Growing - finally

[backinlife]

Hi all,

 

I have posted my story here

 

( ) and I read through it every day. But its not necessary to know my story in order to understand me.

 

I read a lot in this forum and follow quite a lot of you for a couple of weeks now. It has been stated a lot that its all about growing. And a week ago that sounded good to my ears, but i didn't really know what to do with that... growing. It sounded too abstract to me. I have grown a ton in the past 3 months, and i realized today, so i would like to share, in order to give the "Growing" in this forum some substance to hold on to. Don’t expect a result, my growing is more a process….

 

The 10 phases i went through in short:

 

1. I can't do this anymore, i am losing myself in him

2. I am so sad and i can't run to him

3. I am sometimes getting better but that means he can get better too, so i rather stay sad

4. Suffering is my only connection to him and i don't want to lose him

5. I need to move on cause he will move on

6. Where to, and where is he going?

7. I could just be me again and rely on myself

8. That's vain

9. If this is the world we life in, I don’t want to be part of it, life is * * * *

10. No, it isn't!!! In fact its precious

 

Be assured that the phases didn't occur only after each other, but intertwined and back and forth. Right now i feel like phase 10 for 3 hours already!

 

I need to write it down, right now i feel its the ultimate wisdom....

 

Phase 1-6

 

are him-related, totally. And those phases are the most discussed in this forum. There are tons of posts that relate to these phases, and mine are only one example. In this time I thought: Even if i read here i should grow, i though i needed to grow for him. Grow in order to get back to HIM, be a better girl for HIM.

Phase 7 and 8

And then i had short phases of insight, that it can only be about me, but then that felt so vain. So Phase 7 and 8 was all about ME and my place in the world and what I wanted from life. I mean i have been that person before. Self sufficient, doing "my thing" being cynical about love. And when i met my boy i really thought there could be another meaning to life. It could be that there is something that is not only constructed, something REAL apart from me. And i fell in love with the notion of love. And he did too. And then we started to believe that if there is something REAL, and not constructed cause we want to believe in something, but something that really exists, then it just exists. So back then we thought there is a reality between us. Something that we didn't construct ourselves, something that is there not because we want it to be, but because it really exists. So when something exists beyond our believe, if its there, really, then it exists regardless of whether we change or thinking about it or not, right? So i tested it. i cheated on him. And then he was completely shocked, cause he thought, if there would have been anything else than our wishful thinking, something that really exists, this shouldn't have happened, and if it happened, i should be able to get over it. But he didn't get over it. And that made me stop believing that there was something real behind this, cause i thought if there is more than wishful thinking, it should persist after the wishful thinking stops.... but we broke up and i had my fair share in this.

 

So there we were, angry at each other for stealing our belief from each other. Angry at each other for proving to each other that this was all constructed and we were stupid to believe it in the first place. We both felt like fools. Like those hopeless romantics we considered naive before we started dating. And now we had fallen for the same idea and failed!

 

So i started doubting everything. I had loved the idea that there are actual real things between people, not just a deal to pursue the same goals and relying on a win-win situation. So when the idea couldn't be held up anymore, i started to think that i can solve this problem by clinging on with all my might. Even if its not a win-win situation, even if i loose big time. Just in order to not giving up the notion of love, i was ready to do anything. Even die.

 

I was in that state for 6 weeks and god it hurt. I lost so much weight, in need to go to a clinic cause i have serious problems from not eating and not sleeping. I have huge debt and haven't taken care of one of my bills. I have neglected all my friends and family and i have steered my life to the edge in only 6 weeks (if i do something i do it properly, you see). And all of that just so i don't have to admit that the notion of love is constructed, that its a narrative.

 

Phase 9:

The day before yesterday I gave up. It was not about HIM anymore, and also not about ME, it was about nothing anymore.

