There have been moments lately where I am intricately aware of how much happiness is available to me.
It’s been in the simplest of moments too, all of them with my partner Nick.
Looking at him, hugging him, laughing with him, I feel myself opening to a deeper capacity for intimacy and love.
And we’ve been together for almost 9 years so it’s definitely a little surprising to me, the fact that this feels like a deeper opportunity to love him. But still, it’s happening.
It’s happening because I’m doing my work. Coaxing off another layer that was keeping me from experiencing my life as deeply as I could.
My relationship with intimacy has always been a cautious one in which I’ve used various techniques to keep myself from being too vulnerable and letting go completely.
I would let go when I knew not as much was at stake. I would let go when I knew the person on the other end wasn’t completely in. This is how I controlled my levels of intimacy.
But in these moments more recently when I feel myself right on the edge of copious amounts of joy, I am just as intricately aware of the fear also present, keeping me from jumping without a net.
Let me tell you, it’s terrifying.
And I know it’s just my ego trying to protect me. Trying to protect itself. Because that’s our ego’s job. It’s here to keep us safe and sound. The problem is our ego’s reference is often skewed by our trauma and our narratives.
Those damn narratives. We all have so many of them.
Some call them limiting beliefs but often they expand into stories we cling to. Stories that keep us small and scared and limited.
But the difference for me this time is that I see it. And I can feel it. I can feel myself wanting to surrender to the joy that is bubbling up inside of me in the sweetest moments of blissful connection and the wall of fear that surrounds it.
Fear that if I do let go and receive it all that it will be too much. To much of everything I’ve ever wanted. And as a result I will lose it. Because why the fuck would I deserve to be that happy.
I can see all of this swirling around inside of me. I can feel it taking shape in my body.
And it makes me wonder what it means to truly believe we are worthy of the life we desire. Like knowing this down to our bones.
I am starting to see all of the tricky ways us humans talk ourselves out of being happy. It’s tricky because it doesn’t make sense. Happy is what we are going for so why would deny ourselves?
But the thing is so many of us have such a hard time sinking into that space because we don’t believe we deserve it.
In order to be able to be truly happy we need to let go of all the narratives we hold that tell us what we aren’t enough. Not just the one’s on the surface but the ones that are manipulating us way behind the scenes.
Slowly let them go one by one so that all that’s left is the understanding that we are worthy of all that we seek. Not only are we worthy, but we always have been.