"I love you too"

The final message exchange before the breakup call was me saying, “remember we are in this together” and that I love you. His message back was, “I love you too.”

The thing is, we weren’t in this together.

I was fully immersed in my concept of the relationship with him. Planning, thinking what else I could do to connect better, how to improve intimacy, how else I need to show up, change, to be seen, to feel supported, to actually feel loved. I was strong. No tears. You’ve got this girl. Stay cool, stay available, don’t make any fuss, otherwise he might go.

All this internal dialogue came back to me while I was trekking through the tea hills of Sri Lanka at the beginning of this year. The story is five years old now, but in that moment the feeling of being rejected felt as alive as if it had happened yesterday.

While in Sri Lanka I met some lovely people I instantly connected with. It felt like I had been reunited with my soul family. Smooth conversations, laughing together, cooking together. I think this woke up a deep longing for relationship, as well as loneliness.

That loneliness, that perception of being rejected or even abandoned, is not new to me. That’s my biggest wound, which was perfectly masked behind ADD symptoms and then dramatically unmasked when I entered perimenopause.

At one point, walking up that hill, I felt nothing. At the same time, I had an urge to connect with someone or something that would soothe me. And at the same time, I couldn’t face the crowds waiting for the famous train at the Nine Arches Bridge in Ella.

This fear and sense of disconnection is extremely painful. It’s a lack of safety at the deepest level. That belief of “am I not good enough”, “am I too much”. It’s all crying for lost connection with a caregiver. What also resurfaces is a deep feeling of shame in my belly and chest, that it must be something fundamentally wrong with me, that I’m being left, abandoned.

This is the energy of giving up on yourself when you are only a small child, giving up on your authentic-self in order to stay safe, which then shapes your attachment style. In my case, for many years it was anxious attachment, and later, when the trauma resurfaced, also avoidant, depending on the person or situation I was in.

So there I was, on top of the tea hill, in a foreign country, standing there with resurfaced trauma and intrusive thoughts driving me mad.

...And then something shifted.

The thought broke through, and a glimmer of hope arrived.

..It’s ok, you are allowed to feel this way...I heard the soft voice in my head...

you felt rejected, and it’s not your fault.

You just felt something you hadn’t felt in a while…

this ease, this sense of mutual understanding, connection on a soul level…

and then it felt like it was taken away from you again.

True, effortless connection.

This is where the tears came, allowing me to soften even more. And I truly felt that compassionate holding, staying in the present moment and slowly returning back home, to myself.

I know that this returning home was only possible because I practice mindfulness regularly, and because I have a deep understanding of my wounding.

Self awareness is a window to true healing.