Guest Post: Choose Love

The last 8 months have been surreal. 

I felt like I was out of my body. I lost myself and felt like I was broken in a million pieces, like my soul was wandering...lost and beyond retrieval. I realized I had two choices: to live in fear, doubt and hate, or to choose love. I choose love and am trying to live moment by moment choosing love. 

What does it mean to choose love? When I want to scream at my husband for what he did, I think to myself, what will be the consequences? Will anything good come out of this? It is just more harmful, to me and to him. We have suffered enough. So I choose love. 

I am learning to be conscious. Hate in my heart is not going to solve anything. Love squashes all the feelings of revenge, of anger, of hate. I try to choose love every moment because I know if I don't we will just keep living in hell. My husband is also broken from what he did. He has quit his job and we have moved across the country. He is truly remorseful, understands why he did what he did, doesn't blame me. 

We both hit rock bottom. There came a point where he had done everything he could possibly do and I realized that now it was up to me. Up to me to stop punishing him and ultimately myself. It was up to me to love myself and allow him to love me too. It is a lot to ask someone to keep loving you when you keep hating them. It is a lot to ask someone to love you when you are hating yourself. 

We can hate what they did but if we truly want to spend the rest of our lives with them, we have to love them and make our way back to them (after we make our way back to ourselves). Even as I say it, I feel some resistance, the temptation of my grievances...but that's just the way it has to be. For me at least. Otherwise what’s the point? 

I feel that if I truly love him like I say and believe I do then I should act like it. I take no responsibility for his affair but I have to take responsibility for how I am reacting to it. I can still feel angry, still feel hurt, still feel all those things but nonetheless respond from a place of love. Otherwise I will truly die, spiritually, emotionally, and ultimately physically. 

It has felt like a painful slow death up until this point. I refuse to continue on that path. Life is too beautiful and the love we share too precious to throw away. 

Going forward I am sure I will falter but at least I have something to come back to over and over again, and that is me, the love I have found for myself. 

I closed myself off from love out of fear, but I feel it flowing again. It is what makes us who we are. Love. We can't deny ourselves the love we deserve. How can we truly love another if we don't love ourselves first? When we don't love ourselves we look elsewhere and do all kinds of other crazy shit. We just need to look within. All the answers are there. 

I am learning some much needed lessons through this and I know I will never be the same again...and I am glad for it because I am stronger, wiser and fearless. If I make it though this, I can make it through anything! I learned my worth, I own my worth. That's what I am getting from all of this mess. I keep asking myself, what are the lessons i need to learn here? Who am I in all of this? I am a strong proud brave and courageous and forgiving woman who is full of love and worthy of love, that's who I am.