My heart felt like a heavy piece of iron that I was carrying around and there was nothing I could do to shift it. I would cry pretty much on the hour and no matter what I did I could not sit still inside this pain. My first heart break. We've all been there and we know the impact it can have on our future relationships. In fact I think the first heart break can often set the tone for how you approach all future relationships. It certainly did for me. Unfortunately men don't seem to be raised with access to the emotional language needed to move themselves successfully through these points in their lives. The only expression of emotion that was ever permitted for me, like most men was anger. So that's what I did. I chose anger above all else. Whenever I felt the pain or the overwhelming loss of that first cut I chose to focus on any grasping sense of injustice I could hold onto, all for the sole purpose of inspiring my rage. I did this well, too well in fact, to the point of where this rage became so normalised it was a part of my every day. Forgiveness was not even a word in my vocabulary back then because I related forgiving someone with a power struggle. They somehow “won” if I “let them off the hook”. I hadn't realised at that point that forgiveness was a gift that you give to yourself to honour the lesson more than the experience.
As soon as I was aware of the power of forgiveness I wanted it. It felt almost arrogant at first to put myself in the position of forgiving another human being but in truth I was just afraid of the transformational power that it has. It has the power to reset your life, to reorganise your entire energy system in a way that puts love at it's centre. Forgiving my first love was actually the easy part. Now that so many years had passed I could see the insane energy contracts I was sending out at that time in my life and I could see clearly how unfair I had been. To cut a long story short I took responsibility for my part in it all. The hard work was actually forgiving myself not just for how I behaved at that time but how I used that pain to justify the million little personality traits I had left unchecked in myself as a result of that. I wore that victimhood like a badge of honour. We all know people like this, it's irritating that I was one of them for a while! They send invites out to their own personal pity party and expect you to show up ready for their song and dance show. I was SO ready to let this part of my life go and I could see the toxic energy that it inspired around me so I made the commitment to forgive. To forgive everyone for everything. Including myself.
All forgiveness starts with figuring out what you learned and then becoming so grateful for the lesson that it eclipses the experience. Piece by piece I became grateful for the insight that journey sent me on. I became grateful for the boundaries I was now aware of within myself. I became grateful for the person I had to opportunity to become as a result of the heart break. I became grateful for the catalyst the pain caused within me to become a more compassionate, loving and caring person. This journey did not happen over night. The glamour of victimhood is everywhere in our culture and it can be tricky to stay out of it. To herald yourself as a “survivor”. You don't need any of that. You just need to find the parts of yourself that you are and celebrate them. Love who that experience has the potential to turn you into and stay on that path with all you have. Today that pain and that experience are a distant memory but I am SO grateful that I went through them. They matured my heart, mind soul and I would not have the capacity for self love and accepting real, genuine love from those around me that I do now if I hadn't experienced that. Just take it a day at a time, one grateful moment after another.
Thank you for reading,
Big Love,
Ryan James x
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