“Stranger in My House”

When one door closes …. Another opens and you find YOU!

It's taking me a while to finally write this out but I believe it may be one of the final pieces in this healing journey.

To say I was going through it would be an understatement.  Heartache has a way of shaking us to our core.  It leaves us feeling lost, questioning our worth, and unsure of how to take the step.  Whether it's the end of a long term relationship, dissolution of a deep connection, or even a friendship we once thought was forever. 

You in a sense, lose trust in the one person you can always count on, YOU.  

How could you not see it?  

Why would you let yourself get in so deep?  

How could you not recognize the reality of what was actually happening?  

And why did you not listen to your gut … you knew it along?

Back to square 1, right?  Nope this is a whole new level baby. You’ve been here before but younger more naive, and less faith in your own strength.  This time around  your bag is packed with all you’ve learned along the way.  You know this is in fact not the end, but actually the beginning.  The beginning of learning to love yourself for real this time, the beginning of hope, the beginning of healing and blooming like your favorite flower in the springtime. Time to open that door baby!

We get so comfortable in our own circumstances that we don’t look around to see there’s a stranger in our house, we don’t belong there anymore.  We get so comfortable that we don’t even notice that the person next to us never wanted to be there in the first place.  The things they loved about you became the very things they wish you would dim. These are just some of the harsh truths we choose to ignore to keep us safe in our own delusional fantasy of potential instead of the reality of who people are clearly showing us they are.  

I LOVE POTENTIAL!  

I can romanticize the shit out of everything and anything … I live for rom-coms, R&B love songs, and the fantasy of what could be.  Letting go of that potential feels like grieving a ghost—a version of them that never existed but felt so real in your heart. And the hardest part? Accepting that you can’t hold on to someone’s possibility when they refuse to step into it themselves. What this heartache taught me was to let people show you who they are and then act accordingly. Stop creating my own heartache and let them.  And in time, we learn to stop waiting for them to become what they were never ready to be. Instead, we embrace the reality of who they are, even if it means loving them from afar. Even if it means letting go.

I have been doing this for my entire adult life.  But the person whose potential I never saw was my own.  I would dim myself to make them comfortable, reevaluate myself over and over again so they wouldn’t leave, try to be more or less of something because then maybe they would really love me. The only person you can change is you, right?

HOLD UP …. WHAT THE F*CK IS HAPPENING HERE?

We did not come this far to go backwards. 

It got to the point where I could see my love for this person was so deep but they could’t see it nor could he return the love I needed.  Not because he didn’t love me but because we grew in 2 separate ways, his love didn’t fit and neither did mine for him.  Was it him that changed?  Probably not if I’m honest … I’m constantly evolving at this point in my life.  Maybe I wasn’t even really ready for all this … I hadn’t learned to love myself enough see what was staring me right in the face this whole time.   There is a much deeper story here but we’ll save that for another time. 

Yes this broke me …I stayed to myself for months, spoke  about it when I could handle not ugly crying and got caught a couple times in a blubbering mess by those closest to me.  I knew I finally had to heal not just this but everything I didn’t let myself feel because I always running, too busy, or onto the next.  

I spent 3 months basically not even telling anyone besides my people because I didn’t want to distract myself or honestly say it out loud.  I had to learn how to really be alone, enjoy my own company and learn about me.  What then hell do I like?  What do I want in a partner?  What are my non-negotiables?  What excites me? (Loaded question lol) What am I grateful for?  What have I learned?  And just sit there with a list of never ending questions.   

Finally I felt the cloud slowly lift, I started to see that the light at the end of the tunnel was in fact, me. And my own self love.  When the door closed and I opened the next one, I FOUND MYSELF staring back at me.  Nice to meet you Gina Rose.  Maybe I had become the stranger.  Like hold up, there's so much to love here and like my son Anthony said, “Mommy it's his loss”. 

Nah, he's just protective over his mama, all my kids are, but it’s really no one's loss because we both learned, at least I know I did.  The best part of this was getting to know me and  learning you could have pain and love simultaneously… so stay tuned, a new level here has been unlocked and to be continued baby … just getting started.

If you are going through a heartache, take the opportunity to look at it with hope, take time to learn about you and know its not the end but just the beginning! Bloom baby bloom!

So much love for you,,

A&F

Gee