.knowing when to stop

love is a drug that you can’t dabble in. it’s highly addictive. and often destructive to the creature who carries it.

As a highly sensitive person I’ve experienced great emotional connections that at the time were explosive inside creating a cosmic balance that seemed un-earthly. I’m a gentle soul and often quiet, also highly expressive, emotional and passionate, so there is often a tremendous spark, if not a bonfire, of attraction and energy between me and the one I love. It becomes an addiction that I can’t control despite the risk of losing myself to whom ever I love.

Highly sensitive people, I’ve noticed are natural nurtures with a strong, driving desire to foster others’ personal growth. We are the world’s counsellors, finding personal fulfilment in helping and encouraging other people. They can often sense another person’s deeper feelings, seeing through the façade that other people wear and directly to the emotions buried down deep. Knowing that these deep-rooted feelings and beliefs are painful, we want and tend to respond compassionately to try to help that person grow. It’s an added thrill to see the people we reach thrive because we’ve been able to touch and recognize a soul that might not have been if it weren’t for our empathy and drive.

I see nothing wrong in this, until you make it a perpetual routine. Because you lose focus on yourself. You create a cycle where it’s all you do and you lose who YOU are. I know I’ve lost who I am. And I’m the only one to blame.

It wasn’t until I realized that I need to find balance between tending to other’s and tending to myself that I started to pull back and work on myself and my desires to grow internally. It seems like a healthy choice, but when you have been one way for so long, the people around you fight the change. The people you love think it’s their fault and they get hurt. The man I love is a highly sensitive person, just as I am. Both wanting to help and build each other up, we thrive on seeing the other succeed in personal and spiritual growth…. We lost ourselves in those desires. We made mistakes, some unknowingly, and some intentionally… it took months of trying to heal the wounds – tending to each other’s needs in order to heal each other… but that was the problem in its self. We counted on each other to fix the other.

Clearly, it was not healthy. But tell that to my heart. She longs for more – for fifth and sixth chances at this highly passionate and explosive love. She fights on a daily basis with logic, past mistakes, and learned knowledge…. She self imploded on a daily basis. So then I ask myself, how can it hurt so badly? Why would doing something right be so devastating to us both? WHY did we ruin something so amazing?

The questions keep coming, the answers far from surfacing….
How do you know when enough is enough? How do you push yourself to let go? How do you know when its time to try again?
Love is a beautiful thing. But if it’s real enough, passionate enough, strong enough… It will consume you and cause you to question everything.

And it hurts.