Brave Enough To Be Bliss

work. I quickly responded with something about feeling nauseated. It wasn’t even a lie, once I got real with myself and remembered I was unlovable, I did feel sick. Sick that I had yet again allowed myself to be used. And then almost immediately, I realized what had happened. The voices. Always the damn voices sneaking out of the basement. How did I let that happen? It wasn’t that he used me, it’s that I let the voices come out and ruin everything. Again.

I sent a text to my friend and explained briefly, and she said I could just explain to him, and it would be OK.

But it wasn’t. In an instant it went from shivers to a lost cause.

P!NK - Lost Cause (Lyrics) | Is it me? (youtube.com)

“The best definition of love I ever heard: Love is giving someone the power to destroy you and trusting they won’t use it.” Simon Sinek I apologized and tried to explain by text, but I had hurt him…again. But as always, he didn’t throw any sticks and stones, and he didn’t even tell me I was a lost cause. He didn’t say any harsh words. He said nothing. Not…one…single…word. So, I said them to myself for him. And even though this song wasn’t out yet, that’s literally what I told myself. I was a f****** lost cause. I would never learn. And I would never be able to really change when it came to a man. I just didn’t understand how I could know and believe everything Ginger had taught me, but when I was in the shower still feel so unlovable. And yet, after I had hurled the figurative sticks and stones and told myself, I was a lost cause along with many other insults, and after I felt the pain and cried the tears, I had learned enough about self-compassion that I didn’t feel completely hopeless for my future. I knew I had let fear guide and affect my behavior for a short time, but even if John couldn’t forgive me, I would forgive myself. I hoped he would eventually understand and come back, but I wouldn’t count on it anymore. “To love with any level of intensity and honesty is to become vulnerable. I used to tell couples getting married that the only thing I could tell them with certainty was that they would hurt each other. To love is to know the loss of love. Heartbreak is unavoidable unless we choose not to love at all. A lot of people do just that.” Joe Reynolds Since it was the pandemic and we didn’t have patients coming in, there really wasn’t much John could do in the office, which was the absolute worst thing for me, for him, and for us. I didn’t know what he was thinking and feeling, but I didn’t feel I could press the issue, so I just focused on me and worked. During these times when we weren’t connected it could get frustrating. I remember one time in the year after his mom passed away, I was in my bathroom getting ready to go somewhere and was so frustrated with John that I looked to the heavens (i.e. ceiling) and literally said something like, "Mrs. Visani, he's so frustrating that I'm about to give up on him. I don't know what else to do." Literally within the next minute, he sent me a text. I have no idea what it said, but I took that as a sign that I needed to hang in there with him. Of course it could have been coincidence, but he didn’t text a lot, so the timing was pretty amazing. And even if he hadn’t, I wouldn’t have actually given up on the human being . Maybe the relationship, but never the human being. And the term fuckedupedness I use in the following email is one that John first used in a text when I lived in the Overland Park apartment. I remember it was like he was trying to talk me out of caring about him because he thought he had issues, but likely that was before he figured out all of mine or he might have been more concerned for him than me.

137