This post may contain affiliate links and I may be compensated for purchases visitors make through these links. I only promote products and services I really care about and that I think are useful. Read the full policy here.
There are moments I’m reminded of why I started Rebel Love; you might think it was born out of a happy or inspired event, but quite the contrary. It’s a feeling that’s hard to describe: it washes over me with pain so strong, I feel I’ll never come back from it. Deep sadness is truly hard to overcome. I don’t know why my brain does it to me. I can be surrounded by people who love me and feel utterly and completely alone. I crave a connection that is not easily forged. At least, that’s what I tell myself.
I don’t consider myself to be depressed, but I can imagine this must be something like how “depressed” people feel. I tend to distract myself, and these feelings often don’t last too long.
What is this? — Pain, I mean. Why does it just show up?
This morning I woke from a dream of my ex. embracing his new partner. Truth be told, I’m not even sure he has a new partner. So why would my mind show me that?
I woke up like someone had punched a hole in my chest. A feeling of extreme panic, then deep sadness enveloped me as if I had done something wrong. Like I had missed out. Blown it. That even know there are 7 billion people on this earth, there is only the one that really knows me, whoever will.
Perhaps it’s this fantasy that he really *is* the only one who knows me.
Why is knowing someone, so deeply: really being seen, so important?
And how do people who have never experienced love, live? How can they go through life and not know?
Is it really better to have loved and lost, than to have never have loved in the first place?
What is the point of it all?
I am so grateful for what I have. That’s why I think this is so silly. That I still have these experiences and thoughts.
My mother raised me on her own. We didn’t have a lot growing up in terms of material possessions, but it was more than enough. She worked all the time to be able to support three children on her own, so hard in fact that it made her sick.
We never went without. My mother would always find a way to make sure that we didn’t miss out on important things.
I am so incredibly grateful. There were lessons a strong personality like mine could not have obtained without the mother I had.
So why do I keep ultimately returning to this circle of pain? And a more important question, how do I make it stop?
These are the questions I asked myself when I started Rebel Love. My exploration into the unknown.
I want to connect with you in a way that I’m not sure is possible. Obviously, I did not start this space to seek romantic love, but to explore different types of love and healing, even though there is no “cure” for the pain… I don’t know what the exact mechanism is, or why it works, but I have noticed that when we don’t feel alone, life is easier to bear. When you know you are not the only one, it helps.
I’m not so naive to think that we are all the same and that everyone experiences what I experience. But I equally don’t think that we are that much different from each other.
Love unites us; Love makes us crazy, it makes us brave. And it sometimes feels like it’s drowning us or choking us.
Whether we like it or not, we are all together in this world, at least for one point in time.
So how can we feel the pain and keep going anyway?
How can we move forward without being afraid or in spite of it?
How can we love, anyway?
