'Learn to trust yourself in your current situation.'
My yoga teacher said this to us at the end of our class today during savasana...
It really hit me. The thought of this somehow brought me peace and at the same time a sense of unease as well as a million questions.
What does that mean?
What is trust?
What is the deal with trust?
Do you trust yourself?
Do you trust your friends?
Do you trust your lover?
What does it mean to truly trust someone or something?
What does it mean to really trust ourselves?
We can say we trust our families. We can say we trust our friends … we can believe they would do anything for us … or at least believe it enough in order to function in our daily lives as if that’s the case.
We can even say we trust ourselves.
Trust in a romantic context is a very different and altogether more complex dance.
Opening our hearts to another being.
Trusting them enough to say,
‘Here I am … in all my glory, showing all my quirks, holding all my baggage and carrying all my faults … here I am, do you love me?’
It’s the kind of trust that is so cripplingly human, we say it’s, ‘putting it all out there.’
It’s the kind of trust that asks for nothing and everything all at once.
Why is it SO HARD to surrender, to trust someone with your heart?
RISK.
It means risking it all.
Risking yourself. Your true self and the created version.
Risking rejection.
Harsh, raw, rejection.
Complete obliteration of the ego.
It’s not walking into a situation where you are still somewhat in control, and voluntarily, temporarily, putting your ego aside…
Like choosing to take a mind altering substance that will blur your walled in, concept of reality and you forget yourself for a while… no.
It’s total surrender. Falling in love is like saying…
‘This piece of me is now yours. Meaning that you then have the power to trample on it, squash it so utterly that it will never EVER be the same again.'
Then, if like me, your mind jumps to ...
'What if I am betrayed?'
Wow.
This means the security, the groundedness, the safe space we held onto that kept the relationship and connection together, that ever so fragile trust, is gone.
The very earth beneath you crumbles.
The precious air you have previously breathed so peacefully and deeply, becomes heavy and polluted.
Romantic betrayal, whether emotional or physical, catapults us high into the air, deep underground and everywhere in between.
It calls everything you thought you once knew into question.
Not only your trust in that person has disappeared but your very identity, principles, ideas
about the universe are suddenly unclear ... and we are thrust into complete chaos.
Being someone caught between the terror that everything might change and the equal fear that everything will remain exactly as it is, gives me the tendency to hold onto negative emotions.
Being someone caught in my own cycle of intellect and 'emotional awareness,' is exhausting, prevents me from enjoying the moment and is simply annoying.
Being someone who is constantly balancing the scales between order and chaos in almost every single aspect of my life; career, finding a 'home,' staying connected to friends or family while travelling etc, this all feels like a full time job on top of whatever else I'm doing at the time...
Like, figuring out who the hell I am when I am in love with someone? How to trust them? How can I believe it? This seems impossible to answer. When am I supposed to have the fucking time to figure that out?!
I'm a big, beautiful, messy collection of memories, baggage, stubborn opinions having followed a weird, winding and wonderful, totally unique path which has lead to a tonne of very specific insecurities that I'm strangely proud of and hold dear.
This means I try to control what I can control, when I can control it.
When it comes to surrendering in love, I will only even consider this when I feel 100% safe.
Until then, forget it.
You can call it controlled surrender.
Disciplined resignation.
How is this affecting my love life?
It makes me terrified.
Terrified of letting myself fall.
It makes me disorientated, dizzy. It makes me lose touch with the person I thought I was becoming in my 30's and takes me back to the young, shy teenage girl that ate her lunch in the school toilet.
I realise in this particular moment in my life when love comes my way that I have a choice. I can go there. I can trust. Give myself. I can lose my shit over someone.
Even the possible idea of romantic rejection is like a stab in ones heart. A scar that simply deepens over time as we rethink the scenario, over and over. Picking the scab. A wound that simply doesn't heal.
It's a kind of death. An aspect of you dies, never to resurface.
A death of trust.
A death of hope.
A death of innocence.
A death of belief.
A precious piece of your human puzzle freezes over forever while we promise to ourselves to never let that happen to us again.
Not to mention all the while hearing in the depth of my soul that frustrating, practical voice that knew it was going to happen anyway, and feeling some twisted sense of satisfaction or smugness that you were proven right.
Of course betrayal is going to happen in some sense.
Of course rejection will happen in the course of your life.
You just didn't expect it could be you doing the betraying.
That it would be you doing the rejecting.
And how much infinitely more damaging that would be to your own idea of trust.
If I don't trust myself how can I trust anyone else?
I have felt my own power to hurt. Therefore I know your power to crush me.
What am I supposed to do when love crosses my path again?
Turn away?
Run, like I always do?
Love only partially and keep that sacred space in my heart for myself, protected and secure, safe from harm?
Can you love with only half of your heart?
At what point are you just preventing yourself from growth? Further damaging your own course, closing the doors life opens for you rather than walking through them.
To make ourselves feel nothing so as not to feel anything, what a waste.
As tempting as it is I will not sink quietly into the dark corners of my soul.
I will resist the temptation to cocoon myself in a duvet and sleep the day away.
With shakey legs I will try to stand up.
I will rage.
March.
Walk.
Run.
Forgive.
Practise.
Believe.
Shift perspective.
Look fear in the eye... and I will trust.
Trust again.
Trust again.
Trust again.
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