You do have no idea how vulnerable you can be in any given moment. You may think you are strong and not even see your own vulnerability.

He leant in to kiss me and with the only voice I could muster I said “please don’t hurt me”. It was a tiny voice, barely a whisper. I was so afraid, it was all I could say. His response “ I would never hurt you”, followed by a kiss.

I was in a blissful mania.

This was not supposed to be happening. I ran home trembling. There was no way I could sleep. A switch was flipped inside me, the room was spinning. I was feeling happy feelings, something very new for me. My life was full of sadness. One kiss all of that was gone in the moment. Maybe it was the kiss, maybe it was a bunch of events in my life leading to this but I was in a blissful mania.

After that I only wanted more, acheing for those happy feelings to surge through me. I wanted things to just happily fall into place.

My voice was apparently to tiny though and it did not take long for him to hurt me. I had been played. Fleetwood Mac was right “Players only love you when they’re playin”.

Wish I could tell you this is where I had lived and learnt. No I was weak and frankly embarrassed now at how long I let this go on. I clearly remember crying to my relationship coach and her telling me it was never going to work. It was fear driving me not love. I was afraid of failure. I did not think I could handle another failure in my life. So I kept putting up with his mixed hot and cold messages that left me back to where I started in a puddle of sadness.

Once I finally started seeing him for who he was through his actions, I started to feel better about my self. I also did a lot of work to systematically remove stress from my life during this time period. I was feeling better physically and mentally. I was seeing the positives in life, including what I had learnt from him good and bad. In my mind we were “a masterpiece that never found a gallery”.

This Valentine’s Day while I am home feeling lonely, I will listen to these 5 songs in this order to remember the experience. Thanking my lucky stars that I failed.