Who Made You Do It?

Manipulation has been a recurring theme in my life recently. I can look at past relationships and see the guilt/resentment cycle I felt trapped in, out of my own needs and attachments to other people. When someone else expressed anger, disapproval, disgust or disappointment towards me, I felt abandoned by them, and that's what I spent my life trying to avoid.

Struggling to live my life AND someone else's was a terrible energy-drain. Always giving into another's demands and ignoring my own needs kept me angry and made my anger pot boil over at the slightest provocation. And then there was the guilt I felt when I refused to make someone else okay. Wasn't I the all-powerful being? Wasn't it my job? Of course, my manipulative behavior (including acquiescing to their demands to keep them from abandoning me) was futile--they all left me anyway!

It's normal in childhood to believe you're all-powerful and everything in your universe happens because you caused it. When you have parents like mine, who wholeheartedly supported my little-baby belief that I caused all of their tantrums, their marital issues, their poverty, and every painful family event, no one in the household is living in reality! 

At this phase of my life, it's most important that I spend my time left doing what is mine to do, independent of manipulating myself or others. I want to make choices and take the responsibility of saying "yes, I want to," or "no, I don't want to." (Maybe at my age, having made a lifetime of mistakes, it's wiser to be more emotionally self-reliant so I don't take anyone else down with me.)


That said, I do feel my connection to others. I need help, I need to be needed, and I commit to doing whatever I can to help someone else. I'm thriving in my community of friends and loved ones. They are a constant source of support and inspiration to me. Their stories are my story! There's a difference between doing what someone wants me to do because I'm afraid of facing some form of abandonment, or because I'll feel guilty, and doing something because it's simply the right thing to do and I want to.

I'm not all-powerful enough to keep someone out of pain by responding to a demand, and I certainly can't make everything okay for someone else. We're all on our own journeys. It's important that I stay aware of my own deep "martyr" sighs and that I hear myself when I tell a friend I'm doing something I don't want to do because someone "made me do it." 

My life is propelling me away from years of the old familiar emotional pain that telling the truth could alleviate, into a new reality of physical illness that I must learn to emotionally handle. Right now, I'm not doing too well with this. Night sweats have become more frequent and intense in the last week, making a good night's sleep impossible. And there's the "Oh dear, what's next?" fear. 

Dear Universe: Could I just go a few days without having to learn something new? Pleeease?