Taking my projections back

People come into our life and it may be a painful experience in order to help our souls emerge into who we are. It’s just like a birth process and that in itself is painful, but ultimately rewarding (I am guessing as I do not have children). These experiences can trigger our deepest fears of abandonment and rejection and our insecurities.

The person that catalyzes these feelings represent an aspect of ourselves that we are trying to reclaim and get back or that we have never come into. For me it is knowing my self-worth, believing in myself, self-value, self-trust and just a strong sense of self. If I could just see this symbolically, see him a symbol of the power I lost in childhood. What does he symbolize about who I am? About what I am trying to reclaim? Because I do know that it is really about me.

Projections. Often when this is talked about it’s about how we project our shit on to other people, as in misdirected anger, but often we project our “good” stuff on to others too. And maybe more so if you have codependent tendencies... I dunno. So I made a list of the things that I admired in him, that I thought were him, but perhaps really weren’t. We can perceive things in different lights depending on how we feel about the person or rather more correct, how we want that person to be for us.

The Projection List:

Stage Presence

Charisma

Confident
Sexy
Talented
Creative
Profound
Wise
Strong
Responsible
Committed
Loving
Spiritual
Intellectual
Awesome


And most of those perceptions came from him being a musician and song writer. In reality, that was more his stage persona or narcissism, a word he used once to describe why he had to be the singer even though his singing voice isn’t so great. Some of the other perceptions came from him being married for 16 years, him having the son live with him most the time, him having such a close relationship with ex and an extra close (read clingy) relationship with son. In reality, this all had to do with his addiction issues, codependency and deep-seated insecurity.

So perhaps all these projections I put on him are really aspects of me. I don’t claim many of them because I don’t believe them about me. And it’s just that, self-beliefs that hold us back. It’s what we believe about ourselves that directs our lives and feeds our experiences. What we believe is not necessarily the truth. Truth is, these are likely all my unclaimed power. I see it in others because I am unable to see it in myself. After all, people and relationships just hold up mirrors to us. Maybe I was never really seeing HIM, rather I saw my own strengths and power that was cut off from me in childhood.

I am here to reclaim my power and give his stuff back!

The Original Sin

REJECTION: The original wound

That’s where this relationship, this break up, this inner torment has lead me – to my original wound. I know and have always known that since this break up happened it wasn’t so much about him, the relationship or the break up. Hell, I knew all along he had emotional issues and I knew all along it wasn’t going to last. I was always waiting for the next shoe to drop. I knew I couldn’t stay with someone whom I thought was emotionally unhealthy and whereas his behaviours (not mean) hurt me and made me feel…well rejected.

I went through feeling a connection with someone, feeling happines, feeling joy and helping someone open up and grow (and that happened to a certain extent), but when it stopped: I went through heartache, I went through attachment, I went through obsession, I went through self-hate, I went through resentment, I went through blame, I went through codependency, I went through ego pride. And going through all these layers (over and over again) brought me to the core wound: Rejection.

So what does rejection, then, mean to me? It must mean something very bad, very dark and ugly if it created all these other painful and destructive layers. Of course, they all were originally created as layers of protection. Protection from an emotion that was too confusing and too painful to look at.  This feeling that I most likely experienced in childhood at a very young age from someone I loved and looked up to, someone I thought was there to guide me, protect me and love me (in a healthy way.) So what meaning did I give this feeling, this feeling that I am sure I didn’t have a name for, let alone an understanding of? I guess I made it mean that I am not good enough, I am not worthy, I am not special enough, I have nothing special to offer, I am inferior, my thoughts and feelings are not valid, I am not worthy of healthy mature love and so on…

Which then lead me to look for validation of who I am through others… anyone, and obviously through others that have very similar dysfunctions as the original wounder. It led me to not believe in myself, to feel inferior, to not voice my opinion, to not be self-confident, to not trust my own thoughts and feelings, to be powerless and a victim and be unable to soothe my own pain. The feeling of rejection – rather perhaps actually just the belief of being rejected, has not only clouded my vision of who I am really am, but it has clouded my vision of others. And thus I project. Perhaps I project my true power, that in which I have not been able to connect to, onto others thus believing they are so wonderful, confident, talented, worthy and I cannot live without them. But I am wise at the core, because I do eventually see the real person but it becomes so difficult to believe what I see, to believe what I know deep down.

