My therapist - who actually gets a chuckle out of the fact that I mention him occasionally - recently talked over my latest "funk" with me. My personal drive has been on "stall" for a while and I was concerned that perhaps my medication needed fine tuning. He gave me a really good analogy for what has been going on.... "for the last two years you have been running through a mine field, and now there are no more mines and you don't have another focus. This is the time in your life when you just have to be selfish, and only think about this moment and what comes after it. When you think about what has happened before and focus on those other people who have betrayed you, you feel stuck in that moment and you can't move forward..." Stuck in that moment...
I had a vision in my head of the coyote, running madly down the road until the road curved ahead and he was left running over thin air until he literally hit the wall and fell down the hole. I can't remember how many times I have felt just like that; feet peddling over empty air until I hit a hard stop and gravity brought me all the way down again. Living that way is very selfish and self serving. There is no room for another person when your life is a constant race through the mines. Not a partner, not friends, not family, especially not children! Unfortunately, the world of the internet with the "social pages", "internet chat rooms", "email", "IMs" etc. does nothing to foster real time human contact and as far as I can tell it only prolongs the run through the minefield.
Some people are surrounded with those emotional mines. Trying to get close, to find out their true and authentic selves, leaves you stepping gingerly and expecting to hit an explosion at the least pressure. You walk a limited and precarious path. You live with tunnel vision, trying unsuccessfully to navigate through the pitted landscape of your relationship with them. You see a flawed vision of yourself reflected back from them, and you truly do become "stuck". It was only when I made a difficult and very conscious decision to finally "let it go" that I was able to move at all! Suddenly, without any fanfare, without any real change in the world, without asking any permission or expecting any acceptance, the mines were gone. Just... gone.... and it makes me wonder "who's mines were they: mine or theirs'"? I can only own my own mistakes, and I know a lot of them were ones I planted and armed. But not all of them. When I look back at those people and see from a distance how their worlds continue I see other people stuck in the minefields, surrounded by hidden bombs and stepping gingerly. So I know not all of them were mine to own and that is okay.
And now I have to look at "what would I equate as being selfish?"... The answer was really quite simple. My "self" has to come first. It isn't about stuff or luxuries or outer trappings... it is just taking care of myself before I did anything else, and I realized I have not put myself first in a real and concrete way for a very long time. As simple as showering because it eases my muscles, cleaning my teeth as many times as I feel like, giving myself more than a casual thought about clean sheets, clean floors, clean dishes... having the moxy to get off the computer and react with the outside world. Taking vitamins, using the medications I have for my skin condition, keeping the promises I make to myself and for myself. And really, if I can't keep promises to myself how on earth will I be able to keep them to the people I care about? If I don't take care of myself in a healthy way, how in the world will I be able to take care of someone or something else when I need to?
It's really easy to give lip service to making yourself better without actually making the real changes. Was that comment you made just a "wishful thought" of what you want the world to think you are doing? The internet lets you hide, you can tell the world what you're doing, but are you really doing it? Does your "mouth write cheques that your ass can't cash"? In my opinion, those are the weakest and most self serving promises... I promise to be better without changing... I promise to make a difference without the act that makes things different.... I will promise and give lip service to being a better person, and then I will forget that I ever made that promise... and the only person you betray is yourself. It takes real strength and real courage to follow through on those promises, to make those changes. And the only validation you get at the end of the day is the change in your soul. THAT is the only change that really matters.
So I'm going to take my killer headache to bed. I have a busy week coming up, and I fully intend to spend it very, very selfishly. In the meantime, I'll have a caffe mocha vodka valium latte to go, please.....
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