Friday, December 6, 2019

A Process in Forgiving Myself


 
 
I share my process today from a lonely, tender, heart-nook place. 
A confession of the Truest Loneliness of my humanity. 
An exhale, of sorts:

~~~

I have had a hard time believing that my close relationships will share their "no" and today and yesterday that fear was realized twice. 

This mistrust is rooted in that I, myself, regularly withhold my "no" to spare my friends feelings, or for the pride of being "good", or so nobody knows how picky and slow and frustrating I am. So I can be an "adult". So I can be the better man. If I am the better man, I cannot be shamed, you cannot speak shame to me, hypocrite, I am justified because I have done my part. 

So I carry my fear of others doing the same to me, and so I carry my anxiety to be hypervigilent for unspoken truths. Anticipating and manipulating. I make myself responsible for tending to my friends because "I am better than that," (meanwhile I am wholly negligent to others and the guilt eats me up, but that's for another time). And in that hypervigilence, even surrounded by love, my heart is alone and thirsty and unable to drink, convinced the well is poisoned.

Today and yesterday I was told I ran blind across two "crossed boundaries" and I'm finding it very difficult to forgive myself and this is why:

1.
There's an old group of friends in my nervous system interpreting the pattern as an indicator of wrong-doing. I am Job. There must be something wrong that I did. Something wrong about what I'm doing. That I am oversharing and inconsiderate to the needs of The Other. The judge says good people do not make others uncomfortable like I am starting to do more often lately. I say I am learning to love myself. The judge says I am alienating myself and being inconsiderate and selfish and nonsensical and rude. I say I am looking for God. The judge says if I was living right I wouldn't have to worry about looking, that God would be here already. 

2.
The ache is coming from fear of a trend towards more and more broken connections. I believe these broken connections are the path to falling apart into what my spirit truly is. Phoenix. Resurrection. The judge says these whims are pulling me from my connection with God. The judge is saying "people are your connection with God, and you are making yourself farther from that relationship by being so selfish and hurting them. It is the opposite of God. You are hurting God by your selfishness. He will not love you until you resolve your selfishness." 

"You are not worth X until Y" is a message I carry deep in my body as I navigate life's dance floor.

3.
I received the idea of exhibiting 
"The wrong kind of curiosity"
Wrong curiosity.

The idea of a "wrong curiosity" lights up a core fear that what I am doing, that what brings me light, is only a selfish act of cruelty. This is a fear I have been waiting for because I am convinced it must be well-founded. How could I be good and live a good life that fulfills me? Certainly I am not taking on my share of the load. How much other unspoken hurt have I sown with my wrong curiosity? I am not worth a good life without working and suffering. I am not worthy of attention and love until I have proven myself. 

~~~

The judge tells me this is a pattern now, a trend, that I should stop being so foolish before it is too late. That I should be quiet and careful. I am afraid that the judge is right, that whatever happened is from a piece of myself I'm not willing to compromise on. That I will lose connection with others unless I bury my heart like I did. 

I care so deeply for connection. 
Relationship is so important to me.
I have passively (and ":justifiably") manipulated so many people to create the falsehood of connection. Deceived them into thinking I am agreeable and nice when truly I am picky and particular (this careful eye also comes with many gifts, mind you, but I carry it as a burden). A connection founded on "charity" and manipulative jabs of mutual guilting to prod the relationship into the field is a conditional connection that does not celebrate Truth. I have not believed many of my friendships to come without condition. Only this year did I realize how mistrusting I am to be myself. In my heart of hearts I believe to "let it all hang out" is to be undisciplined, irresponsible, and worth abandoning. 

So what is the dance when I am not willing to compromise in the face of these fears?

What is compromise in my Self?
What is compromise in Relationship?





"[Maybe you should be different]"





In so many words, perhaps conditional relationship is human, the judge whispers, everyone will leave you even with all your effort to them. Everyone will let you down. So still my heart carries on its beating song:

"I will only find Unconditional Love if I hold out my Light in The Dark so Unconditional Love can recognize Me." 

I cannot experience Unconditional Love if I am hiding within the netty blanket of conditions and bank-loan friendships that keep track of who owes who.

"I was there for you, you owe me."

Or worse yet

"I was there for you, now I'm the better friend. You should be grateful for me."

