Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Trust is Tangible

You are proof that Trust is a tangible thing

Please don't get me wrong - by stating that you being in the presence or lives of people makes it so that you trust them or that they trust you is NOT what I am talking about. Abuse survivors know one thing is truth - we all know that trust is a thing that has to be in any relationship or else it turns into a master/servant thing at best, and well, we all know what happens that can mark the part that is "at worst." 

By my stating and thinking that trust is a tangible thing and that you are proof of it is that all abuse survivors end up with new people in our lives, people who we may have had the luck of coming into contact with a second time around, or people who we never met before and that all of us have to relearn how to trust other people. It is not an easy thing to do, either. We all want to have people in our lives, all want to be loved and cherished and want to have closeness with people, but how we handled not being trusted by the ones who were supposed to trust us, and the ones who made us work for their trust even as they demanded that we not question their trustworthiness, how we handled others not trusting us for no reason at all versus how we handle our being able to trust anyone at all after the fact are two very different things.

That anyone who has gone through something as awful as any kind of abuse is one thing, but to expect that anyone who has gone through it at all and come out at the other end able to deal with things and also able to try and trust other people again is almost impossible to believe, given  the circumstances, that anyone in that situation can trust again. Trust is not easy. Once it has been fractured it takes a bit of time to regain it, not in the person who broke it, but with anyone. Abuse survivors know what it is to feel like no one and no one's words can be trusted, and we find out that no matter how many excuses we are willing to make for people who have done us wrong, at the bottom of it all we know what is the truth, and the truth is that trusting others is not only something that needs to be regained in us, but more, is something that we have to try hard not to falter on. 

We second guess everything and everyone, but no one more do we do this with than ourselves. You have to remember that we have been physically assaulted, accused of cheating, of lying, of stealing, of doing things that are all chalked up to an assumption, and the assumption is the thing that keeps an abuser in control. They want to own us, not love us, because they have no idea the truth that is Love. This is what we, the abused and the formerly abused, know as our reality. We have a hard time taking people for their word, and we have an even harder time with trusting ourselves with trusting anyone, ever again. When a survivor of abuse comes into your life, it is a gift. It is a gift because you have the opportunity to watch trust become a part of a person's life. 

Too often in life we take for granted that we will be trusted, and then one day we meet someone who we trust our whole self with and that one person ends up breaking that trust, either by not trusting us or outright accusing us for doing things that we would never do. It is immediate that we have to try hard to come out of our selves, to reach out and to be with people who, at the onset, we so dearly want to trust - and it hurts to not trust another person. As humans we are not meant to be anything other than with each other, and when the trust has been broken we become confused as to how it is that this happened. We do not know when it started, all we do know is that it hurts, that it cuts all the way to the bones, all the way to the soul. The first thing that anyone experiences with someone who is going to put us to task with our ability to trust others is the idea that we are not anywhere near good enough to be taken for the words that are coming out of our mouths. When all you have is the words that you speak, and someone who is meant to just trust you because we so readily trust them, does not extend that same energy in return, it creates a climate of "master/servant."

When we have to beg to be who we are, and beg to be able to feel okay with ourselves and someone who we wanted at one time to so dearly trust us, and they think the thoughts that they do that make it difficult for those who have been abused, those who have survived the abuse, those who are still in the throes of the abuse to be able to get out of that mold, that energy that we do not fit into, but that we are being told is who we are. When we are not allowed to be who we are, this creates a serious sense of mistrust. It is an energy that tells us each that who we are is not good enough to be trusted, that we are "not up to spec" with the person who we gave our whole selves to. Our whole self is the only thing that we really can claim to having and when it is that we are told that who we are somehow is not good enough to behave in a manner that is befitting of someone who is meant to be loved and means only to love, and we get told, perhaps not in so many words that the way we are is so irritating to another person and that we feel like we are not even liked by them, let alone loved, it creates an energy of mistrust - not only in other people, but more, and sadly, within ourselves. 

