My Hopes For You.

I hope that in time you are able to face all the truths you run from, in time when you have grown to have more capacity for more vulnerability, depth, and honesty with yourself because it will only allow you more in your ability to connect and show up for others more meaningfully.

I hope that you know that is truly the only way to find the kind of connection you crave. Fear of abandonment and fear of vulnerability will lead you to a dead end, an empty end.

I hope that you can learn that not everyone will want or expect you to abandon yourself to meet them or choose them and that someone just expressing what they like or don’t isn’t always meaning they are asking that of you if that isn’t you.

I hope that you can learn that it is okay to speak up and be firm and say you don’t like or want something and that the right people will want you to and respect you more for it. The right people won’t be mad at you for having firm boundaries but that also means you have to express those firming and stick to them when you do not set semi loose ones and hope that someone always notices when there are mixed signals. They will want you to have them because they don’t want to control you or a doormat. The right people won’t leave you for having a voice, needs, and wants. They won’t want you to be small. The right people won’t require self erasure for them to feel valid and seen.

I hope you learn that it isn’t about who is ever right or wrong or whose feelings are more valid but that accountability can be present without collapsing and that will turn your shame into self awareness.

I think that the most terrifying and anxiety parts of me that triggered things in you that maybe you internalized as bad or threats were the part of me that challenged you to show up more authentically and hold yourself to a higher standard of accountability in being more honest and intentional with your words and your actions and that wasn’t something you were familiar or ready for and that’s why it felt so triggering.

I think it felt scary and uncomfortable because it hit on insecurities and parts of yourself you didn’t want exposed and that is where the anxiety stemmed from and that wasn’t a bad thing but you perceived it as such because you’re not in the place to be able to rise to meet that yet and that’s okay. But all I ever wanted from you is intentional honesty and I think you were honest to the best of your ability at the moments we had but it was ever changing because you were in a very tumultuous and unstable period when I came into your life so there was no ability to be consistently honest even if you wanted to.

I don’t think you had any capacity and I’m sure you could agree now looking back to be honest and vulnerable emotionally in the ways that I required and challenged you to be to meet me at the depths of what I was trying to build with you. And while I might be disappointed I’m not mad about it, I just thought as I think you did too that you were in a different place emotionally and mentally when we first started to open our chapter but I get that endings aren’t often what we hope or expect them to be as we start to turn the pages of a new book. And that is the beauty and the curse in taking the chance on a new story.

I hope you learn that once you accept yourself fully and learn your worth that you won’t be so afraid of rejection because you know regardless of someone else’s opinions you still offer the same value. I hope you have the courage to love without trying to be chosen because that is the only place that you’ll ever stop abandoning yourself to earn approval and love.

I hope you find your voice and the confidence to unapologetically express yourself in the moment rather than after the fact with whatever you feel. And I truly hope you take the time to figure out who you are apart from everything you’ve experienced in your life and have been taught and told. I know that you have pieces of who you are and have made a lot of progress on your journey but I mean in finding yourself in the way where you know that you won’t give up any of who you are and what makes you happy for anyone no matter how much you like them and if they ask that of you won’t be afraid to let them go rather than let yourself go in order to keep them because the cost of you is more important because you’ll know your worth and that won’t be up for discussion.

I wish that you could see what I saw in you from my eyes and that was one of the things that was sad for me to think that I could see so much value and things to adore about you that I feel like you didn’t see about yourself. I hope you find a place where you can better feel like you can regulate the things you feel to be able to be more responsive instead of reactive when all your emotions feel like they’re flooding inside of you and not just when you’re calm. I want that for you and you deserve to experience that kind of peace and control over your state of feeling. Your feelings aren’t too much, they aren’t the enemy but you can’t let them build up and consume you. You have to let them out, you have to let yourself feel them.

To express not suppress. To hold space and grace for all the things you feel and not have to live in extremes or black and white. To learn to find comfort in the pause, in waiting to respond and waiting to make decisions. In not rushing to give people certainty if you’re uncertain. To not let your decisions be driven by pain and fear and habits that were developed to once keep you safe in survival but weren’t meant to adopt forever.