Unspoken crossed boundaries can be spoken in other ways.
Unspoken resentments to fuel self-fulfilled pride rooted in dependency on and so fear of oppression by The Other. Lacking connection with Self. This is my path, my walk.

I struggle in my self-forgiveness and self-care. I death-grip cling to shame, especially in relationship. To be inconsiderate of The Other's experience is a primal sin. When time alone is a constant drain, the nervous system of The Other (a witness, a friend, support), becomes wildfire-important. Rest on my own quickly whispers promise of depression. Watching softly the ruins of failed friendship I fear I will shrivel up into Alone. That asking for what I need will eventually lead me to the end of the road where nobody is left and the sidewalk is gone. 

I reach out to my friends, increasingly hungry for support, but it is not just any support I want. I am particular. I am picky. So I am afraid to say what I need.

My fear of asking for help:
I am firstly exhausted by unsolicited "fixing energy," the urge to be taken out of my experience when The Other is uncomfortable at my discomfort. The energy to guide the fixing energy to the place in my heart that needs nourishing. I feel the need to justify my pickiness. So I shrivel deeper into isolation until somebody "owes" me enough to feel like I can cash out their patience the way others "cash out" on mine.

In the eyes of a friend who is only "returning a favor", or "doing their duty", or overreaching their own limits, I am a picky beggar. I am ashamed for asking too much, too soon.

I want my support group to know their limits and to first and foremost to take care of themselves. This is why I employ a network. To follow where the nutrients are, and to pass them along where I see my own excesses are needed. We are trees with knotted roots.

I want space-holding from a soul who is not only centered in itself, but curious for my own being, who delights in my process and desires to observe and notice the quieter parts of human experience together.

I now believe I am worthy of this.

-deep breath-

My soul yearns to be witnessed in its process of struggle. I do not want to be taken out of this experience (no matter how much my body sings to be taken from this experience) and I must swallow my thirst for escape. It is in that indulgence of thirst I stop listening. I want to learn to express my needs and release the expectation. So my friends feel good saying no if it is a no. So the humans in my life who are full of YES can find me. 

My heart only wants to be fed by another heart that will be nourished by feeding me. 

So I hold. So I continue to track what comes up. This weekend I practice quiet, I practice waiting for my ask to materialize as words. I practice expressing that ask and learning also how to fill it myself in my own Unconditional Love relationship with the holy matrimony of being in my body for my entire life. 

This weekend I practice allowing my human experience in for nobody else but me.
Allowing the discomfort. Allowing it to be and whisper quietly like a child who needs help but doesn't trust the world. So sings the song of Unconditional Love. 

My invitation today is to Be Gentle with the Self and The Other. We never quite understand what The Other's experience is. The beauty is we never will, and that is Always Good Enough for Love to take root. 

1 comment:

  1. I do not wish to provide advice with this comment, only to share my experience relative to this share. I hope my stating this will color the tone of the comment to follow.
    I find that the thing that helps me most when I make what I deem to be a mistake is to find the lesson in it. I see you doing this and I am proud of you. The lesson I find most often in my mistakes, is that while being wholly centered on myself is important, it's foolish to think that that behavior will not have an effect on others. Often it is positive, people see me being my authentic self and find comfort in their own oddities. But equally as often it is negative. I am a person who aims to please others, and while on the surface this is a "good" quality, it feeds into my least favorite "bad" quality, that I am quick to anger. When I please others for too long, when I put others first for too long, my anger festers and eventually a match is struck and the flames engulf me and all surrounding me. And while it's true that the new growth after a forest fire is often healthier than what was there before, it still takes a long time to grow, to have anything resembling your old forest.
    I think in this way I've found the best tools for me to prevent fires. I remind people regularly that they have their own boundaries. I tell people all the time to say "no," or tell me if something I do is beginning to make them uncomfortable. I also exercise my No around others as often as I can, as often as I see fit, which makes others more likely to do the same.
    I also remind people that while their comfort is important to me, it is only my second priority. My first priority is always my own comfort, my own health and self care. But being that the comfort and health of others is my second priority, I want to hear about boundaries I am approaching, I want to hear about ways I can make the experiences of others more pleasant. I just won't go very far out of my way to do it.
    You're growing, Riley, as we all are. The most important thing is to never give up. <3

    ReplyDelete