An Overactive Mind: Afraid to Love?
I am afraid to let people in. I have been exposed to a culture of belief that you will be left - regardless of your status, amount of anniversaries, whether you’re parents, etc. - it is inevitable. My parents got divorced when I was only two, and throughout my childhood they had the worst relationship, co-parenting was basically non-existent; if it was dad’s weekend, it was dad’s weekend, and that was that. The two of them used to even blame each other for their divorce, in front of us.
Eventually though, but a little too late in my opinion, they started getting along better. Some time around my teen years I suppose - they became more lenient with court-ordered dates, allowed more freedom, weren’t such sticklers on time, and even stopped speaking poorly of each other. However, that did not stop the alienating conversations regarding relationships in this family.
In fact, they’re still borderline depressing. My mother still speaks poorly of marriage. She acts as if it is perhaps the worst thing that has ever happened to her, which is when us kids remind her we were pretty decent gifts from a once beautiful time. And I wish the two of them would view it with such transparency - their marriage wasn’t always broken - they once loved each other more than anyone else in the world. Perhaps that’s why my mother is so against marriage now; she could not imagine the same thing happening to her children, could not imagine us losing someone we loved that much.
No matter the fact, I wish they spoke more positively of it, if not for themselves then for their children. I wish I could go back in time and change their perspectives, so then maybe today I wouldn’t be the dating disaster I always end up. Maybe today my mom would be happy for us kids when we find someone, or think maybe we could have. Maybe today my dad would talk to me about his feelings, and stop pretending he has to protect me from them.
Perhaps today I wouldn’t be afraid to let people in. I wouldn’t be afraid that everyone I thought I could love would end up leaving me. I wouldn’t be afraid to be happy in other’s company, even more-so than my own. I wouldn’t be afraid of emotional intimacy, or physical. I wouldn’t be afraid of losing myself in another person.
Perhaps I am naive for all of this; my parents could have been the greatest co-parents on earth and I could still feel this very same way. It’s impossible to say how life would have turned out had a different door been opened, or a certain one had never been closed. It’s impossible to say the results of life thus far would have changed at all. Isn’t that why, when they time travel in fiction novels and film, they stress the importance of not changing anything in the past, for fear of what it could do to the present? The only catch is, it could do nothing, but you can’t risk the present based on a fact-less hunch.
So what do we do? Where do we go from here? Well, I suppose the only answer is forward. We keep working on bettering ourselves, changing our perspectives and leading a life we want to; one conceived by our own thoughts and beliefs. We learn to find peace and happiness in every new moment, whether it lasts three days or forty years. We vow to stop letting our fears drown out our desires, our negativity dim our positivity. We work toward becoming the positive mentors we needed in our youth, but instead of relying on others, we learn to rely on ourselves. We promise to work on our mentality and anxiety; finding new ways to ease our overactive minds.
Use that passion to light a fire within your soul - strip off the old version of you, and start on the journey toward becoming the you you have the right to be. Sometimes, the hardest experiences have the most influential and positive impacts on us, it just takes a little dusting off the rubble of our skeleton’s to find that our hearts are still intact.
**If you would like to leave a comment, mine are still not enabled yet (working on it). Please feel free to email me at sarahsinscriptions@gmail.com. Thank you!**
Eventually though, but a little too late in my opinion, they started getting along better. Some time around my teen years I suppose - they became more lenient with court-ordered dates, allowed more freedom, weren’t such sticklers on time, and even stopped speaking poorly of each other. However, that did not stop the alienating conversations regarding relationships in this family.
In fact, they’re still borderline depressing. My mother still speaks poorly of marriage. She acts as if it is perhaps the worst thing that has ever happened to her, which is when us kids remind her we were pretty decent gifts from a once beautiful time. And I wish the two of them would view it with such transparency - their marriage wasn’t always broken - they once loved each other more than anyone else in the world. Perhaps that’s why my mother is so against marriage now; she could not imagine the same thing happening to her children, could not imagine us losing someone we loved that much.
No matter the fact, I wish they spoke more positively of it, if not for themselves then for their children. I wish I could go back in time and change their perspectives, so then maybe today I wouldn’t be the dating disaster I always end up. Maybe today my mom would be happy for us kids when we find someone, or think maybe we could have. Maybe today my dad would talk to me about his feelings, and stop pretending he has to protect me from them.
Perhaps today I wouldn’t be afraid to let people in. I wouldn’t be afraid that everyone I thought I could love would end up leaving me. I wouldn’t be afraid to be happy in other’s company, even more-so than my own. I wouldn’t be afraid of emotional intimacy, or physical. I wouldn’t be afraid of losing myself in another person.
Perhaps I am naive for all of this; my parents could have been the greatest co-parents on earth and I could still feel this very same way. It’s impossible to say how life would have turned out had a different door been opened, or a certain one had never been closed. It’s impossible to say the results of life thus far would have changed at all. Isn’t that why, when they time travel in fiction novels and film, they stress the importance of not changing anything in the past, for fear of what it could do to the present? The only catch is, it could do nothing, but you can’t risk the present based on a fact-less hunch.
So what do we do? Where do we go from here? Well, I suppose the only answer is forward. We keep working on bettering ourselves, changing our perspectives and leading a life we want to; one conceived by our own thoughts and beliefs. We learn to find peace and happiness in every new moment, whether it lasts three days or forty years. We vow to stop letting our fears drown out our desires, our negativity dim our positivity. We work toward becoming the positive mentors we needed in our youth, but instead of relying on others, we learn to rely on ourselves. We promise to work on our mentality and anxiety; finding new ways to ease our overactive minds.
Use that passion to light a fire within your soul - strip off the old version of you, and start on the journey toward becoming the you you have the right to be. Sometimes, the hardest experiences have the most influential and positive impacts on us, it just takes a little dusting off the rubble of our skeleton’s to find that our hearts are still intact.
**If you would like to leave a comment, mine are still not enabled yet (working on it). Please feel free to email me at sarahsinscriptions@gmail.com. Thank you!**
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