I hope you learn how to name the things that you’re still trying to figure out how to feel, the things you don’t know you need to feel, and the things you will feel along with the things you fear to face to feel but in time I hope you’ll be able to name them and address and accept them so that you can heal them and learn how to coexist with them rather than try to erase and forget them. They will always come back and demand to be felt.

I hope you learn to shift from a place of just emotionally surviving to finding emotional safety within yourself and being able to source that in others. To learn how to hold the things that are actually safe and healthy even if they don’t feel familiar and what our bodies and minds have learned to associate as “comfortable and safe” just because it had to adapt. But first learning what love, peace, and healing feels like within yourself first, starting with you.

I hope you learn that your nervous system was conditioned and has adapted to keep you safe but that doesn’t mean healthy, that doesn’t mean free, and that doesn’t mean with healing in mind. It has been crafted throughout your life to help you survive and get through but not to thrive and that is where you have to be brave enough to step over that line of fear and trust yourself enough to know you’ll be better for it.

I hope that you don’t let a few mistakes I made and the opinions of someone who is clearly leading with their ego harden your memories of who I was to you at one point. I hope that even if we have no place anymore in each other’s lives that you don’t try to erase the memory and the feelings that once lived in your heart.

I hope you learn to let yourself feel and move through all the things you feel. That you give yourself permission to sit, to feel, to hold, and to see all the things that surround the feelings you feel. I hope you learn to give yourself space to process them and not distract yourself from them. I hope you find that kind of clarity to be able to better navigate them in the moment so that you can find the things you need to find and see the things you need to see versus just seeing the things you want to see and later being forced to address the things that you needed.

I hope you learn that your needs and wants matter and that they aren’t a burden and they deserve to be valued in any room and any relationship and you learn to find your voice and not silence yourself for the comfort of others but that the right people will always want to know what you have to say.

I hope you learn to be able to articulate your feelings and needs in a constructive way when they arise and not later after they’ve been neglected. I hope you find the safety in yourself to be strong enough to speak those to life without fear of losing someone or someone leaving you because of them.

I hope you learn to find clarity to see that chaotic isn’t true comfort just because it’s the only comfort you’ve ever known and that boredom isn’t boredom if it’s actually stable and safe just because it feels foreign.

I hope you find inner peace enough to recognize that stability won’t feel as exciting as chasing chaos but it will ground you and feel more wholesome and real than constant dopamine hits ever could.

I hope you don’t keep rejecting people who are healthy in your life just because the chemistry doesn’t feel like the same high of having to chase people who leave you with highs and lows. I hope you’re able to attract, keep, and accept when emotionally available people come who can have healthy conflicts and the love that they have to give that doesn’t make you feel like you have to suffer or sacrifice for love.

I hope you learn how to put yourself first truly when you are alone and when you are with someone else. I hope you learn how to love yourself and ground yourself in who you are. That you learn how to create the life you want, a life where you can truly thrive and not just survive. A life that feels fulfilling and nourishing because that is what you deserve and that is all I ever wanted for you.

I hope that you know that you mattered to me and that me not having much to say isn’t for lack of feelings or care but more that I know it’ll be better and easier for you if I just respect and let it be without fight without question. Because like I said I do know it’s for the best. You were right about that. And I know that. I can see that. But it doesn’t mean that it has been easy for me or that what I felt for you didn’t have any depth within me. And I don’t even know if you care or thought about this if you can just try to cut me out of your life and forget about my existence so easily but I don’t just do that to people when they actually meant something. And I know maybe that is what is easier for you and how you cope even if I feel it all maybe has been a bit abrupt or harsh I know we all cope in different ways.

And maybe I hopefully showed you a little of what is possible at least but I hope you learn to define those things you need and the things you want that will align with you through a healthy and not a hurt lens and can recognize toxicity when it is toxicity and identify when maybe it isn’t what your triggers and trauma misidentify. I hope you seek clarity rather than assumptions in those moments.

I hope you heal and grow to be able to have the clarity rather than the current control your past has on you and your emotions that makes it feel like every trigger is bad or that it is my fault instead of being able to differentiate what is truly a actual threat from me and unsafe and what just feels like a threat because of your past, what is mine and what is actually yours rather than automatically just associating all triggers with being bad and about me and running.

