Month: October 2023

Self Reflection

The Past, Present, Future, Now.

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After I decided that I was, indeed, going to stick around on this ol’ earth to see what the fuck was going to happen next I woke up the next morning with what I can only think to describe as an ‘emotional hangover’. I drug myself out of bed and started my coffee, let the dog out, and found myself staring into space on my couch. My head hurt, I felt dehydrated, my stomach was in knots, I wanted to vomit. I still felt my mind plagued with thoughts on distaste for my current situation, anger, and loneliness. You might say that I was only choosing to focus on the negatives.

I’ve been studying a lot recently on how the brain works to process emotions and how it creates thought patterns. Essentially if you consistently live in a certain state, the neural pathways will exist to keep you in that state as it is familiar and what it craves. The whole concept reminds me a lot of addiction, was I addicted to being miserable? I didn’t think so as I could tell you what made me miserable. But was I choosing to be miserable about those things? 

I have also been studying on the idea of ego and the most intriguing to me was emotional ego. As I sat on my couch feeling like shit, I took a mental step back. I observed those feelings I described in my body, my body’s reactions to the emotions. I let them be for a minute and then consciously removed myself from them. My consciousness is both entwined and seperate from my body. I felt the part of it that was observing the body and the other part that could see the thoughts and the subsequent reactions only for what they were, thoughts on a situation from the past. It is no longer my present moment.

My present moment was here, on my couch, drinking coffee. I looked around at the different colors in my home, the environment I had so painstakingly crafted. I like it here. The art is meaningful. In fact, how can I forget how loved I am when so much of the things in my home remind me that I am? 

I choose to ignore it. I choose misery.

What happens if I choose to only live in the present moment? The right here right now which consistently unfolds into the future? The concept of past, present, and future is truly a perplexing one to think on as neither truly exists. But if the present only exists second to second does it exist either? Even as I typed that present moment is already gone. Are we living in a constant state of both past, present, and future as our seconds unfold into all three states simultaneously?

I meditated on this concept for a part of my afternoon, probing my memories and my present moments. Trying to truly expand and experience the layers of my own consciousness and how far it went. What were its limits? Where did these thoughts come from? What was the source? Why could I think on all of this and also still have a song from earlier playing in the background of my thoughts?

I actually fell asleep for a few moments and when I woke up, I felt a very strong sense of peace. Here I was, in the now. The past was not now. It could only affect me if I chose to ruminate on it. The unknown of the future can only affect me if I choose to ruminate on it. But in the present now, what was there to experience other than contentment of my own company?

I poured myself a nice little glass of soda water and continued a book by Elkhart Tolle that I had been reading off and on on my vacation and very soon it dived into this very concept that I had been exploring in the afternoon. The synchronicities of the universe make no mistakes.

I spoke with my sister before I left about the idea of ‘letting go of the rope’ in life. There’s a common mindset I find myself in where I feel as if I am on a dock holding onto a rope with all my might that is attached to a ship in the water. As the current tries to take it, I sweat and struggle. I get pulled along inch by inch even as I turn around and heave to continue pulling it backwards. But it keeps forcing me forward. In my own fear, I want to keep it with me and docked where I can see it. But there’s no bigger sense of relief than when you let go of the rope, feel it whip through your hands, stand back, and watch it set sail.

The letting go of the rope is truly the only time life can set sail. There is no true control but only an ego’s desire to arrogantly decide its and others path. There is no story to unfold but instead a series of just right nows to continuously choose to experience and how.

I like it, Picasso!

Self Reflection

The Love of a Father.

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Today is my first full day home from a week-long trip from Portland to Santa Monica. As I arrived at LAX at 7:00 am Friday morning I could feel a sense of anxiety and dread building in the background of my mind and as I continued onto the flight it began to churn bringing with it a sense of deep irritability and discontent. My thoughts were starting to race, my jaw was clenched, and as we touched down in Indianapolis I felt nothing but a deep pit of unhappiness in my soul.

While I was sad on my trip, I could meditate on my feelings and view them from the outside. I could evaluate my situation and past experiences with an objective lens and think and behave rationally. I could feel the deep peace of my overall self outside of the turmoil.

Here, it’s all consuming. I’m drowning in it. I hate it here.

