I wanted to write this as a reminder for everyone who has buried their deepest desires out of fear and pain, in the hopes that this restores and renews your hope that your wounds have not broken you.
I have been told by a few different people that the idea of wanting to be loved is a “womanly” quality. It is something I desire because I am a female and this is a weakness in me that needs to be worked on if I want to be successful. My desire to share my heart and my gifts so willingly is a fault that will cause me to be used and betrayed by others. It’s funny how all of these people that have told me this over the years have been the ones who have hurt and betrayed me. They have withheld love from me, even when I gave it to them, opening myself up, hoping they wouldn’t be another person who would in return stab my heart with daggers. No matter how many times I replayed their actions and forms of dishonesty in my head, I couldn’t change how weak and embarrassed I felt.
During these times of pain and heartbreak, I constantly put the blame on myself and thought that I had been hurt because of my weakness. My inability to be enough for that person, my lack of knowledge about the world and not being able to predict how badly they would use me. After going through this with friendships, relationships and family members, I realized how hurt and bruised these people were. How their actions were a reflection of the pain and loss that they had felt and how they were not alone. I feel that so many people have never felt loved or worthy of love, making it impossible for them to actually connect with other people and in return, use them as a means to an end for their own benefit. I also realized that there were people out there like me, who had given of themselves and received nothing in return and had their vulnerable hearts tortured and innocence used. Whichever side you fall to, we must always have hope that change can come when we look inward and open our hearts to love.
What we truly desire the most in this world is to be accepted, to be acknowledged, to be desired for who we truly are. To be loved without fear of our past and to love others in the same way. All of our fears and past pain cause us to put up a block and not allow ourselves to be open to this. I think that so many times we try and convince ourselves that we don’t care, that it didn’t matter or hurt us. When in reality it did. We are afraid to admit that showing our vulnerable selves and being betrayed changed the person that we are. Initially, it might cause us to be bitter and angry but in the long run, those difficulties will become skills that enable us to navigate through future situations. To not allow ourselves to open up and fully love and become vulnerable is not allowing ourselves to live up to our full potential. I know how painful it can be, how excruciating and embarrassing it is to open yourself up to someone and have them betray and use you. But that does not make you weak. Their actions define the person that they are. Whatever they chose to do to you, whatever they chose to say is a reflection of their poor character, not yours. We cannot allow ourselves to become hardened by these actions but we must allow ourselves to learn from them and use our gifts to help others avoid similar outcomes.
We all want to be loved, to be accepted by the people around us, we are all afraid that we are not enough. That we have to accomplish a certain amount of success in order to be deemed worthy of someone or something. That we are too broken to be loved. We were weak and that is why we were taken advantage of. But, the people that hurt, abused, used, lied, cheated, betrayed and hurt you, were not worthy of you. You are not made weak because of their actions, you are made stronger because you survived them. They were not worthy of seeing your vulnerable self and took advantage once they did. This does not define you or your future. It is simply a facet of your life that has shaped you into who you are, but not for the worse. It may have hardened you, caused you to feel insecure about yourself, but you came through it. We have to allow ourselves to heal and work through this pain and be able to show ourselves that we are stronger and better even with the events that have transpired in our life. The fact that you can feel these emotions show that you have the ability to feel love and joy. These pains and betrayals show that we at least have the ability to feel, which the people that have caused the pain probably cannot.
We need to be more open and not dip into our insecurities and live vicariously through others pretending that we don’t care because it’s not impressive to show emotion or acknowledge our pain and show that we are human. When in reality, the people who engage in this culture are the most wounded. They are projecting a false image, convincing us that we are not good enough living with the reality of our lives, living with our pain, our defeats, our flaws. They are saying that unless we are living the life that they are living, editing our lives so that they show no flaws; we are not enough. That we must project perfection, and train ourselves that our past, our pain has broken us to the point that we must pretend that it didn’t happen in order to be accepted by others. But we have all suffered through pain, we all desire to be loved and love in return without fear of neglect. Without exposing who we truly are, we can never fully understand what it means to feel this.
And one day, someone will be worthy of uncovering your vulnerability, someone you can show yourself to and everything that you have gone through, every battle you have fought, will not be a healing wound that they reopen. They will see you as whole person, as a warrior for undergoing your battles and accept you as you are. Whether this a friendship, relationship, family member, work colleague, advisor, teacher, they will not encourage you to open up about your past to hurt you, but to learn how to be better to you. They will help you learn more about yourself, about life, about the path that you are meant to take and help you become the best version of yourself and trust again. There will still be memories of the pain and a fear that it will happen again, but with time, it will become easier to trust again. We have to allow ourselves to become vulnerable, so we can experience this type of unconditional love and learn how to slowly be open, to be loved.
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