was a relatively big event, crowded with people. When the show finished, Omar pulled me on stage and kissed me. Yes of course, it felt magical and powerful, that one of the stars of the night liked me enough to show his affection for me in front of everyone.

Even though in our lived reality over the next 10 years, the star part never really panned out the way he planned—my perception of him remained. I didn't care if he actually became a star, is the thing. He was already a star to me. I would have stayed with him no matter what happened. I would have loved him through anything. I would have helped him pick up the pieces of his ego and his heart even if he never found the success I felt deep in my core he deserved.

I put him on a pedestal, and I was blind to anything that would have taken him off it. Now that I'm out*, I have a couple of quick reflections on that. One: There is something really beautiful and romantic about putting your partner on a pedestal like that. I radiated love for him. As naive as it may be, the innocence and purity of it was special, for sure. Two: Special and pure as it may be, I don't think it's a healthy way to exist in a relationship, particularly if it isn't reciprocated. I can't in good faith recommend it, because of its delusional components.

He's not on that pedestal anymore. He's just another rapper in a world of rappers trying to make it. Normal talent in a field of urban art. And the beautiful energy I saw in him for all that time is currently buried far beneath the ugly ways he behaved over the last year. But he'll have to come to terms with his own wounds that left him to treat me so poorly. I do wish him well on that journey, if he ever decides to take it. That's out of my realm now. I've moved to another plane of existence.

*Full transparency: "now that I'm out" is a slight exaggeration. I'm on my way out. I still feel overwhelming pangs of longing and sadness at the idea of no longer being with him, that this radiant future I'd envisioned for us is over. I still sometimes wish I had him on a pedestal, and I miss the intense love I felt for him (and the purity and innocence of that love). The reality is that I'm still very much in this wrenching process of moving on—as my whole being is going through a detox from that decade-long other-reality I lived in.

backyard picnic (where I’m healing from, part 1)

I'm trying to understand all of this, to put it together in a way that makes sense of what I allowed, how I made decisions, and how I feel now. The "status" element is just one aspect of many that relates to my worthiness wound and how I operate in love. There's also attachment, which in no way could have helped my decision-making. And fear, fear of this passage of despair and broken-heartedness that would inevitably come if we ended. And hope, and love itself, and the way I felt inside our specific equation of love and time: safe.

The anger I feel toward myself for staying, it's become gentle, at least. It's full of compassion and forgiveness. I'm not judging myself. But I still have to sit with it in order to really let it go (here we are in bed, my anger and I, listening to the rain with a glass of red wine). Eventually, I will. When I'm sitting with it—which really fucking hurts, by the way—I meet the elements inside. For as hard as I try to be a truly authentic version of myself, for as hard as I try to bring beauty into this world from the deepest parts of who I am, I still somehow ended up abandoning myself. And that's okay. Sometimes we fail. It happens.

I don't think it'll happen again, though.

In any case, the dream was a gift into the wound that got me into this in the first place. My subconscious brought Omar and that girl to my home to announce their marriage: he didn't choose me, he chose someone else. I "failed" to earn his love, says my ego, straight from the worthiness wound. All the safety I felt from our relationship and the love he'd given me is gone.

And it hurts even though I know I’m better off finding a partnership that actually aligns with who I am.

This awareness will teach me about the safety I can provide for myself without a partner, I think. And that the only person who has to choose me is me, and that choosing people, staying with people, who I'm not aligned with, will only lead to pain.

And this awareness—that my heart looks for places it has to earn love and feels "magic" and forges a connection there—that's what will liberate me from doing it again. That's not magic, Jess. It's the wound making that early emotional charge feel like connection. Really, it's just a reenactment of old pain, hoping this time it will end differently.

So yeah, I mentioned gratitude at the beginning. I'm currently gratitude-adjacent. Today is not the day I will thank Omar, but I know it's coming. I'll feel grateful to him for leaving me (even if he did it for selfish reasons, that doesn't matter) because now I’m available for a higher level of happiness and fulfillment. He was never going to be the partner I really want. That's not who he is or who he wants to be.

And who am I? Well, I'm deeply committed to having a rich and beautiful life, for sure. And that means actually learning and growing from this, which means not avoiding these very uncomfortable and painful feelings. I won't pretend I don't want to find a partner to go through life with, though I'm not the type of person who will go out looking. I just want to embody and radiate the energy that will bring it to me. That's all.

I welcome these storms that make the forest beautiful, I do. No rain, no flowers. This darkness is difficult, but it's not bad. This awareness will make me lighter in the end, even if it's heavy now.

direct hit of forest from my bed (where I’m healing from, part 2)