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“Don’t stop. Don’t hesitate. You can’t be scared of what’s next. Do not let fear get in your way. That’s why we don’t operate alone. So in the cases where somebody actually does get hurt, nobody has to go through it alone.” This is a quote from one of my favorite TV shows, but it holds so much truth as it relates to life, or at least my life at the moment. There are so many ways for us to get hurt, but is it better if we don’t even try, if we don’t love or take chances? That would make for a very lonely and boring life. When your heart is hurting, you think you are dying. The pain is so severe, you feel as if you can’t possibly move on. It isn’t until much later that you are able to look back on the hurt and find the joy that happened before the hurt. I can look back on my marriage now, and see all the wonderful things we did. All the things we accomplished together, the trips we took, the memories we made and shared. I can talk about all of those things now with a smile on my face. They aren’t near as painful as they were. They have a fondness for me. A feeling of growing, maturing, becoming a wife and a mother. Learning how to coexist with another human being, which is a fate within itself. At the time of the demise of my marriage, the last thing I could do was look back on our life together and see the good. You see, at the time, my heart was breaking. I was so broken that I couldn’t see past my own heartbreak to try and see any good that had come of that relationship. Blaming myself for not being enough for him to want to stay, but not seeing my own “faults” at the time. Now that so many years have passed, I can look back and see that we were both still growing and learning. I had so much baggage that I brought into the marriage, in my defense I didn’t know that I had unhandled baggage until lots of years and hours of therapy later. I think as young kids, which most of us were when we got married, we are so caught up in the newness of the love, the attention from your partner, the always wanting to be together, that we forget to look past that and see what it may be like in 10 years. I know that some people have that feeling for their whole marriage, but I think a majority of us lose it at some point. I gained so many wonderful things from that relationship, the most important being The Boy. As I’ve grown since then, I have had other heartbreaks, none as strong as that one but I think that’s because I’ve walled off a portion of my heart. I have lost a few relationships, most of which weren’t romantic. Sometimes, you have to let people go who are not good for your mental health, and sometimes people let you go for what seems to be no reason at all. At this point in my life, the quote above brings so much truth to me. I have so much fear, yet I refuse to let that get in my way of something that could be beautiful. I’ve always heard that “flowers need rain to grow”. That is absolutely true, and I think it brings truth to relationships. Not every relationship is going to be sunny, but every relationship can benefit from the rain. I’m not good in the “rain”, I rightfully admit that. I have a tendance to pull away and shut down when I feel like I am being criticized or think that someone is angry at me. I do know this about myself, again hours of therapy, and am trying to work on the fight or flight instinct. To realize that just because someone gets mad, doesn’t mean they are going to leave, that those are actually the times you grow. It’s kind of funny, because the only time I don’t really “shut down” is with family. And that is because I feel like they “have to love me no matter what.” I wish I could feel like that in other relationships. To have that sense of confidence in the feelings of others, especially when they have expressed those feelings. I read somewhere that “an overthinker needs to be with a great communicator” and I had an A-ha moment. That definitely spoke to my heart. I need someone who can communicate there thoughts and feelings to me in a way that I can understand that yes they are upset, but no they aren’t leaving. Sometimes my communication skills are lacking, I admit, but they are more so when I feel scared. Scared to say the wrong thing, scared to be the wrong thing, scared to do the wrong thing. Are we ever able to let go of past hurts to grow into something more beautiful and confident? Are we destined to always be that person who fears rejection, abandonment, and aloneness? I hope not. I hope that a rainbow comes around soon, because I am coming out of the dark.