Remember those walls I built, well baby they’re tumblin’ down … Beyoncé
For a long time, I walked about the planet wearing the ‘ice queen’ label they had put on me. No, I wasn’t angry nor resentful or upset even. I wore it like a diva. I accepted it wholeheartedly. I lived my big life – driven, content, confident, and SMILING. But even behind the smile, I was aware of the not-so-flattering label I wore with a flourish and the paradox of the ‘big life’ I lived.
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The ‘big life’ – the deceptive world of complacent independence, smug self-sufficiency, and contrived comfort with the world and its ways – was my refuge. In its seemingly ‘open and endless’ possibilities that the world saw and congratulated me for, I ‘closed’ myself for some stifling safety.
Safety from the numbing pain of heartbreak – safety from the desertion by love, without reason, without explanation, without retribution even.
Suggested read: A letter to my future husband – things I’d like him to do for me
This was all until HE came along. HE was unlike any soul I had ever encountered. HE was the guy who inched close to me, fully aware that for every small step he took in my direction, I was taking about five backwards. HE was the guy who wasn’t afraid of my outbursts, my anger or even my bitter cynicism, and scathing sarcasm! HE was the guy who not only hopped onto my life-cab when I was driving about with my yellow shiny cab light off, but also challenged me about forgetting to switch it on!
Oh – the nerve!
I became more fearful of his playful proximity and chose to hide – but he ‘sought’ me out and stayed.
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In this ‘hide-and-seek’ game, I hid behind ominous grey swathes of cloud, afraid of the ‘sun’ he wanted to bring out. Wasn’t it one such golden ray in a now-locked-lovescape that burned me bad? I didn’t want THAT. So, I started freezing my icy exteriors further – so much so that if he’d want to melt me in a mush-puddle, my dry ice fumes of rudeness would cause him to hop out of my life-cab, slamming the door in a huff! Hopefully with a few choicest swearwords on his way out, and I’d be golden! But he stayed – he stayed like a resolute bull – undeterred, undaunted, and unruffled in his determination to LOVE me.
And it is the JOURNEY from then up until NOW that I choose to eternalize with the ‘written word’ today.
Needless to point out, I was not just an emotionally unavailable woman, I was a woman aware of my emotional unavailability. It was a fact I took not-so-much-care to hide – never leaning in to a hint or a whisper, never letting down my guard, never allowing people into the ambit of my personal space – and yet, managing to shake it off with my ‘cool, detached reserve’ – a feat one can achieve when one is ‘ice queen’ cold, and therefore, can get away with!
The problem was, he wasn’t afraid of the emotionally unavailable woman in me – wasn’t afraid of loving the emotionally unavailable woman in me, wasn’t afraid of the challenge implicit in risking his heart with an emotionally unavailable woman!
He did not attempt to break down the walls of my ‘big life’ citadel to build a LOVE haven for us, he did not try to melt my icy exterior with the warm and fiery passion of his love, he did not even try to make me do the same! All he did was choose to ‘stay.’
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Day by day, he continued to stay. I would shout and yell and scream and cry – and HE’d stay! I would tell him I was incapable of that emotion and he’d stay! I would try everything I could do to tear him from myself and he’d come back for more – and stay. No matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried, he’d just stay.
In his ‘CHOICE’ to stay, he’d talk to me, trying to draw a smile out of the corners of my ice sculpted lips, trying to release perhaps a drop of the tear-ocean contained within the frozen surface of my wintry eye-lake, trying to make me talk of NASA or the FBI or Ryan Gosling! Coz he knew that if the former two didn’t work – well, the latter would – can you blame a girl? 😉
Slowly and steadily, he became a friend – a friend who I could tell stories about the façade of my ‘big life,’ a friend who I could call at anytime for sushi, a friend who I could pull along for a lousy play (and he wouldn’t complain), a friend who’d bring me the candy bars I kept a steady backlog of, and a friend who’d be there! But did I trust him completely – did I trust him to be there, forever?
NO!
Suggested read: A letter to my future husband – things I’d love to do for you
I had learnt my lesson with TRUST, the hard way and I’d keep it that way! It had taken me moment after moment, hour after hour, and choice after choice to rebuild the walls that came crumbling down when somebody chose to run a road roller over it – coz he’d not want something that was his to be anybody else’s ever! Even whilst he was leaving to be in the arms of another! It had taken me the strength to pick myself up for every meal, every task, new job offers, and even befriending the friends who’d let me mourn until I was cried out to freeze – to form the antidote to my fear of TRUSTING again!