 

I tell you what happened: I saw my affair again. She had been thrown out of her new boyfriend’s place and I am the only one she know in this city with a car and a place to sleep. So she called me up and I “rescued” her. We talked and talked and later on I slept with her. I felt nothing for her. Nothing. I knew that I COULD construct this again, I could fall in love with her again. I knew that if I closed my eyes and imagined that we would move in together and be happy and all, then I could actually get back to loving her, constructing it. And from then on I could work on reconstructing the narrative of true love, of how we were just meant to be together and how everything that happened before had to happen in order to be together….. I COULD do that, but I would know that its fake. Same had to go for my lost love then. I could construct it again, we could say, well the break up made us stronger, we are two difficult people, but we are meant to be together, and maybe we would have believed in it again…. That feeling was the emptiest so far. A.) cause it leaves nothing but our own construction, B) cause then all the responsibility is on us, we share it with nobody C.) if I can construct anything, then the other narratives, like being a self sufficient person that needs to do “her thing” is not less a construction.

So nothing is real, its all up to what we make of it.

 

See, I thought basically then its completely up to you what religion to follow. The religion of god, the religion of self sufficiency, the religion of being useful to others as in doing good things and save the planet or the children, the religion of love to a partner, you could even buy a dog and make it your religion or a plant, or a playstation. Anything goes. You decide what you want to do with life and do it, and if your religion is your career, then you should go ahead. And I knew that I was capable of that, but I didn’t WANT to, cause with the knowledge I construct my happyness on my own and there is no higher sense, no nothing, it appeared vain to me and whatever direction I chose, I was aware how fake it was.

 

And I have to quote a song here that I never understood up until now:

 

"Losing My Religion"

 

Life is bigger

It's bigger than you

And you are not me

The lengths that I will go to

The distance in your eyes

Oh no I've said too much

I set it up

 

That's me in the corner

That's me in the spotlight

Losing my religion

Trying to keep up with you

And I don't know if I can do it

Oh no I've said too much

I haven't said enough

I thought that I heard you laughing

I thought that I heard you sing

I think I thought I saw you try

 

Every whisper

Of every waking hour I'm

Choosing my confessions

Trying to keep an eye on you

Like a hurt lost and blinded fool

Oh no I've said too much

I set it up

 

Consider this

The hint of the century

Consider this

The slip that brought me

To my knees failed

What if all these fantasies

Come flailing around

Now I've said too much

I thought that I heard you laughing

I thought that I heard you sing

I think I thought I saw you try

 

But that was just a dream

That was just a dream

 

I felt that song, I felt it. And then I talked to my friends again, and I looked deep inside. And there was a spark…. That was the start of phase 10

 

Phase 10

 

Ok, rationally: if it really doesn’t matter what religion we chose, what road we take, then it REALLY DOESN’T MATTER. Pick one. And yes, it is vain, everything is. And that makes it so full. The Meta-narrative is: we are all in the same mess of trying to find a narrative. (Thanks a lot to my good friend Lilly who just had a baby and still listens to my weird stuff) So there is something higher, in a way. Since we all have this spark somewhere hidden. If you don’t move (and that means eventually hit the wall or the floor) you are stable. And stability is the one thing we don’t want, its giving up. If you run now you have at least a chance of finding it one day, and by going wrong you at least can exclude where its not. And what is there is not something you can find. What is there is to try to find it, and be happy doing that. And that’s my new narrative. And it works for me. And I am scared cause everything my friends said makes sense now, but when they said it I wasn’t there yet. So you might think I am a freak, and maybe I am, but I am a happy freak as of now.

 

And yes, I have thought about calling my ex up and telling him what I found out. Cause I like the guy, really I do and I would love to hear what he has to say to it, cause he is a very smart man. When I met him, we were exactly in the same place, even when I called him last week we were. Now I feel I am completely somewhere else. I am so grateful to this man, I can’t even tell you. And I am not going to tell him what I think, cause it would prevent him from getting where I am now. I hope he will get there, as I hope you all will. It is a precious feeling and I love everything today, including me. What a tricky world we live in, and how great that is…. Took me a while to get here, but I got to know myself a lot better… and I like what I see. Don’t let people tell you you have to do one or the other, you don’t need to do anything. Just be aware that you chose what you do and the basis on which you chose is you.

