The Love That Should Never Have Been… Introduction.
Once upon a time, many years ago… I fell a little in love.
Like any woman, I denied much of it after discovering my love was not met in the same way.
I processed the feelings, managed my expectations, and moved on.
Or so I thought… it wouldn’t be until years later that I realized there were a couple months when I was pretending. Fake it ‘till you make it, right? Apparently that doesn’t work when you’re faking NOT having feelings. It was an intense process of letting go and rebuilding the relationship to be healthy and strong. One that I can now safely say has a foundation of deep truth and mutual love of the right kind. One where we are both met in our expression of it, but without the silent sadness of what it will never be. One where we can openly share about our new connections, and excitements in the realm of relationships and dating. One where I know one day to not only be a part of each other’s lives, but also of each other’s significant others.
Those many years ago when I was processing the realization of my own feelings, and the moving through them. The process of letting go and grieving what never was… I wrote a number of letters to the person in question. At the time it was an exercise in expressing my emotions. While I wrote them as letters, I was never actually intending to send them to him. Until one day, we were talking on the phone and I realized I was complete. I had moved through it, and it felt right to give him the option to read my expressions.
It felt like a final closing of the chapter, to admit what had happened in my inner world and the journey I had been on…
Vulnerable, and shaky I spoke the words: ‘So over the past few months I have been writing letters to you explaining my emotional journey. Never intending to share them, however, if you are open to it, I would like to send them.’
Even though I was hoping he would agree, I instantly had a moment of regret when he said yes he would appreciate that.
A few weeks later, after he had had time to read them, we were on the phone again and we talked through everything. How we experienced some things in the same way without realizing it. How our experiences vastly differed. However, what we talked about most was the difference in emotional range and experience. How women and men have such different views, different feelings, different attachments, different depth. It was a beautiful and expansive conversation.
Now, many years later, it feels apropos to share this with you. To open up my emotional heart and let you see inside. For no other reason that to show how everyone’s journey is vastly unique and no feelings are wrong. They are simply our emotional experience, it is what we do with those feelings that creates consequences… I chose to write them, and share them, in the hope that my sharing a small pieced of my inner world might help you understand something more about yours. Or at the very least, feel seen in the emotional rollercoaster that is our heart, knowing you’re not alone in whatever it is you’re feeling.
There is so much talk about leaning in to emotional vulnerability, but if we don’t start really sharing vulnerably then how does that happen? So here’s me leaning in to an intimidating edge of pulling the curtain back a little on my inner world and letting you read select parts of my journal.
So the next couple posts will be a series:
The Love That Should Never Have Been.
8 letters that were written over a span of 7 months, many many moons ago.
Here’s to pulling back the curtain 🥂🌹
Cheers.