This feeling of rejection has even clouded my meaning of rejection. After all I was the one who chose not to accept him and his behaviours in my brief moment of connecting to my power. After all I do know that another’s behaviours have nothing to do with me and it is their crap, so rejection really isn’t REAL. My illusion. My delusion.

Pain as a gift?

Could this pain really be a gift? Is pain ultimately guiding us to our true selves? To live our destiny? Is it just our perceptions of pain that keeps us suffering? Do we misguidedly believe pain is bad and we must rid ourselves of it. Our conditioned belief that we cannot endure suffering and we must do anything to overcome it, rid ourselves of it no matter what the cost.

But what is the cost? Pushing down feelings, closing our hearts, living lives that are just barely tolerable and possibly creating illness in our bodies from unprocessed pain? I have read many times that many physical illnesses or chronic injuries in our body are caused by unresolved pain. There’s a whole book on back pain being contributed to addicts and alcoholics not facing their pain. Our emotions get lodged inside our bodies because if we can’t express them and choose to repress them, our bodies will express them for us.

Or another cost could be not realizing who we really are and allowing our fears, addictions and obsessions to rule our life, creating the same patterns of pain over and over again. Instead of going into our pain, we just remain on the surface of it or not even going close to it by running away from it. Instead of investigating the dark and embracing our wounds and feeling our painful emotions, we find something to distract ourselves … a new relationship or an addiction to a legal or illegal substance. But can you really run away from your pain? Can these distractions really soothe these pains for good?

Sometimes I wish I could do this. I really do. I still see pictures of my ex with his girlfriend, the one he got right after our intense (and his first sober) relationship, and wonder how can they still be together after a year. I thought she was just a bandaid to fill his void. I often wonder how is it she tolerates him having such a “close” and what I thought was a dysfunctional and codependent relationship with his ex if I couldn’t (which I go into in the post Happy New Me). I thought it was my semi self-esteem and self-value that had me choose to not tolerate that anymore. I thought it was my wise intuition that finally said “no more, it’s time to leave. You are right this is not healthy even if he is so sweet to you and you adore each other. Nothing good can come of this.”

But good came to him just two months later and a new admiring girlfriend that he has now had a relationship with longer than we had. And, me, I’m still here in the pain. Am I in the right place? Like the wise sages say, I am going through this pain, working through my feelings, really trying to process old wounds, yet I am still suffering. So how can I can believe this pain is a gift? How can I know I did the right thing, not only to leave, but to investigate this pain? To go down into this really dark place? Do I just need to embrace this suffering instead of trying to rid myself of it, believing this will lead me to my authentic self, to a happier ending? Is it really better to go into the pain like all the wise spiritual teachers say? Because I am not feeling it. Yes I know my perception probably needs to change, as do my self-defeating beliefs and on what I see/perceive in his life and his relationship. But it is really hard. I guess I want a guarantee that I will be free by doing all this deep and painful work. I want to see (want proof) that my "intuition" and my "courageousness" to leave was right. And by right, I want to see that it is not working out for him. That choosing to run away from your pain, run away from something good due to fears & codependency is not a good choice and that will lead to unhappiness and suffering. But I am seeing quite the opposite! Or perhaps I am just creating my own suffering by doing this. I don’t know. I want to believe one thing, but I don’t yet.

If pain truly is a gift, I am ready to accept my gift.

Thanks Dulce for inspiring me to post something. I have all this stuff locked away in my journal...