Sometimes a breakthrough looks like a breakdown, part 2: We accept the love we think we deserve.

I started this series in 2017 on a blog I don't even write anymore, then brought it here in May of 2018, intending to finish the second and third parts. And there it sat. I couldn't figure out why I was so blocked on trying to write the next chapters.

And then September happened. And then the New Year's proposal from David happened, and there was my answer: I couldn't write the story, because it hadn't concluded yet. It's time. This series will continue every other Friday until its conclusion.

Click For Part One

Pretty much all my life, I accepted a crappy excuse for love because I didn't viscerally know, within and without, that I deserved better and could do better. That was step 1. It took over 25 years.

You can say you know something, or believe something. But if it isn't written onto your heart, your heart will betray you in every test, every time.

I was deeply traumatized by two events in quick succession: The tornado of 1990 ripped apart the entire physical world that I knew. That same year, my parents split. Every aspect of the only physical and emotional world I'd ever known was destroyed before I hit first grade. Nothing was safe. Anything could be broken. I wasn't even six years old.

Dad got with my stepmother and left my Mom in exactly the wrong order. His wandering had everything to do with where he was as a person at that time, and nothing to do with me or my brother doing anything wrong. The first man I ever loved didn't really abandon me. It's just that, decades later, I still have a fractured relationship with him, and a hard time forgiving the abandonment, the heartbreak, he didn't mean to make me feel.

If it isn't written on your heart...

I wasn't the most well-adjusted kid, but I mostly did OK.When I was in high school and starting to date, I was much prettier than I knew, and society's messages, that how desirable-looking you were was mostly what mattered, had sunk into their target.

I fell in with some fundamentalist Christian friends, and the Church's messages of submission and sexual purity hit the target that had been groomed for them. I signed the pledge; I wore the purity ring. I fared about as well as most girls who did. Sex was the most powerful power you had, but you'd better only share it within marriage. And you'd better cater enough in the household, be sexy enough, be available enough, to your man. If you wander, you're a loose, soiled Jezebel. If he wanders, you should have done better at keeping him. Man is the representation of God in your household, woman is the church.

It's your fault if he leaves - And if he doesn't love you, who will?

Love never meant safety. Love never meant unconditional. I had to give enough, comply enough, to keep earning it.

There are many wolf-men in this world, waiting to feast on the wounded. Three of them found me.

The next part of this will probably be the most personal and difficult thing I've ever written. Series will continue January 25.