get thee to a nunnery

[EarthGirl]

I know this sounds weird...well may sound weird to some people..I really believe that love wasn't meant for me in this particular life.

 

When I was about 4 years old I had a recurring dream that I was in high school and I liked this boy and he rejected me in favor of another girl. I had it 3 nights in a row I think...It's one of my very very first memories and I do not have a very good memory at ALL but just a few things stand out from when I was little...and I'm sure I was just old enough to even start understanding the boys liking girls and girls liking boys in a special way ..in fact I don't think I truly understood it but somehow while in the dream I did.

 

And all my life there have been little things..signs, dreams...along with the actual rejections and heartaches...sometimes it was not necessarily them rejecting me but complications that made it impossible, although there has been a whole lot of rejection as well...but the effect is the same either way...me "alone."

 

I've fought so long to get a different outcome but I'm starting to think that if fate has an idea in mind then there's nothing the most powerful force in the world could do to change it. I've questioned since I have had abusive parents if there was a sadness in me starting when I was just a little kid and continuing on throughout my life that I was supposed to be alone..but that THAT was the "false" message...the false belief in me, based on a less than loving and healthy upbringing, but that it did not have to be my fate.

 

Now I am starting to think that it has nothing to do with my worth, my worth is fine, I'm a good person, and special as much as anybody else, I'm "love worthy"...It is only the outside circumstances that although I am love worthy, I am not mean to BE loved in this life, for who knows what reason, but it is what it is.

 

I am just crying right now because I feel like somebody has been trying to tell me this my WHOLE life ...somebody somewhere..to tell me that it has nothing to do with how good I am or how beautiful I am or how interesting...that I am all of that, but I was not supposed to have a "partner" in this particular life (still holding out for later)...

 

I feel like I have spent sooooooooooooooo sssssssoooooooooooo SO SO SO much time trying to figure out ways to defeat my fate. Trying to "get out there" trying to give people I loved second, third, fourth chances when they kept hurting me. And then of course also cutting them out of my life when I realized they weren't going to stop ...going "NC"...trying to be emotionally "healthy"...being vulnerable, being hard...but then again I was never any good at being anything other than just myself, so honestly there was not a lot I could do with all this to manipulate and try to reach a better outcome...Being just "open' to love coming to me "when I least expect it"....didn't work either...maybe I didn't wait long enough I am only 27 been trying at all this for over a decade but of course not all of that time was just being "open to love finding me"...not most of it..but I tried...tried not to try...tried everything.

 

I feel like such a fool that I spent all this time not only thinking I was "less than" when I wasn't, but just using energy and HOPING for a man to hold me in his arms and love me the way I wanted to be loved, but it wasn't in the cards for me...if I had just LISTENED and not been so rebellious and defiant, I wouldn't have ever HURT so god damn much.. Could have saved myself SO much pain and could be living a full and meaningful maybe even joyful life right now.

 

I feel like such a fool.

 

what we do for this crazy little thing called love. sure it's worth it if you get it ...and it's worth it just for the fight and for the hope of it even if you never do (in this life...still hoping there is a guarantee that we all get it eventually)..but when someone who knows better than you and only wants to help you is trying so hard to get through to you to save yourself this pain and trouble and you just don't listen...that is nothing but a fool's game.

[Ms. Joolie]

It sounds like since you were 4 years old you have been obsessed with being rejected by love, and you've written your own story on it, too.

 

There could be another meaning to that dream. Romantic love rejected you for another girl. But it doesn't mean you aren't that other girl, does it?

[EarthGirl]

yea that's the thing, I HAVENT been obsessed with it...I had the dream and I always remembered it in the back of my mind cause it was such a powerful dream and the first dream I can ever remember having actually in my life...I am sure I was not even thinking about ...well I don't think I even knew at four years old that everyone DOESN'T end up happy and in love happy ever after, every single one...as all I watched were Disney Movies and old Musicals that my mother raised us on...That's what I thought life was...I just assumed that it turned out that way for everyone...I was very romantic and had my head in the clouds totally all through growing up. Actually most of me up until you know 20 or so when I had been rejected a few times and then also started to FEEL it...(it takes a while to sink in I think)..I was pretty positive that I would find love actually.. even if it didn't turn out to be quite as easy in real life as in a Disney movie.

 

But also my whole life there have been these "signs' i call them...from when I was a kid and on to this day, not every day by any means, just occasionally...well I could explain more about them but I'm busy tonight....maybe another time...I do feel like my whole life somebody has been trying to tell me something...and it just took several years from the time heartache started to settle in for me to finally get the picture....I don't know how I could have been expected to understand this before I even tried for love or even fell in love the first time...because how could I possibly know that I had a somewhat tragic fate you could call it.. whatever signs I got...everything else was telling me that why on earth should I be so pessimistic?...but I'm not feeling so tragic now..actually I am feeling more free and calm and exhilirated than I have in a LONG LONG time...But yeah being raised on those fairy tales, I don't know how I could have possibly known or figured it out...