I hope you get to the place where you are in control of your trauma and it doesn’t drive you and I mean that in the kindest way because I know what it feels like and I know it’s not really your fault. It’s all a part of the journey and being human and the experiences we all have in live and how we inevitably damage ourselves and others intentionally and unintentionally. I hope you find the place to be able to constantly be so honest with yourself in where you’re at that you will always choose you and never be confused about the things you feel and the people you choose.

I hope that you know that I never wanted to control you and I never wanted you to feel that way. I truly tried everything I could to try to prevent you from feeling that way. One because I never would want anyone to feel that way but also two knowing what you just experienced and knowing you probably already were on high alert for those tendencies. But I also had to recognize that I know that isn’t who I am but that if I did something that could be interpreted that way that if you were gonna read into something and identify it as that there was nothing I could do to change that and I had to make peace with that.

Because the perspective I’ve gained is that while one thing may not be a big deal to me or something I would say is me asking you to change a core piece of who you are and I might see something just as a habit and something I easily would change for a partner if they were uncomfortable I can also see that maybe for some that isn’t just a habit and that is a core part of how they live their life and how they share experiences and want to live and love and give to others. And that is also okay but it just isn’t a shared value and so I can understand that even if I don’t register it trying to change who you are but just a piece of behavior that in your world it may be a part of who you are and make peace with that.

I hope you find what you need in life. I hope you find someone who show you what healthy and whole love looks like but that you learn to recognize that sometimes change and challenges come from a healthy place and you need that to grow.

I hope that you find what you’re looking for and that you find people who can support your growth and not just keep you in your comforts. I hope you learn to feel through your fears instead of falter when they arise. To honor them but bring yourself back to the reality of what you’ve seen and not project them onto people.

I hope you are able to connect more deeply with yourself that you are able to connect without fear of losing yourself within someone else and that you’re able to learn how to better read people and the places they come from and find the discernment to give space to figure out if that place is from toxicity or from a healthy place in the midst of discomfort. To not perceive someone expressing their feelings on something as saying you’re not good enough. I hope you heal so you are able to regulate all the things you feel and not bottle or suppress the things you feel.

I think that it was foreign for you to feel like someone working with you and not against you. Someone is not trying to be right or make you feel wrong about your feelings but is trying to figure out how to best support you when you’ve never had someone try to do that so you don’t even know what to communicate in what you actually need in those moments. Someone trying to fix things rather than continue to break them, break you in the process of grappling with their own ego instead of prioritizing the connection.

I hope you learn that avoiding discomfort won’t make you grow. Growth is about creating the space with yourself and with others, learning how to create and nurture a safe space and running doesn't create space it creates distance. I hope you learn the difference in those two things.

I hope you learn that intense feelings are only bad if you can’t regulate them. It is a beautiful thing to feel so much, to feel so deeply but it is learning how to live with them. It is learning how to feel them without feeling consumed and controlled by them, not to nullify those parts of you but to hear those parts of you and learn how to navigate them.

I hope you learn that someone who cares about you will be attuned to you and it’s not a bad thing that someone can feel your energy when it’s off. I hope you learn to be able to differentiate between someone trying to understand you and someone trying to figure you out.

One is empathy and one is strategy and you have to learn to be able to discern the difference in the two.

Safety will also feel scary sometimes and leave you feeling super vulnerable. But growth only happens outside of your comfort zone.

The truth is that it is harder to be with someone who sees you than someone who is toxic because they won’t encourage you to continue to run and abandon yourself they will make you face yourself and we all find that readiness in time. Someone who will hold you accountable and doesn’t let you keep running from yourself because they want you to run towards the best version of yourself and that means running towards and not away from yourself.

I hope that you find peace with all the parts of you that you love, that you run from, and that you internally struggle with from all the chapters of your life. I hope you learn how to make peace with those pieces.

I hope you find peace in the comfort that stability brings and that you don't try to sabotage or chase that away just because it doesn't feel familiar.

I hope you learn that love won't always feel like what you've learned to define as love and to embrace that maybe that is a good thing rather than a scary one.

I hope you learn that you are worthy of love in all the ways that make you, you. And that you don't have to constantly apologize for just being you.

I hope you find love, for yourself within yourself.