So what happened?

In my last post, I was writing just after I had taken a leap of faith, being painfully honest in a way I really haven't before. I was pretty sure the results would be dramatic, one way or another.

I opened up and told Mr L things I've been too scared to tell anyone, and I was fairly convinced it would make him run for the hills. But I knew it was right to be honest. Did he run for the hills?

Well, no. Not exactly. He responded with a similar amazing level of honesty. And we both cried. I find it interesting that despite having heard my fears, and my feeling of certainty that the truth would make him want nothing more to do with me, his feelings mirrored mine: once I had heard the truth he was convinced I would want nothing more to do with him. But of course I did.

I'm getting used to a new feeling now. It feels a little like living with my heart on the outside of my ribcage for the first time. It feels raw and exposed. I have offered up those soft parts of me that make me the most vulnerable. I have spent nearly 30 years carefully hiding those parts. And I have no guarantee that he won't hurt me in those vulnerable spots in the future, nor he I. We are not out of the woods, by any means. But with it comes a freedom, and a realisation that I don't have to be so bound by past and future - honesty gives me the chance to be truly present in the moment. I feel as if I spent the first couple of decades of my life learning how to do it wrong, learning that I must put up a front in order to be liked and loved, in order to be acceptable. And now I must unlearn it. I don't think I'm alone in that, and I wonder why we do it.

I take comfort in the words of T.S. Eliot, my favourite poet. I always thought he was a cynical old bastard, but perhaps it was also the frustration of one who is secretly hopeful.


“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”