I'm not doing so well with my resolutions/goals. My blog is getting more sporatic, but it's the drinking and eating whatever that is flagging most. I'm quick to forgive myself in the moment, but it's the aftermath of vivid detailing of all of my personal sins that is exhausting and deflating. There's some kind of connection that I'm not identifying yet. Something that has a fill-in-the-blank coping mechanism of distracting from the core of what stops me from success and encourages blatant sabotage of what few restrictions I try to place on myself. And not even restrictions but rather positive commitments I try to make in order to change my trajectory to one of up and up and up.
I am listening to some fascinating podcasts about mind/body/culture that have compelling truth in them and get me to listen to them now for the second time. There is something in there that is a paradigm shift I'm seeking. The continual unfolding into mindfulness and presence and the continual retraction that is the acts of sabotage. I believe the breaking of the goals and resolutions are benign acts in and of themselves, but with such frequency and negative feeling afterwards are working to reinforce some negative self-fulfillment I believe on some very real level I deserve. To simplify, I don't deserve good physical health, or am incapable of achieving it. There is a defiance to my own self in there too that works very effectively to reinforce the negativity behind these actions, the driving force to grind myself down into inaction, non-growth, and only a few steps forward before a large step back.
One such encounter this weekend was when I was contacted that my recently ex-boyfriend was in dire straits in Manila. He had been picked up and beaten by cops and then thrown into jail for further physical abuse by cell mates. All of the information I had was two Facebook posts and a general location, also that he was going to a hospital. I immediately started reaching out to all of his co-workers and friends in Manila. I am still very connected to his life there through mutual friends, phone numbers, and Facebook. I started calling hospitals, amazed at my pigeon Tagalog beginning to flourish in the urgency of my mission. He made it home and my many calls to his phone finally got answered. We talked for hours. My relief was enormous indeed to know he was safe, to hear his voice again.
The pattern of our relationship, however, is still firmly in place. My asking about his receipt in my break-up email did not elicit any kind of acknowledgement of its contents, but rather just that he got it and read it. There wasn't one apology, one recognition of what had been said, nothing from him other than to do as he always does and try to move forward into the old pattern of caretaker on my part and victim on his. Nothing has changed and that door is temporarily open to step right back into that relationship just as it was 3 months ago
Totally familiar. Totally broken and dissatisfying.
I should not have indulged in that conversation, but there it is. And now I feel I need to write a very brief, hey, I can't be your friend yet for a while message. If he were the only one I was having that conversation with, I could chalk it up to the exception, but it isn't.
The expert in the podcast says that caretakers aren't as healthy and don't live as long because they don't set benign limits for themselves and others and don't seek to protect themselves with healthy self-interest, a key component to longevity and quality of life.
I am up to making the changes necessary to break out of the caretaking role and into something more honest and with more self-interest. This change started before I started this post and will continue to grow. This feels vitally important now, as old caretaking relationship dynamics reassert themselves and I weaken myself through distractions from a very needed mission of health and self-care. These thoughts and feelings are arising in a place less restricted by shame or guilt and I am shining a light on the little actions, words, and decisions around the greater pattern. I have hope.