You Are Enough!

You Are Enough!

How adequate are you supposed to feel when everyone you love…loves something more than you? Not even loves someone, but perhaps something? Things are inanimate. Non-living! Not even able to love back, let alone love more than you do? Somehow your beloved loves them …or it…more than you.

Does that make it a fault in you? Does that mean you didn’t love enough? You weren’t enough? Or perhaps you didn’t give yourself up enough?

Or is it a fault in them?

Did you give too much, get too close? Get too real, so that it was somehow scary? Did the walls start to close around them? Take away all their air? Eliminate their courage and will to go on? Did it leave them weak and powerless to fight against the pressure of the moving walls and increasing effort that the relationship required. Did that force them to take the easy way out and run for the EXIT?

So even if the neon light above the EXIT was not flashing and marking the door, they found it. They know just which button to push to create a path to the EXIT and then open the door. Was it drugs? Or alcohol? Abuse, or just the smell of another woman’s hair? The truly amazing part is knowing just where that EXIT was in such an unconscious way. Certainly, no easy task to have that sensibility while at the same time not really caring about the consequences of passing through that EXIT door. And never having an intent to re-enter. To somehow know without really thinking about it, just the perfect way to crush that last remaining seed of trust. To leave nothing behind except barren ground where nothing lush would thrive. Create an empty barren wasteland on the inside of the door, and EXIT without any concern for what is left behind.

Having passed through that door, under the flashing EXIT sign, was there really a brighter light on the other side of the door? Greener grass and all that? A deeper dream where rainbows grew off the racing heels of unicorns. Or was there just a dark alley on the other side? Where drunks and addicts and unconscious women and less pressure lived? Where these things took human form and met your needs, beckoning to a future of ease and less effort? No walls move in on you, leaving you feeling free. Fresh air? In fact, no need for walls at all, do what ever! Where there were only long corridors that zigzag between trash cans filled with other people’s broken dreams and rotten wishes. Perhaps there were dumpsters filled with scarred lives and pieces of visions that you never dreamed or tried to fulfill.

So here those left behind stand, the red glow of the EXIT sign illuminating their face. The slam of the door echoing in their ears, trying to push back walls that now suddenly appear that were never there before.

Wondering why? How did this happen? Was it the fault of those left behind? Where did it go so wrong? Was it the love you were afraid of? But if it was not those left behind, then it was someone? You? The one who found the EXIT door so easily?

Were you the coward that stopped trying? Did you just decide to run? Did you fear the commitment to work on weaknesses in the relationship? It was so much easier to just bail and then slip into a silky, smooth darkness where drug, alcohol and enablement welcomed you. Was it a musky deep place where you could be excused for any failure of character and where people would say things like: “It’s the drugs talking.” Or “You know he was an alcoholic.” Or even “That woman/man must have been something extraordinary!”

Was it something you needed that badly? Or was it just a way to keep from addressing your own demons or admitting your own weaknesses? Was it a place where less was expected of you? A place where it was easier to be broken and no one noticed because everyone else there was just as broken or even more broken than you? Did you tell yourself that story so many times you believed it?

What exactly did you leave behind when you went through the EXIT? A broken heart that was now in a crumbled state, pieces of itself? A pit of emptiness and distrust where trust used to light the shadowy corners. Did you leave behind a whole group of broken hearts? Friends who believed in you. Family that extended themselves in your direction again and again, hoping you would never really hurt them? After all, they were blood!

And are those broken hearts seeping blood and oozing self-doubt. What do you care, anyway? You have “moved on.” There are, after all, many fish in the sea. Or so “they” say! Let’s hope those future fish love and trust you better than what you left behind. Let’s hope they don’t have tiny seeds of doubt in the far back reaches of their mind that sprout and grow into huge vining plants that push into your walls and once again move those walls in on you. Let’s hope you can keep your stories straight, so they don’t give away the destruction you have left behind…the last time, or the times before. And they don’t really see the acts of cowardice that made it so easy to just run away. You can hope they don’t see the demons that lurk in your shadows, waiting to grab you again and pull you under…or through the EXIT door! It is always there, waiting for you.

How horrible it must be for you! Living day to day, knowing that your core is weak, and that there is always the potential for you to buckle and fold at the hint of pressure to face that weakness. How hard must it be to always fear that you yourself create the moving walls and flashing EXIT sign over the door!

The fatal flaws reside in all of us. It is a part of being human. We all need redemption from our own weaknesses. But the boogie man that lurks in the screeching latch on the door is never left behind. It exists with you always. It lurks in the words you say, the promises you make, but don’t fulfill. It dwells in your every move, just waiting to be discovered, and heard little by little. The sounds of the EXIT itself echo in your ears.

Someday you will need to nail shut that EXIT door. Smash that neon EXIT light, push back the imaginary moving walls and just be who you are. From day one, say what you mean…. then mean what you say. Live your life like it’s the only one you have to live…because IT IS!

Only then will those you love and who love you know they don’t have to question if you ARE ENOUGH. The question will then be whether the real you is enough for them, and for you! The answer will be, “YES, you are enough!”

_______________________________________________________________

Comments? Your experience. Your wisdom!

Karenmac1999@hotmail.com