So as I have posted before, things in my life have been hard. I have been struggling with issues of codependency and an inability to effectuate meaningful change in my relationships. Mostly, if I am really honest, I find most relationships ask too much and deliver too little. My expectations (yes I know I am not supposed to have them - but fuck if I can rid myself of them - the best I can do is adjust them - mostly downward which feels like a subtle violence to myself if I am being truthful) are so very often so much greater than what people actually deliver.
I have been mired in YOUR part for a long time...if he would just do this, if she would just say that, if, if, if...then I would be ok. I have been caught, tortured really by my own refusal to accept that the problem and issue have always been mine. So long as I am in this place where YOU must change so that I can feel better, I am always and forever going to be fucked of the highest order.
And regardless of me knowing this, I still behaved as if your changes were the only real thing that could make me feel better. See I didn’t like my options if you didn’t change...so I just avoided dealing with my own disappointment, and instead kept the focus on you which distracted me from ever really getting anywhere. Have you ever been there? Where your own unhappiness becomes some sort of self fulfilling comfort? I mean, it isn’t really comfortable at all, but it is familiar and that will do.
Looking back, (isn’t it always in the looking back?) I can see how I got here. I can see the twists and turns in my personality and being that caused me to make the relational choices I did that have led me to a place where I feel stuck and lost and not so mildly despondent because while I am not happy or feeling good, I have not been able to see my way out of any of it.
It is one thing to make the same mistake because you are delusional or insane or unaware. It is quite another to make the same choice over and over again because you just can’t stop yourself. I mean, you SEE your dysfunction but you are powerless to change it...because, what you really want more than anything is to remain the same while OTHER PEOPLE change. It is a trap of the highest order, one that never fails to ensnare the ever hopeful, the codependent and the long suffering.
But sometimes, you are given the willingness to make some changes. And that is what is happening for me today. I am taking action I never have before...doing something totally new, scary as fuck and different. I want to change. I want to be different. I know I have always been a certain way and while there is immense comfort in those long standing behaviors, I have to accept the raw data: the way I am will always result in me being unable to remain in a long term relationship with, well, everyone. Because I will set it up for you to fail then use your failure as my reason and excuse for leaving. Because what I really want to do from the very beginning is leave...at least most of me does.
Sometimes bottoming out feels devastating. Sometimes it is just irritating. Sometimes it comes with a hopelessness that feels life altering. Sometimes it is very mild and sometimes it feels like your whole world is ending. Regardless, true bottoming out comes when you make a commitment to stop digging. And I guess that is where I am this morning. I am placing the shovel OVER THERE, and I am going to commit to doing something other than digging. It feels like I am this very narrowly tailored archeologist, searching for the artifacts of myself, all the ways I zigged and zagged, Digging around in the dirt to find some sort of clue of how I got here, and why I remain.
I feel like we are at the part of the dig that excavators are no longer needed. All that heavy lifting has been accomplished, but now I am standing in the middle of the desert, with tiny whisk brooms, and other minuscule implements while this immense landscape stretches before me that is fucking daunting. Sure the excavating was laborious and hard. But this new refined work, this using tiny contraptions to dig up and brush away debris from the entirety of my life, feels overwhelming in a new way. I mean, I finally have a surface area that might actually turn up artifacts I can use. New discoveries which might actually lead to new ways of behaving and living...
And not unlike Indiana Jones...I am irascible and indignant at the prospective work. And I don’t like snakes...and I am sure there are going to be some nasty little serpents moving their way through my archival dig into the landscape of Erin.
But Indiana always prevails in the end, right? A little battle scarred and bloody. And with some very interesting stories to tell but alive and functional always. So that does actually bring me some comfort.
Digging around in the past, is often an exercise in futility but in this case, I am hopeful to discover some new treasures I can use to develop myself as a more whole and complete individual. And that is the holy grail for anyone in this life, right? To work out your shit so that you stop hurting yourself and others. And to rise to your potential and do the work required to actualize it so that you may be a person of substance and service to those about you? In order to know others, we must first know ourselves. Then to truly love others, we must, and I do believe it is a religious, spiritual imperative that one must find a way to love themselves before one can ever hope to truly love someone else.
And in the end isn’t love the real holy grail? The thing that makes the world keep turning. The thing that gets us up every day? The thing that we strive for and then achieve and then fail to appreciate it until we lose it, or almost do? Underneath all our misunderstanding and misguided attempts at love and loving, is this veritable treasure trove of dysfunctional trophies just waiting to be unearthed and brought into the light.
And I remember, from all the movies, there will be a moment, where I will be forced to look away, lest I perish...but the real payoff always comes from my willingness, or perhaps my inability to leave permanently or completely. All crises have resolution eventually. Sometimes it comes with Nazis being extinguished en masse, sometimes it is less dire and sensational. The guiding principle always is to be true to yourself and do the excavation work required to dig up those pieces of yourself that remain buried in a childhood that controls your present.
Again...still.
fuck
Regardless of how hard this next journey is, I am grateful to know at least there won't be nazis...
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