Is Anyone Who We Think They Are?

We meet someone that is when the story begins.  The actual one with actual people with actual personalities, dreams, hopes, struggles, assets and defects.  Largely, it is not this person with whom we then have a relationship.  Because as the actual story begins, so begins another one...

The one we manufacture from the delusions in our head.

Someone comes into our lives and shows up in a way that lights us up.  We begin, almost immediately, to tell ourselves a story about them.  And most likely, they are doing the same thing with us.  And so the path begins to diverge right from the get go.  It is no wonder divorce and breakups are replete in today’s society.  We are trying to relate with the delusional person, the largely fictitious person we concoct in our minds that are only very tangentially related to the actual person standing before us.

We project things onto this other person that aren’t real, do not exist in that person and are largely missing in that person’s actual makeup.  Why?

Impatience.  I think that is mainly why.  Boredom.  A demand for satisfaction.  We tell ourselves a story and then we begin to sort through and discard all the things about the person that do not fit into our image of them.  They are over there being who they are, and we are wholly missing it because we are too married and invested in who we want them to be.  So much so that we miss completely the person they actually are...

I know I have been impatient and that agitation has led me to jump to conclusions about a person that does not exist in reality.  I want them to want me, love me, adore me, show up for me so I focus on the things they do that look like they are capable of doing those things, and I ignore all the ways they fail to show up, fail to adore, love, and want me.

I have also gotten bored.  It is tiresome waiting for that exceptional person to show up in your life, so much easier (so it seems) to project onto whomever is available.  The person before me may not be the right person, like at all, but they are here and they will do, for now...at least that is the delusion.  It never works out that way, and I am always sorry later on.  I really could have just enjoyed the boredom and skipped the heartache and shattered dreams.  But I just had to give it one more go...delusion in action!

Satisfaction is a relentless beast really.  When will I be satisfied?  When will I find “him”?  When HE does what I want?  When HE loves me the way I want to be loved?  When HE shows up?  Waiting for another to satisfy you is a pretty fruitless endeavor.  The journey is always internal and we are truly the only ones that can ever satisfy ourselves.  Once we are happy, wanting who we are, showing up for ourselves, then and only then can we, maybe perhaps, show up for another in a meaningful way.

I have known all of this for a long time.  A very long time.  My tendency to project and that tendency to get me into all sorts of trouble.  I think I have always wanted to be more important than I actually am.  Or perhaps I wanted to be valued by people who would never value me.  Creating a whole diabolical scheme to ensure that I am never, ever going to get any needs met.  Just chase my tail a lot until I am so dizzy and spent I have to go lie down. (This has happened way more often than I would have liked or want to admit).

The hard truth?  I think I do not really like all that many people.  I think I ought to and so I make the effort.  But the older I get, the less I am able to do this anymore.  And my advancing apathy has been a great delusion popper which is a good thing, ultimately.  Of course, I am not winning in love but I am more content in my own skin the more I screen people out.

I think my need to fit in overrode my natural manner of being a little aloof and contrary.  My need for people to like me created a dynamic that was problematic for someone who really needed a great deal of time alone but was always refusing to be alone.  It was a great paradox that I have only been able to see more recently.

I know, without a doubt, that every person who disappointed me was more about my refusal to accept and admit they were who they were.  I decided they should be someone else and then set about my campaign to convince them of it also.  It is no wonder my relationships have gone the way they have.  I can see it all so clearly, now.

We can call it projection or delusion or whatever we want.  The fact remains that my refusal to see someone for who and what they are has never served me well in the long term.  Short term gain for long term pain.  Really dumb way to relate really.  But that didn’t stop me for decades.

When you stop imbibing people with attributes, traits, and assets that they not only don’t possess but also have no inclination to develop, your life might get smaller, but it will also be more peaceful and fulfilling.  I had to stop expecting people to be who I wanted them to be and learn the very hard lesson to accept them for who they are right fucking now.  Not some magical day in the future.

What we want is a very strong elixir that dispossess us of our rational minds.  Emotion, unmet needs and trauma take over and we insist that the narcissist becomes the love bomber we met in the beginning.  But something born of delusion does not ever give way to reality without a hard stop and a great deal of pain and anguish.  Sadly this has been my experience.

Relating is hard.  Accepting yourself for who you are and what you are is also hard.  Accepting someone else is not at all who you need or want them to be might just be impossible in today’s world. Dooming the masses to heartbreak and divorce, repeatedly.

I can only change me.  And so I work diligently, tirelessly to pop my own delusional bubbles as quickly as they proliferate.  It is a thankless task in the beginning but being free of people who just let me down and wring me out is its own reward.  And I can entertain myself when I am not robbing myself of all my time and energy by wasting it on someone who has never been and never will be who and what I want or need.

It all begins with me.  And it also ends with me.

Again, still...