Trust is a tangible thing, a tangible energy, much as is everything, because trust is us. We are the embodiment of trust. We are trust come to life. When an abuse survivor can become trusting with themselves is when it becomes tangible, because with that trust in ourselves also comes the luxury of just being able to sit in our skin and finally, after many, many years, we can feel our wholeness coming back to us, can feel like we are meant to be this person who we have fought so long and so hard to be again. My thought about not being trusted is that because an abuser is such an insecure person with their own selves and with their own thoughts and essentially are not happy with themselves, they must find others to help them understand this part of them, and the best person to do that is someone who is like them in opposition. 

To believe otherwise- that we are anything other than the most purest of evidence that trust is a tangible thing, is to take away the things from us, the lessons that we learned, which tell everyone, including ourselves, that we have not been through everything that we know we have been. It is like telling a child that he or she has no reason to fear the monsters in the closet after we have told them that monsters exist. The only monsters that exist are those who are willing to breach our trust and expect that we should just deal with the idea that who they are in their own mind is so important to the benefit of mankind that somehow, to not trust them and their words and their actions is somehow a sin against man and nature.

The idea that we are not willing to trust them as well as a lot of other people is not giving credence to the fact that we know what we went through, we know how we felt and now, how we feel. We know that who we are is important, and we also know that there is an energy between us and our abusers, no matter who they are or where they are, that only with our own ability to rebuild trust in ourselves and for ourselves, that there will never be trust for another again until that happens. 

This is how we know that we are trust come to life. Because we are cautious, because we hurt, because we bear the scars and the wounds of the battle within ourselves is why it is that trust is a tangible thing. 

It is tangible because in order to trust someone enough to love them, we must be able to give ourselves to them, in every way that we can imagine.

Without trust within, there can never be trust on the outside, either...

I Love You All
ROX


Friday, August 16, 2013

I hope they've learned as much as I have

It is hard to let go when you don't want to...namely, when you know it is best you do

There are things that I know I have to do. I have to do the laundry. I have to prepare for school, for widowhood, for lots of things. So the one thing that I need to do very dearly is simply to let people who try hard to break me, who will not bother with telling me what is their truth, and who hide behind their fear...well, let's just say that I am tired of my intelligence being insulted, and I am sick to death of being told one thing only to find out otherwise. We shall also say that this is not completely a goodbye, not really a "good riddance," but more my own way of seeing what needs to be purged from my life, and the one thing that I know needs to be purged from my life are those who seem not to be able to release the old so as to make room for the new and the better. 

In essence, this is not really a goodbye, but more along the lines of letting some folks who need to learn about themselves and then try harder to grow out of their old patterns so that they can realize the new part of them. It is this new part of themselves that is trying hard to escape the old patterns, but it is the old part - the part of them that requires no work to change for their own good and their own life purpose, and which is also the part of them that is connected to their Ego sense. Recall that when I talk about the "Ego sense," that I am talking about that part that resides in each of us that is scared to grow because it will take too much time, or it will hurt to much to try to change the things about us and the habits and the ways that we make ourselves not have to feel our own life's pains to become what they are each meant to be. What they are each meant to be are lessons, are teachers to our lives, and sadly, there are a lot of folks who, for one reason or another, are having a hard time trying to get to that place that they know they want to be but for the life of them just seem not able to overcome what it is that plagues them.

What plagues them, essentially, is fear. Humans are taught to fear and to not question. We are taught that we have to use other people, have to try to hide a piece of who we are so that no one can see the reality that is ours, and we are scared as hell of being judged because we do not want our truth to be made everyone else's truth. Everyone else's truth never has to be our truth, but sometimes we buy it. Sometimes we buy other peoples' bullshit. No where else is this more prevalent than in the lives of the abused and formerly abused. Those who have been abused tend to think in a way that is always "how can I not ever have to feel that way again?" and the most unfortunate part of this is that there are many who are in one of these two groups of people who will easily turn to things outside of themselves that eventually causes them to turn ON themselves. It is like when an octopus is feeling anxiety and starts eating its own self - this is what happens when we are more inclined to do what we have always done in order to escape the pain of our lives. 

