Getting back into my body. I’m learning to grow with myself. I’m learning to answer the call to protect myself when there are forces coming into my space that I don’t have the space for. Recently I was in a situation where someone was speaking and I realized that I could no longer hold what was happening. So I told them I wasn’t able to hold it. I think it’s necessary on the journey of recovery from hating myself to live into caring for myself. There are plenty of opportunities. Compassion is great and allows for a lot of change to happen. I don’t have to hold everything all the time. Also, there’s a difference between processing and fixation and when the line is crossed it can be an energy drain to experience rumination on violence.
At some point it might be better to ask for them to do that with someone else. I’m done triangulating. I’m down to hear the grievance. I’m down to extend empathy and my thoughts if the person is asking for them. However, if the situation is moving in a direction where there isn’t a willingness to build trust through vulnerability I will not be the go between for all that emotional energy that isn’t mine to fuck with. I get to work on myself. I get to show up and ask for help when I need it and allow for folks to tell me no because that’s how honest questions work.
I’ve got enough going on that I don’t have the energy to be codependent anymore. I didn’t realize how exhausting it is thinking about how everyone else is going to perceive me and then basing my life around a projected image of what others may think of me. It’s fantasy. It’s not grounded in reality. It’s so self absorbed as well, because it’s assuming that I know how others are going to respond to me when I’m vulnerable, which is just completely untrue. It’s wild how isolating and dark it gets. The asks get muddy and there isn’t clear expectations and then there is the whole loyalty thing. Staying when it gets abusive and it always gets abusive.
I think for me there’s a difference between working something out in an honest way and being trespassed against through the process gaslighting. There’s a easy way to make sure I’m not being gaslit though, and it’s asking myself if someone is offering a true apology. (Three parts, acknowledgment of harm cause, taking ownership for their part in it, an actionable plan on how they will not continue the behavior). I first heard about this through a Buddhist teacher, Tara Brach. That’s great. That’s how we grow in deep relational connection with each other. Mistakes become moments for deeper connection and care as we see each other more fully.
However, inside codependency I can’t admit I am wrong. Just mainlining the gaslighting energy at this point. It’s this fear of the loss of image and the abandonment that comes along with that. Because if I can’t keep performing for you you won’t love me anymore. Fuck that shit. It’s so twisted. It’s so messed up. So, in that setting I can never own my shit (fully). There are definitely concessions made to keep the vampiric situation going longer. I can never grow and we can never have a relationship built on a foundation of trusting vulnerable care. (Which I think is maybe the closest articulation of love that I can find right now).
I think this is part of why Jesus is so compelling to me these days. I’m just getting fully rekt by the way that I see him moving through the world with grace and truth and so much mercy, but still like entrusting himself to something beyond himself. He was secure in why he was doing the things he was doing and when darkness tempted him to go rogue, to violate the vulnerable care built on trust that he had cultivated deeply he was able to resist, because his eyes weren’t blinded by needing to be something he wasn’t. Jesus didn’t hate himself. He was living fully into who he was. And he spread the energy of that truth wherever he went with grace and extending mercy to those who were ready to receive their healing.
I love how not codependent that way of moving through the world is. Jesus didn’t have a savior complex. I used to be like why didn’t Jesus do this or that or whatever. I think I’m coming to a moment right now where I see how Jesus respected folks humanity so much because he respected his own and he had boundaries. I remember when he was talking with the guy at the pool. He’s like, would you be made whole? Do you want to be healed and I was like “What are you saying, Jesus?” This dude has been sitting here for like 30+ years of course he wants to be healed.
However, I see in my own life where I’ve been afraid to let go of the energy that’s actually wounding me. My resentment feels safer and maybe it is. Maybe bondage is “safer”, but I think I’d rather be free and risk danger than stuck in a cell being fed on lies until my eyes grow dull from the darkness. Would I be made whole? Am I willing to risk being free? Will I receive my healing? I’m finally saying yes and the functionality of this is through boundaries built with trust and vulnerability in relationship to myself and others. Death to a savior complex. Death to a false image. Death to being something I’m not. Living into becoming myself more deeply and truly.
structures of home 