I can’t escape my misery, I’m fully sober. There’s no soothing and numbing from an outside substance. Honestly, it was the most I’ve struggled in a long time. How nice would it be to go to a bar and have a drink and lose myself in a crowd of people talking and laughing? Even just go and not have a drink, just to prey on the energy? But I do have the awareness at least that that would be dangerous territory at the present moment and not worth the risk.

So how do I incorporate that feeling I had when I was away to when I’m here and all of my issues are presented to face once again?

I visited these places to see my best friend and my Mamaw. I spent time with more family as well and found it extremely enjoyable. As my Mamaw said during one of our deep conversations on my childhood,

“I never want you to doubt that you were loved.”

I think a key I need to focus on is the unconditional love I feel from these people, though far, is still with me. I am still loved.

My first night home after unpacking and cleaning I was enraged, miserable and I did what I do best: I took to my car and drove. As I was driving I contemplated, if I will be extremely honest, the abstract concept of ending my life. But then I became aware of the distinct feeling that my Real Dad was with me. He was with me and he understood. He ended his life too. He regretted it. He knew the emotions I was feeling, the overwhelmingness of them and he was here to bring comfort and comfort alone.

I always sought out the presence of my Dad but it makes complete sense that he would step back and allow my Real Dad to be the one to be here for me. He understood better, I was so much like him. The time with my Mamaw opened the door to understand him better and to see him again. I could find the deep down wound in my soul that was missing and grieving him all this time.

I realized then that he had always been here, he’d just been waiting. He understood why I pushed him away. But the unconditional love a father has for his daughter has never faltered.

I am loved. Though I feel very alone at this present moment, so much of it is my own making. I fear connection with others because I fear it being taken away. My past experiences have made me very wary of care and love being shown to me. When will they leave? When will they prove that they don’t actually care?

I cannot become jaded. I have to open my heart to feel loved and to love others in the way I spoke on in ‘The New Way to See’. There’s so much love to be had, to give still. The defense mechanisms I have set up so defiantly over time don’t make that less so or make me less worthy of it. 

I am ready to give and receive love. I am ready to give and receive joy. I am ready to open myself up to people outside of a blog on the internet or superficial conversations. I am ready to see others in person and experience new things. I am ready to no longer isolate myself from others because I don’t feel, deep down, I’m worthy of them.

I took a cross stitch from my Mamaw’s house that says, “Give Thanks”. I am thankful for my experiences and the feeling of true unconditional love I experienced on my trip. I’ll think of it when I see it every day.

I’ll carry that love with me, my father with me, as I face a new day even though I truly don’t want to. He didn’t but I can.

Self Reflection

The New Way to See.

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I have done mushrooms one time in my life. My partner and I decided to take a metric fuck ton and float down the river. We ate them as we pushed off and, lazily, we sipped on White Claws and enjoyed the summer day. Everything was normal, as it usually was, until a point: As we butted up to the shore, I went to push us off and found I was absolutely mesmerized by the texture of a tree. It was complex, the textures were awe striking. I stared at it for either two seconds or two days, who knows, but then turned back to my partner and exclaimed, “Are we on a fucking Disney ride? Was this made by Disney?!”

No, it was the White River. My body was probably actively fighting off a giardia infection as I floated down absolutely gobsmacked by the scenery around me. That’s the point, the White River is shit. But in that moment, exaggerated by psilocybin, it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. With every bend of the river, I was dreamily pulled through another great expanse of scenery. Everything was gorgeous, meant for me and my partner to experience in all its glory.

The last time you found me, I was dealing with being in the throes of deep depression. I was struggling to find a way to deal with any of my large emotions from digging up the roots of my trauma responses and I was trying to balance and integrate them into my life. This continued but I have had a lot of seemingly small moments that have brought me closer to that idea of True Self.

I spent last Sunday at my ex-partner’s house. We had an emotional week with a lot of ups and downs and hard conversations. Neither of us wanted to continue having them, so for a day, we let it be. We spent a day on the couch, him napping on and off, myself reading a book on science’s role in spirituality. At the end of the night, when I had nearly finished my book, I looked up from the pages and right at him. He was where he had been all day, doing the same thing. But I saw him completely differently and then, as you may have noticed is a theme, myself.

I have always told myself that I couldn’t develop myself as a person with someone else in the mix. Maybe subconsciously, but it is absolutely something I believed. To fully thrive, I had to be alone. In fact, I thought it had been proven over and over. Looking at my partner’s sleeping face like it was the first time again, like it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, made it all come together. I was the one who put that limitation on myself, he had nothing to do with that.

