What I Want

From Amrit Brar's Marigold Tarot

Some days are better than others. It's definitely not linear. I mean, arriving at a place of equanimity- it's circuitous, and whatever equanimity is available is impermanent. But the key is to remember that nothing has to be a certain way. There's no requirement to be strong or reasonable. There's no requirement to be steady. I'm working away at the diss and at recovery no matter how I feel anyway, so all of the weather is just weather- along for the ride, in wild or calm. 

I've been hung up on being angry at myself lately. I'm most angry at myself for getting into situations where I am being used, and where, when I become inconvenient, I can be discarded. I have a difficult time standing back and making the realistic, clear-eyed assessment that something is not good for me, and changing my behavior to avoid it. In fact, sometimes there is a perverse streak in me that rushes into things that I know are not good for me. It's part of hating myself, I guess. Or just the delusion of my codependency. Convinced that a situation that is all kinds of red flags is actually not dangerous for me, at all. I'm different, and this time, it will be different. 

But I definitely know the work is coming home for me when I am reflecting on and feeling through the choices that I myself made, not the ways others behaved. Taking inventory of what I was willing to do and encountering the unpleasant truths connected with that. When I agree to be used, once I am used for what I was used for, of course, I'm useless, disposable. Used up. This is how agreeing to be or offering to be a means to an end works. Every intolerable situation that I try to make more tolerable for someone else is subject to resolution without my "help." Once that happens, I'm no longer needed. Every drug has a half life. Once the hit is gone, the drug is metabolized, and vanishes, no longer needed. 

The long, repeated story of my being used and using others is up for me every day now, in all of my meditations, in all of my reflections. How to love- how to stay open and real- in the face of a long history of contingencies. A precarious emotional life. I am still practicing the forgiveness meditation and tonglen meditation, but have balanced out with loving kindness, compassion, equanimity and appreciative joy, just to open up some space in all the heaviness. 

Choosing available people to be in intimacy with- trusting those who are trustworthy, as CoDA says- is how I can take responsibility for the kind of relationship I want. Real and reliable, safe and attentive, open and free, communicative and compassionate, inspiring and creative, passionate and wild but in a navigable wilderness, with kind, generous, present, available, evolving, curious and alive people. 

And relating with myself in al of those ways as well. 

It's strange to note my resistance to stating what I want. The feeling is one of shame- who do you think you are, asking for all that? You'l be lucky to have anything at all, let alone all that. I look forward to a time when that voice diminishes and is less strident. less prone to holding me back. I'm putting my intention out there regardless.