“The quality of all our relationships is a direct function of our relationship to ourselves. Since much of our relationship to ourselves operates at an unconscious level, mot of the drama and dynamics of our relationships with others and to the transcendent is expressive of our own personal psychology. The best thing we can do for our relationships with others, and with the transcendent, then, is to render our relationship to ourselves more conscious.” James Hollis
I feel this right now. Deeply.
I have been in a state of withdrawal from relationships for the past two years but more recently it has become acute. I just find myself happier alone. I am not exiting all of my relationships, but at the same time, I am very distant from many of them today.
No one did anything wrong for the most part. I am not angry or upset or feeling snubbed. I just find that engaging with most other people taxes me in ways I can no longer afford. And honestly, I would just rather be alone.
This has been a difficult place to be because I care deeply about other people, some of whom I have grossly neglected of late, but at the same time, I do not know how to really talk about what is going on with me.
So I have remained transfixed to a place of silent withdrawal, staying home, walking alone and doing my days with minimal outside contact. I still have a busy life...clients, kids, parents and sponsees keeps me engaged and busy and fulfilled. I have seen my retreat as pathological and have spent countless hours wondering what the fuck is wrong with me...but the above quote helped me to reframe what is really going on with me, I think. I mean, I am usually the last one to know when I am conning myself...but I think, I am working on my relationship with me.
But at 54, I am foundering in a great many relationships in my life. My quest for a partner has left me heartbroken and a mess. My choices in this department are still absolutely a living of example of all my unhealed trauma. My friendships have also been quite messy lately as well. Oddly, my familial relationships are the best they have ever been. I mean, that isn’t a static thing, there have been ups and down but for the most part, my kids and parents and I are on good terms and it feels real. All of them know how I feel, really.
It is when I leave the inner sanctum circle where things get dicey. It is my engagement with the world at large, people in meetings, work relationships, recovery community, romantic relationships where the veil is thin and threadbare. And this is most likely because I feel pretty worn out lately. Like I just do not have the energy or the drive to connect up like I have in the past.
What I believe is happening is that I am becoming more conscious in my relationships. I have largely abandoned the insistent, yet failing, idea that how I am is healthy and good. And I have really begun to examine how I show up, why I show up and what I am willing to tolerate. In short, I think (and I say think because I do not ever really KNOW) I am in a process of becoming more conscious in my relationship with myself. And I pray, literally every single day, to become more conscious with myself so that I may become more conscious with the world and those other persons with whom I engage in relationship.
It stands to reason that perhaps my relationships are a mess right now because this relationship with myself has been and continues to be quite caustic. I tend to vacillate between self care and self flagellation...daily. The critical voice in my head is often unrelenting and harsh. And then I just mute it. Can’t listen to it anymore because I just can’t hear one more thing I am doing wrong...according to me.
It isn’t completely functional. I know that and thus all the effort currently being expended to improve this most basic and fundamental relationship with myself.
I always hoped that in order to love someone else, you had to love yourself first was bullshit. In reality, it has become one of the most truest things I have ever known. And I have learned it mostly from trying to love others who do not love themselves and so throw back my love in some sort of panicked reaction as if my love was some sort of acid rain. And only in this effort and attendant failure, have I been able to see that it is my own lack of love and care for myself that causes this whole thing to be this repeating pattern of folly. Again...still.
I feel like I am making progress with myself. Like I am coming to know myself more deeply and better. I never really know for sure, sometimes it just feels like delusion and sometimes it is the most real thing I know. But I am sinking into the idea and belief that the quality of my relationships is a direct function of my relationship with myself, so the best thing I can do to improve these outer relationships, is to improve this primary relationship between me and me.
Self discovery is a painful process. And often feels, to me anyway, like panning for gold. Sometimes you really think you have hit the motherlode but often times you find it is just another shiny piece of earth that fools you into believing yet another thing about yourself that isn’t actually true...
But I also know, because it has been my experience, that there are those moments where those nuggets actually are gold. They are real. And they change your whole world in the instant you find it. Everything around you shifts and changes. You are indeed richer for all the effort and time given to mining for those things about yourself that interfere with your ability to show up, relate, allow yourself to be vulnerable, real, authentic and who you really are.
Some days it feels like a very tall order. Other days, it seems like to do anything less would be absolutely insanity. Most of the time it feels like the effort required is way out of whack with the reserves you have available.
If there is one thing of which I am absolutely sure, you cannot have a good, loving relationship with a person who hates themselves or is at war with themselves. And to try is to fail, repeatedly. So first, and foremost, we must all do the innerwork that makes relating to others hard, painful and off-putting. It all begins and ends with us...again, still.
fuck.
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