I should have learned by now. I should have known from the many disasters in my past, that I can’t save anyone else. I can barely save myself. But I have done it again and it has ended badly...again. Hopefully sufficiently badly that I really learn my lesson this time.
I take in strays. People and cats and dogs and injured birds and whatever else is wounded, sick, in need. And I always just think about helping. I never think of the costs because it seems to me, that the costs are immaterial. But they aren’t. To me, to them or to the others who fall into the collateral damage category.
I tried to help someone again and it didn’t go well. I am not sure why and I don’t really think assigning blame would be a productive endeavor. I, however, must own my part.
I should have never done what I did, with someone I barely knew. I created a situation which fostered a dependence that I was not willing to service. I thought I was helping someone, creating a temporary situation, which was not what it was at all.
I extended an offer that I hadn’t thought through all the way. I said that I was willing to try something for 90 days but quickly realized that I did not want the situation to go on past 90 days. I communicated that clearly and openly and without rancor. It was not well received.
And while the receiving is none of my business....I am responsible for setting up the whole shit show to begin with. I have this ego and arrogance that others will behave like I do. That they are like me in manner and deed. And that is my first mistake. I fail to honor others as being other.
Then I fail to honor myself as I am. My ego and codependency gets involved and I fail to really be able to acknowledge who I am, what I want and what I need. Somehow I get all caught up in the giving...and I forget that I have needs too and boundaries and a limited amount of time and attention I can pay someone else.
I have a full life. Which is great but I fail to recognize that my desire to help pulls someone into my already quite full orbit. And then that throws things out of balance.
I did it again. And I injured myself and others in the process, which I regret immensely all the way around.
It is done now and I can only allow the sting of my part in this whole transaction to be a reminder to me in the future that I am not in charge of saving anyone else, of helping others to the degree that I feel that I should. I need to spend some time figuring out where this comes from because it has created more than one shitshow in my life...and the lives of others.
Is it control? Is it really a desire to help? Is it some fucked up notion that I can and should help others even when the situation looks bad from the onset? Is it my fucking ego?
I know that I care about others...but what gets me into trouble every single time is that I, in the moment, care more about the other person than I do myself which causes me to fail to consider exactly what I am signing up for. And then I am in it and then we are all fucked up. Because there will come a time when I see that I have to be true to myself because I am not going to live a lie, but now I have allowed someone else’s life to become intertwined with mine and now I have to go about unraveling it to everyone’s detriment.
I am sure my fucking ego gets me into these situations repeatedly. And I really do know better. I just can’t seem to do better in the moment.
I really feel this one though. I feel sad about how my last go round ended. And while I am not sorry about the ultimate outcome, I am sorry that I caused several people a great amount of strife in the process. I sometimes really just don’t think things all the way through.
So here we are again. I can see my part so clearly when the wreckage is so close...but I seem to falter when I get farther away from it. Then I fail to see that actions taken in haste, ego led, put everyone in a precarious position later on.
I am not sure I will ever learn but this one feels harder. I feel terrible about it really. And I feel badly about how it went for this other person, my daughter, another person who was affected and myself. It feels shitty and icky all the way around. And I am not going to swim in the ick but I am making sure that I feel all of this so that perhaps next time my brilliant ego thinks this particular idea is a good one, I stop and do not do it again.
I think being right sized means not thinking you are capable of more than you are, and also not capable of less. I seem to have a hard time accurately assessing this to everyone’s detriment.
I am not sure why I feel like it is my job to help. So I guess that is where I will have to do some work. Why do I think I owe the people who cross my path so much? It is like I feel like I have sinned in some gigantic way, and no amount of charity or service will ever atone for my errors. But I see, very clearly and painfully, that if I don’t stop doing this, I just cause more heartbreak for all involved. And I really do not want to do that to anyone ever.
So one more time, I have to get out of my way and rise to some new level of existence where I just stay in my lane and just accept that sometimes my help, while needed, isn’t what is best for anyone involved.

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