Ok, here it is. The blog post I have been trying to write for 6 months. Everything I had written up until now just didn’t feel right. It all seemed like something I was supposed to say or maybe a buttoned up version of what I thought about Love and Creativity. I tried to keep them separate, but my individual pictures of these two never felt full or beautiful enough. And they never really seemed attainable. Like two carrots out there in front of me, never to be caught. What was I doing wrong?
This caused me to keep thinking, keep digging, dive deeper, peel back layers, and deal with what I was uncovering. Opening those boxes that I tried to make so cute and tidy, taking out every little memento, snap shot, and goal. Examining everything I thought made up my view of what Love needed to look like in my life in order to feel like I finally had it. Examining all the milestones and things I needed to achieve in order to feel like I have conquered Creativity and feel like a real author, artist, singer, or songwriter.
“Every time I was finally in a romantic relationship, it wasn’t enough. Every time I wrote a song or story, it wasn’t enough.”
I could have sat there and made a list a mile long in each category that would prove that I had accomplished A LOT when it comes to both Love and Creativity, but I still always felt like something was missing. It was more than just the frustration of loving and losing. More than just a healthy desire to keep pushing myself creatively in a direction of growth and trying new things. It was this feeling that these two things, as individual core pillars of my life, always felt weak and unable to support the weight of all I had experienced and dreamed life to be. That no matter what I did to strengthen them, they were never strong enough and I never felt satisfied. Every time I was finally in a romantic relationship, it wasn’t enough. Every time I wrote a song or story, it wasn’t enough.
At the beginning of this year I spoke with someone regarding my love life. I wanted help figuring out where I was still blocked. Why don’t I have that…thing? Why can’t I catch the carrot, eat it, and be satisfied? Honestly, I think part of the problem is thinking a carrot could ever be satisfying. I was told to write down everything I want in a romantic love relationship. Imagine the man of my dreams. All the details. Looks, personality, sexually, spiritually, financially, mentally, physically, intellectually, and what I wanted daily life to look like. EVERYTHING. I did it. 14 pages. I wrote it all down. Then I sat and reflected on everything I wrote. For days I marinated in the thoughts and feelings and dreams of every detail I wrote down. Then one day out of the blue it hit me. Aside from the looks and a few other things that needed a male partner 😉 This was all stuff I wanted for me. Things I wanted to do or be whether I had a man or not. Things I wish I was better at. Things that had been easier for me to hope to find in another person rather than believe I could have them myself. Here are a few examples…
“He is successful and has built a career for himself that aligns with his true calling and who he was made to be.”
“He is so kind, but also has boundaries. He is kind to people, animals, and plants. He is kind to the people I love. He knows how to disagree and still be kind. He speaks with kindness and acts with kindness.”
“He has boundaries around his time and energy.”
“He is comfortable with quiet”
“He has done a lot of work to heal from his past. To learn how to communicate well. To take responsibility for himself and his feeling rather than blame me and others.”
“He is not afraid to communicate clearly about sex and intimacy”
“He loves who I am and wants me to fully live into that with my style, my music, my writing, my interests, my whole life and being.”
I’ll stop there, but you get the idea. I was reading back through my 14 pages and saying to myself over and over again “Wait a minute… I want this for ME… I want to be better at that… I want to be good at that… I want to be the one to do that for ME…” Don’t get me wrong, I still want all this in a partner, but I know there were quite a few things that I was looking for someone else to fulfill in my life rather than knowing I have the power to give it to myself.
My whole life I believed that someone else was the key to my completion. I was convinced that there was a man out there who held the missing pieces to my puzzle. That when I found the person who was holding all the right pieces and he filled in those empty spaces, the picture would finally be everything I imagined. When really I had the pieces all along, but I had just knocked off onto the floor and was spending my time crying about how I needed someone to bring me the pieces rather than take the time to crawl around under the table with a flashlight and find them myself. Like any metaphor, I’m sure there are some holes in this one, but I think you get what I’m saying.
“…Love and Creativity are two magnetic forces trying to attract each other this whole time…”
So the more I started to do the work of filling in my missing pieces I started to notice something. Things I would’ve put in Creativity’s box were things I was using to help fill in those spaces I felt in Love. And the things I was creating that made me feel the most satisfied and fulfilled were fueled by the experiences of Love. When I started to see this pattern, I looked back over the time in Love that I felt closest to my dream picture and it was coupled with Creativity of some sort. There was creative energy flowing in those moments. The times I felt the most deeply connected to my creating and my chosen art at that moment, I was inspired and motivated by past, present, or future love.
When I wrote my book “Hope’s Purpose” I was fueled by the pain of past love and the deep love of my Creator.
I once told my therapist that there are times when I am finished leading worship where I feel more satisfied than any time I’ve ever made love. That my connection to God, Myself, and Love energy is at it peak in those moments.
When I wrote and recorded “Outrun” and “Perfect Houses”, those songs and the different energies in each one are connected to specific moment of deep Love. The other songs I’ve written and am proud of, but haven’t recorded yet. They too are fueled by love and all that it encompasses. The good, the bad, and the ugly.
Could it be that all this time I have been trying to keep these two giant forces in their neat little boxes when really they were meant to be one big beautiful mess wrapped in each other’s arms? That for me Love and Creativity are two magnetic forces trying to attract each other this whole time and I had been spending my time and energy trying to keep them apart? Trying to focus on and make sense of them separately when really they needed each other to make sense?
When I take a step back, I see time after time where I had no choice but to give up trying to keep them apart. And so finally they were able to slam into each other with such powerful force and make each other better. I look back at times when I let down my guard and found myself in a deep love because of Creativity’s energy. Or times when I end up creating something deeply meaningful because the force of Love would let me do nothing less. These are times I have felt the most connected to God, myself, and my purpose.
“…the magic moments really happened when I surrendered. When I stopped trying to keep them apart.”
These are the moments and feelings I would always try to get back to. Without realizing it, when these magical moments seemed to pass, I would try to put Love and Creativity back in their respective boxes and try to control and plan and figure out how to recreate what I had just experienced. I would work so hard again to make sense of and interact with these two on their own and wonder why it was never enough. Ugh! It’s exhausting to think how many times over my 39 years I’ve repeated this cycle.
Now, I’m sitting here today realizing that the magic moments really happened when I surrendered. When I stopped trying to keep them apart. When I let Creativity connect me deeply to Love. When I let Creativity help me make sense of and process everything I’ve experienced with Love. When Love encourages me to respond to her with Creativity. When Love tells me the only way I will heal is to allow Creativity do her thing.
If I am to live the life I am meant to live. The life I was born to live. The most beautiful life I can imagine and feel in my bone is possible. The only way that will happen is to stop trying to keep these two apart. To stop trying to keep them in boxes. To stop trying to control them. They must be able to move freely and intertwine whenever possible.
In someways this post was 6 months in the making, but really I’ve been working on it my whole life.
Ariel Talitha 