(Nimue)
This last year or so has taught me a great deal about love. I've learned a lot from Halo Quin talking about love as a verb. Love as something we do and out into the world rather than something that's just an idea or a feeling. That's given me the confidence to trust what I do, and who I am. I've always been more focused on the idea of what I can do when inspired by love, than on what I might get out of it.
That's also something that changed dramatically this year. The experience of living with Keith has been one of meeting love as a verb every day. Being actively loved in a whole array of ways has been life changing. I'd always assumed my previous discomfort was probably due to me - that I'm not grateful enough or I don't pay enough attention and that the answer to historical feelings of insufficiency was for me to try harder. Apparently that's not true. It also turns out not to be the case that there's nothing in me that could inspire love in the way that I yearned for, because I'd wondered about that one a lot.
It's not about the big gestures. I was never really a big gestures person. What impacts on me most is the everyday stuff. Love as a verb, around everyday care, small joys, and the sharing of life. I find it incredibly powerful. Every part of my life is touched with the wonder and joy of it. Instead of feeling mostly lost and hollow, I now feel hopeful and happy.
I would have said in the past that I wasn't a romantic person. It turns out that what I don't like is performative, transactional 'romance' that's about persuading a person into bed or trying to compensate for something. When the romantic things flow naturally from what's felt, it has a completely different impact on me. Romance as tenderness, and understanding. Something co-created from a place of mutual appreciation.
Aside from the surprises around the romance issue, what these months have shown me is that I was largely right about myself. The things I craved were the things that I needed. The things I felt were missing from my life were real and possible things. Being physically and mentally well is a good deal easier when I have my needs met. Having spent a lot of years thinking of myself as a problematic person, I've had that radically challenged. I'm turning out to be uncomplicated, not that hard to please, or hard to be around.
This in turn has greatly increased my confidence in myself. So much of my history of anxiety is rooted in not feeling able to trust my own feelings and judgement. I'm starting to get a sense of my own feelings as reasonable and proportionate things, and my inner life as something I don't need to explain or justify. Being taken seriously, and having whatever I feel met with love and acceptance has been incredibly powerful and has changed my sense of who I am. I'm feeling a lot more comfortable with myself, and a lot more certain in a whole array of ways.
Alongside this I've learned that I have a lot to give. I can be good. I can be enough. It's a more effective place to start from than the crippling self doubt and uncertainty of my past. I think this change in perception is going to make me considerably more effective and better able to take myself seriously as someone who has something to contribute.
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