Being a Good Person...

It is kind of amazing the effort I have put forward in this endeavor and the absolute lack of credit I have received from people who have absolutely benefitted from my good personage.

As I review my life right now, it is littered and I do mean littered, with people who I have been there for, showed up for, given to, loved, liked and served, and there are a great many of them who hate me.  No, seriously, they absolutely detest me.

And I did the same thing to all of them to make them feel this way...I left them.

I left them because of their ongoing refusal to see me, value me, treat me well.  Treat me with the same love, concern and commitment that I showed them.  I left them because their love felt like a prison, a never ending game where I showed up and gave, and loved, and attempted to prove I was worthy while they just continued to refuse to see it, called me out for every minor thing and then lured me back into their awfulness by telling me what an awful person I was, or how I needed to show up more, or even more pathetically, they doubted my worth and value, which engendered in me an resolve and resolution to show them they were wrong about me.  “I will show them! I will prove I am worthy of their love!”

Except they were never worthy of mine.

And that has taken me an entire life time to realize.  And the better part of the last decade to do anything about.

I was caught in this paradigm:  I show up, love, support, honor and serve. They show some appreciation, but then they all did the same thing:  they doubted me when there was no cause for doubt, they failed to value me when they should have, and for the most part they manipulated and lied to me in order to keep me in this subservient space where they held all the cards and I continued to work tirelessly to show them that I was worthy of better treatment.

I finally saw this dynamic in my life in 2022.  And I walked.  From the friends, the job, the kid.  I walked.  But then I signed up again.  I chose different people...but it was the same relationship.

I have hit some bottoms in the last three years.  And I will own that I am now so fucking over this paradigm that I can barely function.  I vacillate between caring so very much and not caring at all.  It is like I am walking some sort of high wire between the person I have always been (which is a good person for the most part) and this new person who no longer defines “good person” by her willingness to put up with absolute bullshit treatment from others.  I am trying my best, my absolute best to NOT just say fuck it and walk.  I am pausing the fuck out of my nervous system and desire to just push the nuclear button and deal with the nuclear winter that follows.

And you know, I might really believe these maligners that I am this awful version of me they seem to create and bring into existence.  I would totally believe them except for the other wonderful people in my life who tell me and show me differently.

It is hard thing when you have independent verification that what you believe to be treatment you deserve is called out by other people, people you respect and value, as bullshit.  I mean if I am such an awful person, why do these other long standing friends not also think so?  I mean, how is it that great segments of my life have people who see me one way, and this other malignancy that sees me only as bad, and wrong, and demonized?

It is a hard line to walk.  Who is right?  

I have allowed this incongruence to go on forever.  Mostly because, of course, I am not perfect and I have done shit that is wrong.  I have fucked up and I have not always done the “right” thing.  But I am also not the person these maligners accuse me of.  I did not cheat on my spouse, ever.  I am not a malignant narcissist - you can ask my therapist of the last 10 years.  I am not a bad mother, even though there have been times where I absolutely did my best and it was way lacking.

Could it really be that the biggest mistake I have made, repeatedly, was allowing these people who are self serving, selfish, self centered into my world and then allowing their reality and manipulations to become my reality?

After many years, it does appear that this might just be the truth.  I have repeatedly let people into my life that claim to love and like me, then set about a manner of treating me that shows me absolutely that they do not in fact love me or even really like me.  Or maybe it is them they do not like, and I am just projected upon.  Who the fuck knows...that is an issue for their therapist.  Except these people will never get therapists because the problem is always someone else...never really them.

One of the above mentioned people, got called out by another for their complete, abject awful treatment of me, made amends, then maligned me for not calling them out on their own behavior, thereby making their behavior somehow my fault.

My old sponsor said to me one day:  “I am not sure you will ever be happy unless you have someone to abuse you...”

At the time she said it, I was fucking pissed.  15 minutes later, I knew she was right.  That was two years ago and if there is one statement that continues to ring true, it is this one.  I keep allowing and sometimes inviting people into my life who want to just use me up, to consume me, then blame me for their consumption, like my lack of fullness is somehow my own fault even they were the ones doing the emptying.

I seem to be able to set the boundaries, I falter in holding them.  I am so afraid to lose these people even though on the whole it just doesn’t work out for me, like at all.

I do see my own dysfunction which I am pretty sure does equate with being an evolving, spiritual person.  I see my own shit and I work on it every fucking day.  And believe me there are days where I just feel like I want to give up and just behave badly and quit trying...but I don’t, even when I really want to.

I guess I see now that my part in this whole endeavor is allowing these fuckers into my life in the first place.  I guess my problem is that I don’t see who they are until they are already in.  I guess I need to do a better job of gatekeeping and holding people off until I have a chance to really observe who and what they are.  That is very hard for me.  I am an enthusiastic person, and when I meet someone new that lights me up, I fling wide the doors to my life.

I guess I have to accept that perhaps the people who want entrance and demand a full flinging are exactly the people I should be wary about.  Perhaps people who are not coming for me, for what I can give them are the people who would never demand a far flung entrance.  They don’t need a full access pass because they are content to just be present and allow the intimacy to evolve over time. Trouble is that I tend to miss these people because I have been so long in identifying these other fuckers as friends.  Someone who is not rushing my doors, passes for not interested...when in fact, perhaps, they are just taking their time instead.

It is hard to rewire a life time of nervous system misidentification.  It is hard to see that those people who are all up in your business are perhaps the exact people you should be barring the doors and windows for...it is kind of a mind fuck.

It is no secret I have relationship issues.  And I guess for a long time I have accepted that somehow it is because I am this horrible person that people like my son, my ex, my old friend group and others keep telling me I am.

But there is a new day dawning...and I am seeing a glimmering of hope on the horizon where I think I see that my fatal flaw is that I allow people like this access to me at all.

I am not a bad person.  I am kind, loving, and giving, and perhaps that has been the greatest threat to my own well being...because I love people who aren’t capable of love and loving.  And then I am so heated and hurt when their fucked up version of love maims me.  Perhaps I just have to stop loving those who hate themselves and then are more than content to blame me for their own shortcomings...

Perhaps I just have to be done with loving people who do not really like me, are incapable of seeing me for who and what I am and just allowing those other people who have been very patiently waiting to get to know me greater access...because, hey, I will have time now that all those other fuckers are not bleeding me dry...

Again, still...