Anniversaries & Learning About Healthy

I've been watching a lot of @psychologyinseattle lately and it's like I've been learning a whole new language for feelings, for how trauma is internalised and expressed. I am learning what is healthy, how we should treat each other, and how we should speak to each other. I am learning we deserve healthy.

My love language used to be gifts. It’s all I knew. My family wasn't around much and so they would buy things out of guilt and love because words weren't going to change the reality of the situation. Pretty words aside, we were still poor immigrants struggling to survive, so why bother? Instead they gave us gifts, the best of what they could afford. Handbags, shoes, designer things indicated sacrifice, the time and struggle it took to make that money, and that was evidence of how much they cared. Consumerism was a love language we became fluent in.

Jon's love language is gifts of service. I met Jon Farmer when I was 25 years old. I am 36 now. We just celebrated our 9 year anniversary, and he is the love of my life. He teaches me what love is daily. Like when Jon leaves the house before I do, he leaves me my morning coffee and vitamins on the table. It's stupid wonderful. 

But his greatest act of service is his generous vulnerability. He consistently tells me he loves me by choosing kindness. He pursues my heart with the words “I feel”. When I am a jerk to him, he doesn’t retaliate or cut me down. He is clear about his boundaries. “I do not like this. I do not deserve that.” But he doesn’t lecture or try to control. He just says, “I feel hurt.” He tells me how he feels and lets me know what I said or did that made him feel this way. “When you said this, I felt. When you did this, I felt.” He makes himself vulnerable, open, emotionally available to me at all times. He’s not just trying to avoid conflict. He seeks understanding and wants to know why I reacted in a certain manner, why I chose anger and hurt. It is an exercise I am wildly unfamiliar with.

I am not very in touch with my feelings. I have attachment issues and am avoidant. I have PTSD and depression. I struggle with empathy. I know I have issues but I don’t want to go there. I don’t feel like I have words for my feelings or even know how I feel most of the time until I say something cutting. I am excellent at weaponising insecurity. Sadness, hurt, fear are all translated to anger. I don’t want to talk about feelings because I hate being vulnerable. Instead, my instinct is to think about something terrible to say. The perfect words to harm and cut to size come together like a masterpiece. I know this about myself so I avoid the feelings part of me. I know the harm my words will cause so I shut down. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to explore my feelings, why I reacted that way, how I was hurt, why I was triggered.

I had never seen healthy expressions of feeling before. I never knew home, husband, family could be a safe place. Fully comfortable and accepted. No control or manipulation. No aggression or fear. No drama or forcefulness. Jon’s truthfulness was like a glimpse into a strange land, like seeing a body of water through an open doorway after living in the desert my entire life. A part of me resented him for it, I felt like I was a person riddled with holes standing next to the image of health.

I have themes for the different seasons of my life. For a time it was brave. Another time it was contentment. The themes stay with me and they start a chapter of intention around it. I think the next theme might be healthy. We deserve healthy relationships to ourselves and to each other. I think it's going to be something I work on for the rest of my life going forward.