A tilting within myself

I’ve been so devout in my belief that what I want exists and that even if it didn’t, I was brave enough to ask for it without ever considering: what if it’s actually offered to me?

Or, more precisely, what if it’s always been offered to me and I’ve always turned away? What if the issue has never been a lack or even a scarcity of what I want, but that time and time again, I’ve decided to run the other way instead of reaching back for what I want when it was reaching for me?

I’ve only recently realized this to be the case. The problem has never been that I couldn’t have what I wanted, but that I wasn’t willing to accept it. At 34, I’m having to learn how to tolerate sweetness, vulnerability, and honesty.

Tolerate feels like a silly word to use, but when I consider how it feels, the only substitutes are words like “endure” and “bear.” I’m having to learn how to stand still when someone is giving me what I want and to allow them to treat me that way.

It feels a lot like being exposed. And, if I’m being honest, under the bright light of it all, I’m guilty of trying to persuade the other person that I don’t deserve it. My multiple failed attempts at scaring him off have left me wondering: why am I so afraid of getting the things I’ve yearned for?

I’ve loved the poem, Annunciation, by Marie Howe for a long time. My first readings were that I need to be able to give myself what I want, but last night, something clicked for me about my own need to endure uncorrupted sweetness coming from someone else. I need to love myself enough to believe I deserve the sort of treatment that makes me feel like, “I thought I’d die from being loved like that.”

So, here goes:

Even if I don’t see it again — nor ever feel it
I know it is — and that if once it hailed me
it ever does–

And so it is myself I want to turn in that direction
not as toward a place, but it was a tilting
within myself,

as one turns a mirror to flash the light to where
it isn’t — I was blinded like that — and swam
in what shone at me

only able to endure it by being no one and so
specifically myself I thought I’d die
from being loved like that.