The Inevitable Pain of Returning to Love After Years of Abandoning Yourself

Image by AdelinaZw from Pixabay 

A man told me a story of a woman he had known growing up and, one night, their relationship unexpectedly became more than friendship. It had all felt so natural and he had never felt so in tune with anyone as he did then. However, the next day he panicked, lost in a sea of feeling unworthy and misplaced loyalties to others.

As a result, theirs was a story that never unfolded. Both went on to other relationships, the kind of relationships that played out every painful thing they had each believed about themselves.

It was a sad tale, and one particularly poignant for me, I was that woman.

What could have been I wondered? Yet if I am to wonder anything, it cannot be regrets for there is a future still to be lived. I certainly wonder at the path I took, always looking outside myself for love.

I had had some really good relationships up until the one. As he walked across the train station, a friend of a friend coming out with us that night, the moment seemed to slow and everything else faded away except him walking. I knew right then I was in trouble, my heart lost.

After almost two years together, he decided it was time to leave, and I was broken; devastated, left standing at the edge of an abyss. I wallowed for a long time in a sea of utter misery, blaming myself for who I was, who I had been. I had grown up thinking relationships are where I find the love I had been seeking, and if this guy didn’t think I was worthy then that was my truth.

Other relationships followed, all reflecting the parts of me I rejected through their incompatibilities or – if they were compatible – they were unavailable. Each one reinforced the painful beliefs I had about me. These ranged from lack of worth, to feeling like I was too much, through to feeling like I was unseen, with many others in between.

So in the aftermath of that night with my friend, it was just further confirmation, and I felt hurt, abandoned and alone.

Now many years later, I look back and see so clearly that it was me who had abandoned myself thirty years ago, when the one turned out not to be.

It isn’t until recent years that I began to really wake up to how much more I deserve, and how that it is an inside job. I have to love me before anyone else can.

My friend said he often thinks of that night when he wants to forget the painful things in his life for a while. I replied “The thing is, I’m not a forgetting-things-for-a-while kind of woman. I’m a remembering who you truly are kind of woman.” I guess that is why the memory has stayed with us both.

I had decided this week to participate in Teal Swan’s 7-day self love challenge. On day four she posed a list of ten questions, I got stuck at the first one “What thought do I most want to think about myself?” I couldn’t think of anything, “Something kind and loving but what?” I wondered. I thought if I could look at what’s on my mind most, what I am feeling the most, then I could flip it and create a loving thought.

There’s an almost constant pain in my throat and chest, like I’m trying to swallow down big emotions. I’m sure that is exactly what it is, I’m well practiced, and now I am feeling into the pain of the last fifty years instead of pushing it away. But I couldn’t match the thoughts to the feelings, they were at the edge of my awareness beyond my reach. I decided just to wonder and to let the words arise in their own time.

Learning to love myself is one of the hardest, most gratifying things I have ever done. I feel pain a lot, I think it’s inevitable and most probably temporary. It’s certainly better than the pain of rejected myself and all that life brought me in response.

Glennon Doyle talks about this when she tells the story about going to her fifth recovery meeting (on her sixth day of sobriety) and how she decided to explain how much she hurt and how being alive doesn’t seem as hard for others as is for her. Someone explained to her “It’s okay to feel all the stuff you’re feeling. You’re not doing life wrong, you’re just human, feeling all your feelings is hard, but that’s what they’re there for. Feelings are for feelings. All of them. Even the hard ones.”

She did not know that all feelings were for feeling. She had thought she was supposed to feel happy. That happy was for feeling and pain was for fixing and numbing and hiding and deflecting and ignoring. She thought when life got hard she’d gone wrong somewhere, that pain was weakness and she was supposed to suck it up. The more she sucked it up the more booze she drank down.

From that day she began to return to herself, to practice feeling it all. She learned “Firstly, I can feel everything and survive. Second, I can use pain to become. I am here to keep becoming truer, more beautiful versions of myself again and again forever. To be alive is to be in a perpetual state of revolution. Whether I like it or not pain is the fire of revolution. Everything I need to become the woman I’m meant to be next is inside my feelings of now. Life is alchemy, and emotions are the fire that turns me to gold. I will continue to become only if I resist extinguishing myself a million times a day. If I can sit in the fire of my own feelings, I will keep becoming.”

I see and feel many aspects of who I am reflected back in many ways through others. There have been tens of thousands of people doing this 7-day Self Love challenge right along with me, I hear their stories and feel their pain, and everyone has a story.

The years of stuffing down my own needs and desires and true feelings, are now welling up and wanting to be seen. I imagine it’s very much like the pain of coming off a drug, the pain wants to be seen and acknowledged. There are only two choices, one is to seek a salve, for me that would be connection with others who can validate me externally. The other is to sit with the pain, and validate myself.

A good friend said to me this week “Name one thing you love about Shona”. It gave me pause. At first I was actually unable to answer. “After all this work I’ve done, surely I can find one thing to love about me?” I thought.

Then a voice within me said “kind”. Yes, I can own that, I am a kind person and I do love that. Then the voice said “perceptive”. Yes, I can own that too. Then the voice kept coming, soon I had a decent list.

Circling back to the question I couldn’t answer on the Self Love challenge “What thought do I most want to think about myself?” it’s “I’m here, I’m listening”. And I am listening, I feel and am processing the hurt of having abandoned myself for decades, but it’s better late than never. I’m coming home.

In her book Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living, Glennon says we are all bilingual, we speak the language of indoctrination but our native tongue is the language of imagination:

“The language of indoctrination is the language of the mind, with it’s should and shouldn’t, right and wrong, good and bad. In order to get beyond our training, we need to activate our imaginations, our storytelling faculty. So instead of asking ourselves what is right and wrong, ask ourselves, what is true and beautiful?”

She asks:

“What is the truest, most beautiful life you can imagine?

What is the truest, most beautiful family you can imagine?

What is the truest, most beautiful world you can hope for?

Write it down, these are out blueprints, our marching orders...”

So did you, like Glennon, like me, like too many, believe that happiness was for feeling and pain was for fixing and numbing and hiding and deflecting and ignoring? Are you ready to sit with your pain and make plans for a more beautiful version of your life? What is the truest most beautiful version of your life you can imagine right now?

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How to Attract the Blissful Relationships You Actually Deserve, Do You Want to Make a Heartfelt Change to Your Career?, Simplify Your Life to Be Accepted and Loved as Your Authentic Self, Does Your Heart Long to Be Accepted for Being Just You? and How Do I Honour What I Believe and Care Less What You Think? To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.