Learning about Love the Hard way
Today is Valentine's Day. I am thinking of going downtown to fetch the mail, and look at some primroses, one to give to my husband's secretary.
This day is often a day of goodwill gestures, not just for romance.
So I often do just that, make a call, try to send an email, or something interesting.
Or not. I have people in my life that I am not sure if I should, or would it be appreciated, or
something else. Partly based on my own insecurity about how healthy our relationship.
Upon having to go through the emotional clearing process a time or two, or three, I have found the results vary. I am sure if any else of you has done it, you may have found it the same.
I came to learn that I have a different perspective about many relationships. My own personal gut feelings, heartfelt feelings are less fuzzy to me than they were before.
I look back on how trying so hard to always make nice, make it right for everyone else cost me dearly. Hours spent on the telephone hearing how bad this or that was, this boss was, this husband was, this child, this friend, on and on. I though I was being loving by doing so. Often it was extremely one sided, with me being sympathic, even narcissistic. From someone else's point of view, not mine. Mine you are reading. And happened a lot over the years.
I would get off the phone after talking to a friend or family member and spend a lot of time fretting something crazy. I would be so caught up in their problems, and worry about the____________ insert issue here, that I sometimes couldn't sleep. It was very draining. And to top it off, when I was with that person the behavior towards me was quite emotionally abusive to me. I had no boundaries. I felt like I had attracted all of the above to me.
At the ripe old age of 59, I couldn't be anyone's dumping ground anymore. I still loved them, but if things were a lot more tangled, and not so clear cut as I once understood them to be, and I was still
hearing about their issues, I began to practice clearing out the emotional toll from all of it on myself.
One woman I did by speaking my truth about after all of our years of this relationship of her calling at 6 am twice a week and crying or being angry with her children, her husband, or the neighbors, mutual friends, etc. And then a manipulative behavior about even where to go to lunch, complaining about having food poisoning the day after each time we had lunch. This also during a
6 am phone call.
So I did, as gently as I could. But being direct and also loving just doesn't always work. You can get smacked down. I didn't call names, but I did address the issues that bothered me, as kind as I could but also straight forwardly. At the end I told her I did love her, and loved talking about things like coast to coast radio with her. She hasn't talked to me since.
Another friend, I didn't get even that far. She became distant and sometimes hostile, about the wierdest things. So I don't speak to her very much. Our last phone conversation was over a year ago.
Where she popped off on the subject of a young wounded veteran who was having both of his amputated arms replaced by a ground breaking transplant.
She angrily burst out "Why did he rate???" I was floored. I have a son-in -law who has some injuries from Iraq during his tour there. He had a very new experimental surgery to fix his broken neck vertibrae, and his broken eardrum.
I tried to respond in as calm a manner, but she just kept this tone up during the rest of the conversation. I got off the phone as quickly as possible, and haven't tried to reach out since.
She has also been a friend with lots of drama in her life, and I would come away worn out from listening. I do feel as if she is a friend still, we did share some good times, but am at a loss to
understand her. I had to just accept it for the broken thing it was. She never calls me. Nor do I her.
I think what I have learned is that I cannot fix anything for anyone else if they don't want to take the steps they need to fix it themselves. If I had done things to cause this change, I would have liked to know. I tried to speak of it here and there, but now there is silence.
My heart may feel for them, but I learned to take care of myself.
This is a tough lesson to learn. How it started for me was with my son's suicide. The months afterwards were the loneliest I have ever had in my life. People simply kept their distance, and that made me feel worse.
I had imagined that at least more than one of my friends would call and check on me often to see how I and my husband were holding up. No. I can think of two to three of my husbands friends, and
after a short time only one regularly for me.
No, the only one who called was the friend who called twice a week at 6 am, and it rapidly shifted to all about her most of the time. Not always, but a lot, and more so as time went on.At the time I was just grateful someone cared to call at all. I was adrift. I felt abandoned. And trying to act like I didn't. I am still thankful for the calls no matter where they ended up.
