My story is not a happy one nor is it sad. It just is what it is.
As a child, I grew up without my parents really being there for me. My dad was no where to be found and my mom was an alcoholic drug addict raised by a single working mom who was also an alcoholic. Needless to say, my mom didn't receive the tools needed to raise her own children and I ended up bouncing around in the foster care system until I was 18 years old. If you have lived in a foster home or group home, you understand that the parents are genuinely concerned for your well being and their hearts are definitely in the right place, but the love they offer comes with boundaries, limitations and restrictions. You don't follow the rules, you're sent to a new home. And lets face it, those of us who ended up in care came from broken families and rules just weren't our specialty. That being said, rules got broken... a lot.
In group homes, it is a rotation of staff members who work full-time and when they called in sick they were replaced with on-call staff. Even when there was a one on one worker assigned to a youth, there was no guarantee that particular member would be able to create a bond with the child. In many of the homes I lived in I can still think of my favorite staff members who left a lasting impression on me simply because they were cool and understood the changes our adolescent bodies were going through. None of the ones I can think of uniquely had a bond with me, nor me with them, that could remotely be considered unconditional.
While the possibility of creating a pure bond was much more prevalent in foster homes than it was in group homes, since it was families housing needy youth, there was still the disappointment from expectations. Some foster families wanted a certain race, while others don't care about race, but felt that once the youth reached a certain age there is no saving them. Then sometimes, you find parents that truly connect with the lost soul living in their home and that person grows up to be a semi-normal human being in society. Yet, these are becoming fewer and farther between.
I craved attention and affection, a bond, with anyone, that was full of unconditional love throughout the majority of my life. The only problem was that I was looking in all the wrong places. As I got older, I started looking to men to fill this childish need for parents. If you read my book entitled Held Captive, then you know one of the men I chose to love ended up being my testimony to life. When men failed to live up to my needs, I resorted to creating bonds with other females who, like me, didn't have a proper upbringing or close knit relationship with their parents and had an emptiness that somehow I managed to satiate. It was fulfilling enough to realize I had a problem and that there was a nature versus nurture problem in the system that is designed to protect youth and set them up for life.
I was educated enough to hold a job once I escaped my abusive situations. After years of counseling I discovered a new me, a better me. I was smart, funny, beautiful, eccentric, eclectic, articulate, empowered and independent. Unfortunately, I still had a burning desire for love. Real love. A happy ending with a Prince charming who swept me off my feet and saved me from myself. Despite being a great person, I still had character flaws and baggage. Insecurities that arose once I found a man who peaked my interest were a huge challenge for me. I could find good men who were very established and I could connect with them on levels that would have eventually lead to my happiness, but I sabotaged it.
In 2005 I met someone who grew to be special to me. We enjoyed each others company, we always had a good time, and we had some similar interests that took us a long way. In the end, I turned out to be the other woman and I didn't even know it. I had given a man my everything that was keeping me as a back up plan and I still couldn't tell you if the signs were there for me or not. I was devastated. My heart was broken into little bits and pieces and my soul was torn to shreds, never to be seen again for years.
In the meantime, I took some time off from dating and spent time with someone I had false hope of being with again. My daughters father and I grew close as friends and I believed eventually we would be able to find the love again that once existed, especially now that he had the time to really mourn the loss of me while I was in another relationship for a year. He spent several months getting to know a different side of me while we were friends. We spent every weekend together, whether at his house or mine and we talked about everything. When he began dating another woman while I had taken the kids on spring break, I was destroyed once again, still, with no sight of my soul.
Luck would have it that fate was working to salvage the good that was left inside me. I had reconnected with God who knew all my secret desires and needs, but the devil also knew my likes and dislikes, so I decided I was going to be single until I find someone I connect with on a more spiritual level. After several failed attempts with men who didn't even deserve a single moment of my time and being left disappointed, I figured being single was good place to start. I was searching for my soul again and had been reading several books on where to find it, since it had been lost almost four years. It was about time I reconnect with the innermost precious part of myself during a year I intended to invest on bettering who I am. Wouldn't you know it, I would randomly meet the man of my dreams, perfect in every way for me. Neither one of us was looking, nor did we know what was going to happen after a single conversation. Eight hours solid of back and forth communication and getting to know one another and sparks were flying. And low and behold, my soul had come out of its secret hiding spot and sent chills up and down my body that created a safe haven for this new romance to flourish. Now that I had found my spirit and became reconnected to God, all I could do was give praise and thanks. The added bonus of finding a soul mate made every bad experience mean the journey was worth traveling.
He was worth the wait, worth the pain I've suffered, worth the travels through hell time and time again and I made the mistake of saying "if I had known my dream was for sure going to be my reality I would definitely go on that long journey again" because as fast as he came in he popped back out. I let my past insecurities in. What I believed to be me protecting him and his feelings, turned out to be detrimental to our goals and plans. He found himself becoming the better person he had hidden deep inside in uncontrolled emotions going crazy and falling in love. Spring fever was prominent. Yet somehow, my intentions backfired and I crushed him.
Him and I are now friends and obviously that is not enough for me and I don't believe that is enough for him either. I feel him. He feels me. Even at distances unknown, we can physically feel each others essence surging through our bodies. It was more than just a mental and emotional connection, it was divine. He captured my heart and freed my soul which I will forever be grateful for. I took him to an extreme level of unconditional love he never knew he could go, but now that I have hurt him because of an inclination that lead to a hypothetical situation and assumed outcome that I managed to conjure out of a simple statement we are just friends. I wrote him a letter and my very best intention was that of selfless love, protecting him and taking the fall, yet it turned out to be another form of sabotage that prevents me from moving forward in life.
Seems that the one thing I yearn for most is obtainable, but once I have it staring me in the face I have no idea how to hold it. I seem to create illustrious expectations out of difficult situations that only God can fathom, and somehow, I hope these men, these human men, can live up to them. I may have just lost Mr Right due to my issues that have nothing to do with him, or maybe, as friends we will recreate the bond he has stepped back from in order to gain control over himself and his emotions. I believe this may have indirectly caused him to put up the wall he initially didn't want to have with me, the one he normally has up when it comes to his emotions. Yet there is also the chance that maybe as friends he will come to realize he didn't need to put the wall up just because I expressed myself in a way he disagreed with. I hope he can take my hand and guide me through the painful torment I manage to put myself through. He has refused to go anywhere because of the realness of the bond, but that has been damaged. Despite the fact that we both learned something from the situation and gained insight about one another, we lost a rare connection. Hopefully that feeling can be salvaged after I find a cure to my insecurities. However, a subsiding fear that I lost him forever lingers and leaves a hole in my heart and a sickly feeling in the pit of my stomach. I've only felt that feeling once before and the outcome wasn't good. If there's anything we learned today its that my past is not a good predictor of my future and I am working hard to rebuke my negative feelings, but I'm alone right now with my emotions and tears are welling up. I'm feeling weak.
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