Follow up from yesterday…

If you read the writing I shared with you yesterday, then you have a good idea about my life today. The writing was not a complete snapshot, and there are some differences between me and the writer. Where they currently are, I have been, where I currently am at, they have yet to arrive. And so we’ll follow up on that today, in my words. I want you to read these writings, but from a non-emotional stand point, not from a place of judgment, but how they are both written, factually, objectively, without emotion flavoring them. Here we go!

I am the end. I will not, and have not passed along the pain others have bore me. I am the end of generational trauma, period. I am a transmuter, a catalyst, an agent of change, and in as such, I have helped people with their own pain and trauma. The darker side of that is what was fueling that inside of me.

How can one’s light be from one’s darkness? Well, if we go back to the beginning, we almost always find answers. This March, I walked away from a 24 year career. I was heading that way, but I could not walk away from it completely, until I had the biggest epiphany of my life.

I have always been drawn to emotionally unavailable people. Like a moth to a flame, I have sought out those that will not, and probably cannot love me. Short point: you cannot love another, until you love yourself. Long point: seeking out a person’s love can be a childhood wound left untreated, only to resurface in relationships that always go awry. So, didn’t you as a highly intuitive empath know this about yourself, Erin? Yes, but I kept the initial person in my life, so I was always subconsciously seeking this person out in others.

I wanted a person’s love that I was never going to receive, and while this seems maudlin and very adolescent young girl like…well, that is exactly what it was. Logically, I knew they would never love me, hell they don’t love themselves. But I was always expected to endure, these feelings, their demands/expectations, their issues and problems, all for them to have someone love them and make them feel better about themselves, but it never did. And so this has been my pattern in life, to find these people, to care for them, to love them, to help them, to fix them, the counsel them, to basically be that doormat without boundaries.

This started to change in 2018, Bell’s Palsy sucks, but was a godsend to get me to start changing things. I started developing boundaries, I stopped friendships that harkened back to the first wound, that fulfilled the role I sought love from, and thus eliminating my need to perform for that love, love that was never there. If you know me, and have known me since then, you can probably see some evolution in my life, the anger, the purging, the vitriol I have spewed, and the sadness I have felt. You would think that working through all of this, I would have gotten somewhere. Yes and no.

It wasn’t until I ended a friendship this year, that I started to see what was missing in me. I tried. I tried to keep having a relationship with a parent that was terrible for me. I loved this person with my whole heart, my whole life. No matter what hurt they caused me, how they used me, hated me for being myself and not being blindly loyal to them, I always tried, I always went back, I always betrayed myself for a relationship that was not only unfulfilling, but toxic as hell. I felt an obligation to this person, to help them, to fix them, to counsel them, to be there for them, to love them, to endure them, to be a dumping ground for them, and for what? For love they cannot give me. Hmm, but didn’t I already know that???

Yes, I sure did know that, and yet, I was always seeking the light and dark side of this person to be in my life, and fulfilled that with people on both sides. So why keep doing that? I think we will always want a parent’s love, a good relationship with them, and we’ll take crumbs, or even a bag of shit where that is concerned. But wait? Really??? Yes?

No. No. No. I don’t want a friend wearing me down to talk to them to have them in my life, not when they say hateful things to me, judge me and treat life like we are competing, that isn’t friendship. I won’t have a parent in my life doing the same, or worse, trying to turn my own kids against me, and for what? Just to be chosen over me? LIGHTBULB.

My parent’s trauma, is not my trauma. PERIOD. I don’t have to accept the constant foisting of their trauma on me as a means for them to try to deal with it. It ends with me. What was I getting out of this relationship all along? Nothing, Grief, confusion, a pattern, a cycle, and bad behaviors. At what point did you ask yourself why I didn’t love myself enough to move on? Joke is on you if you did, I do and have loved myself enough, thought I was worthy this whole time, and treated others the way I love myself. The problem was the big ass festering wound, that I felt obligated to, and thus, hurt myself because of it.

I cut that wound out recently enough, and the relief I felt, once I made my mind up to do it, was immense. IMMENSE. I am working again, I am happy again, I am working on my relationships with my immediate family and my actual close friends, I even get along with my sister now. That is huge for me. So, while I have been the way of the writings of yesterday, today is about the victory of the other side. Today is about freedom from the original pain. This is not to say that I won’t encounter these same types of people, but now I have firm boundaries, I am no longer searching for the love I once was, and my story is unfolding, with room in the margins to change what doesn’t serve me.

As an empath, we often find ourselves this way because of that initial childhood trauma. We learn early on how to read people and situations, how to navigate that, and how to be an agent of change because of it. Some of us develop deeper senses due to this as well. I quit my job, I don’t need to feel anyone’s pain anymore. I am free of those ties that bind, and helping another person, now, is simply a choice of sharing what I know, or know how to do. I don’t need to live out my wound any longer. FREEDOM. All things start at the beginning, have a middle, you can change the ending, it is never too late.

I wrote and published this, so any typos, please forgive, any fragmented sentences, ignore. This woke me up at 4:45 this morning, and I had to pour it like a cup of coffee, hot.