I thought back to all the times I had pushed him off, his hand outreached to dance at a random moment as I’d roll my eyes. The times he would try to be lighthearted and I would scowl. “He doesn’t get it.” I’d think to myself. What didn’t he get? I had created my own misery by being stuck in my routines and a need for near constant control of our entire lives. While I felt he lacked discipline and stability, which he does, I also lacked an ability to see the need for the lack of it as well.

I often pull Temperance in our readings. I pull it so much that I barely think on it anymore. But it’s truly more than just finding balance. It’s about mixing two substances, carefully and diligently, until they become a new one. It’s about give and take.

I used to resent the things I first loved about my partner, the things I used to love about myself. I resented his ability to live in the moment, his lightheartedness and his carefree spirit. When I was drinking, I had these qualities too. He still has them sober but I felt like my mind was a flesh eating disease. My thoughts ate away at my personality until I was left an empty shell of myself. Sober, I was left only with resentment and self consciousness. I couldn’t temper the way I used to be with who I was now.

I could never let go enough to be happy in very many moments at all. I couldn’t do it alone either, but I blamed him. I feared the idea of letting go after having been out of control for so long. Control was how I kept my sobriety, it’s how I felt like I kept my sense of self. Instead, I kept myself locked in place. I couldn’t grow, thrive, or even laugh how I wanted to anymore. My strength had become my weakness.

In finding Temperance, I can embrace those things I love about my partner. I can wrap myself in them to find them again in myself. I can let go so we can dance in the kitchen again, make plans on a whim. We can live in the moment. With Temperance, his strengths are not his weakness. He can see the benefits of a plan, of having stability, of staying in once in a while. Together, we can combine to truly find the balance of life. We can find all the joys, the frivolous and the contained, as qualities to admire, not to be resentful of. When they are balanced, the cup doesn’t run over or run dry.

I do have the ability to thrive while I’m in a relationship. I can focus on myself. I absolutely can, I read the whole book, published a blog, and discussed heavy topics with him right there. I’m going on a whole trip without him. My interests are separate from him. I didn’t need him at all anymore. This used to be terrifying to me.

Now, the realization that peace is found where I least expected it, even resisted it, has moved me deeply. It dawned on me that I could let him go, I could set him free. Because being in a relationship where you truly love and respect each other is freeing. If it’s not, it’s not right. Holding him in a firm grip, clipping his wings, would never allow that freedom or that trust to grow. He would just be a broken bird, constantly fighting against my stranglehold. We had to choose to be here.

We had constantly perpetuated a cycle of treating each other badly. We wouldn’t treat the other how we wanted to be treated, leading the other to do the same. What could happen if I actually treated him with respect? If I treated myself the same? If I could show him daily that I do think he deserves to be loved? If I focused on myself first without sacrificing anything? What if I could look at him everyday and see him how I used to? These concepts can coexist. He still has all of the qualities I loved about him to begin with. So do I, if I search for them. We can, and have in the past, released the ones we had that broke us down.

And even if things don’t follow an idea I have in my mind, it will still be okay. I am a whole person either way. I will still have learned these lessons. I will still love and respect him for who he is. He doesn’t have to earn that. It can just be. Just like the love and respect I have for myself. I can show this to everyone, without romantic attachments tied to it at all. My old, negative, and hateful thought cycles don’t even feel as familiar anymore. Everyone has a reason, a process to their actions. We’re all trying.

A few days later, I was leaving for work. I had my headphones on and as the music swelled in my ears, I turned from my front walk to start down the street. Suddenly, I was struck by the beauty of it all. The sun filtering through the trees, the subtle changes in color as fall has started to make an appearance. The air was crisp in my lungs as I took a deep breath and made my way forward. In my shitty little neighborhood, on my shitty little street, everything was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

The complexity of life and the ways it teaches you is a glorious experience. Loving someone, loving others, and loving myself made every moment seem meaningful. Every view I have admired as the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen was also one I had seen as an absolute piece of shit. I’ve capsized on the White River when it’s ran high. I’ve looked at my partner and loathed everything about him. I’ve cursed this street as I walk to work in the dreary, cold winter. But sometimes, after a season or two, when you look again: they’re full of promise, full of wonder. I walked to work and continued to admire it. After all, it was a new day.

Tomorrow it may rain, but just maybe, this time we will have umbrellas.

Self Reflection

The Current.

