No summer has seen me move through so many emotions, thoughts, and states of mind as quickly as this one. The last 12 months have been a blur, but the mental outcome of all of these experiences has come to light over the last couple of months and particularly since the middle of June. The pace of change has been dramatic, particularly when paired with the relative stability of the preceding 4 years and I’ve come to accept this as the natural evolution of my of thought – intense immersion and then time to assimilate the information and create a new world view or state of mind that includes the new information. All of this done to ensure that my internal understanding of my universe match the external one as closely as possible.
Why was this summer so different from any of the previous ones?
Mid way through, around the beginning of July, it became evident that many of my thoughts, actions and dreams were unworkable because they hadn’t come from me. Yes, they were my thoughts, actions and dreams, but only because I decided to make them my thoughts, actions and dreams – they did not represent what I NEEDED in order to be happy. They represent what I thought would make me happy. When it came to relationships, I would see the “happily ever after” couples in fairy tails and movies and normalize them; unconsciously normalizing the relationships of every couple I’d see, creating an “ideal relationship” goal that I would eventually set out finding or creating. I created my future relationships BEFORE I ever had a relationship and had moved forward doing this for more than 20 years. In July it became obvious that the model I had created was not workable for me or the girls that I attract or was attracted to. That had to stop immediately.
The other thing that happened was that I saw myself as the author of my life and then mentally filtered out the contribution others played for me finding my place in life. In late March to early July I still felt that I like I had been subjected to some stuff that I hadn’t been responsible for. I was stuck in the victim mindset and did believe that others had power to do stuff to me. Sharon didn’t see it this way and was very good at directing my mind to the fact that each of us drive our own body and allow in whatever information we choose. If we do something, we’re deciding to do it. She was never uncaring about it, but she let me know it didn’t work for her and that, while it was my own journey, maybe it shouldn’t work for me either. Regardless, she knew I needed to figure some stuff out and was good enough to free-up my future. It hurt like crazy because I knew I was walking into a dark room of the unknown, alone. The alone was the thing that burned more than anything else, and that started to make me think, a lot. Why was I so afraid to be alone and how could that fear manifest itself within my life?
These kinds of unknowns mess my mind up so I ran into the room full speed and ended up hitting the wall on the other side. That was good. My face hurt and my head was ringing, but the answer was there right in front of me and hadn’t been too far away. It was actually related to the antiquated relationship goals that I had been pursuing. I feared being alone because that would mean I wasn’t in a relationship and therefore I was not complete. It created a nice co-dependence for me in that my self-esteem would come from the relationship and therefore from another person. Given my victim mindset that I was choosing to indulge, it was easy to view others has having done something to me. It they wanted space, as is completely normal and healthy for fully functioning adults, I would interpret this as a withdrawal, which would trigger the fear of being alone, which would fuel actions geared at bringing those things back on-line. If it didn’t restore things, I became the victim.
It’s chilling to read and think that. It’s nasty to realize that this was how I was. But I get it very clearly now. I was trying to live someone elses dreams (the antiquated stuff I got from childhood) and my threshold for feeling victimized was very low. These things do not work for me, they never did and now I’m putting them to rest.
The last 6 weeks have been 6 of the more interesting of my life because I’ve given-up on having the wife, the children, the house, the whatever it was I was seeking before. These things may be part of my future but only if my OWN life is in order. A career will be of a lot more long term value to me than anything else. With a good career, I’ll have the time (money) to do what I like to do, whatever that ends up being.
These weeks have been amazing because I haven’t been victimized since I realized that I had been playing the role of victim. People have done stuff, and I’ve learned lessons from these things, but I’ve stopped being victim simply because I never was a victim. I can change my thoughts, environment and actions at will. That has been the shift over the last little while. None of my previous girl friends ever did anything to me that would make me a victim. If ever I was victimized by them it was simply because I made the choice to be victim. None of these girls ever hit me. We said stuff to each other that wasn’t very nice but we didn’t set out to destroy each other. We wanted what we wanted and I realize that them wanting something different than what I wanted didn’t mean we were trying to hurt each other. It means they were trying, like I was, to get the best life possible.
What that means now is the decision to create a wonderful and beautiful life for myself. I’ve seen how the need to be in a relationship and my victim mindset were holding me back, effectively remaining in the past. Since I don’t want that as my future, I need to bring the past into the present. This means that I need to redefine my history with me NOT being victim and instead acting as the self-interested author of my life. That is how most other people act, with their best interests in mind and rarely with malice. Others subversive intentions are not important once you make the decision to see YOU as the only real villain in your life.
We become powerful and gain control through the realization that the most damaging person in our lives is us when we are not willing to see the truth. I saw the truth this summer and took the time to recreate a purpose that will make me feel fantastic and live a joyful and passionate life free from self-victimization and blaming others for my place in life.