Practicing the principles in all of our affairs is the living challenge- to be "happily and usefully whole," as Bill Wilson said. That's the purpose of the steps. It has long been clear to me that being happily and usefully whole may well be the hardest thing there is - I can be happily fragmented (in fact, I think that is the most familiar state for me), or I can be usefully fragmented (caretaking, etc.) and fairly miserable, but to combine happiness, usefulness and wholeness into a totality is a work in progress, definitely not perfection. I am happy and serene sometimes when I put about 50 to 80% of myself on a shelf and just shrug and say "well, all of that is fucked, but at least I have stability."
For example, none of the long term domestic partner relationships that I have been in, six total, has involved much understanding or appreciation for the music I either like or perform- or at least, I have been shy about it and deprecated its importance to me. Usually I have felt like I cannot play it on the stereo, or carefully choose when to put it on- I think if I ever throw my lot in with someone again, I am going to fucking blast that shit every goddamned day for a few years, just to compensate. The thing is, the music is vitally important to me, and I take my own playing seriously- but how often I have diminished its importance to me or made light of my own performance, just to "keep" someone who I never "kept" anyway.
24/7/365 with the volume at 11 for the first three years of living with the next woman. If she can't handle Brotzmann at his best, she doesn't deserve Hades. Right?
Emerging into some perspective helps me distinguish between the proportional, natural responses to losing people whose company I enjoy versus the ways that codependency mucks things up and causes me suffering. Proportional and natural: missing, wanting interaction, appreciating and admiring, seeking communicative closure when appropriate and consensual, listening, letting there be space, being hurt by seeming indifference, accepting that it isn't about me, grieving a loss, being grateful for what was possible, accepting things as they are, thankfully moving on. Muck: stabbing myself with aching daggers of longing, waiting for interaction, idealizing, desperately wanting to be seen, taking it personally, hoping to use interaction to "win someone back," wallowing in self pity that is not grief and fantasizing about performing sadness to get sympathy, being resentful about change and being angry that I didn't get what I wanted.
The reality is that all of these levels of both functional and dysfunctional responses and behaviors operate at once, so I am called to be extra vigilant when I am "working a program." Combine the emotional challenges of life with the long stretches of time I'm spending alone in order to complete the PhD and it makes sense. Like Dr. O said- "whoa, no wonder you feel bad."
It is not pathological to miss someone one appreciated and who has gone, and to be sad about a disappointing and unwanted outcome. I have to keep reminding myself that it's neither necessary nor helpful to pathologize everything. It's especially important for me to not become closed off, bitter or hardened. But, at the same time. it's been important for me to be mindful. I have many uninvited memories, and I am training my mind to redirect, and not to wallow.
I miss the Twin Cities and those visits stand out as high points of the past months- and the visits to Santa Fe. Three times to Santa Fe, five times to the Twin Cities. Eight visits in real time in 15 months- how funny that I set myself the goal of being with this person every other month and "exceeded expectations" by one. The April visit last year was when I stood in the parking lot of the place I was staying, and watched U drive away, and thought to myself, "you'll never see her again." We tried- Santa Fe in June, Twin Cities in July on either side of a conference I attended, Twin Cities in November, a scheduled visit to Santa Fe in December that I had to cancel due to eye surgery- and it was over the time period that I would have been there that U dumped me. I still chuckle when I recall that her last words to me during that exchange were "Stay cozy." I was two days out from having had pars planar vitrectomy, laser coagulation surgery and gas retinopathic injection to try to reattach my retina, face down for several more days, alone over Christmas, dumped by the love of my life. Stay cozy. haha. Also, how funny that even my retina has an attachment disorder?
Since this is an anonymous blog, I really shouldn't post a picture of me, but there it is.
I've been doing the forgiveness meditation every day, from Refuge Recovery, and awareness of breath. Working on fundamental emotional health- redirecting thoughts, being mindful, cultivating detachment, taking refuge in the present, dedicating myself to the PhD work. As much as possible. Moments of deep acceptance and serenity arrive. Detachment is possible. By far the most emotionally challenging segment of that meditation right now is forgiving myself for the harm I caused myself throughout my life. It's excellent work. Clearly, my life has the repeated pattern of me betraying, abandoning and rejecting myself over and over again to try to "win love." (Not only in romance, but also in employment and friendships and in my decisions). It's good to see it, and it's good to work on forgiving myself for it. Weeping, weeping, weeping. I'm glad the sobbing is in private, and not at my Refuge meeting- how embarrassing and weak (right?). The forgiveness meditation just reduces me to to a puddle, every time lately.
I'm still having counterproductive trips- lately, the unhelpful questions of "was it true? was it a real experience? were all the things said true things? or was it all just a delusion and were all the things said just pretty lies?" (like roses and kisses- trying to avoid having tombs in my eyes, however). This area is a total waste of time and heart. Who cares. What happened, happened, and what difference would it make if I was lied to, or if I lied to her or myself, or if it was all true? Or if it was only true then and is no longer true, which a real philosopher would argue means it was never true. Etc. I get angry with all of this, angry with myself. Shut the everloving fuck up, what the fuck, who the fuck cares. It's annoying; I annoy myself.
