a couple of sidenotes:
i listened to delilah on the ride back to raleigh...i'm hoping that in no way affected what it is i'm about to write.
this has nothing to do with the wedding i attended this weekend.
while driving to greenville this morning, for whatever reason this became clear to me on my drive there. it was affirmed for me through discussions had in class today.
for some of you who have known me a while you will know that my freshman year of college was a tough experience that i never could have imagined playing out the way it did. for those who don't know...i lost 2 people very dear to me within roughly a 3 day period. one chose to walk out of my life and the other i believe God chose to call home.
struggling with those two totally different loses at such a pivotal point in my life was a challenge i never anticipated on having to deal with, nor did i have any way of even knowing how to deal with it. both would have been the one i would have gone to, to talk about the situation involving the other. this led to months of severe depression, diagnosed only by me (and maybe others who saw it but never told me) and only well after the fact. i knew i couldn't get out of the bed...i couldn't tell you why.
i believe in the saying ..it is better to have loved and lost, than to never have loved at all. i believed it in before those losses and i believe in it kinda sorta now. to know the pain i felt and the absolute dark place i was in and knowing no way out...i can't say that love is worth ever having to experience that again. what i do know is...i got out of that place, only by my relationship with God and him placing me where I needed to be.
i say all this to say...that i think for years since that horrible time in my life i have never allowed myself to experience another relationship. through what ever coping mechanisms i chose, and in some ways still choose, helped with making it easier to not allow myself to be available to anyone. knowing i couldn't be available for anyone to care for ...just made life easier. i never had to even have the possibility of experiencing those extremely painful times again.
when i met with my supervisor the first time at my placement he asked about how i came to social work. i told him my story...and when i got to the part of these events happening in my life my freshman year of college..i could have cried right there in front of this stranger about it (seven years later). why would emotions still be that raw that one question could get that kind of response? that let me know that in some ways i still hadn't dealt with what it is i had gone through.
i think through transformations i've made in my life recently and shedding some of those protective barriers, i am now able to readily make myself available to be loved and to love someone else just as much. human touch and relationships are necessities to survival and something that in so many ways i have starved myself of for the past years. all because of my need to not feel close to anyone for fear of having to deal with that loss all over again. nothing would have been worth it.
i'm in a good place in my life right now...actually probably the best place i've ever been...and not to say those were all bad places before, but i am just more aware now of choices i was making in my life to keep myself at a distance from ever being hurt again. and maybe i needed that distance then, but eventually i have to not live in fear of being hurt or experiencing loss.
life doesn't promise hurt. it does promise to make you stronger, if you allow it. whether that be 10 days or 10 years later.
this blog might make absolutely no sense to you...and that is fine. you'll get whatever is intended for you to get out of it.
lastly, i feel if i told this to delilah she would then proceed to probably play a song like the electric slide. only because it has absolutely nothing to do with the story that is just told to her. you can always count on her to come through with a song selection that is so out of left field.
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