ACOA - http://www.adultchildren.org/

I think finally some real clarity forms for me out of the chaos that has been my life and the clarity definitely seems to come out of what could be called ACOA principles, I feel. The two latest things that really hit one came from listening to a empathic astrologer which may seem odd to some I'm sure but she drove a stake right through my heart and somehow hearing what I already knew really seemed to help me get completely clear on it. She mentioned this pattern I had been in and mentioned that it involved relationships and that I was fully aware of it and fully aware of what I had to do to change it but that I couldn't like an addict. She said I knew now that I had to break this pattern and that I could see how destructive it is and that I could see exactly where it is going.

Why did this help? I think it was like someone finally really knew me at a very deep level like was in my head and it gave me some confirmation from outside.

I was able after that to pull myself away from any advisory role in this dysfunctional situation I am in now that is so much like numerous others over the last five years that it honestly frightens me a little how it could be so when I consciously tried so hard to avoid exactly this situation? There can be no doubt that some hand is at play that is greater than my own conscious intention even if it be just my own unconscious but I suspect it is karma which I have always perceived not as a punitive force but a teaching force.

I've accepted now that this person does not care about my ... being. I was talking with a friend who is hurt by the rejection of a close friend after many years and I realized that for her this was far more painful than is my own feelings of being dismissed in a love relationship because I do not feel the person I am involved with knows who and what I am so their reaction to me lacks the kind of depth that can really hurt me as would the reaction of a very close friend who actually knows who and what I am - that would be devastating to me as I saw it was to my friend. I see that in this situation I am in it is not about me on any level and that is the problem. Literally, if I were to say anything regarding my own feelings, thoughts, needs, desires, dreams - anything, the response is "O with all I have going on I'm suppose to care about your stuff!" and I get it for this person how that is quite the reality. It is not about me at all.

I think I really get it now that it is okay for me to want "it" to be about me. I have always felt shame at being selfish it's a deep feeling in me and not without some warrant but I see that I am capable of being available to others and caring of others while deserving to have this desire to be relevant myself as well. It was a subtle thing my relationship with my single mom this emotional incestuousness and proximity abandonment like some soft, dreamlike dance we danced for those many years. I love you, mom. I understand it all now. You did love me best you could and you came back for me again and again and eventually you kept me and took care of me the very best you could.

I recall once visiting my mom not too long before she died when she told me sobbing - and she seldom cried was a strong woman, actually - "All I EVER wanted David was a good man to love me and a family. I didn't want anything special" she said looking up at me with such pain then breaking down and crying so that the last part came out broken, "but I never got that my whole life long". It broke my heart and I held her and I thought very distinctly how she had expressed perhaps my own deepest feeling. It was a terrible and haunting moment and I will never forget it.

My Impassioned Flowers

On! Sail on! My Impassioned Flowers 
Over the nights and the frightful hours 


But one glance back shall steal our powers
Leave us faceless, our hands devoured,
Dried pillars of salt under Draconian Towers

O never to falter for the dawn's not ours
On! Sail On! My Impassioned Flowers

Who Am I to Argue?

I find myself again with this nearly overwhelming sense of not being in the right place almost not sure of how I got here even though I can retrace my steps in my mind and I do know how I got here and I know also that every step was of my own volition no one forced me or drugged me and relocated me at any point along the way. It is this knowing, in fact, that seems to be the only thing keeping me from really unhinging this time. I have this sense of having pushed it too far, having risked too greatly and am now dealing with the consequences of multiple and catastrophic failures.

It is almost as if I am some amnesiac and I can't help but think of a line from ACOA on the false self - that one can live so long in the false self that they may forget what their own real self is altogether. Yes, there it is. It is a frightening thought and brings me up out of bed where I have been unsuccessfully trying to ground myself for some time. I tell myself look man you are right here right now but it is as if my self insists more willfully than ever - "no, I am not!"

Who am I to argue?

I wander around and wait for someone to recognize me and come up to me and say something like, "Well I'll be damned if it isn't old (fill in the blank?) come back home to (fill in the blank?) Why we were all wondering where you had gotten off to!" And when I ask, this someone will be able to tell me where my home is or at least where it used to be. This someone will be able to tell me if any of my relatives are still alive, maybe if they living there in (fill in the blank?)

But as much as I wander, and I have wandered a lot, no one as of yet has recognized me. I know this is not my house here and these are not my things, not my people, not my animals, not my landscape.  

I'm just feeling kind of sick and broken too badly to do anything but languish right now. I feel as though I am most of the way through a convoluted and annoying story for which I can imagine no good ending. I'd honestly like to just throw the book away but I can't, dammit.