Patterns...

They are the prisons of the every day.  The confines you live within that hold your life in minute increments. They are the underpinnings of life and living, and as much as they provide structure and support, they also trap you into decades of behavior that leaves one largely unsatisfied.

Today I am grappling with my pattern of allowing people in my life who treat me poorly and then all of the work I do to attempt to prove myself worthy.  I see the wound that causes this behavior.  I fucking see it.  I know exactly where it resides.  And I know why.  But despite all of that, I have been relatively powerless to change this long standing pattern in my life.

I keep falling down the proverbial rabbit hole because of the following narrative:

“Oh, that person is choosing me.  This must mean that I am worthy of being chosen.  Wow, they are really coming after me, this must mean they really care and see me.  This must be what I have been waiting for all this time...”

Line cast, bait baited, hook bitten, pattern repeated.

I can see now that due to some pretty gnarly childhood wounds that I have really done my best to heal, I have had this idea that someone was going to come along and marvel at my existence.  They were going to be bowled over at the sight of me, then just completely love struck with my whole being. The fact that most of these people never even took the time to find out who and what I am, escaped me.  I was so desperate for the love, the attention and the possibility of finding what I so desperately wanted, that I jumped on their bandwagon, never fully evaluating that who they were was not someone I really wanted to associate with.

Lately, recently really, I have been presented with some interesting opportunities in the love department.  Things that I would have jumped at in the past.  People I would have granted access to without a thought. But the exquisite pain of this pattern repeating over time has given me just the tiniest pause that has provided me time to make other choices.

I know this may sound immature and fucking stupid, but I have just realized at the ripe old age of 55 that just because someone wants to fuck you, this does not mean that they like you, value you or deserve you.  That being offered almost nothing, throw away sex and almost meaningless connection is not likely to ever produce something grand and wonderful.

I KNOW I SHOULD HAVE LEARNED THIS 40 YEARS AGO!!!!

I KNOW!

But I didn’t.

I am learning it now, and I have to say, I am grateful to be getting it at all.  I feel somewhat saved from the doom spiral my previous unattended patterns in dating and love allowed.  I am not saying, “I am all better, let me jump into something...”  No, instead I am saying, “Fuck me! I really haven’t a fucking clue about what the fuck I am doing and why.  Best to sit idle and wait for clarity”

Fucking hell, I have gotten this whole love and sex and commitment and marriage and all of that WRONG.  So WRONG. Not like one degree off.  Like a million fucking degrees off.  I mean it only takes one degree in life navigation to land you in some place you didn’t intend to go, but it is clear to me now that my navigation system is faulty and unreliable. Which is how I keep ending up in the hell I find myself in.

I see my pattern.  I am aware that I do it.  And now I have to sit awhile in the acceptance part of the whole deal.  I like the awareness/action dynamic.  I am not a fan of the whole acceptance part.  I just like to see things, make rash decisions that seem to be a way out, but in reality are just an endless loop back to where I didn’t want to be in the first place.

I fling wide the doors allowing entrance to those that I should keep out.  And I do this because I just want someone to pick me.  And my discernment about who that is has been, well, really flawed, damaged and broken.  And I can see that it still is.  I pick the wrong thing for the wrong reason, repeatedly.  I can’t seem to help it. But I don’t feel as desperate as I used to. I feel like I finally have the ability to choose me, leaving you to do as you please, without me.

I see the pattern.  I see why it is there.  And today for the first time, I think I may just be ready to change it.  Finally. NOT again, still...perhaps today, for here and now, for the first time ever.  I will pick me over you.  I will crack the door to my life and see that I don’t really want you in...and I will close the door and go back to my life already in progress and that will be enough.

Finally.