Gunhild Archer, counselor

I feel like there is social capital in having an amazing time. Especially when it is a day of celebration, like a birthday.

I wish I could tell you I feel amazing, that I’m feeling the birthday mood, but I don’t.

Yesterday was one solid piece of uphill battle. Nothing went as planned. I kept a positive attitude, telling myself it would work out, but eventually one drop became the last, and the attitude I have kept up throughout the holidays shattered. “I’m fine, I can manage, it’s ok,” wasn’t working.

I realized I wasn’t ok.

I stood in the hospital hallway, crying, feeling unsupported. The pain of having spent another Christmas alone, and another New Year’s Eve alone, finally made itself known. Not having the relationship I want with my family, it hurts. The inner conflict between wanting to, and not wanting to, fill the holidays with friends instead, also hurts. Not being on the same page within myself, plus the amount of effort to get there… Although it’s not futile, I know I’m getting there, it sometimes feels like an insurmountable task.

I don’t want to be in pain. I want to be happy and cheerful. Partly because I don’t want people to sigh and meet me with resignation like I’m beyond hope (just the other day someone told me “You didn’t spend the holidays alone, did you??”), but also because it truly hurts to be in pain.

My resistance to the pain leads to confusion. “I should do something, so I don’t end up feeling this pain!”, a voice inside insists. “But I don’t want your solutions,” another voice says.

In the midst of my desperate attempts to resolve the pain, the same thought is popping up in my awareness. I think I have an assumption of how things “should be” that is not compatible with reality. I keep coming back to the question: Am I expecting relationships to NOT have something that is 100% a part of what a healthy relationship looks like? Maybe I’m expecting it to not hurt, and it is that expectation that is causing me pain. That seems like a possibility, that I’m colored by some “childlike rose-colored glasses”-attitude. At the other hand, I’m used to taking a lot of pain in relationships. I don’t want to accept something that hurts.

…ok, it just hit me that I’m looking for “the rules of what a healthy relationship looks like” as something defined by someone outside myself, by whomever decides what you “should” do in order to get what you want. I’m looking outside myself. I forgot that the most important thing is to not leave myself. I want certain things, yes, but I don’t want them if it means going against myself. Maybe a more productive question is: Can I get what I want without compromising myself? Which, when I realize the answer is “yes”, should be rephrased to: HOW can I get what I want without compromising myself?

So… Looking for possibilities to see what feels right. For me. Right for me. Sometimes I can’t get what I want in the way I want. That would mean pain. That pain is a part of life though, from my perspective it is. Staying in a situation that hurts to avoid that hurt, that’s not it.