The past eclipse had me. It reminded me of how I had been chasing love since the day I needed love, which is probably at a very young age. You see, I did not grow up in a loving family. I never saw love between my parents. When all I wanted was to be loved by them, I felt nothing, mostly unloved. It’s not their fault really. They were perhaps the products of unloving parents themselves. They were not taught how to love. They were matchmake back in the days. Growing up watching heartwarming movies made me wonder why my parents doesn’t hug or kiss me. Do they not love me? Were those actions reserved only for romantic love? When I was a teenager, I remember a fight vividly that had my mother told me, “You want love love kiss kiss? That is not me.” From that day onwards, I knew I will never get a hug or kiss from my own mother. So I sought out love from outside the family. I fell in love with boys, then men. Mostly to feel love and validated, and of course they all eventually ended up in heartbreaking phases. No one taught me how to love myself then. I kept on chasing love, the feeling of being loved, even momentarily. Then one day, I found The One. You know like one of those romantic movies. I found my fairy tale. We got married. Five years into the marriage, we needed marriage counselling, then came baby number one, unplanned, unexpected. That was 13 years ago today, 25 September 2012. We stayed in the marriage, trying to make it work. 2 more unplanned, and unexpected babies, and here we are. Me sitting here, pondering what love was really about, realising that no one will ever love me more than myself. No one will ever be able to love me better than myself. I know now that I need to start working on my self-love journey. Like serious work.
You see LOVE is a feeling, and like all feelings they will pass. When someone is going through sad emotions, you tell them to hang in there, because it will pass. Yes it will. So is LOVE. Discovering this fact is clearly upsetting. LOVE is such a wonderful emotion, why does it have to pass? I have been made to realise that I was holding on to the version of love that I had with my partner for the longest time, except that now it is no longer the same. Of course it is not. Human beings evolved, and parenthood is a bomb that explodes shit in the faces of all. We all had to shift and change in order to survive. Through this evolution, we realise that we no longer are IN love. Maybe there is still love out of obligations of a marriage certificate, or the 21 years of life spent together, or the responsibilities of child raising together. But, life is different. LOVE is missing. I am missing being IN LOVE, or being loved the way I wish would continue. When we hold desires of what we cannot have, that’s when suffering kicks in. When I want something to be the way I envisioned and nothing is going the way I wished, I suffer. Yes, I communicated and asked for what I need. Like the moon lunation, our communication goes in cycles like the moon waxes and wanes, eventually it comes back to the same thing over and over again. It is tiring mentally and emotionally. Human beings are the only species who will step in the same shit over and over again, and even knowing this, we still do it. Why? Do we not learn from past mistakes?
I am working so hard on myself to not become my own mother, but yet, I see myself so clearly that I am her. I do hug and kiss my children of course, as long as they allow me to. Although there are times when I feel the absolute need to be away from them all, to not even be in my auric field because I just feel so suffocated by their needs. That is the moment when I become my own mother. I come from her DNA after all. I cannot ever change that. The more mindful I am, trying to be the mother that I never had, the sadder I become when I am with my children sometimes. Today is one such day. I have a bunch of teenage boys all around the house, but yet I find my solitude in clearing sheep poo from the paddocks and hanging out with them. It felt peaceful. Today my eldest son Heath turns 13, becoming an official teenager, and I remember the difficult induced labor that brought him into this world, the challenging breastfeeding days where I simply couldn’t make enough breastmilk to fulfil him, and going through that horrendous cycle of latch, pump, feed all through the night. I did not have the supported I needed back then as a first time mum, and I was definitely having postpartum depression that nobody cared about. I am however very please that Heath survived his 1st year ordeal as an infant that he almost died before he turned 1, and now at 13 years old, finding his bunch of good friends from school that he enjoys hanging out with, and thriving in school, joining Math & robotics competitions. He’ll be in high school next year, and soon, he’ll be out of my life living his own amazing life. So yes, it is a melancholic day for me today, and I don’t really have anyone I can share this with, in a new country where I am still building my own community. So here it is. A vulnerable share that I imagine some mothers out there can relate.
Our childhood can define who we become. The people we surround ourselves with, can make a difference to help us overcome who are becoming. A conscious mind to see clearly the events that led to who we are today can help shed light to why we are the way we are. What we do with that information next, is entirely up to us. I don’t blame my parents for their lack of love or care for me as a child growing up, because I now see clearly that they were not taught how to be better parents, because they didn’t have the resources we have today. It therefore becomes a bigger responsibility on myself to change this for the next generation. I can only hope I don’t screw it up. As for LOVE? Well, I am reminding myself not to chase it anymore. Like a drug, it only last for a period of time, and then only heartbreak. I chase PEACE now instead. Even in the simplest moments such as collecting sheep poo. It brings me PEACE in that moment between me and the shit, and that is enough.