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As you might imagine, I spent the past week after my last two posts spiraling into the depths of a deep depression.

I could not trust my own reality. I could not trust myself. Every thought I had, I questioned. Every memory that kept popping up, I evaluated my mindset in it. How did my own warped perception color the situation? Where else has my past manifested? How much of my relationship ending was at my own hands? How many people have I pushed away? How can I ever trust what is good, what is right, what is truthful from my own perceptions and from others words and actions? The lenses I evaluate my life through are defensive and often (as much as I hate to admit) self serving.

These past events and the maladaptive coping skills, I discovered, roll into all parts of my life. The same issues persist in my friendships. I keep them at arms length from the beginning because I always expect them to leave. I do not invest my emotions into women as readily as men because I do not expect it will be reciprocated. It has hurt when I do and it is not. I am very guarded. I’m even guarded thinking about it, I’ve realized, because I think this will be one of the hardest challenges for me in my process.

But anyway, I’ve been going full cuckoo bananas. I haven’t eaten, I haven’t slept. I’ve been lost in my own emotional and mental turmoil. I have been destroyed by feeling like I can’t. I can’t move on, I can’t move forward. I can’t go backwards. I can’t unlearn these things. I feel lost, blindfolded and groping into space to try and find anything to hold onto.

The night before I went back to work I didn’t fall asleep until six am. I was doing reading after reading of my cards trying to make sense of things. It only made less. I was not trusting myself, my intuition, my own reality before me. How would it? (And by saying they weren’t making sense, I mean they were telling me to REST. And I roared back, “TRY AGAIN” on a loop for hours.)

After this day, I was so drained there was no way not to sleep. But I woke up at four the next morning already back at it. My thoughts woke me, like a swarm of wasps, already buzzing and stinging. I have been evaluating the resistance I meet in my mind recently. Like a door that’s closed, I feel myself butt up against it. Instead of turning back, I have been opening and seeing what I have hidden behind it. I have often found that it’s a series of doors. Every one that is opened leads to more wasps flying in.

They say that every bad coping skill was one that used to work for you at some point in time but now no longer does. I avoid the things that make me anxious, I shut them back. I close the door to things I don’t want to acknowledge because they are hurtful, dark, or frightening. I do need to make sure I reopen the doors, but I need to be more cautious with my approach. Eventually, I found myself swarmed, stung, bruised and defeated. I am overwhelming myself. I am burning myself out over analyzing. It’s starting to feel like all the doors are closed for a reason, I am creating my own misery. Maybe I need to take my whole ass out and let the momentum hang suspended.

That morning, an hour after waking, I attempted to meditate. I wanted to give up, I couldn’t focus. The wasps were relentless with their constant attacks. It was then that I decided to try a new tactic.

In my mind, I am in front of only one door. As I open it, it leads to nothing. Nothing at all. It’s a black expanse that goes on infinitely. There are no thoughts, no emotions. It just is. As I step through there is no feeling of falling or anything under my feet. I am suspended in the nothing. The door closes, the light from it gone, I am encapsulated. It is peaceful.

As thoughts find a way in, I imagine a chest. The lid is closed but there is a space for a key. As they arrive, they go from my mind to the box in a fluid motion. I do not need to consciously open it, they meet no resistance to deposit them inside. As they come in, I send them through. I know I can pick through the contents later if I so choose, they are not permanently shut away.

To keep myself grounded, I visualize myself as a tree. My roots dig deep into the earth, I am steady, I am solid. But I am not stuck, my limbs sweep out to feel the universe. A weeping willow, I am able to adapt and fluctuate with the winds. I shed the leaves I no longer need as they reach their breaking point. They are peacefully cast off to be blown away with the next breeze. I am graceful, strong, wise.

At another time, these looping thoughts quickly thread together to create a never ending string of pearls. They keep thwacking together, one by one, I can’t stop it. But then I do, I have scissors. I easily snip the ribbon, slicing through the silk. I let the pearls scatter. It doesn’t matter if one rolls away, I do not need to find them.

I have not found a visualization with my ex partner that doesn’t break my heart. As I start frantically gathering up pearls, I stop, and I send them to the box.

These visualizations are so detailed because I had to make them so detailed. If I had to open the box, I couldn’t put things in it as easy. I would have to picture myself purposely opening it. If the tree wasn’t a weeping willow it made me feel like my arms were stuck straight out (I don’t know, dude, that’s just how it felt.). If the ribbon wasn’t made of silk, I had trouble cutting through it. Or sawing through it. It had to be a flimsy ribbon cut with scissors. I had to make myself realize that I wasn’t doing any of it wrong because it needed so much detail, it made it what I needed.

