Be Whole

Let me say something about the fear of being turned away, because it runs more of us than we'd admit.

It comes from somewhere real. Somebody left, or didn't choose you, a long time ago or not that long ago. And the mind learned that people are fragile and can go at any time. So it does one of two things. It grabs: gets jealous, gets heavy too early, needs reassurance. Or it does the opposite: pushes people off, ends things first, so nobody ever gets the chance to end them on you. Grab or run. Neither one is comfortable to live in, and neither one is who you are. They're what the fear does with you.

Two things to understand.

One: every person in your life, every one, no matter how much you love them, you will have to let go of at some point. Could be fifty years from now. Still true. And something in you has to make peace with that, because the people who have are the ones who can love somebody all the way. If you've already accepted that nothing is forever, you can stop guarding and start being there.

Two: the fear goes looking for proof. Somebody doesn't text back for an hour, and the fear says, there it is, they're done with me, instead of the twenty ordinary reasons a person doesn't text back. Somebody you're with talks to somebody else at a party, and the fear says, I knew it. From a scrap, it builds a whole case with no evidence. So I want you to get good at catching yourself doing that. Just catching it. "That's the fear building a case." That one sentence is half the cure.

Get comfortable. Let your eyes close.

Before we go deeper, think of the situations. The specific kind of moment that sets this off in you. The text that doesn't come. The plan that changes. The look across the room. Get a clear picture of two or three.