Last week brought up a really deep wound, and that wound has brought me back home. I feel like I am still being brought deeper into the feeling of returning with every day that is passing.
I am going to sidetrack a bit while simultaneously getting straight to the core. My opening sentence and the use of the word “home” would have made me, if I was the one reading this post, feel jealous. I would have started to compare, making me feel like I also wanted to feel home, and I would have felt pulled to do something to bring in that feeling.
Where I am at is not ok, I should get to someplace else.
That’s what I’m coming home to. I am seeing a new layer of how much I am struggling in my attempt to feel, act and speak a certain way, so that I will attract certain things. The abundance of spiritual new age quotes; “everything external is a mirror”, “your vibration attracts”, and “you need to love yourself first”, are a constant reminder of how something needs to change within ME if I should get what I want.
I want to break up with spiritual beliefs. I don’t want to believe that there is some greater force that decided the rules, and that, in order to get what I want, I have to adhere. My mom and I have lived out that dynamic since as long as I can remember. I want to break up with our dynamic too.
Thinking about breaking up brings sadness. And heartbreak. It feels like I am finally standing on my own two feet. I am done doing in order to get.
I fear that moving forward will look like me doing what feels correct to ME. Sometimes that will lead to pain. I fear expressing that pain, and to be told I have myself to blame. After all, I did it MY way, which has always been the wrong way. What that right way is, I don’t know. My mom never said.
Ironically, my mom held the key to what I wanted. Her presence. I didn’t have words for it at the time – I didn’t know how to ask for her to want me. Nor was it my job.
As I see it, there is no connection between what I deserve and what I am worth, and what I am doing or being. It doesn’t even make sense to connect them, they seem irrelevant to each other. Even the word deserving doesn’t make sense. Should I be getting something? I don’t know if that’s true, that I should. What feels true is that I have worth, and I have it in my own eyes. Other people’s eyes may not agree. I don’t have worth in their eyes. It is not pleasant to know, but it is ok (at least right now).
If someone reacts to my hurt by telling me I should have done x, y and z in order to avoid feeling hurt, or that I can do x, y and z in order to move out of the hurt, I will tell them:
(1) I shared my pain so you could witness me and hold me.
(2) I want a life where sharing the moment comes first. Nothing needs to be done.
(3) I see pain as a part of life. Not something to avoid, but rather something to experience, even cherish.
(4) I don’t want a life filled with doing in order to get, not when the doing has to do with changing anything about me. That doesn’t work for me.
Gunhild Archer, counselor 