It’s March. Like, almost the middle of March. I have to admit that much of this post had been written already. I was holding on to it. I suppose, to make sure I still felt the same. I do. We’ll get to that later.
The last few weeks I’ve had so much going on. New opportunities presented themselves (!) I was so excited (!) There I was, finding myself going hard–saying– “Look at God” (!) (circa @im3media) doing everything I always do in new relationships–business or otherwise. I don’t put my big toe in to feel the water. I don’t take the “cat on the roof” cautionary route as Martha Beck suggests. Nope, not me. I jump in, head first and pray the water is deep enough when I get to it. That’s how I do pretty much everything in my life. You get everything or you get nada. Yessir. It’s an intense place to live from. The highs are so mind blowing high and the lows make for a perfect #KYS cocktail. I mean, it’s not exactly that deep. I mean, kindof.
I don’t do anything from an inauthentic place. I don’t fake it. I am it. Unfortunately for how I choose to unfold my existence, it doesn’t mesh with how actual other people actually live. I forget a lot, until faced with it, that other people have a lot of shit with them and it really doesn’t have anything to do with me. AND it really doesn’t gel well with my “vibe”. In some cases I end up the unofficial “spirit-therapist” of the group. And in others, I end up the over-optimistic shoe gum whose kindness is treated as a plague or a target–whichever is handier at the time. Neither scenario ever works out, but all can be chalked up as lessons learned. My solace comes from this funky notion that people should treat each other the way they want to be treated. What I view as simple, is actually paramountly hard for other folk. This concept STILL perplexes me after all these few years I’ve graced the crusty parts of this planet. People are messy.
I don’t mean this as a slight to anyone who IS messy and doesn’t care to see themselves this way. It’s simply a fact of life. We’re all messy. No matter how we choose to remix the concept. No matter how many ways we detail to ourselves how awesome we are, the actual truth is, we are all fucked up people. Nobody wants to admit it. Nobody wants to say it out loud. It sounds defeatist and self-deprecating. It’s not though. In order to change, grow and evolve, we’ve got to face facts. In order to become secure, we’ve got to face our insecurity. In order to move past an abusive relationship, we’ve got to see ourselves as an enabler. In order to grow from addictions and remove them, we have to see ourselves as addicts. In order to cure ourselves of the EGO and GREED diseases, we’ve got to see that we are oozing, festering EGO and/or GREED zombies infecting the world with our plague. Too much? Okay. But I hope you get my point. People are messy. We’ve all got something that keeps us from the lives we truly want. We’ve all got an idiosyncratic blah, blah that stifles our truth and makes us hard to connect with. Mine? I run. For the hills. Like, Pewooooooooooon.
I grew up in a household where superficiality was paramount. It didn’t matter how much mess was actually going on in the actual living environment. It didn’t matter how uncomfortable it was to be ourselves around the rest of us. We were socialized that A) family is paramount, even if we didn’t like each other. and B) As long as nobody can see our dysfunction, it wasn’t actually there.
Admittedly, from a person who claims to live as authentically as I claim to, that doesn’t sound like a basis from which to preface any conversation about authenticity. It turns out, it actually is. I learned how to survive in the very messy world we all live because I lived in one for most of my life BEFORE I actually got to see how some of the rest of the world lives. Believe. Most of the things that people of all stripes claim as their deterrent from success, I’ve lived through in some form or fashion. The way I was able to get to a place where I can admit that I’m fucked up and consistently growing through it is by being real with myself about it. It’s not an easy thing to do.
The very first thing that happens is we want to play the victim. We want to say out loud, “ooooooh woe is me. Look at the cards I’ve been dealt. (!) Look at how fucked up I am (!!) I can never be awesome, not with how I grew up or what I suffered through or with these shoes on (!!!)” The truth of the universe, that I’m learning STILL is that once we come to grips that we’ve got some fucked up qualities, it’s not supposed to be a red carpet entrance into CLUB VICTIM. Complete with paparazzi camera bulb flashes and celebvictim sightings in People Magazine. It’s supposed to be a train ticket inward to visit our bullshit and figure out which things need some elbow grease toward evolution. We’re all imperfect as a jumping point toward growth. That’s how I see it anyway. Playing victim for the cameras doesn’t do a damned thing but keep us in situations that help us stay there. I’m not a fan. I’d rather run.
BUT running isn’t actually how you fix things with other messy people. It’s not how you forge meaningful, growth oriented relationships with people, who despite their messiness, you may want to connect with. My challenge has always been figuring out which messy people or situations are keepers and which ones to Pewooooooooooooooon.
The way I’ve worked through this is to take inventory of how I feel. Do my insides clench when I think of being in the situation? Do I clam up when I feel challenged? Do I feel battered simply because I’m in the room? Do I feel too much like I’m about to engage in an unwinnable altercation with my mother about something that has absolutely nothing to do with me? In order to “survive” this situation, am I going to have to make myself smaller so that everyone else involved can be okay with me? Granted, sometimes feeling these things are the growing pains of any relationship. We all want to be liked. And sure, we’ll fit ourselves into painful shapes to fit in with a group we want to be a part of. The question I’ve always had to ask myself is, at what point is it worth it? Are a few person’s insecurities worth my own self worth AND where is the line drawn in the sand?
On this three year self-awareness journey I’ve been on, I can honestly say, I don’t know. It’s different for every situation. I guess the empowering part of this post is that at least now, I have the choice to run for the hills. When, growing up feeling this way, I didn’t. When I was younger, I was literally at the mercy of someone else’s emotional diarrhea and all the ways that played out. To survive, my choices were to take it or rebel against it. Rebellion caused great pain and taking it caused the same. While that doesn’t sound like much of a choice, I believe my experience was part of the foundation for who I am now.
I can look back and see that as much as I wanted to, I never used my circumstances as an excuse to be a victim. I just did what I had to do. My version of running for the hills at the time was writing in my many, many, many, many, many journals and finding a way to my voice. Sometimes I would find myself in complicated working and “loving” relationships and stay, far longer than I should have or leave far sooner than I could have endured. I would be thrown all kinds of other people messiness and find myself in this inner battle of– Taking “the bullshit” and not knowing exactly why I didn’t rebel. Or if I did rebel–why didn’t I just take it?
People are messy. I suppose the trick is finding our way to the kind of mess that gels best with our own. Preferably with people who are on our unique level of self-awareness. And not insisting on fitting ourselves into messes that simply add to the mess we’re currently in. The ideal would be finding our way to another being who owns a self-awareness equivalent of a mop, broom or Swiffer.
It’s funny because, looking at it now, it seems, my being fucked up, led me to what some might see as another way to be fucked up. I don’t fight, I flight. And yet, I’m still aware and thus, still able to grow. The lesson here is that authentic human experience is a constant evolutionary process. We go through this maze looking for this ticker tape parade when we get to the end, only to discover it doesn’t quite work like that.
I started writing this post figuring that I was going to write it about my desire to be in a loving, romantic relationship. How, I want more kids and buy a great home and be able to show Aubrei what life and love can really be. It was also supposed to be a bit about how to tell which relationships are healthy and which aren’t and when to peace yourselves out of them–love, business or otherwise. That was my original intention. It ended up being a discourse about why I am exactly where I’m supposed to be. It’s also an unintentional testimony of how life actually works. We wake up every day and live the lives we have for the reasons we have, but it’s really, utterly about something else entirely.
The moral of this story? I dunno. You? Just some food for thought. Thank you for reading this though. Peace and abundant evolve or bust blessings. Love, -e-