Fugliness Included

There’s that fear that the other person will either find out something about you that they won’t be able to take or you’ll find out something about them that you won’t be able to take. I think it has to do with the fear we have that no one can love us fully and truly if they knew all of us—the good, the bad, and the fugly.

As each passing moment is passed, a shell of who we really are begs to be hatched. We yearn to break free from these shells that daily grow harder. I am but another shell of who I once was before this one. I am but a babe beneath these shells. Beholding beauty, waiting to be seen for the first time. Unfortunately, we don’t believe our beauty is fit to be held. “Oh no, I can’t let them know about that! That’s just not a very ‘flattering’ aspect of who I really am.”

We keep our growing feelings for someone hidden for a while and wait to see if they are true or not. If and when we come to a point where we feel we cannot deny that our feelings are lasting, we usually still hold them in before we come out with it for fear the other person doesn’t feel the same way. We try to gauge what the other person is thinking and feeling. Even when they give off the impression that they are feeling the same way, there’s always that chance you can let your feelings explicitly be known and then doubt suddenly comes rushing in to their heads. One of the hardest things to deal with is when you think your timing is good and the other person responds positively to it and says they feel the same way only to later find out that everything has now changed. It’s these experiences that can cripple us the most. If we henceforth shut down and refuse to ever put ourselves out there again, then we will never be able to allow ourselves to experience the moment we have been longing for when we will find that person who will lastingly love us just as much as we love them and not worry anymore about scaring them off or making them feel “pressured.”

We fail to be loved truly, never realizing we are made truly by/from/in Love. We are never able to be fully loved when we refuse to believe we can be and are loved in full, while we are yet still sinners. We have never been graced with this Presence of Being before. My desire is to let the All in All in all of me. All of these tall walls I’ve caused to be built around my heart—guarding it from hurt, disappointment, and chance—must come crumbling down to the ground like the Tower of Babel.

May it be as He has willed…

We're All Searching

We’re all searching. We’re all searching for someone. Someone who will have a never-ending love for us. Yes, for those of us who believe we are loved and counted as beautiful and important by our Heavenly Father, we do “know” that we can always trust in that fact. But, that doesn’t change the fact that we still want something “more,” something tangible. We question whether or not we are lovable and look for the answer in others. We are constantly looking for that one person to share everything with and to know us as who we truly are—all messed up and everything—and still love us (and even more so because we are).

Through past heartaches we have learned not to pile on the reality of who we truly are all at one time because no one could take that! We all hold in a bunch of “stuff” about our own selves from one another when we first meet them for fear they can’t—or won’t—be able to take the messed-upedness. We’ve learned how to do this throughout our experiences thus far. We must keep cushioning so it won’t hurt so badly if we fall. We’ve learned the phrase, “More is better,” and we begin to amass the pillows of fears, jealousies, regrets, and doubts around us like a child building a fort around his or herself:

“They won’t be able to see me in here…” he says slyly as his grin and suspicious eyes scan back and forth, back and forth.

We have learned the cost of letting down our guards, being vulnerable to others, and trusting them when they say they want to hear all about our deepest hurts and insufficiencies and promise to take extra special care with them and not let it scare them off. Sometimes, the casualty of letting down your guard is taking a big hit to it.

Regrets. Do we have any if a relationship doesn’t pan out (or looks like it won’t)? Well, I don’t think we regret the times we had with the other person, but we also hate the writhing pain felt when our hearts are broken. We half-heartedly wish we never would’ve let go of ourselves in the first place if we knew it would end up like this, but we also aren’t sorry for sharing a part of ourselves with someone else because the feeling and the moment was good at the time. So, in short, we don’t but we do. Do we not?

Ah, the thoughts of the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! If there seems to be an end to a relationship, we often times feel robbed…but it was a good robbing. We begin healing and trying not to form too big of a callous from this one and maybe even hope that the robber might come back to not only give back the piece from before, but tell you that they want to trade you theirs for yours. You don’t want to put too much stock in the latter but you also try not to burn bridges that are only being broken down to build a stronger bridge in the possible near future.

It sucks though, doesn’t it?! For a good while you can’t listen to certain music, you can’t eat at certain restaurants, you can’t smell certain smells, and you can’t stand to see the things you have been surrounding yourself with that remind you of the other person. And so we want to take all of those things and burn them. Just throw them away and let them be out of sight, out of mind! The problem to that: they might be out of sight and out of mind, but they are far from being out of heart.

(To be continued…)