Authors: Lori Deschene
I'm not going to pretend that this will be easy. Ripping away Band-Aids and actually facing the wound underneath never is. But this time, I know I'm going to be fine. I know this because, even though it may not come from him, or her, or anyone else I've tried to
stuff inside my heart, I am surrounded by love—unconditional love that is freely available to anyone who knows to look for it.
No matter where you are in your journey, no matter what you do for a living, or even what you eat for dinner,
you are loved
. And if this samskara has taught me anything, it's that only when you've opened your heart to the love that already surrounds you can you begin to see it elsewhere.
by Jennifer Gargotto
We love because it is the only true adventure
.
—N
IKKI
G
IOVANNI
Last night I sat with an old friend who recently broke up with his girlfriend. He's sad. She's sad. I don't think it was time for them to give up yet; he's exhausted and disagrees. He says he thinks that he just loves to love. When you love to love, he says, it's impossible to separate the act of loving from the person you're actually supposed to love. He thinks that he's too much in love with the
idea
of love to actually know what he wants. And so, he argues, giving her another chance would be futile.
I know what he means, because I love to love, too. When I met my boyfriend, Chase, I thought I had been in love before. In fact, I was positive of it. I had built a life out of a dating and relationship blog—
of course
I had been in love before. There was only one relationship that stood out from the masses of little flings, and for a time, he was my world. My ex and I met in college (although he wasn't in school—a sign of different horizons that would eventually be the pitfall of our short-lived romance), and we developed our own little cocoon, which quickly meant everything to me.
I had grown up with a happy home life, two parents who met, fell in love, and then stayed together. I had a naïve perspective that when you meet the right person you fall in love, and that's that. I never doubted him for a minute; this was what was
supposed
to happen. I trusted it, the process of companionship, and I let myself settle into having someone.
After only a few short months together, my boyfriend said he needed to move since he could no longer afford to live in Boulder, where I was going to college at the time, so we made the decision to move in together. Whether he meant for that to happen or not, I'm not really sure. I had more financial resources and was able to subsidize the move—a theme that stretched throughout the majority of our time together.
Our decision to move in together felt like every other decision we made—an initial excitement that then was held together by necessity. I have no other way to describe our time together but fearful. Fearful of being alone. Fearful that I had made a mistake. Fearful that if he left, it was because I was unlovable, that there was something wrong with me.
In retrospect, I had an anxiety that was speaking volumes, louder than my voice ever could. I remember sitting in a park alone, crying, before signing the lease. I knew, deep down, that there was nothing solid about our life together, but I didn't know what else to do. Truly, I thought this was as good as it was going to get.
Quickly claustrophobic by our limiting world together, he began to rebel against our relationship and me. Within a matter of months, things started to fall apart. He became angry and mean. I didn't know how to process this sudden shift and blamed myself. My life went from being my own to ours, to trying to salvage what was left in any respect.
I was quiet most of the time. My mom describes me as being very “proper” during that time, always quiet and trying not to say the wrong thing. As a woman who had built a life on being an outspoken, fearless thinker, I was quickly becoming a far cry from the person I once was. It was a strange time, and although I don't remember many of the details, I do remember it being extraordinarily painful. I had let myself and my old hobbies go, and I'd slowly begun rejecting a lot of what was still left of the old me. I became the enemy for both of us, it seems, since I seemed to be the cause of much of his anger.
My boyfriend told me incessantly that I was impossible to deal with, that I was impossible to love. He made his points clear. But I was lost in the world we'd built and didn't know of a way out. Eventually, after sitting in that toxic mess we'd built for too long, I ended it.
I was sad for a long time. I went back to being lonely, in an empty house, and I felt like a failure. To be fair, I was young. In the beginning, I suppose more than anything I was just excited not to be alone anymore. In many respects, I see now that I was taken
advantage of. In most respects, I wasn't strong enough to stand up to my own fears and make good decisions.
Then, three years later, I met my current boyfriend, Chase. By then I was back to being strong and independent, with a great job and lots of dreams, friends, and a strong backbone in relationships. I had spent years processing how I had lost myself before, and I was determined to never go through that again. But then the strangest thing happened: I started to feel these feelings that I had never felt before. Unlike anyone before in my life, Chase loved
me
. And unlike anything in my life, I loved
him
.
I didn't just love the
idea
of him or the companionship of being together, but I adored the person that he was. He enjoyed the person that
I
was. And as I fell in love with him, they were feelings that were brand new. They were feelings of belonging, safety, passion, and companionship—and they didn't have an ounce of underlying fear.
I realized that for the first time in my entire life, I was really falling in love.
Sometimes in the beginning, and even still today, I'll become untrusting and difficult and attack out of nowhere. The naïve trust that I had so long ago got used up and beaten up by the wrong person. But, unlike that wrong person, Chase protects everything: my happiness, our life together, and my relationship with myself.
So if there's one thing that I learned the hard way in all of this, it's that there are two experiences we can define as love: we can fall
in love with a person, or we can fall in love with companionship. When you fall in love with a
person
, you get to experience their companionship as a byproduct. When you fall in love with
companionship
, it becomes an arrangement of need, where you become hinged on losing one another. It's built on fear, necessity, and power.
And that isn't falling in love
. I can promise you that when you fall in love with a person, and they fall in love with you, you won't lose yourself in love—because you will be an important part of that love and what makes it tick.
After a year of dating, Chase and I are moving in together this summer. It isn't because we need to. It's because we've slowly become a family already, and a place together is an exciting next step. For the first time in my decorating-impaired life, I'm planning curtains in my mind and begging him to go to Ikea with me. This next step is an exciting leap, and there's no fear attached.
