Memories

Photo by Adam Kring

Making Sense of Me

I have been thinking about the complicated relationship I have with my memories. I have given romantic relationships a try a small amount of times since Erik’s passing. At one time I found myself in one of the most confusing relationships I have ever been in. In the beginning, it was so seemingly magical in many different ways. As time went on, I found myself fighting to want to keep on living. For that reason, I chose to leave because I wanted to be here for my kids.

Once I got some space and I began to have some energy again, I began walking. I love the time of day when it is still dark and can see some stars and the moon in the sky but also start to see the glow of the sun. Something began to happen on those walks. Memories began to come to my mind but this time, it wasn’t like my past experiences, when I was back in that place, feeling what I felt in each moment. This time I was floating above and watching the scene play out, but I felt like an objective third party. I began to see how good I was at blaming myself for everything that went wrong in my life and everyone else around me. I had been spending too much time in the past with my memories.

In other instances, when I had an experience that another person did something to cause me a lot of pain, I held onto that pain because I never wanted to allow myself to get into those types of situations again. Throughout my life, I had built up such high and thick walls in the effort to try and protect myself. Yet, there were “takers” that would come along and find all the cracks in my walls. Many times, when I did let someone in, it was someone that wanted to take as much as they could from me. It was like I had an addiction to giving and they had an addiction to taking, so it made us a strong match.

Learning to Trust Me

When Erik was still alive, he was good at allowing me to navigate my life and my relationships, but when he could see a relationship was draining me, he would talk to me about his concerns. Even when I didn’t like what he had to say to me, I always thought about it and considered his viewpoints and concerns. With him gone, I had gotten myself deeper into a bad situation than I ever had been before. I can see now that it took that relationship to help me see and understand a lot of things about myself. Now that I don’t have Erik here to sit me down and talk to me about his concerns, I had to be in tune and trust my intuition.

I believe that we all come from Source energy which makes us all capable of everything we can imagine. Because of this belief, I still really always want to believe that everyone is doing the best they can and I don’t like to admit so called “bad things” about other people. It feels like I am judging and I believe it is not my place to judge another person. It isn’t my business what they are doing or saying because I don’t know what they are or have been going through. I would repeat over and over that I believe every person is doing the best they can. Recently, a couple of my children told me that they disagree with me, they don’t believe that everyone is always doing the best they can. Then they pointed out some examples they had witnessed of some individuals they know doing what objectively looked like something very good, but then pointed out the motivation that those individuals told them they had done it for. Their motivations were definitely self serving and had painful outcomes for others.

The funny thing to me is that I learned this in that very painful and confusing relationship that I luckily chose to leave. Just because a person does something good, it doesn’t mean they do it for good reasons. The reason I chose to stay as long in the relationship as I did was because I kept going back to the beginning and remembering all of the good things that he did for me and how he supported and helped me. I was just trying to figure out how I could do things differently so we could make things work. It took me a lot of therapy to understand why I over and over again was drawn to people that wanted to take; energy sucking relationships. I was still spending too much time actively seeking to see good in others and encourage them. I don’t believe this is bad to do ultimately. However, it did help me see that my energy is best spent staying present in my life. It is not my job to seek out people to convince of their goodness. It is best for me to do that for myself, I still am not as great as I could be in celebrating my achievements and the good things I do.

Moving Forward

Now that I have had a lot of time to practice healthy new habits, I have grown in my ability to love and accept myself. Something that I now understand is that when I have an icky feeling about someone, it is not me judging them, it is my intuition telling me that the other individual and myself are not a good match for each other. I am still working on trusting those impressions and using my discernment to foster healthy relationships for myself.

Now, I have learned that it isn’t healthy for me to spend too much time in the past with my memories because the present is what is the most important because it is where I am at now. When I have memories come to my mind, I visit them long enough to understand why it came to my mind. These days, most often it is a check in moment for me so I can see how well I am doing and how far I have moved from the darkness of fear into the light of Love. I can even remember good memories and smile from times with individuals that things didn’t end well with. I like to be able to remember those good times too because even though I know it isn’t healthy for me to go back and be in a relationship with them, I get to remember that those good times were real too and I am grateful I got to see the God in them too.

Lately, I have been struggling some because people I haven’t seen or talked to in a long time come back into my life and they see me as the person they knew “back when” and I am not that person anymore. It makes me sad that they want me to be that person still when I am happier with the person I am now. Because of this, I have been accused of not loving and accepting others and cutting people off and discarding them. That used to bother me a lot more than it does now because I know that I can’t bring another person peace and happiness that will last by acting the way others would like me to because every person’s peace and happiness is something that is a choice from within oneself. It hasn’t always been easy to stay true to this truth I believe for myself. However, the more I do it, the easier it is and the more peace I have inside. And, it makes room for new relationships with people that are on the same page.