Triggered, disappointed and let down again

Been crying pretty much since 11 am. Spent entire morning organised around being on time to meet a fellowship friend who failed to show. I was triggered but had my boundary in place, wait 10 minutes but get on with my day if they don’t show which is something I learned in Al Anon. Footnote to this if you ever agree to meet my brother be prepared to wait around for anything from 20 minutes to two hours and don’t expect a notification via message or phone call. Anyway shortly after we headed out to walk she called to say she was sorry she ‘got distracted’. I just said to her. Jules, I actually organised my whole morning around getting to meet you on time, I would have appreciated some notice. She said sorry and I just said to take care of herself and quietly hung up then the same deluge as I experienced on Saturday.

I was grateful I listened to a talk on the new moon and was reminded of the fact that Chiron is being triggered by trine to the Sun at present and I texted my friend to apologise for ending the call but she hit one of my triggers and I had pretty much been crying since she failed to show as it was something Mum often did to me. I was so appreciative when she sent me the following text. : “There is no question your time matters. You are worthy of respect and being thought of, my absent mindness reflects my selfishness. Nothing to do with my positive regard for you. My actions have an impact. Thank you for explaining how it affected you. I want to be a better friend. and what happened today was not worthy conduct of a good friend.”

Wow!! I was crying so deeply before that with Jasper and felt that terrible hollowness and emptiness of the wound of emotional abandonment I had suicidal thoughts again and what she said also reflected to me the truth of my childhood and situations with my living sister. When I was growing up they were so wrapped up in their own life, I WASNT EVEN SEEN. I WASN’T NOTICED. I WASN’T HELD IN MIND. i GOT INJURED SEVERAL TIMES VERY VERY BADLY BY THEIR NEGLECT AND DUE TO THE FACT ‘I FELL OUT OF THEIR MIND’. (An expression my therapist often uses.)

I have been reading Lisa Romano’s book on how failure of parental attention and love sets us up for self neglect, self betrayal and self abandonment. It makes me cry and burn in my heart and gut to think how often I abandoned myself to those who would never really put me first or think about my needs and were more than willing to discard me if I didn’t jump to their tune. However now as an adult that is most likely my responsibility. Due to the abandonment wound I have lost myself so many times. I have not known what are healthy or unhealthy boundaries. I had a gut instinct about this person also being unreliable but I still set myself up to meet her. Part of me thinks it was brave to be vulnerable and open my heart, part of me feels I set myself up to be her proxy for her own neglected inner child.

I think emotional avoidants learn very early on to deny the way they feel and bury their need and then they can re enact that in some way and force others to carry the can. It fucking hurts and its not a good transaction to become involved in. I am still very unclear about all of this boundary stuff. But at the moment I just feel spending time alone and working on loving myself is the best thing I can do for me.

I just feel that until I really love myself I am going to be continually opened to these wounded and wounding relationships. Its hard to know who to trust and that it’s not my fault when people let me down (though I always wrack my brain for what I could have done wrong to trigger it – maybe because my parents often blamed me). I have bent over backwards for one year to help this guy Scott overseas with money just because I long for a connection and he offers it to me but how much should I be willing to pay for it?

I also know now that I am sick of caretaking my sister. I wish she would step the fuck up and take care of her own life. I am thinking of going limited contact for a while. If she wants to live it’s up to her to generate her life somehow and sometimes we have to develop the capacity to be alone before we can begin to connect in healthier ways with others. For me I am also atching my inner self talk in an attempt to weed out all self shaming and blaming statements. Lisa Romano recommends doing journaling every morning to catalogue all the negative things we say to ourselves. This is old faulty programming that needs to be uprooted.

By all means I know I am not perfect but the does not mean I am unlovable. I just see how hard I fucking dance or shape shift to maintain any outer connection these days and to be honest I am getting tired of if. If my sis wants a relationship with me now she can pick up the phone. Probably her depression wont let her but I know there comes a time to care for others too to be able to reach out from our own pain to share and give something instead of expecting others to be our psychic activator or sponge.

I sense I am surely feeling the rumblings of the New Moon in Leo right now, we are moving into the dark of the Moon over the next 48 hours as the Moon is in early Cancer right now. Mercury is stationary at about 24 degrees of Cancer right now and the Moon will join it a day before the New Moon at 9 degrees of Leo on Thursday. We need our self love and solar light, we need to know what wounds and what heals us, we need to be strong on this path and develop our inner courage and Lion’s roar but we don’t have to get all bent out of shape when others trigger or hurt us. We can be firm and kind and loving both to them and to us. As I was to my friend when I texted her to let her know how what she had done triggered my pain. We need to know that we all have value and are worthy of respect and love, even my friend who let me down but was brave enough to admit her part. So though I was sad today I am grateful, for as Lisa says if we know we have value, we know we deserve better treatment and we will have the strength to walk away from what is painful, hurtful or toxic for us and speak up about those things that aren’t good for us. Its not something I find easy because I always think I can just cope the pain, but to keep opening to it can rapidly become a kind of masochism or victim position.