Last night, I dreamed a hard one. I dreamed I was happy – sooooo happy – and then the happiness shattered, and I cried in my dream. Wept. Sobbed. Wailed. I couldn’t walk or be strong or keep going, things hurt so bad; then mercifully, I came up through the shadows into my own room beside the one who loved me where others did not.
What do you do when pain wakes you? I always thought nightmares were driven by fear, but this wasn’t fear. It was heartache, stemming from something so deep inside, I had only touched it a few times before.
I have been feeling my way through “vulnerability,” lately, having come to see that for all that I say and all that I put out there, there are parts of me that I understand that I simply don’t make available to others for the knowing, as much as I want to be known in those places. Some of it, I’ve discovered, is just my personality. The reason I don’t – CAN’T – cry in public is because my feelings are often internalized, while my *thinking* is extraverted. It makes a me a good blogger, if I can get a hold on what I’m feeling, but for the living? I wonder.
Yesterday, I created a name (all by myself) for my wedding business that feels like one of the biggest risks I have ever taken, that says in one word everything that I want to give my brides in their experience with me, everything that I want my work to be. It is a HUGE name, a huge calling to live up to, and I shook as I bought the URL and solidified commitments I have been making this year as I’m trying to move my business forward. I feel vulnerable owning this name, vulnerable offering this commitment to my clients, because while it was always there in my heart, stating it means that I will have to tap into my own heart and bring it to life through my work; it means that the beauty of the happy that broke me apart as it was taken from me in my dream last night is something I need to embrace for myself too.
One of the weddings I shot recently was… the happiest wedding I have ever attended. I cried from the joy surrounding me, and I think I cried because I so rarely reach for that, so rarely acknowledge its existence in my life because I know what it is to have it removed.
I don’t have an easy answer for my conundrum; I just know that I want to be happy, and I know now that I am loved, which is a change from the time my dream brought back, when love itself was stripped from me and I wasn’t sure God – or anything – would ever be enough to replace it.