I still think about her, but she made it clear by her actions that I am not on her list of friends anymore. She has moved on.
My own family, there were some who didn't call, didn't seem to care that I was going thru hell, and being quiet about it. Was this love? Looking back at the silence of one sister, I still am not sure.
I know people are uncomfortable with the aftermath of suicide. But they also want you just to go back to "normal", so they won't have to feel uncomfortable. And I tried at first, but I suffered terribly.
On my trips down to visit my daughter, son-in-law, and young grandson, in the Mojave desert, I would pull over into some side road and stop.
Then get out of the car, sit on the hood, a big rock, or open the back end up and sit. I would light a cigarette and proceed to tell the Creator to go get fucked. What a jackass the great Spirit was to me.
I had spent all this time happy, trying to raise happy kids, live a happy life in the country, learn to be closer to Creator in my own way, and Creator let me down. My son killed himself.
And why, because some idiot doctor thought he needed an antidepressant to help with his stomach cramps when he ran college track. Gave him 99 refills, and sent my son on his way with no direction or monitoring. So after track season he just stopped taking it. If I name the drug, the pharmaceutical company will probably sue me.
Boy did they get trashed, I would have liked to see real damage there. I envisioned large factories that made drugs blow up, the doctor turn to stone and crumble. I cried and smoked,
both on the road, and on my own property for two years. I still do now and then, but it is gentler, I
talk to my son now. I am his mother, my tears will never stop, but they are less.
But eventually I forgave the doctor for being the profound ignoramus he was, influenced by some drug salesman. After all he told my son the antidepressant would "improve neuro-transmitter uptake". This my son told me, when I objected violently to this. The" doctor said so" thing. Well who told the doctor that? He was a general practioner, not a specialist.
Love, luckily had a handle on me. This isn't always obvious to me in my relationships with two of my sisters, but Love tells me to watch out for myself, not to put myself out into more conflicts with them. To me, Love and Creator are the same, and there can be communication when you finally learn what it sounds like.
As my youngest sister wisely said, don't try to stop them from doing what they do best.
It's theirs to learn, I suppose. I wonder if to them familial love means that you can simply say things to hurt others over and over and no one will care. Isn't so, but then that requires some deep insight and a lot of love to understand the energetic impacts of bad behavior on the energy bodies of other family members. A mindful kind of relating to loved ones.
I also find limiting alcohol consumption is very helpful. Drunk people often say things that can escalate into a worse situation. So a clear head helps to see ones way.
So this I do too, out of Love. I have learned that people have to go through what ever it is they have to. I may care, but I have to love myself. And enough to avoid too much contact with negative behavior that has left it's mark on me.
Being angry at someone else all the time is unhealthy, it is ok to feel anger, then you have to work hard not have that in your life. This is hard for many families, they feel they have to do the family thing and sit and suffer through.
So I have been selective about it. I still love my sisters, brother and parents and do want to do certain things with them, just as long as I can get the hell out when I need to when we are all together.
I have nieces who feel the same.
They love the family, but not all the time. I have come to see this is very healthy.
So their issues are all theirs, I have been through mine, learned not to try and intervene,still need to learn to speak up about when they violate my boundaries,
gently. Someday. I feel that at this point anything would simply set off the learned manipulative behavior I have come to experience from a few years back.
At least for the time being. I have had my love for them tested, but it is still there. Doesn't ever mean that I should allow myself to feel like I deserve bad behavior. I do not. Nor do I deserve to be lied to, like I wouldn't be able to tell. That I think hurts a lot in relationships.
There will be a time to speak my truth again. And it will be no nonsense, straight forward about what I have felt, and it will be done from Love. I do not hate anyone that I have learned to
do emotional clearing on, to the contrary. It has made me see the truth. But it has taught me to also
let them learn on their own. Like one's own children, the greatest gift of Love there it.
So my son and guides tell me so. You see, he is fine on the other side, and after all of my personal hell was complete, I did come to see and hear from him and then started to hear my guides.
