Taking back my Life

It is not a matter of being fearless. The fear is sometimes constant, but it's about moving forward regardless of the fear. Courage means feeling the fear and doing it anyway. 

~Gillian Anderson~

It has been a year and a half since the big one hit, the emotional tsunami that wiped out everything I knew, everything I believed, everything I wanted. That day that left me with a feeling of nothingness and with walls 10 feet high, made of impenetrable material. But it was a day that left me with an amazing view of the sunshine.

So here I sit, so many months afterward, still reeling from the aftershocks. I still let a man whose selfishness emptied me of everything I believed in, continue to take from me and traumatize me. The sad thing is, he doesn't have to do anything. I allow him to reside in the deepest parts of my head and heart. He is single handedly tearing me away from a man I desperately love. He makes me question myself and he makes me feel unlovable. But it is not his fault this time - it is mine. I am letting him rule my temple and control something in me that he has no right to. It is time to take back my life and free myself from this callous, ruthless villain.

How sad is it that dis-arming this man, facing my fears and opening myself up scares me more than letting this vagrant squat in the recesses of my mind. Kicking him out means opening myself up and becoming vulnerable again and finally letting the man I have grown to love feel trusted. Giving him my trust means that he can hurt me but it also means that I can be happy. It means I have to have faith and faith is not something I have relied on in many years. It means that I have to relinquish my need for control. So much control has been taken from me that I cling to what I have left like it is a life raft.

I am not willing to be hurt again nor am I willing to have everything taken again. As much as a gift as all this has been, I am petrified of starting over. I know my fears are foolish. My future is not something that I can predict or guarantee – nobody can. I have never known "happy love" so I am still learning that the risk could be worth it. For now the risk is too great and too frightening. I want the love, the happiness and peace that come with it but taking down the walls that I have built to keep everyone out scares me. It is safe in my walls – not happy, but safe.

The only thing I truly want is to love and be happy but yet, as I peer over the concrete walls at those things, I am far to afraid to crawl over and see what my dreams could look like. I have a knight waiting at the bottom of my wall, encouraging me to come over, handing me little tastes of what happy is, little bits of what love feels like. He gives me these things regularly but I hold on to the little things he has given me that have made me retreat to the darkness behind my walls, even though the love he has shown me far outweigh the  moments of doubt.

So here I will sit, on my wall, darkness behind me, sunshine in front of me. I fear for the day when my knight gallops away because he can no longer wait for me to jump. The sunshine is beautiful and it does not have the creepy, ball-less villain creeping in every shadow. It has poisonous apples but it has beautifully wrapped treats of love and happiness as well. The darkness holds a past that ties me down and cripples me. Why is this choice so damn hard when is seems so amazingly obvious?