For the first time, I'm in love—and I haven't lost myself even a tiny bit.
by Jenni Hanley
If you make friends with yourself, you will never be alone
.
—M
AXWELL
M
ALTZ
When I was eighteen, I glided across the stage in front of my classmates to collect an award from the principal: All-Around Female. I was a dancer on the drill team; an officer in the a cappella choir; a youth group leader; a singer in the show choir; a member of the honor society, Spanish Club, and Venture Scouts; and top ten in my class. I wore these achievements like a shield, clueless of what or who I would be without them.
Inevitably, when I moved out of state for college, my shield cracked. There was no drill team, no honors points, no one to pat me on the back for working hard. I learned quickly that, when excellence is the default, it's a lot harder to stand out. With my shield in shambles, I had to search for a new persona—a new person to “be.”
For some people, that might mean volunteering or learning to play an instrument. For me, it was making six or seven trips to the KFC buffet line, eating fried chicken and potatoes until my stomach hurt, and then throwing it all up at the nearest gas station. It wasn't pretty. But with no other labels to hide behind, it was comforting.
Every so often, I indulged myself in another label: girlfriend. It was so easy to melt into someone else, and it took the focus off me. Still, when I met Randy, I didn't see it coming. He was a young, compassionate pre-med student who was eager to complete me—and I was happy to let him. At first, it was a great arrangement. But after a year or so, the full weight of my unhappiness surfaced. I was jobless, directionless, and lonely; I came home to Randy every night, but even he couldn't fill the caverns I'd created in my life.
Making the decision to move back home and check into an eating disorder treatment center was difficult, but it was also the first decision I'd truly made for myself in a very long time. Getting physically healthy was the first step, but getting mentally healthy was the most important.
One day, the program director asked what my values were. I was stumped.
Student? Singer? Daughter?
I listed off an encyclopedia of labels I'd used at some point in my life, waiting for a nod of affirmation. But he stared back blankly.
“I'm not asking what you
are
,” he clarified. “I want to know what's important to you.”
I struggled with his question, trying desperately to reframe my life from this perspective. As long as I could remember, I'd been trying so hard to
be
one thing or another instead of just letting my life evolve organically. But as it turns out, I'm more than a student, an overachiever, a writer, or a girlfriend; I'm a young woman who
values compassion, empathy, worldliness, and family. Painting that full picture of myself was a huge step forward.
But in my relationship with Randy, it was a huge step backward. Having finally learned that I could love myself and be complete on my own, there was no room for him. I began to feel physically sick when he tried to hug me. I didn't want him to touch me, or call me, or show me any kind of affection. He was the same kind person I'd always loved, but I felt claustrophobic. Slowly, painfully, I pushed him out.
That chapter of my life was debilitating and painful, but I emerged from it with a very important lesson: another person will never be able to compensate for the holes in your life. Be your own “other half,” and seek a partner who will complement you, not complete you. As someone who had always sought external validation in the form of awards, activities, or relationships, this wasn't an easy lesson, but it's been crucial for me in the development of a richer, more mature self.
Do you ever find your features blurring into someone else's? Do you ever seek validation through compliments from others or likes on Facebook? It's easy to latch on to different identities when you don't fully understand what makes you uniquely
you
. It's a difficult habit to break, but it can be done.
The first step is to learn about what matters to you. Make a list of all the qualities you value in yourself: do you value charity? Is it your goal to travel the world? Are you funny? Driven? Patient?
Things like your career, your car, or your body shape will come and go throughout your life. Uncovering the remarkable core aspects of your identity will make you less inclined to cling to external descriptors.
The next step is to accept responsibility for your life. One of the reasons it's so tempting to focus on the negatives we see in ourselves is that it provides a sense of control. If you're unfulfilled at work, complaining to others can provide a sense of validation. If you're frustrated that you don't travel as much as you'd like, rationalizing can be comforting. Stop making excuses and start making changes—starting with limiting comparisons. Obsessing over all the things you wish you had is one of the fastest tracks to unhappiness. I'm guilty of spending hours on Facebook or Pinterest, pining over a friend's new downtown loft or the hundreds of intricate recipes I don't have time to whip up every night. Consider giving yourself a social media allowance, like no more than five minutes of Facebook per day. It will really take the focus off others and put it back on you.
Lastly, learn to be comfortable being alone. When you're uncomfortable with solitude, it's easy to cling to others for validation of your worthiness. But what happens when the other person moves on? Relationships entered into out of necessity are bound to end painfully, because our needs change over time. When you learn to enjoy your alone time, you'll never
need
another person to fill the space.
When I first started this process a few years ago, I noticed I had developed a habit of deflecting the conversation from myself onto other people. When asked what my goals were, I'd tell everyone that I wanted to make my parents happy, or that I wished I had it together as much as so-and-so. My therapist at the time would always tell me, “That's her garden, stay in yours.”
How can you ever grow a beautiful rose bush if you spend all day eyeing the tulips next door?
by Sheila Prakash
You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection
.
—B
UDDHA
Over the summer, my husband and I decided to take our lovely nieces and nephew out for a day of fun in the city. I expected a day filled with fun, laughter, and connection, but I was in store for much more—a lesson in love and truth from my eleven-year-old niece.
We were all at dinner and decided to play a game where one person asks a question of their choice, and everyone else answers. The question “Who do you have a crush on?” arose, and around the table we went. All the kids had normal answers, such as “um, Jason—no, Adam—well, sometimes Chris,” “definitely Sarah,” “I am not sure if I want to say,” and so on.