“Old keys don’t open new doors”

I do a lot of things well, and with ease. It almost feels unfair and I often feel guilty when I see people struggle with things I find easy. Work and the subject of careers is easy enough for me to figure out. I’m a Mental Projector. The mind is my stomping playground. In my head I run things, or at least run circles around the many tabs I keep open until I make a decision that my gut goes with, upon looking at all the information. 

But that “logic” sadly doesn’t apply to relationships. Much to my frustration and disappointment because choosing to work as a strategist means I thrive on figuring things out. You can’t figure emotions out. Two completely different centres. Like trying to hear colors (well, depending on which circles you’re in, this is not entirely inconceivable if you consider Synesthesia). Relationships kick my behind, okay? To a point where the majority of people in my life have never met more than one or two significant others, I keep my relationship blooper reel completely to my innermost circle of one. My best friend Jill. She has seen me through the terrible choices I have made in choosing relationships that have not been good for me on first consideration. But looking back, the unravelling of seeing myself make personal sacrifice after personal sacrifice in my values, needs and even things I had dreamt was a show reserved for a select few because it carried with it shame that took a while to digest. How was a smart, intelligent woman making such senseless choices in romantic partners? Well, the stories were not short of romance. Unconventional wisdom would say we choose these life lessons to mend those parts of ourselves that need repatterining for us to truly embrace who we came here to be. 

So relationships are the hill I chose to climb and show myself flames in this lifetime. When I am unhappy in relationships, when things are not going smoothly in one or more of my most intimate relationships – especially romantic, I turn into a sour, dull and bitter aunty. I can’t see the rest of the sunshine. My self-worth seems to be heavily intertwined with my need to feel wanted. No intellectually solving that one. So what is your go-to response for uncomfortable things? Mine is avoidance. I shut down – communication, contact and isolation and then feel even more isolated and unworthy. But the irony of life teaches us in those valleys that all the lessons that we are here to really grasp, are in our biggest challenges. 

And because it is incredibly humbling to admit that there is something I don’t have all figured out, I made a decision to invest as much energy in emotional healing, understanding why I hurt myself in the very ways I am asking to be seen, and how I can arrive at a harmony of not being so ruled and defeated by the low points where my relationship status does not match the kind of successful person I am trying to be. And it is hard to even admit that, or make that phone call, send that text or email asking a professional for help. 

I sought a life coach and grief counselor in 2010 when I had lost my mother suddenly. I’m not sure how it was for my siblings, but as the last born – the pain was physical. I felt like a wound in my umbilical cord was left bleeding and unattended to. It was grief that would break my heart open to even seeing all these patterns I could sum up in a paragraph, that all the grief from losing close family throughout my childhood, was patterning an avoidant attachment style that was working against the very thing I wanted to master more than anything. I wanted to reconcile the pain of heartbreak with the need to trust those who I love, who are very much alive, to be there and not suddenly leave. The journey that started off as just grief counseling, connected me to a whole rabbit-hole that my soul came here to experience all of that pain and loss, and still chose to form and cultivate healthy attachment that let vulnerability lead the connection. 

11 years later, and many courses that showed me the blessing of doing my own healing work and sharing that firstly with only my bestie, then as my nephews got into their mid-twenties and had more of a friend relationship than aunty/nephew, I started to see the profound insights I was gaining to share with them, so that I could really internalize all that I was remembering, repatterning, understanding and healing. Not yet a sage, but as I was making the life decision to become a digital nomad for at least a year and give myself a blank canvas to restart, I was also staring at a 7 year on and off passion-filled relationship that was here to show me the biggest lesson of all. No one was going to choose me any more than I needed to choose myself. Mending my broken heart from the many losses – my siblings, all my maternal and paternal grandparents, , my mom, friends (some not even through death, just relationships painfully running their course) brought me face to face with having fallen for someone who was not available to meet my relationship needs, and yet I was not yet accepting that no amount of waiting, working on myself, becoming shinier, more attractive, more indispensable to his life, could replace the most important love. My own. Nothing was broken. I jus was not going to have the international adventures, 1 kid and dog, start a farm and many amazing projects together in That particular relationship. But I deserved to choose that for myself even if it meant walking away from a great friendship embedded in a toxic relationship filled with self-sacrifice.

Business-wise, everything about moving to Lamu checked out. Mentally, logically it all made sense. But the real story of why I chose to follow my dreams so wildly and without hesitation, was that if I was to talk about designing my life to one I was happy in regardless of material circumstance, I needed to talk about the nail that sealed the coffin on life as I knew it. The truth is that I needed to bet on the odd chance that life really means well holistically, and  that we are here to experience a Full life. I owed myself success in all parts of my life, by taking charge of meeting the rest of my needs – not just career goals. That relationship had defined me. & years (on and off regardless) is a very long time. Habits, places, an identity I was not sure how to move past, separate my truest wants and desires that did not live in the backdrop of what this person was willing to invest for Both of us to be happy.

I feel okay about having given that relationship my best shot, and that I had really grown immensely in as long as it was the most beautiful, passionate, enriching experience of another person. No love lost. But old keys don’t open new doors and there comes a time when the coach sips on her own medicine. The only thing I had not tried was just keeping it moving in the direction of all the dreams I was sacrificing by hoping he would choose differently, make choices that accommodated my need to travel, what commitment looked like for me, things I dreamt of achieving in a romantic relationship. 

I fell in love with Lamu and the idea of starting afresh more than the idea of sitting and hoping that by not choosing myself, this other person would, and then all that self-sacrifice would be worth it. If this is the sign you were looking for, please do me and yourself a favor. Your relationships with others are not nearly as important as the one you have with yourself. There is nothing out there that can ever fill the void you leave when you abandon your wants, needs, desires for the safety of feeling chosen by someone else. With no fight, no major incident, I left this relationship that really felt like an amputation, for the promise of making space to fill it more with myself. Because Life means well, and it will meet us only as deeply as we will meet ourselves. 

If this is something you have been looking for courage to do, you are in good company.