LETTERS FROM LOVE — With Special Guest Kira Buckley!

You are doomed to be loved

Dear Lovelets,

I had never before been in a romantic relationship with a woman when I came into partnership with Rayya Elias. One of the things I found so different about being in love with a woman (or maybe it was just Rayya?) was the depth of intimacy, the willingness to be in constant conversation. I loved the way we gave each other so much undivided attention — oftentimes staying up very late at night to process problems or troubles that one, or both, of us might have been struggling through.

“Is there anything else?” Rayya would ask, after we had talked for hours. “Are we good? Are we clean? Any cobwebs left in the corners?”

I had never experienced such tireless closeness and connection before — such a willingness to hammer out every single detail and issue. And I loved it.

But here was one of the painful things I experienced when I was with Rayya. Again, I don’t know if this is what it’s like to be in a relationship with a woman in general or if it was just her, but here goes: I thought Rayya was the most beautiful person I had ever seen (I still do) but whenever I told her that her body or skin or voice or face was beautiful, she would say something critical about herself. She would correct me: No, I’m not beautiful. I’m fat. I’m old. My face is too wide. I’m too short. I hate my hips. Look at this stupid belly! I’m a hag.

Literally: “I’m a hag.”

Many times, when I was in a relationship with a man, I would say the same sorts of things upon being praised — but it was only by being with Rayya that I learned how awful it is to be on the other side of someone’s self-hatred and self-abuse (ESPECIALLY when you find them to be perfect and gorgeous in every way).

It’s not that it was annoying to hear Rayya constantly put herself down; it’s that it hurt my heart. It physically hurt my heart, and it also over time started to make me feel lonely, because she was pushing away my love. My love was trying to find her, to reach her, to delight in her — and she was pushing it away, doubting it, denying it. There was a flow of love that wanted nothing more than to be received, but it was instead met by a roadblock, a wall, an impasse.

I am not beautiful. I’m a hag.

What happens to love when it is not allowed to flow — when the exchange of giving and receiving is blocked?

Where does that love go, when it cannot reach its desired target?

I don’t know.

I just know that it hurt my heart, and that I promised myself that I would never again push away loving words if anyone every offered them to me.

How about just saying this, when someone says something loving or kind: how about just saying “thank you”? How about believing them? How about believing love? How about letting it reach you? How about not doubting it anymore?

What if, on the larger scale of universal consciousness, the same thing is happening between the Spirit of Unconditional Love (what we call around here SOUL) and each one of us? What if love is trying to reach us, but we keep pushing it away — because we doubt that it exists or that we are worthy of it?

Our wonderful special guest this week — my new friend

Kira Buckley

— downloaded a letter from Love that spoke eloquently about the question of doubt, of uncertainty, of a sense of worth or lack of worth. Let her words break over you like a wave, dear ones. Allow it in.

You are so, so loved. Never doubt it.

Love,
Your Lizzy

Dear Love, what would you have me know about doubting you?

Oh, honey, I don’t mind. You don’t think I mind, right?

Sweetheart, come on. We’ve known each other a long time. I am more familiar with the contents of your mind than you are with the contents of your kitchen cabinet. I know that you have a little creature who lives inside your mind, a little overthinking, doubting creature, whose name is YEAH, BUT.

When I tell you that you are loved unconditionally, that little creature pipes up: “Yeah, but . . .”

Yeah, but.

Yeah, but.

Yes indeed, as surely as day follows night, when I tell you that you are loved, good old YEAH, BUT rises up inside your brain and overthinks, and begins producing its finest and most polished arguments against you, arguing against your essential goodness, against your fundamental lovability and untarnishable divine inner perfection.

YEAH, BUT speaks out — and out comes the list of your character defects, your terrible crimes, all the harm you have ever caused anyone, your self-centeredness. Out come the names of those you have abandoned. Out comes the memory of every single petty, cruel, cowardly thought, deed, and judgment you have ever experienced. YEAH, BUT flourishes that list of your shortcomings in my face, as if it could scare me away.

Sweetheart, listen. I don’t mind a thing that YEAH, BUT says.

