As time goes by, and if you are even mildly reflective, patterns emerge in your life. Questions rise up. You can find yourself requiring answers.
It can take decades potentially for consciousness of a pattern to occur. I think little niggles and doubts and concerns can be present but we are ingenious in the way we repeatedly squash them down.
One day, we find that it is all starting to make some sense. We have enough pieces of the jigsaw puzzle to start to see a picture. It's at this time that we might furiously look around for the last missing pieces. That's what I did.
Once one piece emerged and then another I became indefatigable in my attempts for a complete picture. My insistence paid off. I have a full picture and I'm in the healing and moving on process.
This is not to say that I don't make errors still because when you are around certain personality types they have a way of being triggered such they can act their most wounded selves at a moment's notice. There is no telling what might set them off, how they might hear and interpret your (innocent) words.
Someone said to me recently that they admired the fact that I had a irrepressible sense of humor about the circumstances of my life.
I don't ever think I've lost that sense that even the most damaged and difficult of people are multi-dimensional people. Nobody wants to be seen as a condition, or a victim, and those I have known and loved, as flawed as their behavior might be, are all good people at their core. Nobody asks for parents who are incapable of parenting in a good-enough fashion, or for childhood experiences which cut across the sense of self.
It might be excruciatingly difficult for them to overcome what has happened to them, the changes in the brain, probably impossible, but they have all had good and kind qualities. I never forget this. Never.
So long as I can be insulated from the toxicity through methods of self-love, not relying on or expecting reciprocity, then I can hold onto feelings of unconditional love for them. I can't have the sort of relationship I'd ideally love to have with them, but I don't stop thinking of them with great affection.
When children comes into the world they expect, demand, that their primary caregivers unconditionally love them. That's their right as human defenseless babies with hard wired personalities.
Alas, optimal parenting isn't necessarily available to some people and the child is unable to construct an integrated self. The parent(s) liked some qualities - abilities in the classroom or on the sporting field perhaps - but they despised the vulnerabilities and certain expressed feelings; aspects of the children's personality that didn't serve their parents well.
Vulnerable feelings that were expressed by such children, but unwanted by parents who insisted that the child esteem them, created a false self. It's this false self that is protected with every fiber of some people's being throughout their lives. It's this false sense that demands that anyone that comes close to breaking into this false self must be torn apart and chewed up.
It seems to be the case that I was born with a remarkable degree of maternal love. It's not just children but adults too. I see into the damaged soul of some adults and I see a child that needs love. I seek to heal. It's this 'weakness' of mine that can, and has, caused me so much grief.
Now that I know exactly what I am dealing with I am less and less hurt every day by any arrows thrown in my direction. I've an acute sense of what is indeed going on, and I side step rather than duck these days. I do what I can where I can.
However, I no longer believe in miracles, or that I have love enough to offer such that I can save every situation. I'm no saint, can't walk on water; can't change what happened way back when. I do my best. I'm satisfied with that now.
It can take decades potentially for consciousness of a pattern to occur. I think little niggles and doubts and concerns can be present but we are ingenious in the way we repeatedly squash them down.
One day, we find that it is all starting to make some sense. We have enough pieces of the jigsaw puzzle to start to see a picture. It's at this time that we might furiously look around for the last missing pieces. That's what I did.
Once one piece emerged and then another I became indefatigable in my attempts for a complete picture. My insistence paid off. I have a full picture and I'm in the healing and moving on process.
This is not to say that I don't make errors still because when you are around certain personality types they have a way of being triggered such they can act their most wounded selves at a moment's notice. There is no telling what might set them off, how they might hear and interpret your (innocent) words.
Someone said to me recently that they admired the fact that I had a irrepressible sense of humor about the circumstances of my life.
I don't ever think I've lost that sense that even the most damaged and difficult of people are multi-dimensional people. Nobody wants to be seen as a condition, or a victim, and those I have known and loved, as flawed as their behavior might be, are all good people at their core. Nobody asks for parents who are incapable of parenting in a good-enough fashion, or for childhood experiences which cut across the sense of self.
It might be excruciatingly difficult for them to overcome what has happened to them, the changes in the brain, probably impossible, but they have all had good and kind qualities. I never forget this. Never.
So long as I can be insulated from the toxicity through methods of self-love, not relying on or expecting reciprocity, then I can hold onto feelings of unconditional love for them. I can't have the sort of relationship I'd ideally love to have with them, but I don't stop thinking of them with great affection.
When children comes into the world they expect, demand, that their primary caregivers unconditionally love them. That's their right as human defenseless babies with hard wired personalities.
Alas, optimal parenting isn't necessarily available to some people and the child is unable to construct an integrated self. The parent(s) liked some qualities - abilities in the classroom or on the sporting field perhaps - but they despised the vulnerabilities and certain expressed feelings; aspects of the children's personality that didn't serve their parents well.
Vulnerable feelings that were expressed by such children, but unwanted by parents who insisted that the child esteem them, created a false self. It's this false self that is protected with every fiber of some people's being throughout their lives. It's this false sense that demands that anyone that comes close to breaking into this false self must be torn apart and chewed up.
It seems to be the case that I was born with a remarkable degree of maternal love. It's not just children but adults too. I see into the damaged soul of some adults and I see a child that needs love. I seek to heal. It's this 'weakness' of mine that can, and has, caused me so much grief.
Now that I know exactly what I am dealing with I am less and less hurt every day by any arrows thrown in my direction. I've an acute sense of what is indeed going on, and I side step rather than duck these days. I do what I can where I can.
However, I no longer believe in miracles, or that I have love enough to offer such that I can save every situation. I'm no saint, can't walk on water; can't change what happened way back when. I do my best. I'm satisfied with that now.
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