 

I supposed I really DID have to "go through " all that I had to go through to really get my head on straight ...It was hell but they say you have to hit "rock bottom" before you realize something is just not working for you and you need to quit.

 

I just wish that the last few years at least ...well I wish it hadn't taken so long for me to understand and accept. It was so painful fighting against it and hoping for true love...and I knew that was what I was "supposed" to do ...to never give up hope and you have to be vulnerable and take chances if you want a reward...and life is all about ying and yang you can't have joy without pain and yadda yadda yadda...but now I feel peace that I haven't felt in like over a decade...

 

Imagine going so long without feeling ..the stuff..that your very soul is made of...without being able to breathe, with being tense every second of every day...Afraid and hopeless. broken.

 

It's amazing not only what our souls can withstand (anything at all, so they say) but our bodies themselves...I mean I am not in the healthiest shape ever that is for SURE....but my body is still going, my heart is still beating, my lungs are breathing...I'm still alive...in the purely scientific physical sense of this earthly plane.

 

Not everybody makes it this far...but I have. So I'm still here and might as well make the most of it.

[EarthGirl]

 

There could be another meaning to that dream. Romantic love rejected you for another girl. But it doesn't mean you aren't that other girl, does it?

 

oh in an answer to your question...that is a wonderful way to think of it, and I have actually thought of that idea myself before, but I really like the way you put it.

 

I am sure that eventually someday in time I will be the "other girl" or rather "THE girl" ...which we all deserve to be. I am just not going to try to fill up this particular life with it...It's NOT about letting go either and "letting God" or letting love come to me " " ....this is not a strategy, I am really giving up on it completely for this entire life...but really I mean I'm 27, almost 28, and I don't have any reason to think I will live as long as my grandma who was almost 89 when she died a few months ago and when she was younger never believed she would live past 50 because all her ancestors including her parents and aunts and uncles all died pretty young per our standards today....Even for her day her family just had some heart disease in the genetics and were unlucky in some ways...etc.

 

I do not have a deathwish, actually I am really super excited about living...But if the next few decades or how ever many there are, feel for the most part as good as I feel now...I have reason to believe that they won't drag on as much as this last one has that has been so horribly painful...These past ten years or so have both gone by in a blink...like a good chunk of my youth has basically been stolen from me...and yet at the same time it has been so painful and excruciating emotionally and physically for that matter that it has been like living a thousand horrible life times in hell. well that may be a little dramatic but I'm not sure it's not the truth for me.

[drillman]

Will i have love? is the question here.

you can pursue it and make it happen, or over-analize it, deny it and not let it happen at all.

i would say that from a purely biological view, some of us have stronger urges and better physical foundations to find a mate and reproduce than others.

Romantic love is a biproduct of those physical urges.

 

people compose sweeping, flowery definitions of what love is, certainly there are other types of attachment, the feelings of a mother for her child, brotherly connections, etc, but we are initialy drawn to a mate for the purpose of pairing up and perpetuating the species. Romantic love is what grows out of the need to protect your union and the offspring of that union. simple survival.

 

If you feel like trekking the face of this planet alone, you don't have to be one of the multitudes sucked into the status quo of marrying...you can have a fulfilling life going solo. Many do.

 

but i wouldnt let a dream decided that choice for me.

[EarthGirl]

It wasn't just any dream. It was one of the most important dreams of my life.. handful of them only maybe five or so..along with another I had much later when 20 or so where the first angel came to visit me when I was having an incredibly hard time in life..these dreams have a diff feeling to them than your average dream and I do absolutely believe they come from heaven...I know not everyone believes in this kind of thing, but I do.

[EarthGirl]

also...you seem to believe that romantic love is built around the need for reproduction and survival of the species. my argument would be that it is the other way around...reproduction, and survival of the species and the fact that life goes on (at least so far, 2012 anybody?)..romantic love, as well as familial love which extends through romantic love when a couple has children...well all the science of sex and babies and life is actually what is built AROUND love, not the other way around..

 

different perspectives.

