“Should I Stay or Should I Go Now”…Love Part III

“Should I stay or should I go now?
Should I stay or should I go now?
If I go there will be trouble
And if I stay it will be double
So ya gotta let me know
Should I cool it or should I blow? ”
The Clash

A funny thing about living past my 20’s and 30’s is that I can’t help but notice trends in my coping style. I can’t help but gather data that paints a picture of who I’ve become. I suppose, on one hand, it’s another way of saying, “the choices you make define you.” But I think it’s more than that. In my 20’s, despite my best intentions and attempts at self-awareness, I thought I was breaking patterns. I thought I was defining myself. I did try, and that counts for something. I believe it was part of the process, and I’m not un-proud of who I am. It’s a boon for me that I love big and I love hard. It’s an emblem I am not ashamed of. But I spent much of my life loving and leaving fast and I see now how it’s led me here. I’m good. I’m where I am in the moment, and it’s OK. I guess I just wonder if I was meant to be or could have been someone or something else. If I could have been more. I wonder if there is still time.

Mostly I’m just surprised by how much I thought I was creating of myself when in fact I was simply responding to programming and becoming.

Despite my most deliberate efforts, I lived my defining years through a set of experiences I had very little choice in making. My childhood imprinted the belief that told me who I was so the choices I made were choices I was bound to make.

Should I stay or should I go was my subtext and I didn’t even know it. In a way, should I stay or should I go determined the course of my life. It certainly determined who and how I loved.

I wasn’t able to see how I had internalized my childhood life until after I had made choices based on it. It was only through reflection of that “lack of choice” that I was able to finally begin becoming the person I wanted to be. I suppose that too was a process in the making, and part and parcel of being a person, so it’s OK. I guess I just wish I hadn’t taken so long.

Nevertheless, here I am, not too much worse for the ware. I’m still standing. I haven’t given up. I’m happy. I’m not happy in the way I thought I would be in my twenties. But deep in my being, I know happiness because of what I’ve lived through. I know a new happiness because of the love of people who stood by me, including love I’m learning to give myself. I guess at the end of the day, that’s pretty impressive.

“No one’s gone till they’re gone”.
Fear the Walking Dead.

I find this idea of “becoming’ endlessly fascinating. And I always wonder how “being” applies to love.

I want to know, realize, and become everything I possibly can. I want to see, really see, who I am. I want to be the best version of myself. Mostly, though, I want to help guide my son’s childhood with as enlightened a hand as possible. I want to know I did my best to help him walk a path where he makes better choices in his defining years than perhaps I did. At least less desperate choices.

I live by gut and heart…and then the brain. I love my passion and my drive, I’m OK making my way through the heart first. That being said, I was smart enough to marry a computer developer and inventor who lives by data. Also, Buddha’s diagnosis has proven impossible to survive without data and logic So, luckily, I have also come to appreciate, if not love, data.

I can be taught.

This sentence, I love data, if you knew me when, is a complete juxtaposition of who I was or wanted to be many years ago. But there it is. Life and experience that lead to a choice where I am now an avid gawker of data. (Just for the record, I don’t have a spreadsheet or anything. I write I think, I reflect. Some systems just don’t need to change.)

With new wisdom, experience, love and forgiveness, fault and failure I use this data not only to understand myself but how I define love. Because to me, it all boils down to love. How I love myself determines how I love others. The better I love others the better I love myself. Round and round it goes until purpose, contribution, peace, and happiness all collide. At least that’s my theory.

I want love to be what defines me. Big love.

Collecting four decades of data on my personality, partner choices, jobs, achievements, and relationships I found some interesting trends. Trends that help me understand what love means to me and how to love better!

Here are my 10 most common trends based on this data.

1. I am loyal to a fault
2. I crave affection and soothing in atypical amounts. Meaning I need more than a lot of love to make up for love taken as a child.
3. Justice is subjective unless you’re cruel to others. Then your just an asshole.
4. I am an addict, therefore, until my 40’s, my life was seen in stark black and white.
5. I want to save the world from loneliness and unworthiness. I want to be saved from loneliness and unworthiness.
6. I believe in hard work and purpose. The search for the meaning of life.
7. I am a good leader, not a great employee.
8. I believe I am good enough for success but don’t really believe I deserve it.
9. I have judgment for people who have children that aren’t willing to become what they need you to be to raise them without loneliness and unworthiness.
10. Perfectionism is a blessing and a curse but not something I’m entirely willing to give up. It’s a mark of my coding.
11. If you hurt me, you are dead to me…forever. Without even a goodbye. You are erased.

And here lies the rub. Number 11: If you hurt me, you are dead to me…forever.

“Should I stay or should I go?” Most likely, I will go.

Not very enlightened.

My subconscious definition of love is equal to abandonment or enmeshment. So, I believe that if you love me, you will leave me or assimilate me. In attempts to hold my own boundaries, to be myself, I leave people as fast as I fall in love with them. At least I used to.

