Turns out..

Most of us go through ups and downs in our relationships. It’s really difficult to have a flat line experience when two humans come together and try to form a unit or a team. Very few of us know how to love naturally, most of us just learn what love is through whatever life experiences we’ve had and observed. Even fewer of us recognise that a lot of our issues in a relationship is because we have unresolved issues that we’re taking to other person to fix.

I don’t have many blue prints of healthy relationships, growing up I wasn’t surrounded by partnerships and or marriages that I would define as healthy or beautiful. They were traditional and had their own strengths, but I don’t have any examples I would want to replicate for myself. I am also a hopeless romantic and a poet who fell for the story lines in movies, books and songs. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I started recognising that I had been confusing attachment and lust with love. I became curious about this and started to understand that I don’t really know what love is, because it’s not something that I have felt deeply and or let in easily.

I’ve associated love with obligation, responsibility, taking care of others, fixing their problems, protecting them, advising them and being there for them. But actually, love is not about anything you do, it’s about how you are. It’s about what type of space you create and how you interact with someone else. It’s about letting go of expectations and judgements. It’s about connecting with the deeper layers of someone and not their behaviours.

On this journey I also recognised that I won’t be able to fully love someone else if I don’t know how to truly love myself. How do you learn to love yourself when you struggle with the concept in general? You have to try to unblock yourself and try to remember what it is to feel love. You need to examine what it is that you need to let go of and what you need to accept. Paying attention to what you nurture and how you are in the world.

In relationships it’s so easy to blame the other person for the issues, it’s easier to pick at their flaws and avoid fixing your own. We’re constantly playing hot potato with each other’s feelings and it’s not fair nor sustainable. This poem is about shifting perspectives and accepting that perhaps we also contribute to the issues in the relationships we’re with.

Turns Out:

I thought it was you who didn’t understand,

Turns out it was me trying to reprimand,

I thought you weren’t able to love me right,

Turns out it was the light in my heart that had died,

I thought it was you who did things wrong,

Turns out it was me trying so desperately to be strong,

I thought it was you who didn’t want to try,

Turns out it was me who wanted reasons to cry,

I thought it was you who was to blame,

Turns out it was me projecting my own shame,

I thought it was you who was disconnected and lost,

Turns out it was me who had forgotten how to love,

I thought it was you who wasn’t willing to fight,

Turns out it was me wanting to prove that I was right,

I thought it was you who was treating me so bad,

Turns out it was me who was searching for reasons to be sad,

I thought it was you who had broken my heart,

Turns out it was me who wanted to give up,

I thought it was you who would be my lover,

Turns out it wasn’t meant to last forever.