I’ve had two weeks of great transition and uncertainty, and I slipped back into old habits.
I started smoking again after years off of the habit, I started drinking heavily, and I started watching porn again, I have struggled with an old codependency habit too.
I felt that I needed those things to find comfort and to navigate the fluctuations of the fire of forging my path.
I moved out of a house that provided me comfort and security, but that wasn’t allowing me to fulfil myself and my purpose. It wasn’t an environment that fostered connection for me. The people I lived with didn’t know how to maintain an interest in me and my life. I was adrift, and I started to feel isolated. I wanted to foster connection and togetherness, and it wasn’t happening.
The decision to move out came with great financial insecurity, and it still has that aspect for me.
I’m not shaming myself for slipping into these old habits; I needed to do that to get through that. I felt the need to connect to an old self that was independent and progressive, who knew how to be interdependent with others.
The codependency habits came from the last year and a half. I slipped back into those habits; I disempowered myself to keep an environment of peace. I didn’t know how to maintain an empowered self and a space that didn’t include conflict. The people I was living with had a sense of who I was that wasn’t congruent to who I am, a lot had changed for me, and I wasn’t able to facilitate those conversations and allow the environment to remain safe and supportive, without conflict.
This speaks to me of the need for all parties to choose evolution.
If one person in an environment is changing or has changed, and the other people in that space don’t want to accept that change or don’t know how, it creates friction, resistance, resentment.
The environment becomes fractured, anxious, resentful.
I responded to this by numbing. I respond to a constant level of anxiety by withdrawing; isolating myself.
The conflict energy circled. Personally, I withdraw, become reclusive, and elusive. That state fosters a confusion, ruptures the trust of the others, keeps them in the dark. I get frustrated by the silence that secures the anxiety. In particular, with this dynamic, I enable shame that it’s my fault that I am odd and ‘other’. Since the environment has been the same for many years, the other people consider it as their standard. They try to enforce this environment on me with their judgement and criticism of my behaviour.
I face this with humility at first; compassion, and seek to understand their point of view. I get frustrated with the lack of curiosity in reciprocation. I feel isolated by the constancy of the lack of inclusion; they make coffee for themselves; I make coffee for all. I’m included in plans last minute, because of years of my recluse behaviour. I can only guess at their reasoning, maybe they aren’t sure if I want to be included, or they don’t believe that they are worthy of my inclusion. I don’t know how to bridge that divide. There are exceptions to the rule that keep me going back; keep me hoping that things may change, if I put a little more effort in, or wait a little longer. I waited a year and a half.
Is that too long? Too short?
These questions keep me guessing, keep me focused on the environment and not on myself.
An unspoken event can be the rupture in these environments. I was sexually abused as a child. That was the fault of the abuser and none of us individually, yet, it has fractured our family system in a way. I find it hard to trust; I find it hard to be in a room where the doors are blocked off. They don’t understand that because I never spoke it, and even if I did it’s met with an overwhelm, an inability to talk it through. These concepts need therapy. Our western conditioning didn’t giving us the awareness to talk about it. Sex is shameful, something not to be discussed, to be done behind closed doors and not to be heard — both the pleasure and the pain. My life has included more extreme versions of those states. I didn’t choose that (outside of spirituality), and I accept it as my reality and my path. The system didn’t include the toolkit we needed to navigate this, so I left.
This is a learning journey for all of us.
I have faith that we will get there. Unfortunately for me, the familiar concentric circle of me needing to leave comfort and safety to take the next step has become a reality once more.
Please don’t feel sorry for me though, I feel the most aligned with my spirit that I have ever felt, and alongside the fear and uncertainty has been some of the most joyous and beautiful experiences I have ever experienced.
Today, I find myself in a new city; the wind is blowing strongly; stormy rain batters the house, and a strange pale winter sun shines through the clouds. Anyone familiar with pathetic fallacy would find this aligned to everything I’ve shared today.
This city is where I want to be. I feel it in my bones; a feeling of warmth in my chest. It accepts me fully. It contains people who know of my life experience, my sexuality, my life goals; values and purpose.
I feel at home here. I suppose that’s the essential aspect of an environment.
Mirror neurones are more important than we are conditioned to believe. They are activated by sound mostly, and energy. They initiate feeling states in us. We feel each other. We feel the things unsaid, the years of silence.
Constant coughing and spluttering, sneezing, sharp intakes of breath. All these are signs of the resentments that form from not communicating our truths. Perhaps other people can maintain those. I can’t.
I have more to achieve, more to discover about myself. I needed to move.
In essence, I needed to move, it was the loving thing to do. So I could continue my relationship with those people from a healthier stance.
I am, of course, talking about family.
There is such a difficult transition in the family around children becoming adults. I have been going through an initiation, a maturation, into adulthood. Seeking out who it is I really and truly am.
My family have expressed bewilderment around not knowing who I am anymore. The child that they once knew has disappeared into the initiation; those patterns of conditioning dissolved into conscious awareness. The space that I chose to cultivate so that I could choose an empowered and aligned life.
I’m still at a crossroads, and I don’t have my security fully yet, but I do have my authenticity, and I’m not faced with the misinterpretations and the old routines. Some day we might get to a space of reckoning around this.
It’s hard in western culture; we left the idea of initiation behind. We don’t have the toolkit to understand it. It’s death; you have to grieve the loss of the person you knew and embrace the new person. We deny death.
I have many incredible skills and talents to bring to a relationship; I’m caring, kind, compassionate, firm and direct, talented in life coaching, I am a reiki master healer and a curious creative.
It’s a curious thing that explaining this to a stranger can become the easiest thing in the world, yet explaining them to a dear family member; I get lost in the weight and web of history.
This fractured time might be the cause to effect the change in our relating, and it might not. I know it’s necessary for me. I also know how worried and confused they are. That’s painful.
Sometimes in times of great struggle and uncertainty, it’s the old and familiar habits that I return to; I needed that two weeks.
I had a moment today where I was smoking a cigarette, the warmth feeling returned to me, I knew I was exactly where I needed to be, and suddenly the smell of the cigarette in my hand provoked disgust in me. I put it out, half-smoked.
I knew then that I was returning to my aligned self, and that I would continue from there.
Life isn’t always how the self-growth industry paints it; complete and fully aligned. Throughout these two weeks, I have been giving in to desires and allowing them to take me to some significant realisations and lessons.
Sitting with the uncertainty; journaling, meditating, feeling, talking. Navigating the energy so that I can get to the point of clarity.
I know that my main focus now is to find a home and to find financial security that I can build upon, I’m interested to see where that journey takes me.
Thanks for listening.
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Previously Published on Medium
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