I can't love you. No, I could never love you until... I stop loving him.
And for me, it wasn't going to be that simple.
Someone recently asked me why my last few relationships didn't work out. I dread that question just as much as the overused "why are you single". I answered it though as I always did. The reason that my past relationships failed was that I kept falling for emotionally unavailable men. For the first time, my own words didn't sit well with me. I suddenly wondered who I was lying to: him, myself, or the both of us?
It sounded good though. These men that took away such different parts of me were not ready, able, or willing to love me in the capacity in which I deserved. I suddenly started to wonder, what if. What if they were ready, able, and willing to love me and fulfill all the things that I spoke of and my desires...would I even allow them to love me? What if the person that was unwilling and unavailable to love was me? What if that was why I was drawn to each of them because at the end of the day it gave me a way out? I would never have to say that I could not love them. I would never have to admit that I was still in love with someone else.
You see, the first time that I fell in love was not with the first person that I loved. At 18 years old, I didn't recognize then that he was the man that my soul would be tied to for so much of my life. This person single-handedly brought to me a love that made me both strong and weak. It was as if he gave me life and yet took my breath away. He so easily made me feel the difference between the love that I had been accepting and the love that I deserved.
Then just like with most good things, our story came to an end. Life happened as it always does and as it always will, forcing us to move on in different directions. I learned to become okay with that or at least I had in my mind. I began to navigate through different relationships after that. I had decided that I would try again. Now that I look back on my life though, I can honestly say that I was just going through the motions. There was no way that I had the capacity of loving anyone else. In fact, I hadn't even freed up my heart to do so.
They say that if you love someone you should let them go, and if they come back then that means that they are yours. And when they don't...even when you aren't ready to, you must face the fact that it's over. What could have been and what should have been now has to find its own closure.
And so a few weeks ago, I posted a status that said:
Grieving people that are still alive is tough. Coming to the realization that the relationship has served its season isn’t easy at all.
We often think of grief in terms of someone physically passing on. Grief however is an emotion that occurs whenever anything that meant something to you comes to an end. I recently was apart of a conversation on Clubhouse called Picking Up the Pieces which focused on life after loss. Loss can come in many forms. Whether it is a job, a friendship, childhood trauma, a missed opportunity, and in this case even when it comes to soul ties, we have to go through the process of mourning each one.
As crazy as it may sound, it is so imperative to our healing. For me, I'm starting the process of grieving a soul that my soul has still craved for over a decade. As difficult as this will be for me to do, it's the only thing to do if I truly desire to love again. And so it's okay to remember. Remember what it was and then release. May we all begin to understand that love is limitless and in it are still so many possibilities...