About 6 months ago I wrote Relationships Ruin You discussing the growing ease I had accepting some of the truths my father spoke. The post got spammed commented this week and when I reread it sang a slightly different tune to me.
For some reason it made me think about being in the hospital a few weeks ago. The nurses needed to reposition my dad and the pneumonia had made moving painful. Things were least bad when his body moved as one unit as opposed to bending at the center or twisting around the core. The first time I offered to help I felt clueless. I thought there was a lot I could do wrong, and there is, but for the most part, if you remember that you’re moving a human being you’ll do very little wrong. As the week progressed, all of us got better at it. The goal was to minimize unnecessary movements and this was achieved best when we all worked together on a coordinated solution. For me it seemed natural to treat my dad with the care he always treated me with and pooling resources seemed an effective way to do this.
I bring this up in this context of why relationships ruin me because there was something in the experience of helping in the hospital that I have felt before in-spite of the fact that I have never lived through anything like it. In fact, there have been very few times in my life that I went without feeling the same sort of thing for longer than a month. I get the feeling any time I provide a particular type of service to people who play a particular role in my life. For a long time I’ve been aware that I like helping people but it wasn’t until the feelings were the same that things lined up.
I keep damaging my life by NOT treating myself with the full compassion that I am capable of. If I approached making a meal with the same care I took moving my dad it would be a really good meal. The fact that I throw together whatever is easy says something about what I think about how I deserve to be treated; if only to me, there’s a lot of actions that indicate that I’m not worth the trouble. When I’m single I spend more time in the gym. I do it because it feels good and because it makes me look better. When I get into a relationship my gym behavior stops as I shift my attention onto the relationship. Whatever “me” was developing disappears as soon as I have someone else in my life to really care about. Progress is killed by my behavior. Over and over and over again.
I am capable and only too willing to show others a love that I will rarely bestow upon myself and this is why relationships ruin me.