The Crumbling

For awhile it was such a privilege to wake up.

Addiction nearly stole my life from me. Illness nearly demolished my body before a series of hospitalizations and surgery.

I woke up knowing what a gift it was to have a day to spend topside. Until the novelty wore off, I guess.

Nothing stays new forever.

I’ve been through hard things before. Maybe even harder things than this. We stay the course and keep the faith and things work out in ways we couldn’t have planned for while things we plan for so diligently can simply evaporate before our eyes.

I’ve had a great deal of struggle bus riding going on in the last week or so. I would say this has been the precipice of the experience thus far.

Lies being told. Secrets being kept.

Frustration building and dynamics shifting.

I wrote the other day that I doubt I would work for my own future as tirelessly as I show up for my kids. Ideally, I think this is the way it’s meant to be.

I was thinking earlier about the vast difference between what I thought I was working so hard for and what “the work” actually brought me to.

When I finally got through some of the packets I was given in treatment I started to see a tiny crack in the facade I had built. Not only was I questioning the validity of my internal monologue, I was vaguely aware of a revised definition of humility.

I always thought being humble meant to think less of one’s self, rather than it being about thinking of ourselves less. I’m the kind of person who takes the blame for everything around me more often than pointing fingers. In fact, I’ve since learned through practical application and observation that I will turn myself inside out to take responsibility for waves in the water.

That’s just another way to make it all about me. It’s not that we are supposed to drag ourselves down or undermine our achievements to gain humility, but rather about widening the scope and taking ourselves out of the forefront of our perspective.

The mantra I was taught here was something along the lines of, “I’m not better and I am not worse, I am just another person who has virtues and defects and makes mistakes like everyone else does.

It’s not something I’ve perfected by a long shot. I am very quick to swing back into old habits when elevated.

When I can apply it, though, it allows me to see myself as someone who, like everyone, is deserving of love, care and affection.

My psychologist gave me this assignment I’ve mentioned before where I was to make a list of basic conditions of my relationship. He wanted me to list the things that were non-negotiable for me, that if I couldn’t have I’d rather be ok my own. The very idea was completely foreign and I couldn’t fathom making “demands”.

In time I started to get an idea.

It wasn’t that I thought about someone else. It was always in the aftermath of the worst of it when I was licking my wounds I would find myself pondering.

… What WERE the things I really wanted? What would my non-negotiables be if I was starting today?

That’s the problem with seeking, though. You don’t really choose what unveils itself and you can rarely go backwards.

Today I’ve done enough growing in acceptance of myself (we are trying) to know a lot more about how I want to be treated, but the impact it has on my confidence when I’m in a partnership that fits my criteria.

I am more independent when I receive unprompted reassurance. I manage conflict a lot more carefully when I feel respected and heard. I can tackle problems without anxiety more often when I feel like part of a team instead of having to defend everything I say and do.

I am able to feel secure, even though I never had before. I am learning to trust and communicate openly, knowing my concerns are usually heard and addressed with authenticity.

I still don’t want to make rules of conduct, if you will. I don’t want to have boundaries because I’m still kind of convinced I’m unlovable somewhere in there. I don’t want to rock the loveboat.

Knowing the way loving kindness and encouragement feels without being coerced has been wild. Intoxicating, in fact. Knowing what I want and then having it pursue me was a rush unlike anything I’ve ever felt.

I’ve been accused of only loving conditionally. There’s a black and white idea that one day I just gave up on my life and my family and the future we’d been working at for nearly twenty years and switched it off.

It isn’t that.

It was that I started to understand what I was looking for in a partnership and I couldn’t find enough of it in my own.

I wanted to be both loved and protected, not coddled but respected. I wanted a knight in shining armour but softer than that.

It was the realization that the person who I needed to rescue me wasn’t coming in on a steed and he certainly wasn’t standing before me.

I love hard, to this day, but loving someone does not mean we must cosign the things they subject us to. And vice versa.

Loving someone doesn’t mean that we allow our boundaries to be disrespected time and time again.

I love every man I’ve given myself to. To this day, whether the decision to move away from one another has ultimately been mine or his… I always hold a little piece of who I was when I thought there was any other ending than this.

The truth is that we DO have a duty to identify our conditions and to uphold them.

Now that I know that I am deserving of love that fits my own wants and needs I’m the person who is in charge of prioritizing them. At the end of the day, I wish that for everyone.

Today I have enough respect and love for myself to stop making space for people who aren’t willing or able to care for me in ways that I need. I am the person who gets to define what I want going forward.

i say “gets to” like that’s a gift but it actually feels a lot like the death of who I believed I was. It’s a lot of fear and panic.

I don’t want to be alone.

I don’t want to sleep alone.

But I’d rather die alone than say I’m being hurt and be ignored. I’d rather be an aging spinster than live another day where I feel less than.

There’s no way in hell I put myself through all of this just to give up on the very basic courtesies I have decided are bare minimum.

I’d rather be alone than crumble anymore.