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Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Who Am I if I'm Not _____ (an Open Letter to Tina)

An open letter from one single woman to another.

Dear Tina,

No, I've never been married but I understand that you've been with someone longer than you've lived in singularity and have built a united force that is a marriage or partnership. I also empathize that the spirit of compromise can become a routine submission of who we are as individuals. Relationships of all kinds in time develop their own personality, a single routine, and singular ideology on the coordinates of life. Meanwhile, day after day year after year we willingly lose a little bit of that individual fire that was our life prior to the relationship living only in this new identity as upheld by two people. Indeed, I pen the words willingly lose.

Your identity is all you have in this world and although you conceded to lose it for the sake of love, it was never fully given away. Understanding that so much of who we are is defined by our family, friends, careers, and even who we choose to marry or be in an intimate relationship with, know that your identity is only shaped by those things.  Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, your identity is defined by YOU.

The absence of something is nothing. Therefore when a breakup happens it is the absence of that person but YOU still remain, leaving a clear and evident something. Your identity is not found in who you are not; your true identity is found in who you are.

Tina, you're not nothing. In fact, I believe that you are far more than what your husband saw. You deserve to know the hidden woman that you've always been and fall madly in love with her. She may be shy and may be wounded by the recent events, but she deserves to live and breathe a life so full of happiness and freedom that she'll never get lost in the compromise of a relationship again.

In the words of my grandmother, "Stop wanting something that doesn't want you." That is the key to happiness and the freedom of your heart. If they want to leave they aren't, and dare I say, weren't worthy of you in the first place. Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life (proverbs 13:21). Let go of the threads of lost hope, desire only what desires you, and you will then become desirable and free.

As you sit on Steve Harvey's plush talk-show couch; bravely baring your broken heart and crushed soul to millions, I want you to wake up tomorrow and know that just because your lover chose not to love you anymore, that:

You are an infinitely powerful human being. 
You have dreams/ideas that only you can put into action.
Your destiny is bigger than just being someone's partner.
You are beautiful.
You are strong.
You are a mother.
You are a sister.
You are a daughter.
You are a woman.
You are loved. 

"You think you lost your identity, but in actuality you gained an opportunity to find the man who's worthy and to find yourself," said Harvey. Welcome to the best years of your life, Tina. Where you find your inner most self, allow her to blossom, and not give a single f*** about anything that doesn't want you. Seek goodness and love as you alone can define it, and then you will find exactly who you are.

I Love You Tina,
Nicole