I’ll just tell you again: I love you. I love you unconditionally. You are intrinsically and inestimably precious. You belong here. You cannot do this Life School, Earth School, wrong. You cannot avoid my love, no matter how you think you have failed. There is nothing you can do to lose my love.

I was with you at the moment of your birth and I will be with you at the moment of your death. I was with you when you hated yourself and your life so much that you pounded your fists into a concrete bathroom wall and made yourself bleed.

I was with you when you were groveling and begging unavailable people to love you.

I was with you when you starved yourself, physically and spiritually, to try to stay attractive to a man who only had eyes for women he had not yet slept with. I was with you when you hated yourself for not being able to somehow make yourself be fresh and alluring to him, no matter how skinny you got and no matter how hard you tried to be gorgeous. Oh my darling girl, how I loved you then.

I loved you when you were bullied as a child but I also loved you when you were a bully, when you chose a girl — a friend who had never done you the slightest bit of harm — to target one day with your meanness just to . . . what? Try out being mean? To see how it felt to be cruel? I watched you tell your other best friend, “Let’s be mean to [name redacted] today and let’s tell her she’s not invited to play with us anymore, and that we don’t like her and nobody likes her.” And the two of you ignored her that whole day, literally pretending she didn’t exist, until she collapsed in sobs and ran to the teacher, your favorite teacher who you admired so much, who came over and looked at you with disgust when she found out what you’d been doing all day to your friend. And when you saw that repugnance, that disgust, upon your teacher’s kind face, you thought you would go up in flames with shame — that you should have gone up in flames with shame. I loved you then. I love you now, even though you’re still ashamed of that moment.

I loved you when you were cheating on your boyfriends, your partners, and I loved you when you were allowing yourself to be cheated upon. I loved you when you drove drunk in high school. I loved you when you could have killed your best friends any number of times in careless car accidents. I loved you when you shoplifted cassette tapes from Rite Aid. I loved you when you lied to one of your first employers and said you couldn’t work at the restaurant on Sunday mornings BECAUSE YOU HAD TO GO TO CHURCH, when you didn’t even go to church, when you had basically never been to church.

I loved you when you left your husband for Rayya, and I loved you when living with Rayya became so impossible and crazy-making that you seriously thought about murdering her — yes, I watched you think it, I watched you consider it. I watched you picture in your mind how you would kill her, to get yourself out of your misery. I saw that. And I loved you then. How you needed to be loved right then, child. How you needed to be loved.

There’s nothing YEAH, BUT can tell me about you that I do not already know, because I’ve been with you every moment of your life, and I remember every shitty thing, every low-grade thought you ever had, and things you forgot (or wished you could forget). Maybe those were the times when I loved you the most, because you had drifted so far from your true nature of goodness that you were acting out in ways you couldn’t help. In ways that would have seemed unrecognizable to anybody but me.

You have never been unrecognizable to me.

I know why you did bad things even more than you do. Anyway, there doesn’t need to be a reason for it, for it to be okay. I just love you. I’m not going anywhere. You’re stuck with me. You’re doomed to be loved by me.

You can tell that to YEAH, BUT. You can tell that little creature YEAH, BUT to bring their worst case against you — it won’t move me an inch. I do not flinch in the face of any darkness, yours or anyone else’s, because I know what I see. And what I see is innocence. And what I see is love. And what I see is you.

And here’s the thing, bunny poodle: I kind of love YEAH, BUT too.

That’s my secret weapon.

Tell YEAH, BUT that they’re gonna have no choice eventually but to surrender and come into my lap, and be loved. They can cry in my arms, too.

Everyone can cry in my arms.

That is what I’m here for.

Never doubt me.

Prompt

Never doubt me. But do you, sometimes? Do the words on your tongue or on the page really match the words in your heart? If you can’t seem to tap into your source of unconditional love, or if you have ever felt uncertain of it during this practice (or in life), then please join me in posing this question: Dear Love, what would you have me know about doubting you? And let’s try to get back to the place that Kira Buckley summons, where Love says:

I am not inconvenienced by your doubt.
I am not interrupted by your fear.