 

I have very small hopes that this is a very understandable text. Naturally, cause it compresses my thoughts over weeks, and I have done nothing else than thinking… I just wanted to share. And tell you it’s not only getting better, it getting great if you let it!

 

Let go! Life is weird! Nothing is perfect, the perfection lies within the weirdness. You make a complex difference. Its not about good or bad, happy or sad, black or white, its about making a difference, moving something, doesn’t matter in with direction, just keeping it dynamic, raising questions, not giving answers.

 

No, I am not taking happy-pills. I am that weird!

 

If you would like to answer to this, i would be glad to hear if any of this makes sense, and i would also hear which phase you consider yourself in. And if you are in phase 11, please tell me what it is...

 

Thank you all for listening and helping me get where i am. My own story alone would have not been sufficient to get here that far that fast, i was benefiting from all of your stories to make sense of all this. Thank you very much

 

Mona

[robowarrior]

I think you are completely lost, what basically happened was that you let your life evolve around him, and by exposing yourself to someone who doesn't care about you, you are in for some deep emotional hurt. This led to all those crazy phases you where talking about. But in reality it was just a form of depression. Rather going into all those schitzophrenic phases, i would prefer that you would see the situation as one whole, with elements that are interconnected with eachother.

 

With the relationship pain comes the life lesson that you should never go into a relationship expecting things to work out just because it concerns 'your case' reality is that a guy can pack his bags and leave any day.

 

So the mistake you made is that you gave the power of your life away to where it doesn't belong, namely in his hands. With this you became a mere log falling from a waterfall in a uncontrollable manner, and got your feelings smashed like the log on the rocks below the waterfall.

 

This wouldn't have happened nearly so fast if you showed you had a life of your own to live, that way you could expect something like that happening and would have brought the power of your life where it belongs, namely back into your own hands.

[backinlife]

hmmm robowarrior,

 

this post was less meant to show the feelings i went trough after the break up but more how i made sense of it. It is about what is behind all this... And the meta narrative around it. Well what i am trying to say is that there are choices we make and we make them because of some underlying narrative about how we should live our life. And now saying that you should never give responsibility to someone and not having your own life (which i had BTW, i had my career, my friends and never lost that), is somewhat not an answer to my post. Cause it is a narrative itself. YOU think, one should not lose ones self sufficiency. And that is your narrative. I say, whatever narrative you choose is fine. You can be happy with whatever.

 

I know people who chose to live in complete unity with one person. They make unconditional love their religion, the thing they believe makes sense in life. And they are not necessarily happy, but they might. I also know people who believe only in themselves, and they are not necessarily happy, but they might. It doesn't matter.

 

My point is, that those believes are all naratives and i think they are not universal. So your narrative is yours, and mine is mine, and its fine as long as we both know that its not universal truth, but believes. Those believes can fulfill themselves by being pursued. So if you decide tomorrow that self sufficiency is what you have to pursue in life, and you act on it, then self sufficiency will make you happy and maybe eventually sad, cause it is not THE THING to do. If you decide tomorrow you want to believe in god, you will find happyness in that, or not.

 

But it will be stable happyness if you then stop questioning what you are doing. In order to keep it dynamic you have to question, try and error on these believes, in order to find out what is really true. You can't just construct truth and then decide this is true because you believe it. There is no recipe to happiness. And if i give power to someone, it is still a considered action from my side, and tomorrow i can take it away again. If i give power to someone it is still me doing that, because i think i will benefit from it. I let my boy so close cause i believed i would get something in return, it was a deal. And the narrative behind it was " there is true love" and in order to get this true love we needed to give each other some power. And for the time it lasted we were fine. What killed us, was that the underlying assumptions didn't hold true and so we crashed the whole concept as constructed. This was not the case when i look at it now though. I learned that there can be true love, even if its not as in a hollywood movie (and I think my boy still cares very much for me, and i care for him), but it can take different shapes. I don't have to reect the notion of love anymore just because my relationship ended. This doesn't shock me anymore. So i adjusted my narrative. I am not saying it is the universal truth. But for me this narrative works, and by adjusting it to reality a little bit more, i have come closer to what actually is universal.