For all of my cussing out Creator, Spirit, the Field of Existence, LOVE, insert your own name here_________________________
Creator's Love had my back the whole time.
This day is often a day of goodwill gestures, not just for romance.
So I often do just that, make a call, try to send an email, or something interesting.
Or not. I have people in my life that I am not sure if I should, or would it be appreciated, or
something else. Partly based on my own insecurity about how healthy our relationship.
Upon having to go through the emotional clearing process a time or two, or three, I have found the results vary. I am sure if any else of you has done it, you may have found it the same.
I came to learn that I have a different perspective about many relationships. My own personal gut feelings, heartfelt feelings are less fuzzy to me than they were before.
I look back on how trying so hard to always make nice, make it right for everyone else cost me dearly. Hours spent on the telephone hearing how bad this or that was, this boss was, this husband was, this child, this friend, on and on. I though I was being loving by doing so. Often it was extremely one sided, with me being sympathic, even narcissistic. From someone else's point of view, not mine. Mine you are reading. And happened a lot over the years.
I would get off the phone after talking to a friend or family member and spend a lot of time fretting something crazy. I would be so caught up in their problems, and worry about the____________ insert issue here, that I sometimes couldn't sleep. It was very draining. And to top it off, when I was with that person the behavior towards me was quite emotionally abusive to me. I had no boundaries. I felt like I had attracted all of the above to me.
At the ripe old age of 59, I couldn't be anyone's dumping ground anymore. I still loved them, but if things were a lot more tangled, and not so clear cut as I once understood them to be, and I was still
hearing about their issues, I began to practice clearing out the emotional toll from all of it on myself.
One woman I did by speaking my truth about after all of our years of this relationship of her calling at 6 am twice a week and crying or being angry with her children, her husband, or the neighbors, mutual friends, etc. And then a manipulative behavior about even where to go to lunch, complaining about having food poisoning the day after each time we had lunch. This also during a
6 am phone call.
So I did, as gently as I could. But being direct and also loving just doesn't always work. You can get smacked down. I didn't call names, but I did address the issues that bothered me, as kind as I could but also straight forwardly. At the end I told her I did love her, and loved talking about things like coast to coast radio with her. She hasn't talked to me since.
Another friend, I didn't get even that far. She became distant and sometimes hostile, about the wierdest things. So I don't speak to her very much. Our last phone conversation was over a year ago.
Where she popped off on the subject of a young wounded veteran who was having both of his amputated arms replaced by a ground breaking transplant.
She angrily burst out "Why did he rate???" I was floored. I have a son-in -law who has some injuries from Iraq during his tour there. He had a very new experimental surgery to fix his broken neck vertibrae, and his broken eardrum.
I tried to respond in as calm a manner, but she just kept this tone up during the rest of the conversation. I got off the phone as quickly as possible, and haven't tried to reach out since.
She has also been a friend with lots of drama in her life, and I would come away worn out from listening. I do feel as if she is a friend still, we did share some good times, but am at a loss to
understand her. I had to just accept it for the broken thing it was. She never calls me. Nor do I her.
I think what I have learned is that I cannot fix anything for anyone else if they don't want to take the steps they need to fix it themselves. If I had done things to cause this change, I would have liked to know. I tried to speak of it here and there, but now there is silence.
My heart may feel for them, but I learned to take care of myself.
This is a tough lesson to learn. How it started for me was with my son's suicide. The months afterwards were the loneliest I have ever had in my life. People simply kept their distance, and that made me feel worse.
I had imagined that at least more than one of my friends would call and check on me often to see how I and my husband were holding up. No. I can think of two to three of my husbands friends, and
after a short time only one regularly for me.
No, the only one who called was the friend who called twice a week at 6 am, and it rapidly shifted to all about her most of the time. Not always, but a lot, and more so as time went on.At the time I was just grateful someone cared to call at all. I was adrift. I felt abandoned. And trying to act like I didn't. I am still thankful for the calls no matter where they ended up.
I still think about her, but she made it clear by her actions that I am not on her list of friends anymore. She has moved on.
