The experience of a shift

...and I will strain my potential until it cries for mercy...If I had to choose a word to describe where I've been lately the word I would pick is "outstretched." I feel both open and pulled and I love it. In blessed meetings last week I came to know and understand the following two very important things.1. The thing I want more than anything is connection. I had someone tell me this. He said, "Oh I know you. I see you. You're just like me, you want that connection more than anything..." Cue all the cliches, lightening bolts, whistles, bells, etcetera. I thought about the obvious, my relationships with men, it is why often nothing feels like enough, because for all the gifts and sometimes even physical affection, they do not necessarily equate to connection. Then I thought about food...I have never ever been able to answer the questions regarding why I am an emotional over-eater. It is connection. It is what I do with friends and it is what I do in absence of them when I wish for them and pray for them and feel my loneliness. 2. Romantic love is a reflection of self-love. Surely I had heard this before but it was as if I was hearing it for the first time. As if it came into my ears and went straight to the center of me where it reverberated throughout my form. Again I look to past relationships...E once asked me why I was afraid of love. I had no way of answering that question, and not for lack of consideration. Quite the contrary, I have thought about it often in the 7 years since he asked me. Though now I think to myself, "why are you afraid of loving yourself?" It literally brings tears to my eyes...why on earth would someone be fearful of loving yourself? ...what if I fail ...what if the things I dream about are unattainable? ...what if no one ever loves me the way I want to be loved? When I say them out loud I can hear my own voice assuring me that failure is the opportunity to go another way, that imagination is the blueprint and if no one else believes in me, I have to, and that if you make a petition to the universe it always delivers.

To be continued...