Lovesick

After getting married for the second time, something in me changed. I felt everything shifting around me. My relationships, my perception, my goals. It felt like I was spinning. I still feel like I’m spinning most days.

More things I didn’t know would happen after getting married were happening. I felt unprepared, but forced to deal with the situations at hand. The emotions I didn’t want to experience, the pain, the discomfort, and ultimately, the solidifying of my husband and I’s partnership. It felt like it cemented.

I didn’t think it should change since we’d already been legally married for 2 years, but if I and everyone else hasn’t realized by now I didn’t think a lot of things would happen as they did. I noticed this shift happen in my husband after our legal ceremony. It was immediate, he moved up a level in partnership overnight. I thought I was already there. Maybe I was, but maybe what has shifted lately is another level of partnership I didn’t know existed.

I do know that with every life change with your partner you will experience new things. We’ve been teens together (as friends), navigated a partially long distance relationship for years, bought and created a home, raised 3 dogs together, opened a salon, traveled in and outside of the country, lost friends, gained new ones, experienced the loss of our dog, experienced a parental loss, got married, got married again (in front of a lot more people), and so many other things since our relationship began. Of course these experiences will change me as a person, and change my relationship. I live with this man, I get to come home to him each day. I get to be there for the good moods and the bad ones, just like he is for mine. We have shared things with eachother that we are too scared to share with anyone else. We have admit our inner most thoughts to eachother, and learned that they aren’t personal. We’ve also learned how to communicate when our feelings are our own, and when the other should not take those feelings as a personal attack. We’ve held each other through many tears, more of him holding me, but don’t think I haven’t held him too.

To many outsiders I am the more emotional one. The one who controls more, the one who demands more, the one with less patience. And maybe parts of those statements are true, but they are not the truth. I’ve had to fight these allegations that I am controlling my husband since we began dating. That’s almost 8 years of trying to prove my character. When this whole time his love has been teaching me that I have nothing to prove, because he knows my heart.

I regularly feel like my love for him is not believed. Is it because I don’t show it well enough? Do others need proof for it to be real? Does it matter? Should I change? Is it honest if I change? I feel nauseous

I want to throw up talking about love and writing about how I feel. But I want to be soft. And the only way out is through. Through doing what scares me. Declaring my feelings publicly. In front of other people. GROSS

Why did I used to look down on love? Maybe it’s because I didn’t have a good example of it. My parent’s relationship was basically non existent, my dad was mostly depressed and hiding his identity as a gay man for over 23 years. My mom didn’t have a gentle upbringing and that doesn’t really set you up on the path for success in gentle parenting, and her husband was gay and depressed. The love happening at my house came with a side of nails. It was sharp, it cut, it scarred

What’s happening now is an undoing. It’s a ripping open of these scars, and an outpouring of love. It’s burning like molten lava as it leaves my body. It’s feeling bare and exposed. It makes me want to vomit

I’ve spent my adult life so far just trying to get others to see my heart, but it’s never felt like enough. To the people that have entered my life in recent years, my love has been gentle enough that there’s nothing for me to prove. They have gotten the refined version of me. The version of me that has worked so hard to be soft and gentle. To lead with compassion and love. To aim to understand first before being understood. To say I’m sorry.

There’s more to prove to those that have been a part of my journey in life for longer. I know that I don’t need to prove anything, and that it’s up to others to be able to accept who I am now. But it doesn’t change the fact that there are people out there waiting for me to respond to things differently to show them I am capable.

Don’t we all do this though? So is it wrong? Is anyone wrong? Or is it just where we are at?

I’ve felt the power of healing that writing has given me, and it’s been something I’ve always felt called to. To share my writing is to share pieces of my heart, pieces I’ve only just accepted, pieces I’m still processing. It makes me feel sick

But it also frees me

It frees me to write and share because I am letting go of my fears I’ve carried for far too long of being seen. I knew what lived inside was actually just a big softie. And it was mortifying.

But if all some people see is my tough exterior, then how will they ever treat me differently?

My readiness now, is not coming from a place of feeling that I need to prove I am calm and gentle, it’s coming from a place of showing others that it is possible to change. Not for validation, but for proof

I wouldn’t have gotten to this place without the love from many different individuals. The strongest influence being my husband. He’s loved me when I have been sobbing and yelling at him (clearly just having a meltdown from overwhelm and the inability to process). He’s loved me when I have taken out bad days on him. He’s loved me through depression. He’s loved every part of me that has emerged, and even if he didn’t love that part, he welcomed it, and didn’t make me feel less than for being where I was at. He understood I wanted better for myself and he has seen my efforts.

Because of this he has also experienced my love at its best. He’s been the one I turn to for everything I go through. Since we had our wedding, that’s truer than it ever has been. It’s scared me to put my full trust in somebody like this. Especially to publicly declare it, because what if one day everything changes? That possibility exists with everything in life, so why is it so much scarier when it comes to sharing how you feel about people?