Lockdown Memoirs: Part Two
I Forgot What Love Felt Like
I spent all my life looking for love in all the wrong places, learning truths and hiding them, for an easier life. I had hopes felt the joy of what it would be like when I find this magical kind of love I’d been searching for all my life. I was singing songs of love in my mind but not expressing them openly for fear of how they would be received by the wrong people, for fear of rejection and abandonment again (it was a common occerence).
I lied to myself, I lied to others, about living my perfect life as wife and mother alongside being a successful business woman, because the reality I dreamt of was so far away from the truth that I was actually living through for over a decade. The fear choked me and I truly did end up living a lie.
Stuck in the depths of my depression, in total survival mode, I didn’t sing those songs of love out loud for the best part of a decade. I was unable to express the love to others in the end, because a lot of the time, some of the people I was trying to express my love to, were unable to receive because of their own bad experiences previous. Their numbness and inability to receive love, became my own numbness to receive or express love, even with my own children and it was the worst feeling in the world.
When I Lost My Soul Song, I Lost My Voice
I am one to sing when I am happy I hadn’t physically sung for many years. I’d lost my voice, my heart-song went numb, because I had lost all belief in love. I felt like I was disappearing because the centre of my being had lost faith in all that I had believed since I was a little girl - that true, dream, picture-book love could be real.
After losing all faith in love against all the odds, I became very numb. I struggled to feel any joy, or happiness. I got to the stage where I couldn’t remember what it felt like to laugh. I couldn’t give my children the love and affection they needed, and I felt like the worst mum in the world. They were crying out for attention and love, but I couldn’t give it to them as I felt so starved of it myself. It was one of the darkest times of my life, coming out of my marriage, and the rushed into relationship straight afterwards. This numb feeling returned during lockdown as well, but in a different way.
When you feel numb, trying to get over that to be what you need to be for others is so hard, and I have been there, too many times to count.
Being Warmed Again by a Circle of Love
February 2019, as I felt I was very gradually coming back into the light again, I had trained in my incredible Closing the Bones Massage and had some heart-warming experiences with co-trainees and clients alike. The feeling of love I received from my trainer and my fellow trainees during our training weekend, was phenomenal as we held each other as a circle of women blessing each other. The training was even more profound than my own personal Closing the Bones Ceremony the previous December and I felt an incredible sense of belonging for the first time in so long. It felt like I had truly found my calling. This led onto some beautiful ceremonies pre-lockdown and then I knew what I was supposed to be doing.
A Lonely Road
In-between serving others with my ceremonies, which filled me up so much in the knowledge I was helping others, the time alone with myself was still so very hard, as well as uncomfortable. I had so much love for others but still found myself feeling really unworthy of receiving love in return. I felt like I had to serve more to earn it, much like my marriage had been.
Love was always conditional – conditions felt like I was being told ‘to get my love in return, you have to be the perfect housewife, the perfect mother, the perfect everything, otherwise you don’t deserve it…’ Another thought that kept replaying in my head like a broken record was ‘To get my love in return, despite everything that you are doing physically, you need to be more fun, more beautiful, fitter, more for me…because otherwise you are not enough, you are not as lovable as this other person.’
I had felt constantly compared, constantly unaccepted for me, and when I felt that rejection, I always did more to try and prove myself worthy of the love to be returned to me, that I was so willingly (and naively) giving out. Then, unsurprisingly, abandonment happened because I was ‘too much,’ or ‘too intense,’ clinging at straws like my life depended on it. This cycle kept repeating itself over and over again. This inevitably made me ill, made me stressed and burnt out because I was on a constant treadmill of trying to be worthy enough to receive the love I was giving others. Always hoping that it would be enough to get what I so desperately needed from another.
In the meantime, my poor children were being left behind as I constantly sought the love I wanted from outside sources. This need to be loved by another, blindsided me because there was always love around me, from my children so desperate to please, from my parents and friends so desperate to support me. Instead however, I isolated myself from the world, my children, my support network. All of whom, were right under my nose and if I had seen that, I would not have needed to seek that love from outsiders.
All this happened, because I had lost faith in myself and had no love for myself, thanks to the emotional turmoil I had allowed others to put me through all my life.
A Life-Changing Festival
Through a lot of self-work, I somehow managed to sum up the strength and motivation to attend a festival alone later on in June 2019. This festival was called ‘All About Love’ and I was welcomed whole-heartedly by so many strangers, opening their arms to me when I had never met them before. The warmth, the hugs, the love and acceptance I received from this collective of beautiful souls was like nothing I had experienced before. Considering how long I had felt isolated, alone, unaccepted for me, and ultimately unlovable, there was no better place for me to be at that time. I was meant to be there, come what may. I met and connected deeply with many people, purely from being myself. There was an incredible feeling of acceptance for all that I was, and I hadn't experienced that from many people previously.
These deep connections included one fascinating character. I had never met anyone like him before. His ability to hold space for you when listening to your plights, his huge heart that had been plagued by horrendous trauma growing up, his 100% presence he offered when in your company - felt close to magical. He was my magical man and had been on many journeys, travelling deep into himself. He had experienced trauma that most people only read about or see in movies, but his heart was so pure and full of love, wisdom and calm. He was one of the biggest blessings from the festival and the total reflection of what All About Love represented.
He helped me through for a number of months but I became too co-dependent on him. Good in a sense, because he was so great at holding space for me to express, that I finally realised I could feel safe in the presence of a male after feeling unsafe and unprotected in so many of my previous relationships. He was the epitome of a Divine Masculine Male who had done the work, surrendered all his ego, yet one of the most ‘manly’ men that I had ever encountered on my life path up to that point. When we went our separate ways, it really did break me. I found it so hard to love myself, that I needed constant attention and love from another to believe I was worthy of what I dreamt of. I'd been starved of love for so long, that my darling special friend was a very welcome visitor on my path and although he helped me such a lot, the void that came after he left me was very hard to deal with.
I will forever be grateful he met me where I was mentally when he did, because we helped each other such a lot. Sadly, the showering of love that I gave him, became overwhelming for him as well. Like many of the other men I had shared some beautiful moments in my life with, he was unable to receive, because yet again, his trauma ran far too deep. Toxic masculinity has a lot to answer for, and it is something I intend to dive deeper into at another time. The beautiful men that have crossed my path, have been traumatised by it in a way that I am not sure they will ever heal from. Not allowed to express their emotions, being made to believe they are unlovable unless they meet the criteria of a, b and c. It is heart-breaking.
To keep this to a length that is manageable for my readers, I will stop here for now but later today (Sunday) my next instalment will be published entitled...
LOCKDOWN MEMOIRS: PART THREE - My True Happily Ever After...
Thank you for reading you lovely lot.
Much Love,
Anna Chantal xx
