Feeling Love

 I had to write therapy goals when I started seeing a therapist in January of 2022.  My goals were pretty simple. Primarily I wanted to feel love or loved.  I couldn't feel it anymore.  I saw three doctors with Better Health from January to August.  My goals were the same. I wanted to be my authentic self and feel love.  In August I switched to my current coach, Emy.  I have done a lot of work healing myself.  I confronted childhood trauma and found peace.  I had a difficult breakup prior to meeting my husband and convinced myself that I had never been loved.  I spent a lot of years gaslighting myself and was primed and ready to go to my life with a narcissist. 

Through my work with Emy I learned to accept what I knew as the truth and to rewrite those things I said to myself in the past, at least in my head.  I did start to feel loved, but never by my husband. It took me a few months, really only until this month, to realize you can't feel what isn't there.  I'm not the one who is broken.  I could feel love from those who actually loved me.  I could feel so many emotions.  I wasn't broken, I was in denial.  

The further I get away from him and the lies I heard every day, the clearer I become.  I am learning to trust myself and both my emotions and instincts.  For so many years I felt like I didn't measure up, that I wasn't worthy to be his wife.  I wasn't pretty enough, thin enough, good enough, and so many enoughs.  I was the one who took responsibility for his cheating. Who could blame him?  I was disgusting.  I wasn't what he wanted and I knew that our whole marriage.  I mean how could I not know that when I was told daily how wrong I was; when there were always others he chose over me. He told me I had low self-esteem.  Goodness, I wonder why.  He never wanted to be seen with me.  Every family picture I have with us has him making a face.  He never chose me.  He couldn't, he was the most important and I paid the price for that.

Today, I know.  Today, I know that I have value.  I know that the flaw was in him and not in me.  I am so far from perfect, I make all kinds of mistakes, but I laugh, I love, and I give all of me.  I am loyal and kind. I do cuss like a sailor and laugh at ridiculous things.  I am completely imperfect which is what makes me smile because I know I can feel love and I can give love.