My biggest fear of being forgotten is preventing me from falling in love. And I want to fall in love. It's everything I've ever wanted. (Okay, maybe not everything. But it used to be everything.)
So here I am trying to break it down. How do I tackle my fear of being forgotten, so I can have the courage to love fearlessly?
*cue Sherlock theme song*

And if you want to just skip to the end, the answer is, drum roll please...
you just kinda do it. 🤷

I know, groundbreaking stuff.

The Fear of Being Forgotten (and my fucked up definition of love)

It's a paradox. I'm a hoax. My fear of being forgotten stems from my sadistic ideas of love. Without being forgotten, there is no love. 

Because it's so beautifully tragic when tears stream down your face as you whisper "why."

Why am I not worth fighting for?  There's an allure in looking deeply into someone's soul, begging for them to choose you, to love you, to fight for you; pleading that you're worth it, because you're so unsure of it yourself.

And that's all I've known love to be.

Growing up everyone, and I mean everyone, told me that my mother did love me. Every mum loves their kid, and being the little Einstein, I put one and one together and suddenly tragedy becomes my definition of love. That's the familiar, default narrative. And it's going to take a lot of self-awareness to fix. I mean hey, at least I'm aware and (kinda) want to fix it. Right?

So where does this play in terms of being forgotten? That's an easy one. If you're forgotten, you weren't loved. You weren't important enough to make an imprint. You didn't matter. Would any of the memories you built together actually have happened if you're forgotten? Or are they merely fragments of your own imagination?

I know - literally, reality proves that it happened, regardless of if anyone remembers. I've been told I have a skewed idea of what reality and fantasy is. Working on that too. 

But nonetheless, all of this is synonymous to the catastrophic ending that in the absence of tragedy, love cease to exist, I so masochistically orchestrate. 

So... I guess we should move on to how I'm trying to fix it... lol. fml. 

The Courage to Love Fearlessly

For my few readers whose known me for a while now (funny because analytics prove that no one's reading this, hahaha). Let's talk about the gross Brenda from way back when. The happily-ever-after Brenda. The one that believed in fairytales, and true love, and all the gross things that comes with being a hopeless romantic. 

To my surprise, she's not dead. Just left for dead - but somehow survived my suppression and is trying to reclaim the throne. Who knew?

Who knew that being vulnerable and letting myself experience raw emotion in truly falling in love gives just as much of a dopamine fix than curating a most masterful heartbreak? HMM, was she on to something?

I'm starting to believe it. I'm worth the risk, and I want to risk the vulnerability - because I felt it for the first time this year. For the first time I broke my ‘no sleep over rule’ not because I had to or because I felt inclined to, but because I didn’t feel nervous going to bed, I didn’t feel anxious, I felt safe. And that is a new feeling. It was scary because it was the kind of feeling that I’ve always known to end in anguish. And it's fine if it ends, because even if it does, it was real.

I'm worth love - and love isn't heart break, that's one ending. But there are so many others. Goodbyes don't have be definite. And for as long as I keep holding on to those devastating endings, I'll never find love... because I'll be too focused on the ending to ever enjoy it. 

So here's to the new story I'm going to keep telling myself and fight for.

I want love to be simple. Because no one thinks it's simple, ESPECIALLY in this day and age. In fact, it's quite complicated - but it doesn't have to be. All it should take is for two people to want to fight for each other. And as long as that's the core principal of how to love, all the missteps along the way will be okay, and can be resolved.

I don't want to be scared to fall in love. I want to have a crush, I want to date, I want to fall in love, and I want it to happen fearlessly. And when two people can courageously take that step, we wouldn't be in a society where love is lost. 

I don't want feelings to be a game. Mind games are fun, but it's more fun when you feel secure with the person you're playing with. When you know it's just a game, and that it doesn't matter who's more Alpha - because love wins. 

So that's it. I'm going to fight, regardless of if anyone is fighting with me. I'm fighting for love. 

--

Let's take a moment to gag because that was the cheesy stuff that I wrote ALL the time. See why I've been repressing old Brenda? Who was I even? 

So I guess that's it. I'll check in later to see if I actually hold up to it. x