(This post is updated as I’m back in Miami, but I’ll leave it how I started it)

I’m on this long ass flight right now from Dubai to Miami, which left at 3am and will last a total of 16+ hrs. I try not to look at what time it is… but I believe to be in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean right now lol.

I was just thinking about how many obsessions (long lasting and transient) I had. I think the biggest long lasting one is training, even if some days I love it less than others, it’s my evergreen, #1 passion. Yes I think passion and obsession go hand in hand in my world. If I’m not obsessed, I won’t do my best, I need to be in love with it.

I had phases that lasted a year or so with other stuff, like when during Covid I got obsessed over plants and I think I had close to 90 at home😂. Now it’s not that I don’t like plants, I have a normal relationship with them, I have some, some die, I check on them and care for them, but it’s nowhere close to when I was reading books about it, watching YouTube videos, shopping for plant products, studying and so on. I have this tendency with things I like and turns out, it happens with love too. I had to work a lot on my attachment style, which if you’re familiar with the book Attached, falls into the category of “anxious”.

Anxiety has been a big component in my life, I don’t know when it started but it has been with me since I can remember. It’s usually worse in the morning and the best way to ease out of it is with training. I also meditate, journal and read a lot about reprogramming your mind to think differently from habitual thought patterns. It has been very hard but I’m noticing how much calmer I can get when I stay aware of what my monkey mind does and observe it rather than follow it into spirals of anxiety. Anyway that is to say, I have been obsessed with love.

I romanticize sex, love, connection, bonding, yet secretly I am scared of it now, as I felt in the past all I did was losing emotional stability, abandoning myself in the attempt to be perfect for someone that was not even a fit for me, but somehow got “chosen” by me, or better, by my “patterns”: being attracted to people somehow unavailable.

Love has been repeatedly a painful experience and contrary to all my other passions, it never turned out fruitful to obsess about it. Making “love works” is not about forcing, chasing, convincing, trying (with the right person you wouldn’t need to do this…I know). In training if I work hard, try, sometimes push through it, things actually work… that approach has never been true in love. Love is really like a plant, you can nurture it, give it sun, water… but it gotta work out on its own time and ways, you can’t lift up the plant to check if the roots are growing, overwatering and trying hard will kill it. There is something so deep I’m learning about love and it is this: “the things we love we need to learn to let them be”.

I’ll attach this wonderful poem below, that brought me light on this concept.

In the past couple years especially I reached a turning point, my way of love was just painful and stemming from this deep fear of not being good enough, needing to prove myself of being worthy of it, all this crap for some reason our subconscious believes to be true. If I am Love, that is the Source I come from… why do I feel unworthy of it?

I learned to not obsess over love, or at least regulate my emotions around it. Two things have been life changing.

1) TAKING THINGS SLOW when I meet someone new (aka wait for sex…-*rolling eyes*, cuz I’m a horny motherf**** – but seriously, gotta protect yourself and how much you give to new people, especially because us women BOND quickly through physical intimacy) . Not letting yourself enter fantasy land just because you kissed someone and it was good, or because that one thing you really like about them, yet they just got out of jail (lmao jk). Stripping myself of this perceived desperation to be in a relationship, I felt a new strength within: if it didn’t bring peace of mind, I didn’t want it – and to honor the fact that I needed to sit back and observe for a while, not going all in, as tempting as it might be.

2)LET THEM GO WITH LOVE.

This was the biggest realization for me. I can let go, and I can do so with LOVE, not hate or anger. I love and let go, I release with love, I don’t hold onto someone anymore, I trust you had a place in my life to teach me something, I celebrate what was good, I hold dear memories even, but still am able to leave if that’s the best thing to do. I gained so much more confidence and self respect by developing this muscle. it’s not easy to allow silence and space to grow, the days pass by without acting on my emotions… but it’s the only way back to sanity.

Suddenly, what was important wasn’t ANY love, but a love that would support my peace (and I was willing to do that again in return, but too often I never calculated my peace, just the one of the other).

My view on love is still romantic, but with a back up plan and no self abandonment. “Keep a foot in heaven and a foot on earth” (fantasizing while keeping myself grounded), without becoming bitter about the repetitive delusional experiences (!).

Was I obsessed over other things?

Definitely. In the past, I was obsessed with being an ice skater, with being skinny (do the point of developing a very serious eating disorder), the gym/fitness competitions, pole dancing, photography, always deep into tunnel vision mode.

Last year I got obsessed with learning Arabic and I spent 3 months straight studying everyday, then felt like I was becoming too much of a hermit (happens when I’m deep in my obsessive phase) so I backed off a bit. I need to pick it back up.

The last fixation I have is hair care, I’m having so much fun with it but also because it distract me from other stressful things. Being excited about something is the closest feeling to being in love or high off training, trying to feel good over here, you know… I also realized how badly I cared for my hair these past years. I want to see how much I can “heal” my hair as well as everything else.

This was a bit of an obsession talk, training and love being on top of the list, both “obsessions”, yet needing very different approaches.

I wonder how many hours till I get off this plane🥴

– update: I’m home 😉