I never really committed to these things because they made me feel stupid sitting in my bed thinking of myself as a tree like I’m in poca-fucking-hontas. But, it was working. In these moments, I felt more in control of my racing thoughts. I felt present in the moment I was in. I could stop a debilitating train of thought if I snipped the ribbon that strung them together or if I locked the stinging thoughts into a box.

I had been doing mild versions of this before and abandoned them, but that’s okay. I remembered again. That’s the point: I can regroup and refine my approach. It’s okay to lock certain things away if they are not productive to growth, if they are self loathing disguised as self exploration.

Although as the week went on, I found that the scars I had unwrapped to inspect had thin skin. Although they had healed over, they were not calloused. As things rubbed against them the skin had become raw, irritated. Eventually those wounds fully reopened to reveal a larger wound than before. The pain from them felt new but familiar, it ripped through me like a wildfire. Choking out my logic and sense, I could not visualize to get past the deep rooted feelings of hurt it incited. I found myself twice in a room of my own destruction when the anguish eliminated everything inside of me but the hurt of that child who felt rejected. I couldn’t block her out anymore.

I am trying to ride the waves as they come in. Trying to stay present and grounded but also riding out when I want to leave my entire life behind. I feel strong, capable and then weak, miserable, and pathetic. I can’t make heads or tails of it. I have regretted even beginning this journey at all. I’ve questioned every decision, questioned my own sanity. I have thrown every last tarot deck I owned against the wall and as the cards ricocheted around the expanse of my home, I screamed, “How am I supposed to get to Death and see The Sun if I cannot make it past The Tower?”

I truly want to see a way through. I really do. I want to see a balance of my emotions and consistent day to days. But I just don’t right now. And maybe that’s the whole point. I always have a game plan, I’m always ready for action. I always had ways to ‘soothe’ but they were either unhealthy or outright ignoring. Maybe this is just the one time I have to weather the storm, stick it out, and I’ll finally see The Sun. I literally just have to figure it out as I go along.

Not every day is going to be a good day where I can visualize myself as a god damn weeping willow. Some days are going to be harder. I can learn from the days when I destroyed everything I could touch (including regretfully my Paris Hilton tea kettle) and learn from when I cleaned it up. I can realize when these emotions are coming and not do it again. I just have to keep going. There’s really no other option, I can’t run away from it. Besides, it has to give soon, constant misery is boring as fuck.

And honestly, in my spiral, I did laundry. I kept my house clean. When I couldn’t force myself to eat, I drank four hundred protein shakes a day. I don’t think I am because, mentally, I want to throw myself off a building but I am still existing and attempting to take care of myself. I have started to eat again and I have slept for more than a couple hours a night. I am at least treading water in between the times I am washed away with the current.

When I was putting away laundry my only thought was, “this is the worst task I could ever imagine doing in my whole life.” on repeat. But the result was that all of my clothes were clean and ready for the week. When I’m getting dressed for work I don’t think, “Man, I really hated folding these fucking pants, hanging this shirt, and organizing these fuuucking socks.” No, they’re just there. I don’t avoid them because I hated what went into being able to wear them. It’s okay to hate my effort, to feel stupid, to feel like it’s not working. One day it will. When I don’t like how I handle something, I will regroup and refine my approach.

One day the reward of this time period is going to be similar to having clean clothes. I won’t think about how much I hated what went into it, I won’t avoid it because of the misery I experienced in it.

It’ll just be there and I’ll wear it.

Heartbreak & Loss

The Mirror.

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One full week after Affair Day, my ex partner and I lost our shit.

We faced off, chest to chest. I grabbed him by his chin with the tightest grip I could, forced him to look me in my eyes, and then I struck him.

I hit my partner. I bloodied his lip. I had lost control and the rage had spilled into a place I couldn’t contain anymore. I am extremely ashamed of this. I didn’t know that was inside of me.

This moment struck a chord. Mirroring each other, we sat and stared for a long while. And then he broke, the words came tumbling out of him. I sat across from him as he bared his soul and began to sob. All of the deep rooted issues, fears, and insecurities finally came to the surface.

Eventually, I crossed the room and I held him. I held him until he calmed down and then we went our separate ways for the night.

