It's been quite a year for me. So much unhappiness and confusion swelled to a crescendo and doubled back, doubting itself only for my soul to go all "Bitch, we're going auto-pilot and taking care of business" while my heart stood there, clutching a teddy bear, and saying, "but maybe this time....?" Auto pilot is good. It's what your heart, your lungs, your whole body does at every single moment. It knows better than I do. It's wired. And when I get into a situation that isn't good for me, my system gives me awhile to make decisions on my own, giving me signals. Drawing graphs, putting up billboards, making afterschool specials about it. My blinders are tailor made by Pollyanna though. It can Change! Auto pilot buzzes off my two braided hairdo, smacks me on the ass and suddenly I hear myself saying things like "I'm moving out" even though inside I'm freaking out. It got me into emotionally and psychologically safer digs.
An abuser though, will make you feel like you are crying 'abuse' like a politician wearing a rainbow pin at a gay parade. You start to wonder....well, there really wasn't anything physical that happened...really...a couple of small things but nothing really. So was it abuse? Yes. Cutting someone down and destroying parts of their psyche to suit how you need to run a household is abuse. But the kicker is - what if they are not completely aware of themselves? That's a toughie. I don't want to be on the jury for that one. But I suspect on some level, they know. Especially if they have a history of relationships crashing against the wall in high drama most of the time. Patterns. Patterns. Listen to their stories of past relationships. If you're in a sucky situation, you might pick up on something.
My ex happens to be obsessive about emailing me constantly now to blame or cut me down. I have tried to stay true to my karmic ideal of going out on a feather and not blasting off on a fiery rampage. Finally after a long period of time, I finally said (in an email) that I am no longer responding to the cut down emails to the tune of Same Old. Instead if he has a question, I will answer it. I've been baited. I've bit. But I've tried to bit down with the flat teeth, not the canines. He's created a victim narrative where although with everything that I've done for him, for us, I've become the user. Might I add, when he worked, he was a fabulous salesman. He has a number of awards for it. He could convince anyone who has the slightest crack in their foundation, of anything. I had some cracks...now a cavern would be more like it. Like a decaying tooth though, you remove the decay, you remove just a tiny bit more, and then immerse in something to neutralize, then germinate and flourish. Ok, a tooth doesn't flourish. But I like the pretty words so we can just agree that it makes sense?
I'm sitting outside right now on my porch, actually cold with a light jacket on. It's a beautiful gray day. I'm hoping for some camera type inspiration but trying to let go of it as a Must, or else there will be disappointment. My desire to run out and find photogenic opportunities clashes with my desire to stay home and write, read, clean guinea pig cages and just be. One of these things is not like the other....dare you figure it out? And seriously, while I sit here, I can hear my downstairs neighbor's AC on. It is SIXTY SEVEN DEGREES outside. Is he a snowman??
So I've taken this beautiful morning (lie, it's really 12:38 at this point) and used it to purge myself further of Flip. It's like an infection though....just have to keep ingesting and living in the salve that will slowly take care of the complete septicity. Someday it will cleansed to the point where it's not on my mind so much - or at all. When my second marriage ended, it consumed me. One day, months down the road, I realized that I wasn't thinking about him much anymore. How freeing that is!
I did have a dream last night about Flip. We were broken up still, but I realized that I was pregnant. And I told him that I was. But with tears in my eyes told him that he would have to realize that we probably couldn't go through with it due to health reasons. He was not warm during any of this. And in real life, he would have been excited to have a child.
My interpretation is thus: At the end of things, a late seed has been planted....yet one more opportunity to do what is easy and stay in it. A solid opportunity to stay bound. The hard thing to do is reject the comfort (and yes! even being in something abusive for years or degrading can be comfortable to your psyche - it's what you get used to) and whisk your own self away to stop the cyclic insanity. Whisk your own self away. Not wait for someone else to do it for you because it won't happen. And in most cases, if it does, then you didn't experience the emotional parfait that you needed to in order to really stop the cycle and get better. You could end up rejecting a wonderful partner because you aren't aware of your comfort with the abusive, co-dependent, whatever negative relationship. Or you may find yourself in the hands of Same Shit Different Penis. Worse, if you trade down into eerier circumstances.
I've done this. I am aware now - I pushed away someone who, if I were to write a checklist of all that I wanted in a man, would take home prizes for every category. But I wasn't aware. I was brought up in a violent home with a very critical and unaffectionate parent. Breadcrumbs is what I learned. Take the crumbs, whatever you can get. Hang on to it. Once you get a crumb, that means you've gotten that hard won approval - finally! Yes! He SEES me. He cares! I win! But it's just a crumb. It isn't going to sustain you for very long.
Just for the record, my parent has changed in the later years and all is forgiven - unspoken forgiveness. We are human, there are no instructions and our parents can only do what they learned if they aren't aware either. While it is one of the best things to happen that we can have a 100% better relationship than when I was little, it doesn't mean that my issues disappeared. Now I'm on an island, no longer in that relationship with my father, and am stuck with the bill. Now that I am aware (due to therapy, self reflection and lots o time listening to podcasts and reading on the internet) I can choose to do something with it. It's not something I would bring up to my father, I'm sure he has his own thoughts and guilt about stuff. But as a self-aware adult, I can stop choosing relationships that repeat the cycle in some way. I can create a welcome sign for the guy who meets the checklist.
Phew, told you this is a new year. A renewal. My autumn. I'm going to marry it.
Happy Equinox!!!
