The trouble with evidence is…

     Happy New Year, everyone.  I wanted to pick up close to where I left off with the story of how my husband and I met.  I was talking about how timid my previous online dating profile was when it came to asking for what I wanted.  And I briefly explained that I probably didn’t believe I could actually get what I wanted.  Well, why would I think that?  What was I basing this very limiting belief on?  Evidence.

     I had a horrible relationship history.  A history involving men with substance abuse issues, sexual preference issues, and lying and stealing issues.  A history of getting less than I deserved from my relationships, and a history of putting up with it.  Add to that one failed engagement and the fact that the statistics on women my age finding a mate were disheartening at best, and it was easy to come to the conclusion that there weren’t any good guys out there, and that, even if there were, he probably wouldn’t be finding his way to me. 

     Fact was, I felt like a victim.  And I was playing that role to it’s fullest.  But these weren’t just things that had HAPPENED to me.  I was the one who held on to painful situations too long – long enough to do damage to my self-esteem and outlook.  And I was the one who accepted less than what I said I wanted, what I said I deserved, until it was hard to even know what that was.  It was time to admit – it was insanity to take my willingness to hold onto pain as an indication of my readiness for joy.  It was lunacy to consider my willingness to accept less as a sign of my readiness for more.  There was work to be done, and it started with me. 

     It started with me realizing the malignance of making the opposite sex my enemy.  It started with opening myself to the possibility that I didn’t know what was out there, but I knew what I wanted and what I deserved.  And it started with trusting myself not to accept less.  There was nothing anyone could do to me that I simply didn’t allow.  “Evidence” was holding me hostage because I bought into its power.  But there was nothing in my past experience or understanding of “how things are” that could account for my personal potential for growth and change.

     The trouble with evidence is that it doesn’t speak to who you can be, and how that can change everything.