sreynolds1977

I know this feeling you have - it's the same as mine. Here is what I'm doing to try and find the source of it:

When you are ready, go back in time to when you first felt that "unfulfilled need". You still remember that time, right? I think maybe we all do. And you kind of gave away the answer by saying: "what is causing this unfulfilled need that is trying to invade my heart?

Besides pumping blood, what do we have a heart for? Spiritually, emotionally?

When I was growing up, I was made to feel shame for simply being a male child. And for simply doing the normal things a male child does. But there is a natural extension of this that I missed. If I could have somehow verbalized what I felt back then, it would go something like this:

"I don't deserve love because I'm trying to be a man and that is bad".

That was that 'normal' thing I was trying to be that I was made to feel I didn't deserve to be loved for. And what did I get instead of love for trying to be that?

I was criticized and hit a lot. So that's what I learned to think of love as being. Something that hurts me. I experienced shame and physical pain when I should have been experiencing unconditional love.

So these are the questions I asked my inner, hurt, child-self before I could discover the above:

1) I didn't deserve to be loved because (......).

2) I got (......) instead of love for being that.

3) So to me, love was (......).

4) I had to be (......) back then to try and get love.

You might find that whatever #1 is, is what, deep down inside, you think and feel is what is wrong with you. This is shame. And you are what you are ashamed of, but only as long as you walk around believing it's true.

What #2 is, is what your getting today instead of love. And it feels as bad today as it did back then.

#3 is what you seek when your looking for love. But it's not love. And it does not work.

#4 is what you are today when your trying to get love. But it did not work back then and it does not work now.

I think I have learned that I used drugs because they were the closest thing to feeling love that I could get. Think of all the words we use to describe being high. A stranger might think we were describing love. And all the ways I had learned to get love did not work. I have heard numerous addicts express great feelings of sadness and pain when they realized they had to give up their drugs. I too felt this when I finally gave up mine. We were giving up the only love we had. But we had to - they were killing us. We have to give them up and learn the right way to seek, to feel and to give love. To me, thats what growing up should have been. But I had no choice but to believe what I was made to feel back then. Children have no choice but to believe it.

But we are not children anymore and so we all have a choice today.


I hope this post made sense to someone. Sometimes I write these things and I think they only make sense to me. So take only what you need and leave the rest.