The Lonely Spaces

There are periods in our lives where we experience lonely spaces. These spaces are used to equip and strengthen us in preparation for the next level God is calling us too. However they can feel a bit cold. A bit isolated. A bit… lonely. It can feel like the bottom of the bottom. As if no ones around to hear your call for help. It’s hard to keep your head above water when the waves keep crashing you under. See its these lonely times that can either make or break you. You can either gain the strength to swim or let the waves pull you under.   

Theres a new sense of power you gain through each lonely space you cross. It seems non existent while you’re in it. On the other hand when you come out you radiate a new level of strength and resilience. I often loose sight of this truth while I’m in the lonely spaces. The darkness can something creep over me and blind me from the true purpose and bigger picture of the situation I’m in. The truth is out of the pain and darkness, light and strength are gained. 

Personally this is this hardest lonely space I’ve sat in, in a while. It feels like this ones one of those “its gonna get worse before it gets better” kind of thing and I’m just bearing down to embrace the ride. This lonely space was inevitable and everything thats being taught makes sense. This space was not just necessary but required for me to move to the next “level’ if you will. 

We are shown in the lonely space what we couldn’t see with all the noise and disorder that slowly engulfs us living day to day without stopping to do a self check. When its just you there’s no distractions. You have no one to put the blame on. You have no outside force dictating your thoughts or actions. The only one in the space is you. The loneliness of the space may even make you question what’s the point of all this? Or make you begin to think that the pain being experienced in the space is never ending in sight. I know it made me. The dark provokes raw questions and can formulate deep thoughts. Maybe our power arises out of how we ask those questions and the actions we do in response to them? It can be easy to get swept into a negative spiral when the space around you is isolated and uncomfortable. It’s easy to perceive loneliness as fatalistic and obstructive. However the switch of perspective to understand that the lonely space is where growth and strength are built shifts the whole narrative. So now instead of asking “Why is this happening to me?” The thought is switched to “What am I being taught through this situation?”. And boom. Just like that the story is being restored not destroyed.  

I never really grasped my codependency and attachment issues until I met it face to face in this lonely space. Not only did I never really make sense of it I also didn’t understand how extensive the roots actually were. Thats been the hardest to swallow. I’ve had a deep sense of love for family, friends, strangers, animals, even inanimate objects since childhood. Through learning myself I’ve gained knowledge that its because I’ve always given the love I craved to received. Growing up chasing the acceptance, love and attention from an inconsistent narcissist parent my understanding of love was built on cracked foundation. 

My therapist once told me that kids who grow up with a narcissistic parent or any high needs individual in the house often tend to lack a sense of self. This is because their whole life the mood, decisions and thoughts were dictated around this other person. The child in turn never really knows themselves yet is very hyper aware of everyone else emotions (empath) and tends to everyone else needs so no one is upset with them (people pleaser). Leaving the child with feeling like they do not matter, often in turn craving and giving love with no boundaries. 

I look back at all my romantic relationships and see how extreme, attaching and explosive they were. Each one similarly cyclical in nature. The “honeymoon phase” is out of this world. That feeling you could imagine you’d get if you were frolicking through a grass field in slow motion. Just eccentric. Because the thing with me is when I fall, I fall fast… and hard. And from day one i’m in it for the long haul. I used to give way too much, way too quick. Leading me into trouble every time. Being a magnet for damaged guys who needed saving due to all my unhealed wounds the red flags would not phase me. Instead I would do what I always thought I could do. Heal them. Love them. Show them genuine caring people do exist in this cruel world because I knew what it was like to hurt. No matter the emotional turmoil and devastation I faced during the relationship. This is called trauma bonding. Thats why there was always a flip in the relationship. Once the honey moon stage ends, and the truth of who they really were slowly revealed its self, and the baggage they carried seeped out. I was left with nothing but the truth of who I was actually dating. My passionate feelings of love I felt in the beginning then turned into fierce anger and sadness in the end. Instead of walking away from the infidelity, the emotional abuse, the explosive angry episodes, the manipulation, the deception, and betrayal. I’d take it. I’d accept it. And I’d try to make it better. All to just hold on to the few highs there were in such low relationships. Mimicking the exact kind of tolerance I observed as a child. As the great J. Cole would say “Everything comes back full circle”. But there comes a day when you wake up and realize that it isn’t what you want to feel anymore. The emotional instability, the highs and lows. What was once something that seemed so normal and oddly addicting is now just draining and exhausting. 

     My emotions were extreme, low or high. Completely out of tune with how I felt. I was never taught how to feel emotions yet alone how to control them. In fact I learned exactly the cycles I was repeating in my very own relationships. Being an empath who hadn’t discovered herself yet it left me with a target on my back getting wounded by each hurtful word, betrayal, and wrongful doing that hit me. Emotional attunement is a power in itself. A power I’m becoming illuminated to everyday. If you don’t know how to express what you’re feeling inside or even understand the emotions you are feeling you don’t know how to translate it into words when communicating with others. Leaving a bunch of feelings and thoughts bottled inside. Which will eventually overflow and burst. Causing emotional destruction to everyone in the way.

