Finding ourselves

First thought today was this idea of how mixed about and torn this way and that I felt on awakening today with all the demands on me lately plus Mars finally moving forward yesterday.  It was a huge day as the money I sent to help Scott was not able to be retrieved due to exhorbitant fees from the bank, he didn’t ask for more money only for me to cancel the cheque and yesterday he was very low again as the situation where he is tougher any day, tougher than any deployment he has been on in over 19 years.  All my attempts to ‘save’ him have failed to date and yesterday my sister was really pulling on me for help.  She is very lost and this thought came to me this morning how does a self get so lost that we have to go on a search to find it and how do we do this in a culture that so often only leads us to lose ourselves more in the quest to be better than or equal to or something else THAN WHO WE REALLY ARE INSIDE.

Often it starts with parents who may be just to darned busy surviving to see us at all as we really are, or they may not like parts of themselves they see in us or may think we are a bother or a nuisance, why then have us in the first place, my anger is pretty obvious in the last comment and how many times have I ‘wished I never was born’ to older parents and yet that wont help me now to survive or thrive in this life.  What I wanted and needed so often was absent and I was blamed for it when I ended up an alcoholic and in recovery at 31 and the hardest part its really only at about 22 years sober I realised I was emotionally neglected and that is why I turned to booze and substances and lacked self belief and self esteem as well as a solid core of strong good healthy ego.  Well I was about 53 when this started to finally dawn and blaming myself and criticising myself has been pretty much a way of life for me I am only just really realising fully the extent of it with the great therapist I finally found three years ago after about 6 aborted other attempts at therapy, not all were bad and I learned much even from the therapists who ended up failing me.

This morning after the day with my sis yesterday when I felt how weak and shaky she was inside I realised its not a case of her needing to buck up and get on with it.  The anxiety and depression courses she is doing are all about managing symptoms not sharing from her heart about what is going on.  I asked her yesterday if she could talk to someone in her group about what is going on and she said no.  I don’t understand this pathway…. how can it really help?  We need help to find where we got so lost in the first place if we ever want to find our way back home to our True self.

Anyway I woke feeling lost today and I never liked the saying feelings are not facts but I am beginning to understand its true.  I can feel lost at times but even the fact I can say that means I am not totally lost, just struggling like all humans do.  I am glad to say today I am part of the human race but its not hubris to say I am a more fully conscious human than so many I meet despite the fact I can be down on myself at times for never having achieved as much in a worldly sense as I would have liked, but I feel that for me so called ‘failure’ in external culture has not been true failure, its been a breaking down so I could wake up to the dysfunction around me and understand how it impinged on me and in that way I could find the self who always danced to the beat of a different drum and felt out of place in the culturized socialised world that I didn’t feel I fit inside.

Today even though I don’t belong a lot of places I do know I belong to myself and I belong to life.   I get down on myself a lot but I am unnecessarily harsh.  Its taken me years to see this and as I see my sister struggle I recognise myself and parts of my Mum and Dad in her she was bequeathed.  I will never abandon my sister, its not a matter of her having to pull herself up by the boot straps but she does need to learn to take action for herself more than pull on me all the time and the same goes for Scott.  After I get the money back for this unsuccessful bank draft I need to consider if I want to help more.  There is a chance he could die where he is as its very dangerous.  I know his spirit is getting so tired and he longs to be held.  He knows the soul I am and has fallen deeply in love with me and you know what its the first time I could ever say this before but I know why.  I am a loving caring person who is intelligent, fierce, brave and strong.  Its not easy for me to make tough calls and decisions but one thing I know like the Boddhisatva’s say as long is there is suffering let me be a channel for healing and peace, let me be always a light for others a lamp in the darkness but let me not deplete myself in the process of giving but also practice self care in the midst of it, for no one is super human we are all just human beings on the way to finding and living our true selves in a world that so often encourages us to get lost.