Then the "fun" thing that happens after that is that those who are choosing without realizing that they are choosing to habitually drag other people into the fracas that is their life.  It is essential to our growth, to our ability to be able to heal successfully without having to turn to things tangible, things and people outside of ourselves, things that we know WILL hurt us, that we look at who we really are and realize that even though we might essentially be a train wreck at the moment, it does not have to be like this forever. However, there are a lot of people who are choosing the familiar discomfort of things that worked temporarily in the past rather than choosing wisely and deciding to grow out of the old and to wear, from day one, that which is the glorious and the new. Like brand new jeans, so, too, do new ways and new thoughts and the newness that is the growth that hurts us need to also be worn, to also be tried out and looked at and used to our own advantage. 

The hurts that we experience from the growth is different than the ones that were brought to us by what we thought was helping us. We each know that there are things that people do to themselves that cause them to think that the secondary things they do...drink, indulge in ugly substances that we know will screw us up, try things that we have been told work that seem like a good idea but on the whole we KNOW are anything but...end up being 

We know when "the better" is coming, and not only because it will be revealed by the Goddess those things which no longer serve us or our purpose, but also because new people, new ideas, and new energy reveals itself, too. Where once there was the energy that was fraught with being scared and inundated with fear, there is now the energy that is letting go, is the energy that tells you that you can live without certain people and situations in your life. It is not something that will be easy to do, letting go of those whose purpose in our lives or perhaps for whom our presence in theirs was to bring about the energy that was needed, but is something that, when the time comes, we will just do. 

When the energy came for me was sometime last evening while I was talking with someone who is very close to me and they'd mentioned that there was, at that moment in their lives, much as it is with my own, a list of people who were being extricated from said close person's cell phone. As minute as it sounds, in the realm of the Soul and all that is healing from the pains and abuse from the past, it is huge. When I was told by this person that this is what they were doing, it was with an immediacy that I'd told them that I, too, was doing the very same thing. I was doing the same thing because if I do not do the same thing - keep on symbolically removing people who've no business or purpose in my life through whatever means it is that I do so - it will only drag me and my energy down, and I have been down for so long now, much as this close person, as many of my closest friends and confidantes have also been, that the only way to relieve my own self of the pain and the hurt that comes also with the idea that someone, that anyone at all, is going to tell me one thing and do the opposite, is to release them from my life, even if temporarily.

This is not simple to do. We attach ourselves not only to people but also to the outcome that we want to see for them, for ourselves and for the situations at hand as well as the ones in manifest. It is not that the outcome is not something that I cannot wait for but more that the outcome, for some people, might seem impossible to realize, might hurt too much to have to go through the work involved, and the work involved has only to do with the self.  "So, Rev., why would anyone want to get rid of things and people they think are important?" is usually the question that I am asked when people ask me what it is that they should do when trying hard to get through something with someone else, no matter who they are, and the answer that I give is relevant to my own life at this time. In my own life at this time much is happening. There is the ending of one part of my life and the start of an entire new part which, when I think about those two things on their own I am made both happy and afraid. I am happy because very simply, it is about time, and afraid, because no one, not even a well paid and proven psychic can tell us what the exact outcome will be. No one can. We create the outcome we want to see or one that is better than the one we want to see. 

With that said, it may well be understood by anyone reading this that I am no longer open to draining my own energies for those who will not also help with the work that they know they need to do if they are also not as at least as willing as I am to help them get their lives back. Abuse survivors are very uncannily able to tell when we are being lied to, when the truth is being hidden, and there is not one of us who, even if we do not realize it, cannot sense it when someone is not being as open and truthful as we are, as we have been. Just because it is my job to counsel, is my job to intuit the energies that I sense, my job to sometimes and physically place my hands, sometimes my whole self, onto others so that they may have a bit of the good energy that they need in order to get along in their lives with the thing that they are supposed to do and more, to be, it does not mean that mine is an endless energy even though technically, it is. 