My own family, there were some who didn't call, didn't seem to care that I was going thru hell, and being quiet about it. Was this love? Looking back at the silence of one sister, I still am not sure.
I know people are uncomfortable with the aftermath of suicide. But they also want you just to go back to "normal", so they won't have to feel uncomfortable. And I tried at first, but I suffered terribly.
On my trips down to visit my daughter, son-in-law, and young grandson, in the Mojave desert, I would pull over into some side road and stop.
Then get out of the car, sit on the hood, a big rock, or open the back end up and sit. I would light a cigarette and proceed to tell the Creator to go get fucked. What a jackass the great Spirit was to me.
I had spent all this time happy, trying to raise happy kids, live a happy life in the country, learn to be closer to Creator in my own way, and Creator let me down. My son killed himself.
And why, because some idiot doctor thought he needed an antidepressant to help with his stomach cramps when he ran college track. Gave him 99 refills, and sent my son on his way with no direction or monitoring. So after track season he just stopped taking it. If I name the drug, the pharmaceutical company will probably sue me.
Boy did they get trashed, I would have liked to see real damage there. I envisioned large factories that made drugs blow up, the doctor turn to stone and crumble. I cried and smoked,
both on the road, and on my own property for two years. I still do now and then, but it is gentler, I
talk to my son now. I am his mother, my tears will never stop, but they are less.
But eventually I forgave the doctor for being the profound ignoramus he was, influenced by some drug salesman. After all he told my son the antidepressant would "improve neuro-transmitter uptake". This my son told me, when I objected violently to this. The" doctor said so" thing. Well who told the doctor that? He was a general practioner, not a specialist.
Love, luckily had a handle on me. This isn't always obvious to me in my relationships with two of my sisters, but Love tells me to watch out for myself, not to put myself out into more conflicts with them. To me, Love and Creator are the same, and there can be communication when you finally learn what it sounds like.
As my youngest sister wisely said, don't try to stop them from doing what they do best.
It's theirs to learn, I suppose. I wonder if to them familial love means that you can simply say things to hurt others over and over and no one will care. Isn't so, but then that requires some deep insight and a lot of love to understand the energetic impacts of bad behavior on the energy bodies of other family members. A mindful kind of relating to loved ones.
I also find limiting alcohol consumption is very helpful. Drunk people often say things that can escalate into a worse situation. So a clear head helps to see ones way.
So this I do too, out of Love. I have learned that people have to go through what ever it is they have to. I may care, but I have to love myself. And enough to avoid too much contact with negative behavior that has left it's mark on me.
Being angry at someone else all the time is unhealthy, it is ok to feel anger, then you have to work hard not have that in your life. This is hard for many families, they feel they have to do the family thing and sit and suffer through.
So I have been selective about it. I still love my sisters, brother and parents and do want to do certain things with them, just as long as I can get the hell out when I need to when we are all together.
I have nieces who feel the same.
They love the family, but not all the time. I have come to see this is very healthy.
So their issues are all theirs, I have been through mine, learned not to try and intervene,still need to learn to speak up about when they violate my boundaries,
gently. Someday. I feel that at this point anything would simply set off the learned manipulative behavior I have come to experience from a few years back.
At least for the time being. I have had my love for them tested, but it is still there. Doesn't ever mean that I should allow myself to feel like I deserve bad behavior. I do not. Nor do I deserve to be lied to, like I wouldn't be able to tell. That I think hurts a lot in relationships.
There will be a time to speak my truth again. And it will be no nonsense, straight forward about what I have felt, and it will be done from Love. I do not hate anyone that I have learned to
do emotional clearing on, to the contrary. It has made me see the truth. But it has taught me to also
let them learn on their own. Like one's own children, the greatest gift of Love there it.
So my son and guides tell me so. You see, he is fine on the other side, and after all of my personal hell was complete, I did come to see and hear from him and then started to hear my guides.
For all of my cussing out Creator, Spirit, the Field of Existence, LOVE, insert your own name here_________________________
Creator's Love had my back the whole time.
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