Today has been an emotional one. Not so much tears and breakdowns, but my energy felt completely off.

I woke up a little sporadic and I didn’t have time for my morning routine (which always throws me off) but I still felt fine when I walked out the door. However, once I began my commute to work, I could feel my emotions like a ton of bricks.

Music has such an effect on my mood and for all of 2017, I coped with a lot of my feelings through lyrics. I’ve felt connection to music since I was 12, but somehow 2017 deepened that connection within me.

I like to focus my writing more so on breaking down concepts I’ve learned, but I’ve found the best way to explain anything is to dive into my own experience. I have a problem with believing I need to have my issues completely sorted out before I share, but thing is, you don’t want to hear from the girl who has it all figured out. The girl who gets what she wants and creates the exact reality she wishes to see. Because despite how badly we want certain things in our lives, our human-ness will always interfere.

All of us are learning by the day. We’re ever-changing as humans and the person we fell asleep as may be completely different to who arose. There’s no telling what circumstances will arise to change us into the people we are.

So, on my commute, a lot of old Taylor Swift was playing. While I usually enjoy belting to her old songs, I surprisingly felt numb. Every single word was piercing me so deeply that by the time I got to work, I was a wreck.

 

That’s the thing about heartbreak. One moment you believe you’re over it when suddenly a few sad words bring you right back to your pain.

 

It could be months or even a year later and you still find yourself in the same confused, lonely state. You wonder why everything played out the way it did, why you can’t let go, and how you could possibly still feel invested in a story that ended a long time ago.

You get angry at yourself – you know better. You’ve been down this thought train a million times and you know where it leads you.

Yet you continue down the path.

You replay the old memories, flashback to before it all began, and end up in tears over the fact that’s all you have left.

You tell yourself you shouldn’t feel this way.

In a spiritual sense, all humans are assignments. We flow to the people who match our vibration and ultimately will give us the exact lesson we need to expand.

 

For example, let’s take a girl who doesn’t know how to love.

 

She meets a laundry list of great men over the years, but growing up, she never had a male bond. Not with dad, a brother, or even an uncle. Her masculine side is completely disowned. When a man tries to show her affection, her immediate reaction is to pull away. It feels wrong, uncomfortable, like walking on worn-down wood planks with a tide underneath.

Yet, she continues to attract men in to her life that try to shower her with love. The purpose is to reveal the inner wound to that girl. If she re-lives the same assignment (different men, same scenario) enough, maybe she’ll begin to see a pattern.

Well, she does. She notices she has a rough time with male affection, but her mind has already come up with excuses. She starts to believe she’s aromantic and phew, now the pain can be buried again.

 

Until she meets someone new, someone who feels different from the rest.

 

Someone who won’t shower the affection so easily. A man who will have her questioning her every word, laying down every baby hair, and amping up every small mundane detail of her life.

She believes if she can just say the right words and do the right things, love will be reciprocated. She’s trying her best and men have loved her before, so why not this one?

It’ll be months before she realizes the truth behind this assignment: to see the mirror.

The girl who couldn’t love ended up attracting her male counterpart.

After re-living the same story of male affection and running away for years, the Universe took a different approach.

 

Show the girl the mirror and see how she responds differently.

Show the girl the mirror and see if she sees herself.

 

If we haven’t picked up on it yet, the girl is me.

 

This is a struggle I have been anxious to share on here, but vulnerability is what sets a lot of us free. Sometimes airing out our deepest pains releases them from our heart long enough to see them objectively.

 

Letting our pain go is only possible when we’re willing to be with it.

 

I spent most of today trying to avoid the all too familiar feelings, but as I lay in bed tonight, I refuse to fall asleep sad. I refuse to spend another night wallowing and making myself feel bad about it.

If I’ve learned anything over the past year, it is that our feelings are always valid. It seems ridiculous to repeat the same painful emotions over and over, but the thing is, the pain doesn’t come up for no reason. You’re meant to be feeling it as much as you don’t want to be.

I’m tired of shaming myself for being this girl who can’t love. I have my pain to work through, past and present, and that’s okay. I recognize I have my wounds and I have every right to be sad things didn’t work out how I wanted them to.

 

It’s human to feel that way.

 

It could take me months or years to work through these feelings, but I have to be willing to feel them wholeheartedly. I can’t continue to berate myself every time I reminisce on a night I want back. On the other hand, I can’t talk myself into relationships I don’t want to be in.

I know this whole post has been super vague, but I know those who have been where I’m standing will understand. It’s a special kind of hell when you don’t know how to love/be loved yet you long for the ones who deal with your same struggle. It’s a cycle where no one wins.

I’m scared to share this post, mostly because of who might read it, but I know this is something I needed to share.

It’s okay to be sad things didn’t work out. It’s understandable that you crave love yet you have no idea how to go about it. You didn’t grow up with those tools, which is exactly how it was supposed to happen.

 

I’m convinced that one of my sole reasons for coming down to this lifetime was to learn how to receive love. If I had been given the perfect environment for that, I would have nothing to learn.

 

I go after the ones who pay me no mind because in my past, I had to prove my worth to receive a man’s attention. I had to make my presence valuable in some way because if it wasn’t, I would be brushed to the side. By going after men who can’t commit or validate me, I feel comfortable in the insecurity because it is what I’ve known.

When men want to commit and try to love me, everything feels off. It feels like there must be some ulterior motive because I did nothing to deserve their love.

I realize now that I never needed to make myself valuable, I already was, yet old beliefs die-hard – especially subconscious beliefs. It’s not a matter of turning a switch on or off, it is a complete dedication to parenting yourself in all the ways you never received.

Our parents always do the best they can with what they know, but we live on a planet of imperfect beings. When they’re full of negative core beliefs and past traumas (as most of us are), expecting perfect children feels cheating.

 

We didn’t come down here to be perfect. We came down here to learn from the life we’ve been given.

 

In my case, love has always been a huge issue for me. It will continue to be, but I’m doing all that I can to work through it.

If that means crying over old memories, so be it. If it means giving the good guy a chance, as resistant as that feels, so be it.

Awareness to our issues is the first step. but it is how we approach these issues that makes all the difference in our lives. We can’t be aware and repeat our old patterns without feeling an immense amount of negative emotion.

I’m on a rough road that feels eternal yet I know nothing can ever last forever. I will work through my pain just as you will work through what came to mind for you throughout this post.

We have to show up. We have to continue on even when song lyrics hit us right in the throat.

Our pain is our power.

Do not forget that for a second.