I lost my virginity at the delicate age of 16 to my best friend. He and I would stay up till all hours of the night talking on the phone about any number of intimate things including family, past relationships, hurts, hopes, joys and our mutual curiosity about sex. Neither one of us had been with anyone on that level and we decided that it would be safest to explore this uncharted territory with each other - someone we trusted and knew inside and out.
It was finals week of our junior year in high school and we had it all planned out as we had talked about our "first time" extensively. He didn't care about where or how it all went down, but I had high expectations due to my exposure to movies, music, etc. and I wanted it to be "perfect." I had voiced to him that I wanted it to be dark and romantic - candles, music, the whole nine yards. He tried his best to accommodate me, but dark and romantic turned into him hanging up towels over his bedroom window to block out the sunlight and Nirvana blaring over his alarm clock radio. He had also laid down old Muppet Babies sheets over his bed in case there was any bleeding involved. Very romantic.
It took us awhile to get it to "work" and I never felt any of the explosive things I had seen in movies - cries of ecstasy and moans of pleasure were things I never came close to and the whole thing was over and done in approximately 45 seconds. I was very disappointed, but covered it up for him and told him it was great and exactly how I had always imagined it to be. He felt like a rock star and I felt awful. I went home and cried buckets of tears for both my loss of innocence and my anti-climactic experience of sex as a whole.
Over the next few weeks, we decided to be in a committed relationship with each other and I had my first official boyfriend. I fell in love with this boy eventually - my best friend turned into something more. I let my heart go and it was fully his...I trusted him and thought he would never do anything to hurt me. When he left for school a little over a year later, he dumped me. He told me he was going to rush a fraternity and that he wanted to have the full experience of hooking up with random girls at parties; that he was sorry but we were young and obviously didn't have a future together. I was crushed, as he had never communicated to me that we didn't have a future together at any point and I very much thought in my young state of mind that we would eventually get married and have lots of babies.
This was my second time around of feeling disposable to men; the first being a result of my father leaving. From where I was standing, they had both left me for the same reason - other women. I thought that all I had given of my heart was worth nothing; that I was worth nothing.
More than a year went by before I gave my heart away again; this time to a man who would have given me anything I needed or asked for. He loved me unconditionally in spite of my "baggage" I brought to the table. He thought I was perfect and put me on a pedestal I couldn't stand on for long. I stepped off the pedestal eventually, broke his heart - and my own in the process. To this day, I have never been loved by a man as he loved me.
I carry my book of broken hearts with me every day. I have been on both sides multiple times and believe that there are few things worse than being the giver or the receiver of a broken heart. Being on the receiving end in this moment has forced me to reflect on my own patterns of behavior in life and love. A theme I am currently meditating on and praying through is how I put everything I have into someone I choose to love and let my identity be wrapped up in the exchange of hearts that inevitably happen over the course of time. I live in a paradox of serious trust issues and giving my heart away too quickly and too much to men who are emotionally unavailable for various reasons. I have been the "bridge" more than once for men - someone who helps them through a significant time period in their lives and gives them hope for a romantic future; just not with me on the other side.
My girlfriends are helping me to believe that my desire for authenticity, openness of heart, and deep connection with people is a beautiful and rare quality that I possess; that I only need to be more careful about how much I give of myself in the process before it has been reciprocated and deemed "worthy" of my gift. I am taking a hard look at why I have a tendency to love so hard and fierce far too quickly, and I know that it has to do with where I base my identity. I was created to love this way for a reason, but somewhere in the process I lose sight of the invaluable truth that my ability to be loved back does not lay in what I say or do not say; what I do or do not do; how I look or do not look. My identity should lie solely in how He views me and how He loves me. No other person and how they view me matters - not really; not in the end.
I am once again on a path of painful self-discovery and desire desperately to make a change in my perceptions. I am getting lost along the way and am very discouraged, but the Truth continually speaks to me in my darkest moments to let me know that I am well on my way and that unspeakably beautiful things are on the other side waiting for me.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Thursday, August 4, 2011
The Personality Girl
(re-posted from July 28, 2011 - Black Becomes Me)
I was 17 years old and experiencing my first broken heart. It was summer and my mom typically lay out in the sun for hours in the mornings before it got unbearably hot. I didn't feel close to my mom at that point...I was a teenager and completely consumed with myself, but in the midst of heartbreak the desperation to connect with someone who loved me unconditionally was palpable. I found her there on the balcony when I could drag myself out of bed that first morning. She saw me at the door and motioned to the chair beside her, inviting me to sit wordlessly. I sat down hard, closed my eyes and let the warmth of the sun wash over my body as tears streamed down my face.
"Mom, I'm never going to love anyone the way I love him," I choked out. My body shook with sobs and I squeezed my eyes shut tight, trying in some way to close out the hurtful thoughts, feelings and memories.
She sighed and said nothing for several minutes as I continued to cry. Eventually, she sat up in her chair and looked at me sitting beside her, stared for what seemed like an eternity, taking in my pathetic state with a kind of thoughtful meditation. Slowly, she reached for my hand and held it wordlessly for quite some time before she spoke.
