You're uninvited
Sunday Scaries: Alanis reminded me today about my past self's staunch desire to keep people out.
The first few notes of Alanis Morissette’s “Uninvited” hit me today in some chamber of my heart I’ve now realized needs redecorating. That part of you that gravitates to the assuredness of self-protection.
The piano begins its haunting and ambiguous melody as Alanis negotiates the craving of someone who truly wants her and her staunch drive of protecting herself.
I remember those days vividly.
I would convince myself my heart was simply too broken to be loved, and I would ultimately drag the both of us into some foray of passion and anguish - never fully becoming a safe place for love to land yet feeling truly alive with an insatiable love, simultaneously.
And yet, I’m fascinated by that creeping and disorienting emotional pull of the very beginning. The tentative steps you take to protect the image you’ve created start to become more deliberate and there’s a reckoning. You’re not entirely sure how you feel about it yet, but your walls make the choice for you.
You decide they’re uninvited.
It’s much easier to say “go away”, save us both the trouble, but, most importantly, my walls remain intact.
Then there comes a point where the potential love begins to make my conviction sway. I start to wrestle with the discomfort of someone really getting to know me, and the more restless I get, the more I’m convinced they’re enjoying the show of their own making now. But that’s my job.
“You must be so proud of yourself, you’ve infiltrated me, you’ve figured out how to have power over me. I am my own leader and now I’m looking to you, with preemptive regret, to lead. Do you enjoy watching me writhe in my uncertainty when I’ve only ever been felt safe in my stoic facade?”
Alanis belts the sentiment with an unwavering conviction, and yet, one layer deep you’ll find those same words are laced with vulnerability.
No matter how much I tried to convince myself, or anyone for that matter, of my inability to allow love in, I was hopelessly enamored with the idea of it all. The spectacle of someone breaking me down, of saving me from myself. The harder I kept people out, I thought to myself, the more colorful the show.
And it’s that performance I was addicted to. Let’s play the man of mystique. No one is allowed. A club reserved only for the truly worthy.
Alanis needs a minute at the end of the song to think it over. This is clearly a person worthy of that at the very least. The show continues.
Some years ago I told a girl goodbye, and I scared myself a bit at my emotionless delivery. I’ve replayed the image countless times over the years of our talking in the driveway. The tears start to slowly fall as she turns the car on and the radio down as Katy Perry boasts about the depths of her all-consuming love in “Dark Horse”. My soul a cacophonous swirl of unease. My words deliberate. I had mastered the art of the performance, and I became a better counselor than a lover to her.
Several months ago I had a revelation in the form of a question that continues to stoke multiple levels of introspection:
“Have I ever truly been in love?”
Had I not had my years of growth and healing, I doubt I’d even arrive at such a question in the first place. Considering I performed for the sake of protection, I still flinch at my past self’s inability to be fully seen - intentionally or otherwise. Being fully seen...being under someone’s spell...that’s not allowed. I tell myself that I did the best with what I could with my capacity at the time, and I did indeed love a few women with notable intensity, but how much of even that was performative and protective?
The reason I am able to articulate any of this today is precisely because of that awareness and healing and my now relentless drive to finally let love win. Love for myself and being a safe place for love to land.
Not for the spectacle, for the truth.
This week, think about the last time you let someone get close enough to scare you - and what you did with that fear. Whether you dressed it up as discernment, or standards, or simply not being ready.
We are remarkably creative when it comes to protecting ourselves from the very thing we want most.
The challenge is simple. Let one person in a little further than feels comfortable this week. Not all the way. Just further. Drop one piece of the mystique. Say the thing you’d normally keep. See what happens when you stop running the show.
The door doesn’t have to swing wide open. It just has to move.
Stay redecorating,
EP
Sunday Scaries is a weekly personal essay series published every Sunday evening at 8:15PM Central. Each piece is an honest look at something I’m working through or experiencing in real life and ends with a challenge for you to take into the week. The whole idea is to take that ever-familiar Sunday evening dread, and turn the energy back into ourselves with intent.
No self-help, no fluff. Just real, and something to do with it.
I enjoyed this so much — your honesty and vulnerability really came through in this reflective post. It actually reminded me of one of my favorite quotes: “Loving someone is giving them the power to hurt you, but trusting them not to.” I’ve always connected with that.
True love requires a level of vulnerability and trust that goes far beyond the surface. When you open yourself to someone — your fears, your flaws, your heart…you’re giving them the ability to hurt you deeply, yet still choosing to take the risk for the sake of experiencing love fully. And that choice to trust anyway is what makes love meaningful.
Man, this is just so good…
I could talk about how great this song fits with what you’re describing, or how perfect that photo of a cracked open (geddit? cracked *open* and *cracked* open?) door is, or—most importantly—the way you show the true internal pushing and pulling of your heart’s needs, wants… ‘Eloquence’ is the word that comes to mind..
You share vulnerable truths about yourself, and that’s brave, and that’s a big deal.
I think today, it hits me again just how vulnerable it is to love and be loved in return. Sounds so simple on its face, but to truly do this, you can’t hide behind a well-crafted persona or the ‘you’ being loved isn’t ever really you at all.
But, like you describe, if we unfurl our insides and let ourselves be seen..actually seen..including the parts we don’t much like.. we risk the ultimate rejection, don’t we?
And what if we don’t survive that? Because that’s how scary it can feel sometimes, I think.
Two internal instincts—the need to truly connect with someone else and the need to protect your own, deepest sense of self so that you actually feel worthy of being loved in the first place—these forces are at war within two people while all four forces cavort around on a minefield of possible hurts between the two.
It’s a wonder we’re out here still tryin’, am. I. right? 😂
I think maybe your answer would be that a really big love would be worth a really big risk.
And, against all my hard-earned-from-past-hurt ‘good judgement’ badges, I would absolutely, wholeheartedly agree.