I choose you every time….these words came to me last week at a retreat when I I had an epiphany of sorts during a heart meditation.
During this meditation, I saw myself reaching out towards love, romantic love and I heard a voice saying, “He’s not ready yet.” I said, “Ok we’ll when he is, his going to have to pursue me, to let me know, to CHOOSE me.” In this moment I felt like my whole heart was on fire as if the love was almost too painful to feel.
I felt guided to look deeper at this need for him to ‘choose me’ and it was as if I opened a doorway into my past and a memory reel began to play.
I was 5 years old and the kids were picking people to be on their teams for some game. Why did we ever do that? Why not just split the teams up…I digress. But for me this was soul-crushing, to never be chosen, to always be the last one picked by default was sheer torture and mortifying….and right now I was reliving the humiliation and rejection of my early years as if it were in real time.
Next stop I am 13 years old and the bullying has continued my entire childhood. I see myself sitting down for lunch and my best friend has been befriended by some mean girls. When I sit down to join them they get up and move across the lawn. Oh how my heart hurts. The pain of feeling unlovable, not good enough, discarded and rejected.
We make a few more pit stops down memory lane and then I am 21 years old and diagnosed with herpes. Wow…well I guess there is no better way to reinforce a pattern like not being chosen than to get an STD. I spend the best part of a decade trying to get noticed, to be picked, to be chosen in the most unhealthy dysfunctional ways. I wanted to be noticed, I want a man to validate me. I want them to choose me.
All this sadness fills my heart and at the same time I have an ah haa moment, that getting herpes was only a part of my story but it wasn’t where it began. You see I had always thought that was the beginning of the shame cycle. Herpes was just the physical symptom designed to show me the way to where the real healing needed to happen…at age 5 where that desperate need to be ‘chosen’ first began.
In this meditation I see myself going back to visit with my 5-year-old self. I take her hands and look into her eyes and I tell her there is nothing wrong with her and that I know she doesn’t understand any of this but that I promise, “I choose you, every time.” I repeat this statement as if it is a mantra, slowly healing my inner child and the chanting works it’s way into my heart. I am yelling this now, “I choose you, EVERY fucking time.” I can feel the healing taking place.
When I come out of the meditation I have tears running down my cheeks. My heartbeat has slowed and I feel a kind of peace wash over me.
I realize I don’t need anyone else to choose me because I choose me, every time.
As I continue to do this deep inner work, I find more and more triggers, old beliefs and stories that need healing. It’s painful to sit with such feelings but when we do this work, in my experience we can release things almost instantly.
Where might you have an entire history of behaving in a certain way that is threaded through your life? Perhaps built on a belief or story that you have been telling yourself for so long that you may have forgotten about it altogether. Where perhaps you are triggered by something today but your reaction has more to do with your wounded 5-year-old self.
This week I have my new mantra on my bathroom mirror, and to all our 5-year-old selves I say,
“I choose you, EVERY fucking time.”