Reality is kinder

Some mornings I wake up afraid before I even open my eyes. Nothing has happened. The person I love is asleep beside me, and he chooses me every single day. And still a voice rises inside me: Be careful. Someone will take him from you. You’ll end up second again.

For a long time I took that voice for the truth. Today I know it as a part of me.

The part that keeps watch

At Semilla I talk about inner parts. It’s a way of looking at ourselves, inspired by IFS (Internal Family Systems): we aren’t one seamless whole but more like a community of parts, each of which is trying, in its own way, to look after us.

My Husk, the part that protects me, was born long ago. As a child I learned that love can be lost. That the attention of someone I care about can belong to someone else more than to me. That I have to share. My body remembered this better than my head did.

So when the love I had dreamed about for years finally arrived, my Husk wasn’t any less afraid. It was more afraid. Every shadow from the past, every trace of someone who once belonged to our story, meant danger to it. It spoiled more than one beautiful moment. I almost believed the threat would stay with us forever.

Responsibility that isn’t mine

Hours of therapy, parts work, somatic work with the body. I kept searching for where the fear was being triggered. And one question opened more than all the others:

Why am I carrying a story that isn’t mine?

That question led me to another part: the Soil. Since childhood it has taken responsibility for things it never chose but that still affect it. It wants to hold everything together. I was constantly weighing how much power people and decisions I couldn’t influence had over my life. And by doing that, I was the one giving them that power.

Today I can tell what is mine and what isn’t. Other people’s decisions belong to them. My energy, my peace and my path belong to me.

When you’re allowed to fall

I believed a relationship like this existed. I dreamed of it. But it’s everyday life that shows me how deeply my body holds the belief that it doesn’t exist, at least not for me.

Yet reality is kinder. Next to someone who has connected with himself, and through that with me, I’m learning what it feels like to truly come first. Such solid support has grown around us that I can fall. That I can look inside. Old wounds don’t dissolve because someone heals them for me. They dissolve because they finally have a safe place to show themselves.

I thanked my Husk. It protected me the best way it knew. Then I told it that today it can ease off. I’m letting go of a fear that isn’t mine. Without a fight. My energy belongs to me and to my path.

And you?

Maybe there’s a part in you, too, that wakes you with fear even though nothing is happening. A part that carries someone else’s story. It didn’t come to torment you. It’s protecting you from something that once hurt.

Whose story are you carrying?