Love After Love
My Next Love Wasn't What I Expected
After my last significant heartbreak, I was lost and felt unloved, unwanted, and discarded. I gave myself away with every relationship, more afraid to lose them and their validation than myself. Who even was I?
I believe I will never suffer that great loss again because I will never lose myself again. That’s the greatest loss. I found myself and learnt to sit with her and enjoy her company, just us. She’s interesting and intriguing, I like her. I’m enjoying rediscovering and building a relationship with her. We trust each other to take care of each other. We don’t need to build walls to protect ourselves, together we’ve got this. We don’t need to be afraid. We don’t need anyone else’s validation anymore. Now she is found, I feel a deepening sense of self and self-assurance, and I find I’m moving differently through the world.
Coming back to self, coming back home.
My next love turned out to be my greatest and most important love, the love I have for myself. The love that will be with me for the rest of my life. This love will sustain my love for others, especially my joyful love for my son. My son and I have a strong energetic connection and when he sees Mummy joyful with an overflowing heart, that fills him up… I can see it in his eyes and that fills me up more. What a beautiful cycle.
Tonight I found this poem by Derek Walcott, it immediately spoke to me. I felt the words in my heart and soul. It reminded me of the journey I’ve been through in finding and loving myself. Never to be lost again.
Love After Love
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.- Derek Walcott