I've been pondering anew my unconscious feeling that great things only happen to other people. Like letting life happen, I also let life pass by. I would never in a million years describe myself as "dynamic" though I would love to. And not even in a world-changing sort of way, but just in a "having a spark" sort of way. I would love to feel the energy of doing something I truly believe in.
I imagine this is again a mix of nature vs. nurture and haven't dwelled overmuch on causes because 1) this one doesn't feel it needs healing exactly. If I tried to go that route, it would verge on wallowing and I'd probably get stuck in a tar pit of victimhood because 2) unlike the shame revelation, this one feels like something more insidious, a story that's been slowly absorbed into my psyche over time and on such a low frequency that I can't trace it to a wound.
I think it just needs to be reframed.
The story that I tell myself is that I don't make things happen in my life, at least not from a proactive point of view. The victim thing is an icky old pattern that has been my default setting in the past. So perhaps it is time to look at some situations from a more positive point of view.
I need to remember that, regardless of how I got there, I have always taken care of myself in the end. Though unconscious people pleasing and my non-confrontational, fear-of-taking-responsibility self may have gotten me in an icky situation, I always, eventually, do what is best for me. (Now to just narrow that margin and head it off at the pass, so to speak!)
Some cases in point:
- I knew I wanted to have a better relationship with my family (and in cases where that maybe wasn't possible, at least to reconcile that with myself) and I took the necessary steps to do that, including moving back home. After having cut myself off from them, probably as a reactionary means of belatedly establishing personal boundaries, the thought came to me one day so clearly, exactly as if someone else were speaking, "I want my family back." Though I also moved home because I desperately wanted a respite and a way out of my miserable job, the decision to go home as a solution was motivated by this directive.
- I had gotten in way over my head with debt, but by 2007 made a conscious decision to pay it off. Though I was a little, ahem, gun-shy about work, the thought came to me one day like the family thing, "Get a full-time job." I landed the Job I Loved and was debt-free in two years, by June, 2009, 2 months after being laid off from that job. I now have a conscious decision to never, ever get in that situation again.
- When I was feeling at my absolute worst several years ago, I went to my favorite coffee shop and journaled for the first time. On the way home, I got the first of these clear directives in my head, "I have to divorce my husband." I cried the rest of the way home, because though I didn't want it to be, I knew it was true and the only option for me. It took about a year or so for me to actually carry it through.
I had been hoping for another such directive in the last 8 months or so, but I didn't seem to be getting any. There have been more subtle ones, but nothing sure and clear like those. Also I think that I was so full of panic and "should's" and "I can't's" that it was impossible for me to hear anything.
Until this last week, when I got two (though I realize in hindsight that they are not that much of a revelation and have been percolating for a while -- I just kept coming up with excuses to ignore them.)
And these two realizations have led me to begin to sketch the outlines of a new life plan.
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