Looking at the whole journey

Tuesday I had a falling out with a friend.  T and I have been limping along as friends, him holding on to me because I am a bright spot in what he considers a dark life, and me well, I am getting tired of taking the knocks he doles out because he is miserable.  Tuesday, it came to a head.  By the end of the day, I told him I didn't want to talk to him anymore, that I was finished with this whole thing.  I had, had enough.  I had promised him that I would give him until June to prove to me that he understood that I was not someone to beat up on and he promised to try.  I will admit that it is better to a degree, but still not where it needs to be for things to feel okay.  Long story short, T and I have a kind of toxic relationship.

Anyway, I digress, Tuesday evening, I felt a bit like I hadn't been fair.  That I had made an agreement and I wasn't upholding my end of the bargain.  So Wednesday morning, I pulled animal medicine cards to get some guidance on how to proceed.  The cards told me to look at my whole journey and see what it was I wasn't facing.  What it was that I was repeating.

Immediately, my relationship with A came to mind.  We had a similar kind of situation.  We both held on to a relationship that had gone toxic.  And in the end, I dumped her and she called me a long stream of names.

So I spent some time yesterday wrestling with what what it is that need to see and face in myself so that I stop repeating this kind of toxic relationship.  I can tell myself that I see people who I start out feeling equal to (in terms of intelligence, emotional maturity, etc.).  As the relationship progresses, it becomes more and more clear that I am the stronger, the more mature.  I can tell myself that I hold on to them because I am a nice person who only wants to see them grow into the potential they have.  They are both great people, and I want them to be happy.  So I do my best to try to help them find their happiness.  So, I am sticking through the toxic for a good reason...right?

It's not that easy.  It isn't just that I am a nice person with unconditional love.  If it were just that I was a nice person, we wouldn't get to the point of toxic.  Toxic happens because there is underlying resentment, hurt, anger that builds until it bubbles to the surface.  Certainly, some of that stuff is on their end, but if it wasn't on mine too, it would just dissipate.  Since it doesn't, my own negativity is mixed in.  But where is it coming from?  What is it that is causing this pattern I am not seeing.

I make arguments of possibly my ego gets involved and I get a charge out of being the person that has helped them come into their own.  I will be the person credited with them finding themselves and their happiness.  But that feels hollow and untrue.  I have helped a lot of people in my life find their strength and their truth, and it never got toxic.  Maybe it is because I am determined to make someone in my image.  Perhaps I have a God complex, and I think I am the way people should be, and so because I see the potential of them being more like me, I want to force it.  But no, that doesn't feel right either.  I talk to a lot of people, many of whom have aspects that remind me of me, and I don't want any of them to be like me.  I honestly do want them to live to their full potential.  So what is it about these two?

Then I realize it isn't just these two.  There is a third.  And the story with P, is different.  The toxicity that was starting with P, wasn't about inequality or wanting to fix him.  He and I were equals always.  Yet, as the end of our friendship approached that toxicity was there.  It was forming just under the surface.  In looking at my pattern, at my journey, I am pretty sure that had he not moved, we would have suffered through the same long, toxic end to our friendship.

I can list a million similarities that make the relationship between A and T seem like a repeat of the exact same pattern.  With P, the surface similarities just don't exist.  How did it get toxic?

I am not sure of the deeper implications or what exactly it comes to.  But P was the first.  My relationship with him was the first to end, and the first to reach the point of near constant feelings of self-doubt and toxicity.  It ended through other means first, but it ended none the less, and it ended toxic.  A was next, and several years later T.

If we really want to look deeply, I could probably include relationships with AE and AD as part of this pattern of toxic behavior.  Holding on to something damaged well past the point when it would be best to let go.

I have decided that it comes down to love.  I love my family; my mom, my dad, my sisters.  Those relationships all have their ups and their downs.  But in the end, I know that everyone of those people will be there for me should I ever need them.  I don't have any reason to doubt that they love me.

J and I suffered through several periods of toxicity and really perhaps he should be included on the list, but as we muddled through and managed it, including him in that pattern isn't quite as obvious.  Our relationship was never one I considered even, but perhaps he is part of it as well.  I don't know, I might need to think about it.

I loved AE, AD, A, P and T.  Not in the forever after kind of way, but in the connected "I want you to know me kind of way."  At some point they disappointed me and/or I disappointed them, and we ended up realizing that we wanted different things.  I wanted something deep, something where I could explore myself and they would come with me on the journey, exploring themselves and ... I am not sure what they wanted, but I wanted to go places they didn't and I didn't want to go where they did.  But we both felt it.  That connection.  That "love."  That feeling doesn't come up very often.  At least in my experience I don't meet people I connect that fully with regularly.

So there it was.  I had a soul connection, and I wanted to run with it.  And when it became clear that it wasn't meant to be  what I wanted it to be, I couldn't let go.  I can't let go.  If I let go and I can't make them feel that soul connection again that makes me wrong about them or wrong about me or wrong about the connection.  These connections are supposed to go with me into old age and senility.  And here I am losing them.  Doors are closing and the dream I have for what this connection means goes too.  I don't want to be wrong about that connection.  I don't want to be wrong about that love.  I can't be wrong about the people I have let into the doors of my life.  And so I fight to maintain that connection even though it was really only a temporary thing.  They did their job in my life, and when it is time to move on, I can't let go because I want to continue to feel that love.

What's sad really, is that as I fight with them to hold on to that connection, the people who aren't toxic, the people with whom I have that connection and it is meant to be long term suffer.  I don't make an effort with them.  I don't maintain the connection with them.  I am determined to give the squeaky wheel the grease, while forgetting to keep up the maintenance on the rest of the car.

I don't want it to change.

The lesson...I suppose is that I need to focus my attention on those that are good in my life, instead of trying to force something that isn't fitting.

AE, AD, A and P are gone.  There is no going back and at this point I am not sure I want to.  With T, perhaps instead of removing him, I will just let him be, and while I give some maintenance to those that don't need it, but could use it, he will wiggle back into place and things will run smoothly.  And if not, well, I suppose that I will deal with that, when the time comes.