At the beginning of the month I felt heartbroken by a bad let down and the absence of a certain person I was expecting to see for Halloween. After my initial reaction (pain and anger,) I realized I was tired of feeling this way. The pain was too familiar and after years of living with these disappointments, I think it’s time to end the vicious cycle.
It’s so easy to get swept up in the currents of our lives and just react to what is happening as if it is being done TO us instead of FOR us, and I went with it for years but it just finally clicked. Except for those times when people pass away and we can’t help but miss them, all other forms of heartbreak have a lesson there. All this pain cannot be just because the Universe is against me or life hates me or a certain person is an insensitive, oblivious, emotional unavailable jerk! I mean, people might very well be all that, but the Universe is constantly conspiring in our favor and life is nothing more and nothing else than what we make of it, what we will it to be. And if I also remember that whatever a person does or says it’s a reflection of them and only them nothing to do with me, and everything I say or do and feel is a reflection of me ,then this situation should be fixable by me alone.
So I decided to analyze why this pattern is so hurtful. Why does it always break my heart? What triggers me the most about these situations? And here’s a short list of what I’ve come up with in no particular order:
I’m never a priority
The person’s never here when I need them the most
Has no follow through
Cannot count on their word
Always has an excuse
Takes no responsibility for their choices, at least regarding me
Blames life for how things work out
Says they want things they never work to get
Takes me for granted
Come and go as they please
Is emotionally unavailable
Never realizes how much they hurt me
Does not take my feelings into consideration
Disregards my time
Now that that is out of my system (and not saying that it hurts any less,) I can try to examine it more rationally and realize that a lot of what bothers me is a mirror of myself. I have put myself in situations where I’m not a priority even to myself. I have been guilty of taking the fact that I have an able body, my health, my 5 senses and some of the people that love me the most for granted. I have at least in the past, not taken responsibility whatsoever for my actions and choices and have blamed the entire Universe for things too. All these things might be so hurtful because a part of me recognizes them as pieces of my shadow self that haven’t been yet healed.
Some other things on the list might be triggering the other side of the coin, they hurt not because they resonate with my shadow self, but because they’re supposed to. Without that pain I wouldn’t notice anything was wrong and I then wouldn’t strive to learn the lessons, to change things!
I’ve heard we have no friends only teachers, which means that good or bad everything we experience because of others is something we can learn from. I also recently read that living with a soulmate is too painful, since they’re not here to complement us and make us happy in a romantic fantasy. They’re here to reflect back to us our flaws and broken pieces, to stir up the deepest shadows in us, the ones that hurt the most so we can face them and heal them. My heartbreak is just a tool, a way for me to know I’m alive and point to the things I have to work on.
My latest disappointment with this particular “teacher” happened earlier in the month, but it’s just the most recent out of years of going through a vicious cycle. Repetitive things like that in life almost always mean an unlearned lesson. It is something our soul in its infinite wisdom has called for and, instead of tackling it, learning what we need from it and moving on, we tend to just react, let ego take over and ignore what we could learn, so it keeps coming back again and again.
I still haven’t found the lesson, but I know it’s important. The Universe is loudly letting me know I need to learn this now as it is happening again with my family not showing up for either my gallery show in a couple of weeks nor for the Holidays. Part of my vicious cycle when these things happen is to try to ignore it, put on a happy face and keep going. Halloween is such a fun, eventful and magical time of the year that it helped me not think about it, but the fact that life brought three almost identical situations, with very different people under very different circumstances makes me think that A) Being without a social or physically close family network is important right now for me and B) It is time I pay attention to these feelings and clear whatever it is I need to clear so it won’t happen again.
It’s time for me to focus inward and stop trying to figure out what these other people are feeling or going through, whatever it is it is not about me, they’re lack of presence or commitment is not personal and I need to heal and learn for myself so I can move on to newer, hopefully less sad-feeling lessons…
