The Four F Words

I have spent too many years in this perpetual cycle of fight, flight, freeze and fawn. Wasted countless hours laying prone in my bed. Callouses formed on my feet from walking on egg shells for what feels like an eternity.

For so long, I have been paralyzed by my circumstances. Incapable of making decisions, making moves. Made to question my own sanity.

I have worked so hard to move forward by doing the shadow work, digging out all of the skeletons of trauma from my past. I set it all out in the light of day, sanitizing all of it. It's still there, but it doesn't hold the same power it did. I am free.

Sometimes, freedom feels so foreign that you aren't sure what to with it. You tread cautiously, with the meekness of a caged animal, suddenly set loose in a wide open world.

Then, almost miraculously, someone comes along, and they see you, they see all of the pain you have endured, but they also see all of the hard work that you have put into your own growth and healing. They encourage you to focus on the positives.

Unlike previous relationships, they don't want to rescue you. They do want you to succeed, to forge your own path, on your own terms. They put real effort into supporting you and showing up in practical ways. They don't rush you. They don't force anything.

You start to believe in magic again. It strolls in, nonchalantly, without announcing it's arrival. It's there, in the mundane, in moments like standing in the kitchen, and they take your hand and dance with you to Frank Sinatra that is playing while you wash dishes. It's their insistence on always lighting your cigarettes. It's in the comfortable silence as you sit on a picnic blanket at a seaside park, gazing out at the fiery golden sunset dipping beneath the ocean horizon.

For the first time in your life, you believe them when they say, "FOREVER". For the first time, reciprocity actually means something. You look at the future laid before you and you feel HOPE, and you feel bliss, and what you don't do this time is question it.