It is not the energy that is not endless, but the level of patience that is. It is the worn out thinking in others that I will be there for them, at the ready, because that is how they know me to be. What they have yet to go through is the fact that even highly energetic people like me get tired, on many levels, and lately it is the wish upon my own heart and soul that while I want to see that everyone gets their own lives healed, when it comes to my life and the things that I want to see happen in it, I cannot allow myself to let the energies that I know will deplete my own be the thing that eats me alive. I cannot wait here for people to stop being afraid of the work involved, can't just be the one person who is just always going to be there at someone else's whim even though I am essentially always there for people to seek a way to heal their own lives. I will always be there for that, but will no longer be there for people who just need a quick fix of good energy so that they can deal with theirs that is not so good, and I will not be around for those who will tell me that things with people are one way when in reality that is not the entire story. The entire story may or may not be believed.

The entire story may or may not be believed for the simple fact that if a person is willing to live without integrity, it also means that they are willing to live with the things that they hurt from, and more, willing to continue hurting from them, and willing to medicate themselves in whichever manner it is that they have for a long time just so that they will not have to deal with the pain of the shame of the losses, the pain of the abuse that was once there, which was there by someone else's hands and then when the pain became too much, by their own hands, in manners that no one with a brain in their head would bother with. Everyone on the planet has been hurt, but not everyone who hurts becomes abusive to others or more, to themselves. This is the other reality that comes with abuse - somehow, there has to be healing, and it has to come from within, and always there will be someone who will be able to help those who have ignored the things that I have told them in matters of where the pain is coming from versus where they can send that pain...most listen, but there are those few who do not. 

I could sit here and say that my choices ...the ones that I have to make as of now....hurt me a lot, but that is a lie. The choices that I have to make - the ones that are "should I help this person or should I save it for me?" - are not easy. On the outside of it all it seems that no matter what I have said, no matter what I have done, no matter what it is that has eaten their lives and no matter what it is that these people have tried to heal themselves with, it is to no avail. It is to no avail because while I understood that no one is guaranteed that they will be able to heal their lives on their own, it is a promise that no one who doesn't at least try to heal, will. They will not heal, because the mess that is in front of them called "their lives" is familiar to them, comforts them knowing that they can deal with the mess because the mess is all they know. So they keep creating bigger messes that look like the last mess and keep on expecting different results from the same messiness that is still not better, not smaller, and only gets worse.

It breaks me up inside a bit to know that for a moment, I have to step back and have to do so because should I bother to stay where I am, I will not be able to move forward, and my future is a beautiful thing indeed, filled with laughter and love, with friends and people who I care deeply about and who are considered to me as family, and the antics that these people have heard about thus far, while said antics do not affect me in the manner that is direct, they effect me in that I have cared, and cared, and talked, and emphasized, and propped up, and basically been there, and at the moment, it feels like it was all for nothing, even though that is the furthest thing from the truth.

It was not all for nothing, because without those people who are too afraid to grow out of their own messes I saw my own. That is the blessing in what seems at the moment like it is a loss. It is not a loss. My thought is that I have to let them go and perhaps in my (hopefully temporary) absence they will grow, will get a clue, will be able to take what very little they came to me for and utilize it. My prayer is that in my absence that they will know that I truly do love them, enough so that I would imagine that if the tables were turned that they would not want me to not heal on my own. I would imagine that if I were them, and they were me, that they would have done this a long time ago. I would imagine, too, that they know that I am human, that I fail at things, that I am not the greatest healer on the planet, but that I may indeed be one of the most loving. I hope they learned from me that they were worth my time when they were worth their own time.

While I cannot say that these people with whom I must, at this time, part ways, know who they are, I will say that they all know, and hopefully believe it when I say that really, it is for your own good, my own good, and that I Love You...

...I Love You...I always will...but I love me, too, and I am a priority.


Why aren't you a priority to YOU?

I LOVE YOU ALL
ROX