December 31, 2022.
“It’s 15 minutes to midnight, grab your glasses!!” shouted my friend.
It was the first time in 2 years that we were all together.
The table overflew with foods of all sorts, everybody who came to the party contributed by bringing a dish of their choice and it was the perfect set up to wait for the new year.
Someone went to the kitchen to grab glasses, someone else grabbed the champagne and I switched on the TV to watch the ball drop at midnight.
We thought we had plenty of time to get everything set up but between a laugh, a chat and a few issues with the channel, we realized we had lost the count-down and midnight had sneaked under us like a thief at night.
We looked at each other speechless for a few seconds, then I said “All right girls, we’re not going to let 2023 sneak on us like that!”. I went on youtube, looked for a video of the count down in time square and asked everyone to come close to repeat what we had lost.
The evening ended up well. We had a lot of fun and in spite of the last minute hiccup with the TV we had a wonderful celebration.
As usual I had to pick a word for the new year and I had no doubt what it was going to be: LOVE, of course!
I had been working on myself for quite sometime and I felt I was finally ready to welcome a special one in my life. I didn’t know how it would happen or when, I only know I was ready for it.
Around March I met a new friend through a social platform. She lived in Germany and had a lot in common with me, so we started to talk about emotional injuries and processing.
I told her I had been searching for a good therapist to work with that had a more emotional centered approach and, sure enough, she happened to know one that did exactly that.
“Boris Haliad-Elul” she said. He came highly recommended and she was already a client of his so I decided to give it a shot.
From March to May Boris and I worked on many emotional issues, from residual family related topics to my own unresolved blocks towards a new relationship.
When we finally touched on the latter point, I told him I had worked for months on removing all blocks towards men and I had no idea what else might be there that hindered me from attracting someone in my life.
We had touched many areas at that point: my relationship with my dad and the desperate need to be seen, wanted and accepted by him, my relationship with myself and my feeling of not being worth of love and, last but not the least, my relationship with my ex-husband.
During one of our last sessions Boris impersonated my ex and asked me to talk to him about how I wanted him to stop chasing me and hoping for a future together. As soon as I started talking he stopped me and pointed out how smily i was during the process. I was supposed to ask this person to stop chasing me but instead of feeling irritated by it, i had a big smile on my face. "You love how he makes you feel when he chases you" and that was one the reasons why I hadn't been able to attract a new relationship in my life. I liked the attention that I was getting from him. I loved feeling wanted and pursued and while keeping this exchange with him I was actually preventing any other person to come into my life. The emotional space of a potential partner was already filled by my ex, and as much as I kept telling myself (and him) that I didn't intend to have a relationship anymore, the reality is that I was reserving a spot for him in my heart.
Once the truth about our interaction sank in, I was finally able to let go of this addiction towards him.
The interesting part about doing therapy with an emotionally open therapist is that the process goes beyond the session itself. One day, maybe a week after my last session woth Boris, I was sitting in the car waiting for my daughter to come out of dance class. I was scrolling through feeds on my phone when I decided to cancel all noise and check in with myself.
I sat in the car in silence for a few minutes and i slowly connected to a feeling of sadness and almost desperation about being alone.
"I will never find someone...who wants to be with me anyways? I'm almost in my 40ies, im divorced and i have a daughter. I'm carrying so much baggage with me...who would ever want that?". And within seconds I felt this very painful emotion that had come up before but i never let myslef experience. I realized how scared i was to admit i felt that way and every time i had the feeling of being too old and difficult to be liked i would immediately sooth that pain by telling myself "oh stop! You are not old and you have a lot to offer". I always thought that stopping that thought would be a form of self love but it was rather a lie that stopped me from experiencing the truth of how I felt about myself.
Somehow i thought that by acknowledging the thought I would make it stronger, but it was the exact opposite. I kept pushing it back into my soul and refusing to let go of it, which made it more pervasive and persistent.
After having a good cry about it, at last, I felt relieved. I could finally FEEL that i had something to offer (instead of think) and I could FEEL in my soul the firmness of that belief.
When I told Boris that I hoped this process would bring some change in my life he said "Just wait and see", so I was curious to see if things would unfold as he had announced.
One day, in the middle of April, I went to my kitchen to grab a bite for lunch. I had been working all morning and I needed a little brain break.
As I approached the window, I saw someone standing on my neighbors’ deck.
“Huh. Cute”, I thought. But I didn’t think too much about it.
As days passed by, the cute guy kept coming back to work on my neighbor’s deck and, once in a while, I would stop in front of the window to look at his work and his progress.
After a couple of weeks into the project, my neighbor told me that the "deck guy" needed to talk to me about something. He was supposed to knock at my door or catch me while I was out on my deck but the encounter never took place. Sometimes he was too busy to come knock at my door, other times I was too busy to hang out outside on my deck, so days passed by without us ever talking.
Then one day I heard someone knock at my door. I was in a meeting and could not go downstairs, but as soon as my call was over I opened the door to see if a package was delivered.
I did not find a package but I saw his truck parked in front of the house, so I ran out and knocked at his driver seat's window. We talked for a little bit and agreed on whatever needed to be agreed on.
Fast forward a few weeks, the deck was almost done and upon recommendation of my neighbor I asked him for a quote to redo my bathroom.
This request opened a window for some conversation, through which I found out he had a similar past to my own.
He had worked in finance for about 10 years when, in 2020, he decided to quit to pursue his dream to become a builder and start his own company.
That initial conversation never stopped and within a few weeks we started to date.
Being in a relationship after 5 and a half years of singledom has been an emotional rollercoaster.
I genuinely thought I had worked through a lot of my intergender injuries and I was convinced I could bring balance and serenity to a new relationship.
Instead, few days into it, I became completely obsessed with my new partner. And when I say obsessed I mean “OBSESSED”.
I would spend hours looking at the my phone going through our conversation and pictures, I would be physically glued to him from the time I opened my eyes in the morning (if he had the misfortune of lying close to me in bed) to the time he went to sleep. I would harass him for sex several times a day and watch him sleep whenever he needed time to rest or take a breath.
I left him with no personal space whenever he was around me and I became a nightmare to him and to myself as well.
I hated feeling as if nothing mattered unless he was with me and, after a few weeks of this love frenzy, I decided to ring Boris again to talk about this issue.
As always, Boris helped me dive a little deeper into my behaviors and helped me release some core emotions that were created in the early years of my life that caused me to behave as I was.
Being in a new relationship at the age of 39 has its own perks, one of which is that there is a lot more awareness towards everything.
Having to start everything from scratch at this time of my life has made me realize many things, one of which is that no matter how much we think we have worked on ourselves, there is always more work to do and more progress to make. Another big realization is that the saying "love comes knock at your door when you are ready" is literally true, so never open the door in a dressing gown and slippers if you know the time is ripe for love, lol.
Lastly, some emotions are more easily accessible when we engage in a relationship with someone rather than being alone at all times.
While being alone gave me time and space to work on many personal issues, there are some emotions that came up only when I became emotionally entangled with S.
Today marks 7 months since the beginning of our journey together and there are still many questions about the future of our relationship.
S. is on his own path of recovery from addiction and there’s a lot of roadblocks that we need to clear before being able to call ourselves stable.
2023 was a good year overall. It brought deep transformation and helped me close an important chapter of my life while opening a new one I had waited for long.
S. and I welcomed the new year snuggled on the couch.
“Dive Deep” it is.
Dive deep into relationships, dive deep into my emotional injuries, dive deep into everything that comes along. I just want to take things a notch further and see what happens next.
Bring it on 2024...we are ready for you!
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