 

My post was not meant to indulge into the question on what went wrong or anything. I was trying to say something on a different level. Nothing went wrong with this relationship. It made me figure out things. I grew with this and leaned something. And that is what needs to happen in life. It keeps it dynamic. I look back now and think, wow, if that had not happened i would have never had the chance to find my new take on life. And this new narative will be proven wrong again, and the one after that, and in this process i will get closer and closer to what actually is the meta narative. This relationship could have worked, if my narrative behind it wouldn't have been wrong. If i wouldn't have been shocked about the fact that it was not what i had constructed it to be, if it would have met my notion of love back then, i wouldn't have pulled out, and neither would he. We pulled out cause the notion behind it, the narative was proven wrong, so we though this doesn't fit what we decided to be love. We should have questioned the notion behind it, not the reality. Then it would have worked. But i guess we both needed to grow in that respect, adjust our notions. The love was good, it was just not what we expected it to look like, so we thought well, then its not true love. We should have thought oh, so THAT's what true love looks like, interesting, and then it would have been fine.

 

i hope you understand me more now, not less... Its late and i fear when i read this again that it is not very clear. I am sorry. This is more a philosophical post than a getting back together post. But i think it makes sense here anyhow, cause all these thoughts came out of a breakup and the following trial to fix it. So i just wanted to share what i learned.

 

Mona

[Leigh]

Thank you for sharing your thoughts, Mona. I think it's very brave to allow everyone this kind of intimacy into your stages of healing these past few weeks. I also understand what you have said here, and I think it's a very interesting perspective... Love ITSELF did not fail - the love was there, it just didn't meet your PERCEPTION of what love is.

 

In my case, for example, my narrative was that love meant loving someone enough to do anything so that they would be happy (even if that meant without me), as I left my ex due to feeling like a burden (both financial and emotional). My ex, on the other hand, had a different (and more common) narrative - one that said that we stick things out no matter what (so BOTH of us are now unhappy instead of just one). So one was LOVING THE OTHER ONE ENOUGH TO LEAVE, while the other one was wondering WHY DIDN'T THEY LOVE ME ENOUGH TO STAY?

 

It's easy to see where the communication/ideals then broke down... we didn't UNDERSTAND each other's narratives and, though there was a ton of love actually still there (from both sides), the narratives meant that the DIRECTION of that love was mismatched (staying vs. leaving).

 

Geez. I hope I'M making sense now...lol (On a side note, my narrative has since changed to that of my exes'.)

 

Anyway, I just wanted to say that I get this and I do not believe that anyone should tell you that your method of healing (or realizations as a result) are incorrect... you have found happiness, and however that was accomplished, I think it's great that you chose to share it.

 

Take care, hun.

L.

[backinlife]

Thanks Leigh,

 

Thats exactly my point. The narratives have to stay dynamic, as people are dynamic. And they need to be agreed upon, all the time, constantly, it about the dialogue. When we had the narrative that we stick together, no matter what, we were fine, but when i cheated, my boy changed his narative, and mine changed too... the love was not wrong, the love was there, just the narrative changed.

 

i certainly had my own life, and he did too. The problem was when my boy made these huge concesions, like moving for me and giving up his life in India, i couldn't deal with it, cause i somehow was scared i had to give up so much now too. He gave up his source of finance, his good life, his career. It freaked me out how much he did for this realtionship. I forgot that this is what he WANTED to do. And from then on it was just a mess. It was not that i couldn't deal with the fact that first he was leaning on me and then i was leaning on him, it was my struggle with the ideas behind it. I had to make peace with it. And he didn't manage to adapt his narrative.... well when i broke out, he felt like a love fool, didn't remember himself that he was the one who WANTED all this. Every second he had spent with me suddenly seemed like a wasted one. He didn't remember that he was happy to do all this for me. Cause he felt i was not. And i couldn't convince him otherwise, he was already too far gone to the other extreme...

 

My signature are his words. Its a quote from paradise lost. read it, you can find it online, its good read.

 

Mona

 

Mona