After this, I could really see him. As a child, a teenager, a young man at war. I could see everything that had hurt him and how it shaped him into who he is today. I could see what motivated him to do what he did. I understood it as it struck a chord with me. I didn’t ask myself why.

I will not share what he told me as it is indeed his story to tell. These are mine.

This new feeling of understanding and empathy inspired me to try again so we went to couples counseling. We tried to make it work. This ignited a lot of my introspection. My codependent tendencies would have never been challenged if he was not there to display them in real time. I would have never been shown how I could be toxic too. It took a second to sink in. He was supposed to be the one who was wrong. My perception was skewed, I couldn’t see how we were similar.

I do strongly believe in peoples ability to change. I believe in my own. I think every single person has the capacity. In him, I had seen it when he got sober shortly after I did. I thought he could do anything he set his mind too but his recent behavior had seeded me with doubt. Even as I tried to make it work, I was living in fear that he would disappoint me again as I shakily tried to recenter my view of him.

A week or so ago, I came to a place where I had to acknowledge that our paths couldn’t move forward together. Even as I saw the efforts we were making, there was too much of us that had been destroyed along the way. I didn’t trust him to be careful with my heart while also keeping a part for myself, it was all or nothing. My own hurt was suffocating me and the growth I was trying to make. My intuition was telling me to go deeper into myself but I was still looking at him. I was always going to be looking at him.

So you can imagine it stung when I saw him soothing his hurts in the same old ways just days after I left him. I fled to my car and listened to songs about heartbreak and mentally screamed at him, “I believed in you! You deserve so much better than that!’

But let’s be real here: It also just outright bottomed me out emotionally to feel like I wasn’t good enough, I had been replaced, and I was way too easy to forget.

I was moving forward, I was trying to heal. I wanted him to do it too! But if I am really real with myself (as this stupid blog often pushes me to be) I didn’t want him to be with someone else. That wasn’t the plan. I wanted him to do it, and do it alone, so that we could finally have time to heal separately. We could be made pure by our transformations. In the end, we could make our way back home.

I have to let that go. One, it’s unrealistic and unfair. Two, I had been trying to convince myself I was blazing on a hero’s journey but after experiencing this past week, without seeing him moving on, I probably would have gone back to him. I would have eventually soothed myself with him as he did with others. I am no better. I don’t think I would have made it many days past The Numbing. Removing the option of his comfort forced me to push forward and find comfort in myself, I can’t act like I chose it freely.

Nevertheless, I had to sit here in my misery for more than a day to be comfortable enough to explore what it was and, in turn, to finally look at myself.

Believe me, I’ve hated every single second of it. I feel like I’m missing a god damn limb. I look and feel like a shell of who I was. I can’t stand the idea of him getting the comfort I crave from being on someone’s pedestal while I feel like I am going to literally die here in the cold trying to heal myself. I hope you read that in the bratty tone it’s supposed to be.

But we have chosen our journeys. As I began mine I finally had to ask myself: Why wouldn’t I just give up? He’d hurt me so badly, why do I still want to understand him? Why do I still want his approval if I think I am so much better than him?

After finishing The Roots., I gained clarity on the patterns and the whys of my own internal monologues and actions. As I uncovered this about myself, it all felt extremely familiar to me. I had heard it before. Then I realized: Of course I could never give up on him! It would have felt like I was giving up on myself because were the same fucking person!

But Savannah, you were faithful! You never cheated! That’s worse!

Yeah, and you bet your ass that was my first rebuttal to this realization too. I didn’t cope with things from my past the way he did! I’m not bad like him! But in reality, that only gave me the leg up to be self righteous. I always got to be the wronged party, the worthy and good one, if his attacks were so much worse. As much as it hurt, I enjoyed the power his more obvious hurts gave. If he felt unworthy of me, he would never leave me.

He went for the kill, but I went for a death by a thousand cuts. I may have not been unfaithful but I was emotionally manipulative. In my constant desire to isolate myself from any perceived threats, I withdrew and hoarded everything he needed to feel safe, loved, and needed.

To me, sometimes he is the Two of Cups radiating with everything good I see in him. We are unified, we are soulmates. I’ve never loved another more. Reversed, I feel that he has fooled me and is actually a snake, coiled and waiting to strike! He must be the reason for all my disharmony! I run, frightened, until I find myself again where I started: the me who sees him as the Two of Cups.

