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Time For a Change

Chapter 4                        New Challenges

This court case has me so busy that I have very little time for anything other than interviewing possible witnesses, reviewing my notes, consulting with my client and appearing in court.  But with all of that time consuming activity I love it.  I have a new vigor and zeal about what I do.  It does not feel like a drudge to come to work each day.  I look forward to the activity and to the excitement.  My mind is active and I have no time to think about other things.

One thing that has caused me to pause though is the therapy with Dr. Parker.  Talking with her twice a month has allowed me to discover things about myself of which I was not aware.  Never thought that I was a needy person but evidently I am.  The stunted relationship that I had with my father made a major impact on me in that its effects carried on to my relationships with men.  Trying to please my father or trying to get his approval and in effect love made me lose a part of my strength of resolve.  Not hearing my father say that he loved me or not showing me how much he loved me made me feel like I wasn’t enough.  Dr. Parker pointed out to me that in a way that made me suspect any relationship that I had with men.  I held my heart close so as not to get hurt.  

When I told her about my relationship with RJ Gannon she said that although I thought that I had opened myself up to a genuine sharing of feelings I really only had what she called a ‘surface’ involvement with him.  It was light and without much substance. We shared some common interests but his criminal activity would never allow me to really sustain a long lasting relationship with him.  I work for the law and he worked outside of the law.  Those two sides do not mix.  Even if he had not been so possessive we would have ended at some time any way.

Now in my relationship with John it reminded me of what my mother said when we went home for my great aunt’s funeral.  John was reticent like my father and I tried to succeed with him where I failed with my father.  I tried to have him to love me.  I tried to prove that I was enough.  But that was also doomed for failure for I had not dealt with the emotional scars from my relationship with my father.  So it seems that John was not the only one to carry emotional scars from their childhood.  Dr. Parker clarified that she did not want me to think that my love for John was not real but it was not sustainable because I expected John to act and behave as if his scars should not hold him back from loving me when my scars did hold me back from fully committing to a lasting relationship.  Love is not always quid pro quo.

The challenge remains for me to deal with my feeling of loss in not having my father’s love and leave it in the past where it belongs and not allow it in my present or future relationships.  To realize that my father’s inability to express love to me his child has little to do with me and more to do with my father.  Not fully feeling my father’s love seeped inside of me and clouded my judgment and reason on what love is.  I have to purge myself of that feeling of ‘not being enough’ and replace it with an assurance that I am enough and worthy of great love.  That is my new challenge.  I can’t hide behind my work. I must go forth in the world and engage with others in conversation, activities and then perhaps I can work my way to having a meaningful and wholesome relationship with a man that will lead to marriage and children. Before it didn’t cross my mind that I wanted to marry.  It was not something that I even considered but I am older now and I can’t continue to just have sex with men and have no plans on how the relationship will progress.  Yes I want love but to what end.  I want love for what purpose?  Do I want love to just stay with a man and go to dinner, dance, theatre and the sort?  That’s not love that’s dating and dating to what end?  Do I want to be a perpetual dater?  No!

This time of self-discovery will allow me time to reevaluate what I want out of life.  These new challenges before me will allow me to grow strong in myself.  Above all, this time is allowing me to heal from the hurt that I have felt in the past few years.  I’m looking forward to coming out on the other side a better Evangeline. I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.  With all that said there is still one thing that remains constant within me. It’s like an ember deep within me that glows faintly but still has a spark of heat to it.  I don’t stir it but neither do I try to extinguish it. It is a sliver of hope that I don’t think about but yet it remains with me.  It’s a glimmer of hope of a possibility that I won’t give voice to but won’t deny that it exists.  I won’t talk about it because I don’t want to fan the flame.  I leave it alone so that if it decides to go out it will on its own.  It yet remains and I will leave it there.  It says in a whisper, ‘Sometimes you have to LOVE people from a DISTANCE and give them the SPACE and TIME to get their MINDS right before you let them back into your LIFE.’

So I, Evangeline Williamson, have much work to do to get myself together and until that happens I will keep myself to myself.  For now any romantic entanglements must wait until I resolve my current imbalances.  Therapy has allowed me to calm my fears that I will be alone forever.  No I need to be alone now with myself to find myself and strengthen myself for the present and the future.  Even with all that said I do see a bright future ahead for me.  Look out world Evangeline is coming back fiercer and stronger than ever!  Are you ready for her?