Patient Zero.......

I love Taylor Swift, can't help it......and I make no apologies for it......I find her a lyrical GENIUS......the way she spins words is magic for me.......the wisdom that lies in her lyrics is art.......she is completely underrated in my opinion......a poet in every sense.......I also guess I feel we are kindred in our journey to love......she writes very candidly about her struggles and the places she let herself down too, and I am so rooting for her marriage, and her happily ever after ending that she deserves:).........but all that aside, she has a new song that resonates......"Patient Zero," being the one that was living the new woman's reality before she did......and I was not the first in any of my stories, so zero isn't exactly accurate.....and I likely won't be the last based on some of what I experienced, but it really doesn't speak to me in that way......as I have said often I wish them all well, in every story......I REALLY do.....However those well wishes are held among some reality I see now, and for sure some clarity, and I am no longer subject to the games that love can play when you are in deep, and that is clouding your vision......and I have had "Patient Zero" moments......where I commiserated with women, or shared war stories about the same man after the fact, more than once......having my experience validated, while I validated theirs too.......but for me "Patient Zero," is more about me no longer being the patient, or wanting to be HER.......forever holding empathy for other women, but personally I have decided to no longer be HER.......the one that allowed the stuff I did.......the nonsense, the stress, the games, the toxicity, no longer being the "patient" in the story.......and maybe having today help me to better know why I WAS HER too......and gosh, I sure know how you can find yourself in places you never thought you would ever be in, putting up with stuff you never thought you would, in the name of love, or potential, or whatever other name you want to attach to it......and it isn't easy......I am never judging it, EVER.........just deciding in my own life to say NO MORE.......the cycle ends right here.......for good........and it is funny, when I think of future love, I am not afraid of it ending and having to walk away now, I have proven that I can, and I will, even if it hurts like hell.......what rattles my cage some is finding ANOTHER man that will eventually steal my peace, turn into HIM, the man I have been running into all of my life......a man that ruins the sacred space that I have created in my own life, and the lives of my children.......and most days I believe that the clarity I have found and the wisdom that has come as a result will keep me out of those places.......but I have been "Patient Zero," more than my fair share in this life.......believing that my new love story would not end the same, because the man was SO different, until he wasn't......same man, different disguise.......so that is what leads me, but guess what is different this time...... I AM the one that is DIFFERENT.......attracted to different things now, and repulsed by things I once thought I liked......completely cured of being attracted to that mysterious bad boy, unreliable man, better late than never:)........and I suppose that is how you become free of being the "patient" ever again.......facing your own patterns, your own darkness, and not looking away.......and not choosing comfort over growth ever again........and I will forever hold space for women's experience.....honoring it......knowing how challenging it all can be......and I will also hope she chooses different for herself too......because we are all worth that, we really are:) Happy Wednesday! xoxo