Theloopylululog

What’s one thing I know now that would have saved my younger self a lot of pain?

One thing. You certainly are underestimating me and my adulting process, WordPress!

What’s with sending me back all the bloody time to my past, eh? It’s THE PAST for a good f***king reason. You apparently are too tone deaf to know that. I get it now.

I have been doing so much time travel because of you…I have practically aged by over a dozen years. It won’t be a wonder if I wake up tomorrow and celebrate my 60th! I am only 45 FYI! This is where all my favorite emojis go. The angry one, the one with my favorite profanity and the purple head with horns!

Now that I am here anyway…let me pull another one from my bag brimming with life lessons.

What’s one thing I know now that would have saved my younger self a lot of pain?

The blind belief that I could love someone into loving me back.

It began with family and extended to friends and partners.

I would do everything my mother never even asked me to do and stand there waiting for her appreciation and affection.

Nothing of the sort came my way. She wanted the job to be perfect…not done by me in the way I knew how.

I tried to change the way I spoke and suppress my usual emotional self and look to my emotionally absent and volatile dad to congratulate me for following on his footsteps.

Nope. Nothing positive about it again. He found fault with the intonation. Apparently some emotion had breached it’s banks and leaked out of the corners anyway.

I finished chores of my sister like cleaning her cupboard, washing her clothes and cleaning up after her faults. Waiting by the edge of the door in vain for her to notice my presence and contribution to making her life easier.

I did something similar with my temperamental brother. Literally cleaned up after him, for he was reckless and careless. Took his volatility and insensitivity to my chin and made it seem like it didn’t affect me at all. After all if I could love him to death, he should do the same, right?

Wrong.

Again.

The behaviour broke through the walls of home and extended to friends first. I didn’t let go of any opportunity to shower them with love, time, gifts and effort. Can I say the same about them? Sadly, no. I seem to be the only one doing the heavy lifting and I was blind as a bat to even notice it.

The worst was yet to come.

My romantic life saw the most painful outcome of this debilitating need to feel needed.

I gave. They took.

I gave some more. They took some more.

I dug deep into the trenches of my reservoir and gave more, scraping the bottom shamelessly. They took it. And went about their lives like I was a stray dog waiting to be fed…only occasionally.

I drank their pain. I ate their poison. And stood at the edge of their hearts waiting.

Endlessly waiting.

Trying hard. Harder. Hardest.

For what, though?

I don’t know now frankly.

Why was I such a pathetic people-pleaser?

Was it a desperate need for approval?

Or maybe a need for validation?

Why did I try so hard?

Was I waiting patiently to be SEEN?

Could it be that it was simply a need to be held and comforted and just adored for being ME, with all my quirks and flaws?

I wish I knew.

I truly wish I understood why my younger self put herself last.

Minimising herself until she was barely there in any of her relationships. Becoming the classic prototype of a sacrificial goat.

Loving the other until there was nothing left for herself.

Obviously I became invisible in my own life. To my own self.

It took me 42 of my 45 years to understand what Self-Love meant. And the next three years to inculcate it in every sphere of my life.

Need you wonder why I am not in touch with any of my friends or ex-partners except for an occasional email or a stray whatsapp text.

My relationship with the family transformed. For the first time I wrote myself into the equation.

The moment I took a stand for myself and stopped needing anything from anyone outside of myself, was empowering for me and, strangely, disempowering for all of them.

They had taken me for granted for decades letting the dysfunctional relationships continue the way they were. Until I learnt it was okay to say No.

Until I made sure I gave but with a full cup, keeping a good portion of myself for my own self-replenishment.

There was push back. Obviously.

When one gets used to being showered with love without the other demanding their fair share, people usually become full of themselves. When one half of a relationship becomes invisible, the other half always becomes invincible.

So when they are taken off their pedestal and placed on an equal footing, there is a discomfort. They miss the idol worship, the blind faith and the cocky attitude that comes with being someone’s entire world.

Finally the bubble burst.

For me first.

Then for them.

I look back at my younger self and wonder what made her give so much of herself to everyone in her life? What made her convince herself that she didn’t deserve any of what she gave the others so freely? Why did she feel she needed to perform to receive what she deserved anyway? What was she indeed expecting in return?

It’s distressing to say the least to go down my memory palace to dusty rooms with cobwebs of suppressed pain left unopened for decades.

I wish Love came with a manual.

That had 3 simple rules in her own words.

1. Pour me unto yourself first. DO NOT be shy or ashamed or afraid or guilty of giving me to yourself first and of putting yourself first. If the world calls you selfish or self centred, it can go f*** itself.
2. I don’t demand performance. Performance is for circus monkeys and artists of cinema. Unless you are one of them or belong to one of them, leave the performance out at the door. If somebody forces you to perform or makes you feel you need to perform to receive me, RUN!
3. DON’T YOU DARE INTERCHANGE THE ORDER OF THE ABOVE RULES.
4. As an added bonus, here’s another one. STOP pandering to WordPress’s desperate need to stick it’s smelly nose into your past! That’s not me. That’s intrusion!