By: Naii’Mah Salaa
Looking back at all my decisions in love, I’ve realized there was a common habitual pattern that always broke me. It took me to fall flat on my face due to a lackluster marriage, dating while separated, which dug me into deeper pain and then divorce. Reflecting on those series of events showed me why I wasn’t being pursued or loved properly the way I deserve. My healing process began once I became aware of my faults. I started asking myself; Why did I believe that these men were who I deserved? Why did they have a chance with me? What were their intentions to begin with? Why did I ignore the red flags? The questions went on and on, until answers began to appear.
One of my exes answered it best, (even though that was half the problem) he said, (and I’m paraphrasing) You let us do it, you drop your boundaries and standards, and you don’t know how to read the room. After replaying that answer in my mind, I did more self-reflecting on what parts of that were true or not. I used my own case study now! I would analyze how I love and how others love me. It seemed that I would love with a love that was never ending and it seemed that they would love me with intentions to use my weaknesses against me. As I continued to get clarity, I saw that I knew how to love effortlessly, unconditionally but I never truly witnessed what a healthy love looks like. More thoughts began to form rapidly in my mind. I needed to know, was I loving with pure and untainted intentions or was I loving others to fill a void within?
It was both. I was loving people pure and untainted, while trying to fill a void within myself. I had to accept that I wasn’t fully aware of this at first. In my mind, I thought that you love hard, unconditionally, ride until the wheels fall off and come back on, with hopes of reciprocation. The truth was, I had no clue what it looked like to allow true love to develop. I naturally was a trusting person and I really believed in people but, how could they reciprocate, when I didn’t allow them to earn, appreciate and value me? I was a wife before the wife. Scripture says, “He who finds a wife, finds a good thing.” Proverbs 18:22. They were getting the whole good thing for little to know equal value and I was getting nothing in return. I knew something had to change. I wanted and finally believed that I deserve a lifetime kingdom purpose partnership, companionship, empire and more.
As I began to analyze myself further, a major question took over my mind, “Why did I settle”? The key answers to this question and the others were that I had to find the root, I didn’t know how valuable I was then, and I didn’t know what it felt like to be loved correctly. I didn’t allow myself time to see if I was really their good thing and I also didn’t allow them to show me their fruit. I wasn’t holding them accountable the way I should have, and my kindness was misunderstood as stupidity.
Well, this all goes back to the root. My roots were in childhood, I didn’t know how valuable I was then nor was I made to feel that I could do without others. Now that I was beginning to finally be receptive to the truths and accept what took place, I began to forgive, stop blaming God and most importantly heal at a more rapid speed. My past relationships helped me see where I went wrong. I searched and pondered on my exes’ words, actions etc. They also blamed me for why they betrayed me. Once finally seeing this behavior clearly, I saw that I wasn’t holding them accountable, which explains why they got more chances than they should have gotten. I heard someone say, “I can tell you have low self-esteem by looking at your exes”. Wow what a huge game changer for me. It really clicked after hearing that and I was like what was I thinking.
I had to hold him and others accountable for taking advantage of what I was giving, tricking me into believing that it was all me and I’m just broken or damaged, due to my past pain. I’m warping or confusing what they were doing with the pain caused by others. They knew what they were doing and they were character framing me to be this crazy, unhinged, damaged, broken, insecure woman so that they didn’t have to deal with the fact that they were evil in their whole intent towards me.
Why they did what they did and what they did was inexcusable. I continued to ask myself, why didn’t I leave when it became disrespectful, unattainable, unloving, toxic, one-sided and damaging to me and my children? What was the root behind this ? This isn’t normal!!!! I started waking up again. I began to see that everything the enemy was trying to do was killing me off, but God kept turning it around for His good.
Yahweh showed me why I was repeating these cycles. I was repeating those cycles because:
1. I forgot who I was and whose I am
2. I believed them in the beginning and didn’t want to believe that it was all a ruse or lie, I didn’t know how narcissistic behavior looked and what it looks like to be abused by someone and began to respond like them to defend myself etc.
3. Also, I believe that we are all flawed so I wanted to give the men I dealt with a chance, the way I hoped someone would respond to me.
4. I’ve always seen what others could be, I saw the best in them but then it clicked, why wasn’t I seeing them for who they really were at those moments. Later, I was so ashamed and embarrassed but God understood.
I lost myself completely by being too enthralled in everyone’s lives and yes, it was and has been an extremely humbling experience, but the facts were this was who they were at that time and maybe that’s who they will be for the rest of their lives and there was nothing I could do about it. Though I believed that I needed to help them, it wasn’t my place to. What I’ve learned about those times was that I needed to be needed, and that had to change. One of my daily healing methods is to look in the mirror at my eyes to see how I’m doing internally. My process of healing has been one grueling, but edifying experience, but in order to truly be free from this travesty, I had to relinquish myself from everyone and truly give myself to God and not turn back like Lot’s wife did in the bible.
In conclusion, After unfolding my roots and the why’s, I finally learned how to say no, not right now or maybe later. When you stretch yourself too thin you then create bad habits of being misused, depressed, procrastination, lethargic behaviors that burn you out. During healing and during life in general, fight and do your best to limit yourself to distractions.
As I take these measures to be more Christ-like again and more aware of what I’m doing in the presence of others, it has helped me as I heal tremendously. I’m not fully healed yet but I’m getting there. I’ve learned that to really see clearly, you must always test the spirit by the spirit, to see if they are from God. 1 John 4:4 says, Greater is He that is in you then he that is in the world! How do you test the spirit by the spirit or spot a counterfeit? Find out on my upcoming series/podcast Confessions of: Unrequited Love. Link coming soon!!
Peace and Love Always,
N.S.