"J, I know it doesn't feel like it right now, but you are going to be OK. This isn't the first time you have had your heart broken."
Confused, I looked at her through my blurry, tear-filled eyes. I shook my head vehemently. "No! I haven't! He is the first person I have ever been in love with."
"Yes," she agreed. "The first person you have ever been in love with. But not your first feelings of heartbreak; not your first rejection by a man. Do you know what I'm talking about?"
"Daddy?" I asked.
"Yes, daddy." She sighed heavily and leaned back again in her chair.
"But that was different," I objected again.
"Yes, different. But I would venture to say that it feels very similar. Am I wrong?" she asked.
I thought back to when I was 12 and my dad had left us. I thought about how angry and confused and heartbroken I had, indeed, been when he told us he was in love with someone else and was going to marry her. I thought about how my family had fallen apart and I had been left to pick up the pieces of my mother and sisters' broken hearts with all the inexperience of a 6th grader. I remembered how it had hurt when I saw him checking women out behind his sunglasses at the pool; how I had decided then and there that the most important thing to a man was a woman's physical beauty. Earlier just that year we had all undergone another serious blow to our hearts when we found out he had an addiction and had hurt young women throughout his entire life as a result of it...defenseless women; children, even.
My mom broke into my reflections and asked again pointedly, "Am I wrong?"
"No," I choked out. "You're right. I remember feeling like I wasn't good enough. I remember feeling forsaken and left behind by someone I trusted. I feel all those same feelings now."
She nodded and sat up again, this time very intentionally. "J, you got through that. You may still be muddling through residual thoughts and feelings about your father; you may be doing that your entire life. But you stood up and you took care of all of us. You were the only one who could be strong. You taught me a lot. I wouldn't be here right now if it weren't for you."
"Mom, this hurts so much. I don't know how you did it...how you woke up every day knowing he had chosen someone else after so many years together. I don't think I can do this. You are the one who is strong. I'm not strong like you. I feel like I don't want to wake up," I cried loudly and hung my head.
"But you can wake up and you will wake up, J. You have to. I wish I could say that this will be your only broken heart but I can't. You will have your heart broken again and you will break hearts as well."
"No," I said firmly. "I will never make anyone feel like this. Not ever! Not someone I claim to love. It's so mean and devastating and changes a person forever. I would never do that to anyone."
She smiled back at me sadly. "But you will, J...you will. It's a part of life," she said softly.
I remember that morning like it was yesterday. My mother was right. I went on to break many hearts of men that I claimed to love and have experienced more heartbreak than I think is fair in my short life of 33 years. My solid, stubborn belief that men only care about a woman's aesthetic beauty and not the beauty of a woman's heart has been a theme and played a large part in my romantic relationships. I have come to believe that I am the "personality girl" and have nothing to offer men in the way of physical beauty. I have come to believe that my only shot is that a man fall in love with my heart and then accept the fact that I have other things to offer outside of physical attraction - he, then, chooses whether that is enough for him. At no time have I stood up for what I feel or know I am worth. Sadly, this is due to the fact that I don't feel like I am worth much.
I have an amazing spiritual mentor/counselor who uses a metaphor of a diamond that I love. She asked me once - Jamie, if I told you I have a diamond that is worth a million dollars and I go bury it in the ground underneath a pile of shit, does it make the diamond any less valuable? Would you still go after that diamond, dig it up and treasure it? If I piled even more shit on top of it that you had to dig in for days to get to - would it make that diamond any less valuable? Would you not still go after it? YOU are that diamond. We have all this shit on top of us but that doesn't make us less valuable. Hold out for a man who sees your diamond and goes to great lengths to go after you in spite of how dirty you feel on the outside. The only man worthy of you is the man who sees you as a diamond.
I have learned the hard way that I love hard and as a result, hurt hard. I take rejections personally. It's my knee-jerk reaction to think that I am not worth anything, that the person I have chosen to love has seen that I am not worth anything - and I live in that place for a long time. But somewhere deep down I believe that I am a diamond; at least, I want to believe that I am a diamond. I struggle very much because of my rejections by men with this but - I know on a logical level that I cannot be the one exception...God can't have created me to be the only non-diamond worth shit of all the diamonds He has created. I have to believe and cling to the hope that one day, a man will see me for the diamond that I am and choose me - chase me and treasure me. But first and more importantly, I have to believe this about myself. Until then, I will continue to give my heart away to men not worthy. This is where I am at today - the "personality girl" with another broken heart and clinging to a hope I do not believe in my heart just yet that maybe, just maybe, I am a diamond too.
I was 17 years old and experiencing my first broken heart. It was summer and my mom typically lay out in the sun for hours in the mornings before it got unbearably hot. I didn't feel close to my mom at that point...I was a teenager and completely consumed with myself, but in the midst of heartbreak the desperation to connect with someone who loved me unconditionally was palpable. I found her there on the balcony when I could drag myself out of bed that first morning. She saw me at the door and motioned to the chair beside her, inviting me to sit wordlessly. I sat down hard, closed my eyes and let the warmth of the sun wash over my body as tears streamed down my face.
