What Makes Us Think We Don't Deserve Better?
As I look at the blogs and personal ads, all of the people trying to find love on-line, and I talk to my sister I begin to wonder????..What makes us think we don't deserve something better?????Why do we think we have to settle???..What is in us that others don't see? What do we want them to see?...What don't we want them to see??
Why do we feel like we have to write an ad?? Something that sums us up in a couple of sentences or a couple of paragraphs to explain the whole that makes us up? And are there enough words....do we belong a few words..or in a paragraph.... or pages that make up a novel...or a couple of novels....who am I???what do I stand for??? Do I stand for something that will add to the life of someone else??? Do I want to add to the life of someone else? The questions keep coming....especially after being in long-term relationships that we thought defined us, but did they define us or did we allow them to define us and mold us carefully into people that ended up broken or feeling like we lost ourselves in the relationship itself...did we lose ourselves or let ourselves get lost because we let them feel that way?....and once we let go.....................Will we truly find ourselves again and find that what we were looking for was not in that person or it was in that person, but we failed them?....but how could we still want them?...or feel like we need them?..How could they feel they wanted us?..How could we find that our whole being was surrounded by what we had made of ourselves wrapped around them or they did the same??.. Why???? Did we give too much..did we give too little..did we fight..were we permisive..did we NEED them ...did they NEED us...because they or we were the known....the security........were they..we totally lost or did they...we want to be lost?????????????
If they..we were lost........then how would there be an end..... in minds there would be no end to it...yet, something told us the relationship was lost without anymore left in either one to repair it ......it is in that moment when we realize that it is finished that we fall to pieces.....we feel like failures....we feel relieved....we feel broken...we feel put together..we start the process of beginning again.
HOW did we get here? How did we lose touch?...How do we get in touch?.....How do we stop from drowning ourselves in life....going and doing more and more and just long enough not to have down time to think? How do we start spending time with ourselves and realize that we are not looking for some miracle that will bring us to another next level, but by realizing that all we want to find is someone who will add to our lives, not make us happy....only make us happier without change? We are who we are....and we need to find someone that accepts us!!!
The Velveteen Principles come back to mind. A GREAT BOOK...in its own time for your life or mine....based on putting the Velveteen Rabbit into our ADULT LIVES...."a stuffed bunny covered with inexpensive fabric, copes with the insecurity of being compared with the other playthings. As Margery Williams writes, 'He was naturally shy, and being only made of velveteen, some of the more expensive toys quite snubbed him.' While he longed to fit in with his peers, the Rabbit hoped even more to become special to the Boy."
One of the chapters, "To Be Real in A World of Objects". "She was bright-eyed but obviously quite ill. Her hands shook, and she breathed with the help of an oxygen tank. She wore no makeup. Red splotches and blue veins were visible through her pale, wrinkled skin. And her clothes were not the least bit feminine or fashionable. She was everything I had been taught to avoid becoming----weak, unhealthy, dependent and unconcerned about the impression she made on others.
Her husband, a white-haired man dressed in khaki pants and a flannel shirt, was small, alert and quite fit. He had pushed her wheelchair with relative ease and then knelt next to her. He pushed back the sleeve of his shirt, revealing a very old tattoo of a buxom young woman----maybe it was Betty Grable--- and stroked his wife's hair. As he adjusted the plastic tubing for her oxygen supply, he spoke softly in his wife's ear. Whatever he said made her smile."
After spending many years...trying to change...or hoping to find change in others...with my parents' divorce....my father's remarriage...then divorce...my grandparents, who did not admit their love until my grandmother was dying...it was hard to believe that you could find someone you would really want to spend the rest of your life with no matter what!! It was not until my grandmother became ill and I watched how my PopPop doted over her, brought her all her favorite things and then on New Year's Eve (her last) a toast with a spoon.....and seeing him cry for the first time in my life...not just a cry, but almost a wailing for his loss....he made the procession go past the house more than once and he mourned.....and I mourned....and I learned in that instant....that love does transcend youth and beauty and time and it makes us real......I have come to realize............I do not need to change..........nor does someone else need to change..............I need to find someone who will give me and I will give them.....................the principles found in the Velveteen Rabbit. The more I love them and they love me, and the more they show their age...(they will have lines near their eyes that reflect too much laughter, lines by their mouth that do the same, and they will always find me entertaining or interesting or worth the time)....it will not matter....their inside self will still make me smile and my inside self will still make them smile...Silly, coming from an adult....but I have witnessed it....and I have seen that it is "real".