This emotional high and low pattern that repeated in my relationships is one of those “ah ha” moments of realization. You really do grow up to mirror the environment you experienced as a kid. When dysfunction and emotional highs and lows is what’s normal for you to experience, it then becomes you. Slowly invading like black mold. Each one of us are born so pure and clean. As we walk through life we develop survival tactics to protect us from danger we encounter not understanding the latter affects. Theses survival tactics creep their way into our thoughts and actions. The lonely places feel uncomfortable because it can be gut wrenching to realize the destructive qualities we hold. Qualities we didn’t realize we engulfed throughout life in order to survive. Characteristics we took on from our parents unhealed wounds they weren’t able to repair although they did their best. Thats the only way we can truly heal and be come our best selfs right? Is if we repair and heal the parts of us that keep us down and damaged. God uses lonely spaces to heal wounds and break chains if we let him. If we put the focus on what we are being taught.  

Without the lonely spaces we get so caught up in everything and everybody else cycles tend to get repeated. Sometimes God throws a lonely space so you have no other choice than to tune within, giving us a chance to stop and breathe. Or maybe he allows us to sit low so we begin to hate the issues we reface in the lonely space we stop going back to whats hurting us. To do an internal software update. Because maybe if we hate the familiar things that keep circling back to us then maybe we will grow tired enough to get up and fight to defeat it. Rather than letting it continuously run its course because it’s familiar. Familiarity and comfortability are two things that will keep you complacent in the situation you’ve been praying would change. Familiarity and comfortability can kill your desire to move different then you’re used to. It can keep you from stepping out and taking a chance on yourself; stopping you at the thought that things will not change ceasing your motive to preform the actions needed for change. 

It’s easy to loose sight of the true power we hold over our minds and life when we get low or when something in life doesn’t go the way we thought it should have. The enemy distracts us with all the problems circulating around us and all the doors that are closing. On the surface it feels like your loosing everything within arms reach and that’s the distraction the enemy uses. He tries to put magnifying glasses on the losses. I get blinded and forget Gods moving for me now. Removing people who’s intentions were deceiving, testing my patience, letting me sit in a lonely place so I can heal and release the things that pull me back from getting closer to my higher self. He’s renewing my mind, shifting perspectives, and healing wounds. So even though in the beginning I felt like I was loosing things left and right. Its becoming clearer I was really being protected from what wasn’t for me. 

A struggle I used to face is feeling so guilty and defeated when a friendship, relationship or a family bond ended. When I form a bond with someone I never imagine it to end. Like I said I am in it for the long run. Through the good and the bad. I’d take it so personal when the ties eventually faded. But I’ve come to realize that people come into your life for a reason. Sometimes it’s for a season or two or sometimes it is for a lifetime. I am learning to find peace in knowing that what is for me will be. I’m understanding that it doesn’t mean I failed, or that I’m not worthy enough of the relationship. It’s just the ones that left just simply weren’t for me in the next season of my life and it’s okay to let go. It’s okay to let go of a bond thats no longer serving me, because it only leaves room for the new to come in. It’s okay to let go of the anxious attachments, because the love I give my self and the love I receive from God is an unconditional one I can always count on and will never run dry. It’s okay to let go to the fear thats tied to being alone, because I’m never truly alone no matter how many times my mind tricks me into thinking I am.  

There are days when I feel confident and empowered about my strides in healing, reaching my higher self. Feeling like Im learning and growing so much, stepping into new heights. On the other hand there are days when my anxiety is so smothering there’s nothing else I can do other than curl up under the blankets feeling uneasy and debilitated. The hurts of past and fears of the future sometimes take the captains seat and start sailing into a tsunami throwing my mind into the eye of the storm. The beauty of inner healing and becoming in-tune is that no matter if it’s a good or a bad day you will always learn something about yourself, something about another and/ or something about life.

It’s in these lonely spaces we grow, we learn and we rise so we are equipped, healed, and wise enough to bear the fruits of what lies ahead. Letting go of what we once thought we needed to live like- old thought patterns, people, mindsets, behaviors, and reactions. So the things that are meant for us can come in and break cycles. The process of letting go is easier said than done but I’m practicing everyday here in this lonely space. Practicing making room for the new. New habits of the mind, new actions and reactions, new creative ideas, new abundance, new standards, and new levels. Its here in this lonely space I’m getting a chance to rebuild on solid ground. Sowing the seeds for my future self so she has a harvest to reap. I envision her radiant and unapologetically herself. She is whole with out anyone else’s approval. She loves deep but knows her worth. She pours out but also allows herself to receive. I cant wait to meet her.

If I have to climb mountains and cross oceans to learn every lesson, heal every wound, loose everything thats not meant to be mine, and even sit in these lonely spaces then so be it, I will. The trials only make you stronger, the lessons only make you wiser and better is not in moving backwards. So in the lonely spaces we get the choice get up fight, and move forward towards better. Or lie down out of defeat, crawling back to whats damaging just because it’s familiar. My choice is to fight. Thats the least I can do, give myself the fighting chance to win. So it’s here in the lonely spaces lives are taken back, stories are renewed and peace is restored.   

~ B