I'm a firm believer that nothing is accidental or simply a coincidence in life. While I have not always held this belief, looking back it was certainly no coincidence that I found myself looking at a website where people anonymously shared secrets. I had not gone looking for it, so it must have found me. In any event, I was strangely drawn to this online 'confessional' of sorts. I had never expressed my unhappiness in any form, never mind actually put it into words and tell another, but it was to this online 'soul friend' that I confessed my secret. My secret was that I desperately wanted to escape the life I led. I was a shell of a person seeking a hero to scoop me up, love me and shelter me from the storm that raged in my life; and so I confessed to this online forum my most intimate desires. There was more. You see I had pinned all of my 'hero' hopes on a certain individual, only he didn't know and wouldn't know because I would never tell him. I thought I was in love. Dumb? Absolutely! But there I was, caught and held fast by the torture of unreciprocated love. Then one day I received an anonymous reply from my online soul friend that changed everything.
“Unreciprocated love. It is the most incredible thing undeniably, and the most exhausting. To not be with them is sweet torture. But you just have to be faithful in what you know in your heart. Hold on to what he has told you and the connection you have. Souls that touch so strongly are hard to resist, but there could be many other things involved that you don't yet know. Only the universe does, but the universe has it's own timetable. It does not listen to impatience. It will happen in its own time. It will happen when you least expect it, but not until you experience the things you have to experience in life. Just know that what is meant for you will be there. On the universe's timetable. Not yours.”
If you have ever had a crush on someone, loved someone from a distance, or been in a loveless relationship then you will know the all consuming pain of unreciprocated love. Yet receiving this response was an instant game changer for me. The universe had just engaged with my desire to be rescued and had delivered highly evocative words direct from this soul friend. I saw in that moment I had no connection to my unwitting 'hero' and he hadn't told me anything because he had no idea what was going on! I saw in that moment there were indeed other things involved, including my impatience to manifest a result; and because of that he just could not be the hero I longed for. I had tortured myself with longing and impatience, hoping, praying for something outside of myself; and if this was not going to change on my own indeterminable timetable, then realistically I could be doing this forever! And just when I least expected, I was set free from the unhealthy attachment I had formed to my unwitting hero, all by the words of a stranger that had spoken straight to my soul.
Charlotte Bronte wrote, “The human heart has hidden treasures, in secret kept, in silence sealed; the thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, whose charms were broken if revealed.” From disclosing my secret, the charms were broken and I was at once released from their ethereal grip. I was able to look clearly at where I was and what I could do to move forward. That was the point in my life when I took the first real steps, albeit baby steps, to change my life without waiting for someone to do it for me.
Of course I didn't go from baby steps to running a marathon and just as my soul friend told me all those years ago, there would be many years of life experience. No doubt there will be many more to come too, but my life has at last been blessed with the hero I sought all those years ago. The hero that scooped me up, guided me safely through the storms and that continues to fill me with love today was the very person that taught me to “just own yourself”. That hero is the person who looks back at me every day I look in the mirror. I needed a hero, and I found one in me, all thanks to the words from an anonymous soul friend who shared hidden treasures from their own heart and delivered them to me, right on the universe's timetable.