I couldn’t let him take away that. I couldn’t feel that pain again – I couldn’t allow searing wounds to pulsate with every breath I took, I couldn’t let the nausea swirl about my insides, I couldn’t let my blood thicken to tar, traipsing around my insides, reluctant to fuel my heart for a steady beat. I just couldn’t.
Only I didn’t have to.
He didn’t ask me to. He never did.
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Day by day, moment by moment, he only continued to radiate the warmth that gradually melted my icy exterior. No – he didn’t crack it open – lest the scalding hot contents burn him – he only let cracks ooze out the pus from the throbbing wounds locked inside. They say, you can’t heal a wound until you let it bleed – and he did just that!
I felt no pain – only a relief from feeling lighter each day – making me see myself, the world around me in a new light. And most of all, him – in a different way!
I hadn’t asked to be loved, but I did want to be loved!
And no matter how much I denied it – that was the TRUTH! I hadn’t ruled out love – only the possibility that it would stay. I was scared of trusting – trusting if someone was capable of the same unconditional love that I knew I could give! I had begun to believe that all relationships were, by default, doomed to be as short-lived as the shelf life of non-refrigerated yogurt!
He changed all that. All of that, by teaching me that loving an emotionally unavailable women began from the inside. And these are the five precious lessons he has unknowingly blessed me with (of course, I am way more blessed to have HIM) but these are priceless nuggets that would do well to help you, if you are loving emotionally unavailable women. Take a pad and note these down:
1. The truth about walls
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In choosing to stay with me every day and loving me without any expectations of reciprocation, he quaked my walls, causing those cracks that widened day by day to let my wounds drain. Whilst I had, for years, been living with my deluded notion of building and sustaining my walls so that I could keep the ‘pain’ out, he made me realize that those walls intensified my pain (then refused an outlet), and kept my ‘disease’ in – making it malignant. He also made me realize that instead of shutting out pain, my walls kept out love – a REAL possibility of love.
2. The truth about what you want and what you don’t
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Another important thing he taught me was that what I REALLY wanted should trump what I feared! In my heart of hearts, I knew that I hadn’t stopped believing in love – I just wasn’t willing to trust and be hurt again. I feared THAT place. His enduring love (that stuck by me, even when I was difficult, if I put it mildly and am an unreasonably cranky bi**h if I use my words) helped me conquer that fear. It helped ‘what I really wanted’ vanquish my fears – and true love triumphed.
3. The handicap of fear
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Fears are the most crippling element in shutting out the possibility of love. Based on what burnt an emotionally available woman in the first place, her fears might be specific. Allow her to see how they are keeping her from LOVE. She will certainly try to defeat them!
4. The power of choice
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I have already stated how he CHOSE to stay and even CHOSE to love me – when I wasn’t really being very loveable – and that, my friends, is the power of CHOICE. And I now know that true love means choosing each other – every mile of the way! Even when a bumpy path makes her ask you to carry her coz the stilettos she persuaded you to dole out a good fat wad for (saying they are very comfy) are hurting her precious toes. Maybe when you get home, she will lie down – and you’d still, of your own accord, give her toes a soft, gentle rub and some soothing ointment! Love, my friends, love! You choose it – always!
5. The promise of life-affirming love
You CAN see how the ‘big life’ that deluded many has transformed into a ‘life full of laughter and love,’ can’t you? Enough said.
Suggested read: How to make a relationship work
My friends, remember that loving emotionally unavailable women isn’t easy. But it isn’t difficult when you LOVE her for real. All I’d say is that on some days, you’d have to ‘choose’ to love her – and that’s okay – coz once she lets those walls down by herself, there’s a lovescape where love flows, boundlessly … forever. That’s your destination – right at the end of the rainbow. Wait patiently to get there – she’s your lesson in patience! Just remember she is the one who has to let her guard down – you can’t put your foot in the door to try to force your way in!
As for me, I am no longer emotionally unavailable. I am unavailable, though! Yep, no prizes for guessing – I am his – for life! 
And that’s how you love emotionally unavailable women!
Featured image source: Google, copyright-free image under Creative Commons License
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