I would attach myself to his side, I would glow with the sheer love and desire to be around him. I would shower him with love, praise, and affection. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, I would shrink back with no explanation, leaving him cold and rejected. As he mentally spiraled, barely any reassurance or warmth could be given until I brought myself back full circle.

To him, I was the Queen of Swords. He thought we could take on the world together. I could make everything around him make sense, pointing out the joy around us, remembering the things he could not. He was motivated and inspired by the standard I held us too. Nobody could hold a candle to me, he crowned me as the one he wanted to be by his side when we conquered it all.

Reversed: We couldn’t. It didn’t make sense. I didn’t remember it right. My standards were destroying him. The flame extinguished, my crown was taken off and thrown carelessly to the side.

Soon, he’d cradle my tear streaked face, pick it back up and replace it.

We weren’t getting anywhere. We were always going to be two damaged bozos looking around and shrugging our shoulders while randomly stabbing at each other.

I have spent years telling him that is is how he thought. Pointing out the patterns in his moods, his relationships prior, trying to get him to just see so he could stop hurting himself, hurting me. Probably should have looked at yourself, bitch.

That’s the thing, I did question myself, I knew this turmoil inside of me couldn’t be right. But his childhood was so traumatic, mine paled in comparison. I should be mentally sound and able to lead the way, you know, like he told me I was. It was how he saw me. But we both just rambled off the version of our childhood that we had rehearsed, the version with no feelings to it. It was not until his true feelings were revealed that I could identify with him and see my own.

As we found in The Roots., It only takes one moment to completely augment a child’s perception of their limited reality. It only takes one moment to send their emotions into hiding, to make them see the world as only good and evil, and to base their identity on how others see them so they never feel less than again.

To dig deeper into the roots: remember that seeing my Real Dad’s girlfriend looking for pity disgusted me. Since being looked at with pity is what had just caused me so much shame, I was revolted by her neediness for it. I internalized that letting my insecurities show made me weak and pathetic. I found comfort in feeling like I was better than her, she couldn’t hurt me as I looked down on her.

His story is not the same as mine but the themes are similar. Driven by a need to feel better than others, to feel loved and desirable: he looks outward to affirm himself. He seeks out those who will worship him, but he has no connection too so that if rejected, it does not matter. Driven by my need to feel better than others, to feel loved and desirable: I put myself on a pedestal of my own creation. To be looked at and admired, but not touched. My attention is a reward. I do not risk the vulnerability of someone thinking they have a claim to me or to reject it if its offered.

These absolute shit coping skills, as well as the never ending love/hate cycle, are just defenses we’ve used to protect that child inside of us from ever feeling like they aren’t good enough again. We cannot be hurt if we are emotionally detached or destroying anything that could make us feel small.

The point I’ve always missed is: It does not matter that I never did any of this intentionally, the resulting damage to him is the same as it was to me.

We love each other so deeply because we desperately see everything in the other that we want to heal in ourselves. It’s heartbreaking, honestly. No matter how badly we wanted it or how inspired we were by each other, we couldn’t release the defenses around our deepest fears. We couldn’t break the cycles of the extremes we saw each other in. When we were in a position to try, too much had happened. I retreated again.

In the roots of it all, we were just scared and we just wanted to be loved.

I cannot go back in time. I cannot fix it. Instead, I have to recognize that I loved him so much despite of the fact that he was a direct mirror of myself. I can love myself the same way. I can forgive myself for hurting him as I forgave him for hurting me.

I have to integrate the Two of Cups with the fallen crown, the snake with the Queen of Swords. I have to accept them as all parts of a single image. I have to move forward to find a world of balance, a world where good and bad exists in harmony and vulnerability builds trust. After all, this does not just affect our relationship, this is the lens in which we see our entire lives.

We have said before that I’m the usually the one to start the next phase of our lives. He often follows my lead.

In my mirror image, I found myself searching to find the meaning behind it all. I dug deep, I labored, I meticulously excavated and turned over every thing I could. I took my time to linger as he is where I felt safe. I examined every memory of him, every touch, every lie. How did we become this? How do we fix it?

I neared the end of my search, it was time to go home. But then, in darkest parts of the roots, I stumbled upon the child he had hidden away. The child who was scared, the child who reached out only to be slapped away, the child he’s been so valiantly defending. Next to him, was my own. They had been waiting.

As I pull her out, I hope he follows soon.