I am learning that’s it’s allowed, even right, to redefine love as we go along defining ourselves. I didn’t believe that as a child and think it’s why I’m happier now. I have given myself permission, more and more each year, to chose love that works for me rather than let love just happen to me.

If you hurt me enough, you will be dead to me. But if you keep trying to communicate, to understand me as I try to understand you, I won’t run anymore. I will stick it out.

Your path isn’t mine to decide. You have the choice. I don’t want to run. I don’t want to be a runner. I just want to know I’m worth more than tolerating abuse. I want a big love that’s real love.

I’m not entirely healed so if you love me, please don’t fuck with me. I will go and that will be that.

I want to choose to stay instead of go. I want to see who I can be, how much better I can love when I stay instead of go.

 

Love-Part I

I love love. I mean, I really love, love. It’s everything to me, always has been. It’s the driving force behind every decision, good and bad, I have ever made. Love is powerful. Love heals. Love is a tool for growth and goodness. Love is respite and breath. Love broadens and coaxes out the best in us all. Love keeps its promises.

I believe free love is real love.

I believe love is the only thing that can save us from our collective self-destructive impulses, from ourselves.

I don’t always know what it looks like, but I know when it’s right. Love is real and right when everything works out…not usually the way I envisioned, but the way it was meant to. In the end, if I can get to the end, love is always right.

I was lucky, I came into the world knowing that love is the answer. And I was luckier still because even through heartache, bullying, and betrayal, I was encouraged to let love lead. Love was always an acceptable form of currency in my life, even if it wasn’t always evenly traded.

Since my first memories, I have committed myself to love; to absorbing, sharing, and holding, even hoarding when fear takes over, as much love as possible. From every atom in my sphere, through every second of the day, until forever, love has and always will be my answer.

What I didn’t know when I took on the mantle of love as my personal life quest, at the tiny age of impressionable and trusting, was the many forms of fear, judgment, and insecurity that masks itself as love. Love is not always discernible, but real love is always right. To me, that is what it means to be human. Finding real love is sifting through the pain to the heart.

Real love, pure and unselfish, empowers and emboldens us to be our best selves. To relish in the gift that is life, to see past the pain. It is the tradeoff of form and function, of suffering.

Love is worth it. As a child abandoned by her father, a young woman with a broken heart, and a mother with a sick child, sometimes it’s all too much to bear. But I will die, hopefully not soon, remembering the love. Love is the particles I will take with me into the next iteration of my being. I have no doubt.

Yes, I am human and I hurt…easily. And as such, love is complicated and full of expectation and foggy lenses that I will need to spend every day I am granted cleaning and refining.

But love is why I get up every day. And when I can’t get up it’s because I misconceive love, or try to control it to abate my grief and fear. Love has shown me what it means to be human. Love, through every struggle, sets me free.

How do I know love? That is a question deserving of far more attention than a simple singular post. So I am going to spend the next few weeks diving into the answers to these questions: How do I know love? What does love mean to me? What is love? How has love changed for me? And others.

To get me started, here is my answer to how do I know love?

I know love as a reflection of those I love. Their open hearts, their generosity, their kindness, their affection. I know love through a filter of experiences reflected through generations of resilience, trauma, pain, and joy.

I know love from:

A mother who was saved by the unexpected fullness of the love she felt for and by her children.

A father too afraid of himself for real love, who through lack thereof, showed me what love isn’t.

A brother who was saved by the love of his mother but can’t yet admit it so is held hostage by his resentment.

A sister who is taking New York City by the balls and making it her own because she knows the love of a good man. (That’s NOT the only reason, but it’s helping. And we all deserve the love of a good “other”)

A leader who allows himself mistakes but does not tolerate ignorance.

A boyfriend who loved me for who I was and then left me for the same reason.

A boyfriend who didn’t love me even though I pretended he did.

A dog who was batshit crazy, but insanely loyal to me until our last parting.

A friend who decided early on that she knew the love her heart needed and was smart enough to not listen to the naysayers. Me.

A stepfather, mentally ill and emotionally unwilling to face his own messes. A man who gave up fighting his selfishness and turned to manipulative control instead of love.

A director who saw more in me than I ever saw in myself and gave me the opportunity, guidance, and support to trust myself and shine as bright as my light could beam. A man who let me be exactly who I was in that moment without asking for more and then trusted me enough to hold the spotlight for him.

Three nannies who were exactly the people Buddha and I needed them at exactly the right time. Three different women who saved my life and made his so so so much better through their devotion, intelligence, objectiveness, spirit, and love.

A friend who has stood by me supported me, loved me, and accepted me for over 25 years. Through every bad boyfriend, job change, crazy family moment, and my son’s diagnosis she has been there because she is my friend.

A husband who didn’t believe in happiness, who didn’t believe himself capable or deserving of love until he held his son for the first time.

A son shattering from the inside out, who doesn’t know he may be systematically dying because the love from his parents is enough…for now.