In Need Of Love
She was having a problem with love - she was empty. She didn't have any left to give - or so she felt. She had been pouring out without tapping into the pouring in - she knew that there was love pouring into her all the time, but she didn't seem to have the grasp to hold onto it. It didn't make much sense - she wanted the love, she prayed for it and felt for it like a desperate groper in a dark elevator. She knew that it was there but she was not able to hold it long enough to feel at peace and pour it back into her significant relationships.
Recently she had become aware of how much she sought approval. From everyone. In the home, in the cooking, in the cleaning, at work, in her relationships with her friends. When she got dressed in the morning, she thought about who she would be seeing during the day, and how they would expect her to look. Even in the doing of her good deeds she always needed the stamp of approval, and yet, when she got it, it didn't make her feel good - at least not for long. The inner bitterness had its way of corroding external praise. Not that doing the right thing and getting approval was bad, per se. But it was a demeaning way to live. She wanted to do what was right because she was a believer in the greater good - and she had a little role to fill in the big universe in which she existed. She didn't want to need to get a stamp of approval like a band-aid to help her get through her day.
She knew many in her world who seemed to be full enough that their love spilled over - they were always full of love, and joy and holiness - all the right stuff - it just oozed and spilled over all whom they touched, and it came without demands of manipulation and flowed without conditions on its recipients. She wondered if they were always like that or did their parents do something right? Or was it a choice that they made for themselves, something they worked on and became. She felt so lacking - not that she thought they were easier on themselves than she was, but there wasn't an ounce of bitterness in them. Most of them were less of a perfectionist than she was, but they were definitely more perfected. Sometimes she felt that her very cells were screaming with self-hatred, and, if not, then held an emptiness, a yearning for someone to scoop her up, fix her character, and make her world okay. But that hadn't happened.
She was also very afraid to get close to anyone. She yearned for love, closeness and companionship, but was afraid of becoming attached, afraid of depending on someone else and getting hurt, getting let down again, in the process. When she was first married she and her husband shared many wonderful moments. Then they had crushing moments. Then, when more good moments came, she was a little less into them; she was holding back. The less invested she was in the 'moments' the less the next 'bite' would hurt. Maybe it was a coping tool she had learned in her childhood, but it didn't really help, because the 'bite' still hurt. Again and again. And then her marriage ended. And with the loss, she had lost her capacity to trust, to love and to be close.
But she knew that she was not yet numb. She didn't want to pass her pain on to her children. She wanted them to have love and closeness with her and with chosen others in their lives. But she saw that as much as she had revealed love for them, her hidden hatred of herself had inadvertently created a stinging bubble around her that had, without her intent, filled their existence.
She wondered if she had always been like this or was this something in her that she had absorbed from her parents as they dealt, in their unique way, with their own pain and trials in life. She felt that perhaps she had been the most sensitive of her siblings and she might have absorbed their parent's pain, perfectionism and cynicism. But she realized, too, that they also gave her their genes and a good dose of intelligence and she knew that she now needed to seek some guidance - some counseling - so she, too, could be able to radiate serenity and warmth. Life's turns and tumbles, if reflected on properly, could be used to soften her edges and she could learn through them, and discover how she could give the very best she could to those she loved.
Sh now dared to touch the depth of her pain, in the hope that by kneading it with her raw heart, she might be able to bring change - she did have the strength of character to put a smile on her face and to force it to take root in embodied compassion and no longer projected the pain that her own heart bled into the lives of her children. She was able to heal herself for them and finally found peace and enjoyment knowing that others could not truly love her unless she loved herself, and so she taught herself to finally be proud of who she was, imperfections and all.
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