Brave Enough To Be Bliss

Chapter 10 —I’ll Always Have Your Back

“You are either running towards something or away from something. You must choose whether it is love or fear that pushes you through the door.” Joel Clemons

I love this quote and I hate this quote. I love it because if I could summarize my relationship with John, it would be with this quote. We just couldn’t make up our minds. We’d run toward love, then flee in fear. I would run through the door in love, and he would flee out of it in fear. And vice versa. For years, back and forth. In the door and out the door. It was madness really, and yet it wasn’t. It made perfect sense given who we were, what we had experienced in our lives and what we knew at the time. And it’s the same for everyone else. Behavior makes sense once you’re brave enough to look beneath the behavior to understand it. Then it’s possible to actually change it with a lot of practice, trial, and error. And I felt like I perfected the error…and not different types of errors, the same ones, over and over and over. That part was madness and on November 30, 2018, I had had enough. Ginger had better fix me and fix me fast. In reality, I understood that no one could fix my behavior except me, but it sure would have been nice if she could have. I was sick of myself and was quite sure John felt the same, so I came in ready to solve the puzzle once and for all. In the three months I had been seeing Ginger, we always had things to follow up on and I just let her lead the discussion. But on November 30, 2018, I remember going in on a mission. I had to figure this out. I didn’t want to continue to do the same things I had been doing. I wanted to change. I so desperately wanted to change.

“It's the questions we can't answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think. If you give a man an answer, all he gains is a little fact. But give him a question and he'll look for his own answers.” Patrick Rothfuss

As she does, Ginger asked me questions and I tried to answer them as best I could. You can see in this photo, we worked through several things. ▪ On the top middle of the board, she talked with me about distinguishing fake danger from real danger. To me, the danger felt real when John left because he hadn’t expressed his feelings for me (I believe words) and when he left, I feared he wouldn’t be com ing back because he didn’t say that he would. And if that happened, it would confirm I was unlovable. ▪ At the top right, she asked how I feel when I am at my best. Peaceful, energized, not hungry, light, positive, motivated, inspiring others, productive. ▪ The middle was all about John. She talked about how I had options;

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