I stated yesterday that my soulstice was going to focus on ushering in care, commitment, trust, responsibility, respect and knowledge all in an effort to increase the love vibration in my life. I wrote about care the other day so I guess today is about commitment...
This is an area that I have really struggled with all my life. I am not a good committer. I am decidedly committed to being uncommitted. That is actually a thing.
I am, of course, talking about relationships. I have mostly, always left. I leave. I have always seen this as one of my most glaring defects. My willingness to just turn tail and run. But as I have been thinking about these principles of love (Thank you Ms. Hooks) I have been thinking about this one a little differently.
I spent my life moving. I went to six different elementary schools, two different junior highs and three different high schools in two different countries, in at least three different states. Leaving is a skill that I learned early and well.
I have always felt badly about the fact that I do not have people I am still friends with since elementary school, but seriously, that would be almost impossible. To have kept up with someone who I knew only a year for fifty years? Just didn’t happen for me. And I have always thought it my failing. But recently, I realized that it was likely a combination of circumstance and evolution. Mine took me one way, while others, whose path briefly intersected with mine, a different one. No one’s fault, we just grew in different directions.
I do have a few long standing relationships that date back to high school and college and I am super grateful for our mutual commitment to stay in each other’s lives. I know that my lack of worth operated as a self fulfilling prophesy for a long time: I didn’t feel worthy, so I left, they let me leave, and that reinforced the idea that I was not worthy of being followed. Stupid, as I look back but it was the way it was.
I have gotten better with commitment as I have aged. I was committed to my marriage until I could no longer push down the parts of me that didn’t fit into that relationship. I also was committed to Lane, likely overcommitted resulting in me needing to be committed (ha, that is just a joke...sort of). So keeping my word about being with just one person over time is something that I can and do honor. This is not something that I was particularly good at in my younger years...ask anyone. Not a point of pride, instead I still feel shitty about the way I behaved.
But I realized recently that I lack staying power. Eventually I move on. I do not remain for the long haul, and I just realized that this might be because of the commitment that I made to myself, about myself. And for that I will make no apologies. I can’t stay with someone if the price of staying in that relationship means that I have to alter, change or ignore who I am. And for me, that has always been the price. I am not sure who actually set the price, them or me, but there has always been one to be clear and I have not been willing to pay it, repeatedly.
I am in a relationship today that has a lot of freedom and space. That is good for me. I care about him and enjoy our time together but love that he lives three hours away. I am unclear if doing a daily life thing is something I want or can do. There is a part of me that wants that but then there is a larger part of me that does not. I like my home, my space, my independence. I am not willing to alter or give that up...yet.
And that leads into my most committed commitment...to a spiritual life. I am committed to letting God, the universe, loving kindness or whatever benevolence exists in the world be my guide. I do the footwork but I am not the results maker. I am just the foot soldier in my life, doing the next indicated thing, knowing that I will always be led to where I needed next.
And I am committed to that. Me in charge of me almost killed me. God in charge of me, much better results. I am so grateful to not be running the show anymore. However, I will admit that God’s ideas sometimes scare the shit out of me...and I often wonder what the actual fuck God is thinking, seeming to have way more confidence in me than is warranted or safe. (I am almost completely positive that this whole podcasting idea is a really bad idea...but I made a commitment so I will honor it...if it fails, I know that I will learn way more than if it succeeds).
So as I near the end of this blog about commitment I will share what I know to be true: commitment to self doesn’t make you selfish, in fact, being committed to you is the only honest way that you can show up for others. But, fuck, it is really hard. For me, it is because codependence sinks in and I want to be liked, adored and loved but I believe (sometimes erroneously and sometimes not) that me being me will cause the object of my love to leave, not like me, certainly not adore me and maybe even not love me.
But here is the kicker, it doesn’t matter. That is going to happen anyway. There is no way to hold someone who is not meant for you in your life. They will always go and in my experience, the more you try to hold them, the more alarming and dramatic their exit. So I might as well be me and let the chips (God I love chips) fall where they may.
So as the soulstice beckons and the year winds down, I realize that my most important commitment ever is to myself, about myself, for myself. This doesn’t give me a pass for being a stupid, self-centered jerk, it just underscores that the only way that I can ever authentically show up in the lives of others is to be me, no matter the cost. That my commitment to being me, honest and true, is the foundational commitment that is the basis for any and all other commitments in my life. And sometimes that results in me appearing to others like I am a self indulgent commitment phobe. And that is ok. Because in the final analysis, I am the only one who is going to have to answer for all my conduct. And regardless of where I land, I want to know that at the very least, I had my own back, even if I was dead wrong.