[EarthGirl]

ps.. you cannot "make" love happen...like the mariah song (ahhh..good stuff) you can make other things happen with hard work and optimism. careers, better health , happiness even...maybe even great friendships...and you can make sex happen and you can make dates happen and you can make relationships happen but that is all on the surface, looks good on paper..but no one but no one can just make love happen for them. All you need is luck, that's what i say...and it is not pessimism nor laziness that brings me to this conclusion no matter what you may choose to think of me. People who are lucky in love will very often come to believe that they brought it on themsleves, they just went about things right, they had faith...so as not to feel horribly guilty about all the broken hearts in the world. And that is fine with me, we all have our coping mechanisms and I certainly would not want anyone to waste their happiness with being brought down cause they're worried about others suffering things that are not even their fault...just as long as they do not preach to me about their own delusions.

[latefragment]

i agree with your posts 100%, i too feel that perhaps love isn't in the cards for me in this lifetime. yeah, boo-f**king hoo to me, but (and i've cried a lot over htis) but i totally think so.

 

i'll still hope for it, and actively try to be friendly towards people, etc., and try to meet new people, but it may not be in the cards for everyone - it's not a guarantee.

 

you are right. people who find "true love" tend to think they brought it on themselves by being "open, friendly, fun, compromising, etc." but in reality i believe luck has a LOT to do with it.

 

you know what else i hate, people who say "all the good ones are taken and all the bad apples remain." THANKS, a**hole. I think that is bull***. it's a lot of luck (and of course having a decent personality) when two souls connect, don't you agree?

[EarthGirl]

it's like a dance, and it's like a maze...it's crazy intricate and complicated..but in the end..at least the end and all the in betweens of this particular life...the people who end up happy and in love with someone who treasures them and SHOWS it and that they feel the same way..were always meant to find their way through the maze to that exact spot. And it may have been hell getting there or it may have been a cake walk, but either way there was really no way they could have avoided it. ..kind of like that Rascal Flatts song, you know..the best one, I love that song. And that is the same way I feel about us who are unlucky in love throughout life...the maze is crazy complicated and intricate like I said, and there may be "fake outs" many times over and we may try so hard to have hope and at one time be quite un-jaded and hopeful..but whatever winding road we travel either led by our hearts or common sense or both or a host of other things...we will end up inevitably where we were meant to...and it hurts for sure but you've got to realize that it has nothing to do with your worth...

 

so it's kind of like a movie or a story (even though it feels much more personal and painful while we're in it of course)...well, how to explain....it's very hard for us not to take bad luck personally in life....because we DON'T know the reasons for it, or why people get more of it thrown at them or put upon them than others. Many religions and spiritual paths and individuals have their own theories, but we can never know for sure.

 

I mean the excruciating pain and hurt from being tortured emotionally (or physically) in life ...particularly bad luck in romantic love , or neglect from parental love, or dreams in general that just don't come true no matter how hard you try..wether it be to have love or a particular career or hobby that you always dreamed of and is just your heart's absolute desire...you know we're taught as children that "you can do anything you put your mind to if you are willing to work for it" and "if you just stop looking, love will come to you"..But of course that is not always true. Anyway, yeah, there are two parts to it: one, just the raw pain of letting go of dreams and being lonely which incredibly powerful in itself...so much so that it's hard to breathe at times...

 

And then part two is feeling that somehow you brought it on yourself. And for some people they feel that they did something wrong to get themselves in this horrible position, and for others they can't think of all that much they did wrong ,but they think they just must be inherently "bad" or "stupid" or a "loser" just in and of themselves. And for some the first hurts more to think, if they have guilt issues about their moral character, and for others the second if they issues of self esteem, but usually they end up not being able to help but believe the one that hurts them the most as an individual.

 

I think the only way to have a fighting chance is to have a little common sense and realize that that is all an illusion and you're just as worthy as the next person who is having a beautiful wedding next month to the love of their lives who treats them like an absolute queen/king, or that person who is getting some great award for their work in the field that you always dreamed you could work in but you just couldn't cut it.

 

To realize that it actually is not wishful thinking that you're not a "total loser" and you are actually just as good as anyone else, you're winding path of life that you were set on the day your were born is just a much much more difficult one that some others...that's not the illusion, it's the other way around...and to realize that is actually not getting your hopes up or having delusions or even having an ego but it is actually just common sense and truth and nothing else.

 

Now the problem is that in the end what you're left with even if you get rid of those illusions of worthlessness about yourself...you are still left with the raw loneliness and the difficult life, the hurt, and the exhaustion, and the despair about all that.

 

all I can prescribe for that is if you are lucky enough to have a tv and a free hour a day, watch some really funny sitcoms and let yourself escape for a while, and just keep on keepin on...you know? oh and get a cat or dog, a sweet one and take very good care of it and let it take care of you...and you will survive, maybe even crack a smile every now and then... hopefully it will all be more than worth it.

Edited November 20, 2009 by EarthGirl