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Surviving the ‘no’
Lessons from heartache and loss
In the middle of my summer, a years-long relationship brimming with passion, filled with adventure and affection, and leaps off the dock at sunrise, ended in the way Hemingway described going broke — slowly at first, then all at once. This was a relationship to which I had, possibly for the first time ever, decided I was going to be all-in.
The all-in decision came after years believing I could somehow experience the love I longed for while keeping a part of my heart in check. Somewhere along the line, I concluded that if a piece of me was tucked safely away and things didn’t work out, it wouldn’t hurt as much.
The logic to this, of course, is faulty. When it comes to love, it is more likely to take seed and grow when you sidestep the you-go-first stance and lean your genuine and flawed self into it — when you stop waiting for the other person to show their cards before putting your own skin in the game.
Or more accurately, caution and assorted what-ifs scattered to the wind, you love as fearlessly and as wildly as you long to be loved.
In every facet of life, it is a deep act of vulnerability to ask for what you want. To say one day: “I want more of this, and of you, in my life.” Asking, from that most human part of you that longs for and wants, exposes…
