There’s No Disappear Here (So When Will I Believe It?)

I had another…episode…a couple weeks ago. It was another convoluted mess of abandonment fears, distrust of my perceptions and feelings of not being enough.

In other words, the usual.

Not the usual as in that I usually feel that way. But the usual in that whenever I have a rough day, that’s always what it’s distilled to at the end. And I’ve learned that these rough days don’t usually occur in isolation; there’s a smattering of them over a period of weeks or months until the particular offending mental remnant is identified and hopefully neutralized.

I always end up feeling sorry for Brock in these exchanges. He ends up having to deal with the effects of my tsunami divorce – my lack of belief in words, my distrust of the security of a “good” marriage, my continual struggles with self-doubt and my conviction to never allow myself to be in that same position again.

The morning after (no emotional hangover this time!!!) this particular exchange, I found sticky notes with various declarations of love and affection around the house.

And then I saw this one. And I felt another layer of my old wounds close.

It referenced a statement he made the previous night when I mentioned my continued difficulties with trusting my own perceptions and judgment.

There’s no disappear here.

Four words. Big meaning.

A promise to face problems rather than to run away.

A promise to refrain from stonewalling or retreating.

A promise to put effort into the relationship.

A promise to step up rather than step out.

Those words don’t expect perfection. They don’t deny that there will be challenges. They accept that we will have hard times and that we can overcome most anything if we both make the promise to show up and speak up.

And for some reason, even though Brock has expressed similar in words and actions for the duration of our relationship, this simple phrase resonated in a way that I could actually hear it.

And hopefully even start to believe it.