"Mom, I'm never going to love anyone the way I love him," I choked out. My body shook with sobs and I squeezed my eyes shut tight, trying in some way to close out the hurtful thoughts, feelings and memories.
She sighed and said nothing for several minutes as I continued to cry. Eventually, she sat up in her chair and looked at me sitting beside her, stared for what seemed like an eternity, taking in my pathetic state with a kind of thoughtful meditation. Slowly, she reached for my hand and held it wordlessly for quite some time before she spoke.
"J, I know it doesn't feel like it right now, but you are going to be OK. This isn't the first time you have had your heart broken."
Confused, I looked at her through my blurry, tear-filled eyes. I shook my head vehemently. "No! I haven't! He is the first person I have ever been in love with."
"Yes," she agreed. "The first person you have ever been in love with. But not your first feelings of heartbreak; not your first rejection by a man. Do you know what I'm talking about?"
"Daddy?" I asked.
"Yes, daddy." She sighed heavily and leaned back again in her chair.
"But that was different," I objected again.
"Yes, different. But I would venture to say that it feels very similar. Am I wrong?" she asked.
I thought back to when I was 12 and my dad had left us. I thought about how angry and confused and heartbroken I had, indeed, been when he told us he was in love with someone else and was going to marry her. I thought about how my family had fallen apart and I had been left to pick up the pieces of my mother and sisters' broken hearts with all the inexperience of a 6th grader. I remembered how it had hurt when I saw him checking women out behind his sunglasses at the pool; how I had decided then and there that the most important thing to a man was a woman's physical beauty. Earlier just that year we had all undergone another serious blow to our hearts when we found out he had an addiction and had hurt young women throughout his entire life as a result of it...defenseless women; children, even.
My mom broke into my reflections and asked again pointedly, "Am I wrong?"
"No," I choked out. "You're right. I remember feeling like I wasn't good enough. I remember feeling forsaken and left behind by someone I trusted. I feel all those same feelings now."
She nodded and sat up again, this time very intentionally. "J, you got through that. You may still be muddling through residual thoughts and feelings about your father; you may be doing that your entire life. But you stood up and you took care of all of us. You were the only one who could be strong. You taught me a lot. I wouldn't be here right now if it weren't for you."
"Mom, this hurts so much. I don't know how you did it...how you woke up every day knowing he had chosen someone else after so many years together. I don't think I can do this. You are the one who is strong. I'm not strong like you. I feel like I don't want to wake up," I cried loudly and hung my head.
"But you can wake up and you will wake up, J. You have to. I wish I could say that this will be your only broken heart but I can't. You will have your heart broken again and you will break hearts as well."
"No," I said firmly. "I will never make anyone feel like this. Not ever! Not someone I claim to love. It's so mean and devastating and changes a person forever. I would never do that to anyone."
She smiled back at me sadly. "But you will, J...you will. It's a part of life," she said softly.
I remember that morning like it was yesterday. My mother was right. I went on to break many hearts of men that I claimed to love and have experienced more heartbreak than I think is fair in my short life of 33 years. My solid, stubborn belief that men only care about a woman's aesthetic beauty and not the beauty of a woman's heart has been a theme and played a large part in my romantic relationships. I have come to believe that I am the "personality girl" and have nothing to offer men in the way of physical beauty. I have come to believe that my only shot is that a man fall in love with my heart and then accept the fact that I have other things to offer outside of physical attraction - he, then, chooses whether that is enough for him. At no time have I stood up for what I feel or know I am worth. Sadly, this is due to the fact that I don't feel like I am worth much.
I have an amazing spiritual mentor/counselor who uses a metaphor of a diamond that I love. She asked me once - Jamie, if I told you I have a diamond that is worth a million dollars and I go bury it in the ground underneath a pile of shit, does it make the diamond any less valuable? Would you still go after that diamond, dig it up and treasure it? If I piled even more shit on top of it that you had to dig in for days to get to - would it make that diamond any less valuable? Would you not still go after it? YOU are that diamond. We have all this shit on top of us but that doesn't make us less valuable. Hold out for a man who sees your diamond and goes to great lengths to go after you in spite of how dirty you feel on the outside. The only man worthy of you is the man who sees you as a diamond.
I have learned the hard way that I love hard and as a result, hurt hard. I take rejections personally. It's my knee-jerk reaction to think that I am not worth anything, that the person I have chosen to love has seen that I am not worth anything - and I live in that place for a long time. But somewhere deep down I believe that I am a diamond; at least, I want to believe that I am a diamond. I struggle very much because of my rejections by men with this but - I know on a logical level that I cannot be the one exception...God can't have created me to be the only non-diamond worth shit of all the diamonds He has created. I have to believe and cling to the hope that one day, a man will see me for the diamond that I am and choose me - chase me and treasure me. But first and more importantly, I have to believe this about myself. Until then, I will continue to give my heart away to men not worthy. This is where I am at today - the "personality girl" with another broken heart and clinging to a hope I do not believe in my heart just yet that maybe, just maybe, I am a diamond too.
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