"You can't make the past a better place to live," say my recovery friends. Anyway, it all goes back to my anger at being abandoned, which is my stuff. The core of codependency resides in the pain of being forgotten, or not being important to someone to whom I used to be important. The feeling I get when I tell myself that I am superfluous and disposable feels like I am trying to kill myself. The feeling that, even for a person for whom I was major or important in their lives, I can and will eventually, inevitably also be completely forgotten and discarded. Annihilated.
The control strategies that this core fear generates in my behavior are multitudinous and often unconscious. They are never, ever effective. I end up controlled, not controlling. I give my power away in a fruitless attempt to be indispensable. To be needed and to be important to someone. And I tend to choose women who seem to be skilled at forgetting, and whose emotional attachments seem easily switched off. I am out of sight, so I am out of their mind. One of my control strategies with women like this is I try to be *in their sight* at all times. "Don't forget how amazing I am!" Fuck, that is hard, hard work. They always forget anyway. Or someone else catches their fancy and no matter how "amazing" I am, I'm fucked (and not in a good way), or they grow tired of the Hades Channel being on all the goddamned time. I don't want or need attention- I need to not be forgotten. Psychically, I need to not be killed by disappearing from the mind and heart of someone to whom I am attached.
In spite of one of the great joys of my life being interactions with U on social media, it was the recognition of this vain and fruitless hope that I would impress her- "I shall find exactly the right hilarious meme to post and she will leave her husband and spend her life with me!"- that pushed me to decide to block her on Facebook and Instagram, until I trust my motives more, if I ever do. I also couldn't handle seeing a picture of her face- as written on my body as she is.
Re-enactment compulsions are a pain in the ass. The rush of being admired by an independent woman who seems to need no one at all is addictive. (The Queen of Self-Sufficiency).
The confirmation in my own imagination of my "disposable" status and irrelevancy when I become inconvenient or just when things have run their course is addictive too. Repetitive craving for the high of being loved by a cold woman, repetitive craving for the low of being rejected by same, hello again my favorite, my Queen of Swords.
And, if she tries to be warm and kind, I push the boundaries enough to guarantee she has to go to a very cold place to create not just a boundary, but a fucking wall. Through all of these threads, I am trying to stay in control to avoid being hurt. And I stay hurt (or painfully numb- a styrofoam lover with emotions of concrete, pace Lou Reed) at almost all times.
I am an accessory and I'm being taken for granted, and I have chosen this. ("Begging for scraps" as U put it). Even knowing I am fourth or fifth on a woman's list, no matter the reasons, I keep choosing it- and admittedly, sometimes the scraps are an incredible banquet, a feast, and I get hooked. But the inevitable rejection of a "cold woman" hurts for obvious reasons- yet again, I "failed" to make myself impressive or important or useful enough to be worth caring about. I am not worth her time. Eventually, even the scraps stop. I'm not fourth or fifth on the list anymore. I'm not on the list at all.
I have never been in love with a woman who was reliably there for me. The ones who have gotten me, and this last got me the best, have been unavailable, one way or the other (although never married before this)- usually just emotionally unavailable. The tendency to fall hard for unavailable women seems to be getting worse over time- and the last choice of mine to open myself 100% to a person with an entirely self-contained, demanding, existing life, marriage, children, at a different life stage, 1600 miles away, an avoidant attachment style, skeptical about romance, with Sun Capricorn/ Moon Virgo (as opposed to my Sun Virgo/Moon Capricorn- damn you, astrology, why are you impossible yet accurate?) seems like a hilarious attempt on my part to put every possible unavailability together into one choice.
She showed up as she was able and in fact took great personal emotional risks to do so. Those times were thrilling and I wouldn't trade them for anything. Yet, I also knew along the way that I was running back into the heart grinder of abandonment over and over, and I chose it anyway. I chose to be 100% unprotected and vulnerable. I knew *exactly* where I stood at all times, after the initial exchanges wherein she and I imagined a future together and when it seemed possible that that change might occur. It wasn't too long after that, that she withdrew all such statements, as well as hints; I would try to go there and be met with nothing, and I think I kept trying for months. It was clear to me about two months in that we would never be able to be together in any "normal" way, or at least not for years. I undervalue my own safety enough, and the moments of connection were so powerful, that I chose to stay. I do not regret this, but I do see now that I had other choices. I am told by people with recovery wisdom that I might have chosen to leave. It didn't occur to me, really- as if I had no choice. I "tried," one time, last summer. It lasted a few days. She tried several times. We kept reigniting.
In spite of all of these truths, I miss her. I powerfully enjoyed her company. I love, respect and admire her. It's weird how the simple, actual things remain- how clear it is that codependency ("a most deeply rooted compulsive behavior," as the lit says) is a separate thing. Letting go while acknowledging missing and loving someone who is gone is the deal. It's a worthy project. It hurts.
It is what it is. Like bacon and ice cream.
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