Being Let Down...

I don’t think I ever realized how much of a part I played in being let down.  I think I just reacted to the disappointment leveled by others and blamed them.  I never really saw how much of getting let down started with me...

I have, historically, not been the greatest at allowing people into my life.  I have made egoic based selections for the most part.  People who I thought would gain me other friends and access to cute boys in the beginning.  I tended to chose best friends who were more popular than me and hotter.  I think in my early life, that low self esteem drove me to seek out people who could add what I felt like I lacked.  And when you feel like you lack pretty much everything, well, then there is a veritable host of people who can supplement and shore up your already sagging self esteem.

I did not pick great people.  In my early years, I picked friends who were crazy, outlandish, brazen, wild and intense.  I think they were my outlet for all the things I felt inside but was too afraid to possess or express.  I wanted to be all those things but I was basically an overgrown terrified child, so...I needed them to drag me along on their journey downward.  My first several BFFs were train wrecks.  Pure and simple.

I did choose better when I was younger about boys.  I couldn’t commit and stay with any of them for very long, but I did make better selections in the beginning.  I think me being terrified, anxious as fuck masked exactly how insecure I really was.  That and booze.  That was a great cover...at least for a little while.

I was walking yesterday and thinking how much I was the one that allowed the people I did into my life, every single one of them.  And looking back now, I can see how very much my acceptance or acquisition of them in my life was a set up from the beginning.  In order to be in their lives, I had to be indispensable.  They needed to need me.  And I needed them to, but there was a fundamental imbalance from the word go.

Most of the people I selected were not people who were ever going to show up for me.  And I think on some level, I knew this and that was fine because it requires a certain level of intimacy to need...and I didn’t have that.  I couldn’t need, I could just give.

Somewhere along the way, I made some really stellar choices with friends and men.  But those people were the exception, not the rule.  

In large part, I played a major role in every disappointment with others I have ever suffered.  My failure to see them for who they really are, own why they are in my life in the first place, really were all major contributing factors to why I ended up being disappointed by them later on.

I can see that I didn’t want people to let me down, so I ignored all their behaviors that were indicators or warnings of the pending disappointment, over and over again.  If I didn’t see it, then I didn’t have to admit it and I didn’t have to do anything about it.  And it is this fact more than anything else that landed me in disappointment land.

And I never really saw it until yesterday waking home from a meeting.  It just kind of hit me.  How very much of a part I played in the whole endeavor.  And instead of that being an indictment, it was really more of an awakening.  Information I needed to become a different person.  And a lot of forgiveness for all of us who couldn’t do better, no matter how hard we tried.

And I also could own how much my not being able to be honest with myself about who and what these people are from the outset resulted in me doing some fucked up shit to them and with them later on.  Turns out my reactions weren’t all that stellar either.

I can also see how my failure to acknowledge and see my part resulted in me just repeating the same fucking shit over and over again and then wondering why the hell I am that horrible place AGAIN!  I see it now.

When you allow your criteria for intimacy to be so low and unexamined, you are bound to find people who are going to let you down.  If you have better self esteem, you make better friend and dating choices.

I have done a lot of work over the last 30 years but I think on some level I still feel like I am lucky to have anyone in my life at all...and I am not entirely sure where that comes from.  I think my being invited and included is still so much the goal that I still fail to see how much I don’t want to be included in that particular circle, like at all.  I will give myself credit here.  I am doing sooo much better.  All of the people in my life today are good choices and good people.  And my poor self esteem is not working against us all.  Turns out it is impossible to have a good relationship with someone who can’t have a good relationship with themselves...

I need a lot less from people today. My expectations are lower.  And I am still doing the work on why I feel so less than all the time.  It is very hard to get to the core of that matter because it is so diffuse and has so many origins.  I know today that my peace and serenity are absolutely tied to the company I keep.  So I have done a pretty good job of cleaning that up.  And for newer relationships coming into my life, I am slower to engage which gives me more time to ascertain whether or not I am engaging in an old destructive pattern or sowing new seeds of possible intimacy.

I am not sure what I thought I was doing before...I just know that I operated below my own radar.  I didn’t see the disappointment coming because I didn’t want to.  In reflection, I could have seen it from miles away. But I didn’t want to, so I didn’t.  And that kept me looped in an almost endless cycle of shit.  Until I wised up and saw my own part in the whole debacle.  

Turns out truth, self honesty and intimacy with yourself are prerequisites to one ever being able to find that with others.  Who knew?  Probably, like everyone fucking else!  But I know it now, so I can do it differently from here.

Again, still...