Monika Basile's Blog: Confessions of a Bleeding Heart - Posts Tagged "feelings"
Being Me
There has been a huge blessing growing up in a large Italian family. Though everyone is constantly involved in everyone’s business, and we overreact to all of each other’s business, there is a blessing in knowing that those we are dear to, make sure we are aware at all times that we are their business.
I think of when I was young and experienced my very first heartbreak. I hadn’t quite realized how painful it would be or that I would feel it all so intensely. I didn’t expect the physical pain of it, the punch in the gut knocking the wind out of you feeling, the throat swelling fighting tears at all times feeling, the empty feeling and all the other awfulness of the whole thing. I didn’t expect either for it to be one of many dear uncles to offer the comfort and the lasting advice to a devastated teenage girl. It took me many years to actually believe and take that advice.
I remember sitting in my grandfather’s TV room, away from the crowd in the basement, by myself, nursing the wounds, struggling with the difficulty of being around such happiness when I was so miserable. I stared at the flickering screen like a zombie, not seeing any of it and fighting back the urge to weep when my Uncle Pete glanced in while he walked past the doorway. He did a double take.
“Why are you in here alone?” he asked.
I couldn’t speak. I burst into tears and shook my head.
He sat down on the stool and was quiet a minute and then said, “There will be more…really.”
I shook my head again, explaining how there wouldn’t be, how there was never to be another again. I told him how there must be something wrong with me because I felt like since it happened, that I couldn’t breathe and I would never be able to catch my breath again. I asked how something could possibly hurt this bad.
“I know you don’t believe me, but this will pass. And you will love someone again and you will hurt like this again and maybe even worse. And that will pass too.”
I didn’t believe him. I told him I hadn’t dated many boys and that it seemed if whenever I was brave enough to just be my real self they didn’t like me. Uncle Pete said, “You are very intense. You feel things real deep. That’s real scary to boys. Someday you will meet a boy that isn’t afraid. It might even take until you meet a man. But you will meet one and he won’t be afraid. I promise you. And they are going to be thankful that you are just who you are. You don’t have to change for anyone. You just have to be patient.”
Though I heard him, I didn’t believe him and I didn’t understand at all how people survived heartache after heartache. I didn’t take his advice. I spent much of my life attempting to conform to whatever someone felt would be a better version of the way I really was. Oh, I started off as the “me” I really am but I never quite ended up that way in the end. Time after time in my life, in the midst of relationships I found that it didn’t work. The being me thing. It never quite worked for as long as I hoped. And I did change in far too many ways. I was a practiced contortionist and an expert balancer of a life that wasn’t really mine.
Yet, my Uncle Pete’s words would linger in my brain. I would hear them ringing inside and still not take that to heart. I still kept trying to fit my square peg into a round hole insisting it would fit if I just carved off my edges and smoothed it all out. I wonder too, why I always have felt that it is me who needs to do the adjusting and never the other. In the endings I heard his words as a shout and was only then able to give up the battle of trying to make the undoable doable.
As I have grown, I realize now that my Uncle only told me the truth. There will be more…really. Yes, there has been. I can actually be quite intense and someday, there will be a man who will not be afraid of that and will instead glory in it. Though patience has never been a virtue of mine, I am learning to find it within and wait. I can’t settle for someone who wants to pick apart the things of me that are truly me, no more than I ever want to have a man feel he has to be anyone other than himself. I would rather spend our time together just enjoying each other—amazed at the wonder of it all and knowing that being comfortable enough to expose our souls is what makes something lasting. It is okay to feel life very deeply—intensely, even if the hurt hurts a bit more than the norm because the joy is all that much bigger too.
Monika M. Basile
I think of when I was young and experienced my very first heartbreak. I hadn’t quite realized how painful it would be or that I would feel it all so intensely. I didn’t expect the physical pain of it, the punch in the gut knocking the wind out of you feeling, the throat swelling fighting tears at all times feeling, the empty feeling and all the other awfulness of the whole thing. I didn’t expect either for it to be one of many dear uncles to offer the comfort and the lasting advice to a devastated teenage girl. It took me many years to actually believe and take that advice.
I remember sitting in my grandfather’s TV room, away from the crowd in the basement, by myself, nursing the wounds, struggling with the difficulty of being around such happiness when I was so miserable. I stared at the flickering screen like a zombie, not seeing any of it and fighting back the urge to weep when my Uncle Pete glanced in while he walked past the doorway. He did a double take.
“Why are you in here alone?” he asked.
I couldn’t speak. I burst into tears and shook my head.
He sat down on the stool and was quiet a minute and then said, “There will be more…really.”
I shook my head again, explaining how there wouldn’t be, how there was never to be another again. I told him how there must be something wrong with me because I felt like since it happened, that I couldn’t breathe and I would never be able to catch my breath again. I asked how something could possibly hurt this bad.
“I know you don’t believe me, but this will pass. And you will love someone again and you will hurt like this again and maybe even worse. And that will pass too.”
I didn’t believe him. I told him I hadn’t dated many boys and that it seemed if whenever I was brave enough to just be my real self they didn’t like me. Uncle Pete said, “You are very intense. You feel things real deep. That’s real scary to boys. Someday you will meet a boy that isn’t afraid. It might even take until you meet a man. But you will meet one and he won’t be afraid. I promise you. And they are going to be thankful that you are just who you are. You don’t have to change for anyone. You just have to be patient.”
Though I heard him, I didn’t believe him and I didn’t understand at all how people survived heartache after heartache. I didn’t take his advice. I spent much of my life attempting to conform to whatever someone felt would be a better version of the way I really was. Oh, I started off as the “me” I really am but I never quite ended up that way in the end. Time after time in my life, in the midst of relationships I found that it didn’t work. The being me thing. It never quite worked for as long as I hoped. And I did change in far too many ways. I was a practiced contortionist and an expert balancer of a life that wasn’t really mine.
Yet, my Uncle Pete’s words would linger in my brain. I would hear them ringing inside and still not take that to heart. I still kept trying to fit my square peg into a round hole insisting it would fit if I just carved off my edges and smoothed it all out. I wonder too, why I always have felt that it is me who needs to do the adjusting and never the other. In the endings I heard his words as a shout and was only then able to give up the battle of trying to make the undoable doable.
As I have grown, I realize now that my Uncle only told me the truth. There will be more…really. Yes, there has been. I can actually be quite intense and someday, there will be a man who will not be afraid of that and will instead glory in it. Though patience has never been a virtue of mine, I am learning to find it within and wait. I can’t settle for someone who wants to pick apart the things of me that are truly me, no more than I ever want to have a man feel he has to be anyone other than himself. I would rather spend our time together just enjoying each other—amazed at the wonder of it all and knowing that being comfortable enough to expose our souls is what makes something lasting. It is okay to feel life very deeply—intensely, even if the hurt hurts a bit more than the norm because the joy is all that much bigger too.
Monika M. Basile
