Vulnerability

“Your Job is not to seek for love, your job is to search within yourself and break your barriers against it.”

A friend of mine once told me that you can ‘only be as happy as you can be vulnerable.’  These words have forever played on my mind. Only recently, have I been able to reflect on what they mean for me.

I don’t care who you are, I don’t care what you’ve done, who you’ve hurt or what keeps you awake at night. Somebody loves you. There are people on this planet that think about you and that wish you happiness. You may not know them or you may know them really well and think they don’t care. They may never seem to show their love, they might appear to be wrapped up in their own pains and strife. But somebody loves you.

It is difficult to believe that when you don’t love yourself. You can convince yourself that you are alone and that you can’t connect to anybody when you are afraid to connect to your own thoughts… “I made my world as small as the space between my bed and the light switch. I can think myself into corners made of words and nightmares and what does it get me but more thoughts. A currency that only buys more currency. “ – Niel Holborn, Our Numbered days.

This year I brought into the currency of thought. I took away almost everything that was dear to me through my own unhappiness. Nothing felt solid. All my ideals about love, my goals, my studies, my morals and my structure felt as though it could all dissolve. As droplets of water dissolve into the vast sea.

I hurt my parents, I almost dropped out of university and leaving my house felt like walking into a gladiator colosseum. Eyes. Judging me. Everywhere….. So I’d avoid them. I’d go to the beach alone, and evaporate into Barcelona. I’d run for miles at night. I even flew away on a last minute plane ticket, only to be greeted once again with my own mind. Reality, felt like a false concept.

I punished myself greatly for my actions. I pushed myself away from friends that wanted to help me, from the people in my life that cared, because I blamed myself for my pain. Therefore I created a self fulfilling prophecy. I hate myself. I think nobody loves me, so I push people that care away. When they are no longer around. I create evidence for the thought that nobody loves me. This then evidences my thought that I do not deserve love.

Yet, when I started to find my own self love. When I began to accept my fears, and struggles and the pain I felt, and explore the parts of myself I once saw as ugly. I began to let go of the expectations and attachments I had to the person I thought I was, and open up to the possibility of who I am. I realised that I am surrounded by love, but my perception of what love was before was wrong. Oh, how I am now in the first chapter of a very new book….

In western society, our whole perspective on love, is wonky. Films, literature and the images we see on social media. They all preach attachment. Saviours. Always being happy around somebody. Needing somebody. Being completed by another. Shaping your life around another. In the society we live in this works… if you don’t feel like you need anything, your not going to buy anything or necessarily indulge in the rituals of careers and marriage.

Romantically, sex is often presented as the biggest thing you can do to show you love somebody. We make our ideals of love into a form of transaction We can easily pin our ideals of love on the ability for another to understand our thoughts, rescue us, and bring us to pure joy. The expectations we create from our loved ones, are often very different from the reality that they can give. Therefore we fail to accept the love thats all around us, because we are busy trying to warp it into another form.

We get attached to concepts of what love should look like. Of how you should feel. Rules. Conditions. Expectations. Not only of the other person, but of yourself too. Hurdles you’ll never quite jump….

“The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. It may look paradoxical to you, but it is not. It is an extensional truth:

only those capable of being alone are capable of love. Of sharing, of going into the deepest core of another person without possessing the other, without becoming dependant, without reducing the other to a concept and without being addicted to another.” – Osho

When I began to observe myself, and realise the attachments and what self fulfilling prophecies I had created. I began to learn to be alone with my thoughts. Re scripting my fantasy of all my adventures with friends being dramatic travelling affairs. Re scripting my idea of love being a fairy tale where I escape with somebody into the world. Re scripting the prophecies of ’I am Shit.” “ I am Ugly.” “This will go wrong.” into “I am am enough,” “There is beauty.” “I will make good things happen what ever the scenario.” Had a massive longterm effect on the happiness of my subconscious mind. I learnt to understand who I am without ideals, and accept.

Then I woke to all the love around me. My family, the happy faces I see each day at uni, the support from my friends. I realised that people are constantly wishing each other well. Whether its sharing a smile or an experience, or even if they just choose to be around you. Once I began to strip myself of expectations, I realised that I could be more open around people too. I could tell them that I cared about them, or if they did something that made me unhappy without the fear of rejection that comes from attachment. Sometimes now I can share my fears and worries in conversations, without a plan or an expected result.  Theres no limit on how deep a conversation I’m willing to have if I’m with the write people. In these spaces that hold my fears, pains and struggles,  I now accept and create and I can let life fill them or other people guide them. Now that I am learning to be vulnerable, I am also learning to accept changes and recognise abundance all around me.

Its easier to accept that my life will never be perfect, that bad things will happen, that people will leave, that mistakes will take place. However now that I am learning to detach myself from an expectation and a false image of myself, its easier to see these events as stepping stones on an adventure. Each day I repeat the thought to myself that I will “find my limits, and explore the distance around them”.

“Others can only offer the level of intimacy that they have with themselves.”

Lots of Love,

Nome

xxxx

 

Many of my posts on this blog are about discovering self love and self empowerment. I’m forever grateful for emails and messages I get from fellow bloggers, friends and internet explorers with their opinions on my posts. It makes me very happy to learn about the journeys of others. If you have a thought or a story you’d like to share with me, please email    anomeslife@gmail.com

I’d like to take a moment to say thank you, to everybody that supports me and my work. To all the friends and kind people that engaged in my idea’s at university this year. Who never judged and openly asked me about my wellbeing after my time off. To the people who continually send me names of new books to read, music and other blogs to get inspired by. Who push me in my training, and friends that inspire new adventures. To all the people,who have silently been wishing me well, by smiling at me in corridors, thinking about me, going to my shows, reading my blogs and making the people around them happy. To anyone who is struggling with their mental health, in a bad place, or unsure of where they are going, know that there is always more love and help out there than you can imagine.

Sending love, and good energy.