Connecting the Dots...

Every now and again something sparks my memory and I go on a dot connecting conquest.  Welcome to one of said conquests... we shall see if combing through all this shit actually helps me make a connection.

So, I recently read a couple of things that fired my consciousness up.  First- it was this- We Are Not Here to Fix Each Other which was a really refreshing reminder for so many things, I am pretty sure I was also absent on the day they taught us how to 'close our hearts off'.  If I am not super vigilant about it, I am prone to let other people's shit overwhelm me.  This is why I am so fiercely protective of having one day a week to unplug and not be around anyone.  Gives me time to re-center myself, gather my thoughts and get hold of all the crap that isn't mine that I may have collected over the week.  Being empathic aint all that glamorous, I feel as thought I have a responsibility to myself to keep my shit in check... ya know, so as not to inadvertently spill it all over somebody else's shit.  And, I will be honest, it still happens. In fact, it still happens far more frequently than I would like, but I am definitely ever more conscious of it.

Sometimes, the empathy thing can be overwhelming- like in crowds or even at parties, it's as if I accidentally tune into somebody elses frequency... and sometimes it's multiple people's frequencies at once.  Trying to have a conversation with someone while picking up 32 other signals at the same time is fucking frustrating and confusing! Not to mention, all that unintended mental chatter can make it tough to concentrate on whomever I am actually interacting with.  This used to be a lot worse, especially because I, like the writer of that piece, continuously felt compelled to 'help people'.  I thought it was my calling.  I worked in the 'helping field' in any number of capacities for years... working with everyone from juvenile sex offenders to adult inmates to drug addicts.  And, ya know what? It was a pretty short crusade.  When they say the social work field has a high rate of burn out, they are not fucking joking.  All the 'worst' cases flocked to me like white on fucking rice.  If there was a borderline in ANY of the facilities I worked at... they would find me.  And suck every last fucking drop of energy from me.  And I let them.  Because at some point I subconsciously decided it was my calling to save them from themselves. All of them. And, I had yet to learn how to keep my own shit in check.

Anyway, so I took a 180 with my career path and thought that would make it better... but it didn't.  It was like I had some sort of beacon, if a person was damaged, or hurting, or emotionally unavailable or just down right crazy... I couldn't go to the fucking grocery store without having someone pour their heart out to me in the fucking checkout line.  And I began to really resent the whole empath thing.  I felt as though I were (if I may be so trite) carrying the weight of the world on my damned shoulders and it was fucking exhausting.  I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out how to make it stop, at the grocery, at the bar, at work...  And then, one day in conversation, a wiser, older, soul than I helped me to see that it was me luring them in. That by not being conscious about my own shit, I was seeking these people out.  After all, if you surround yourself with people who 'need you' all the time, then there's no reason to look at your own shit, because my life was a fucking cake walk compared to some of the stories I heard on a daily basis.  But when I stopped and evaluated the whole thing... it wasn't everyone else using me, it was ME allowing it.  My ego was in the drivers seat, and we were charting a course to save the world.  When I realized that, I immediately felt an immense amount of shame.  All I could think was who the fuck am I to think I have that kind of power over anyone?!!!

It took a little bit of time to get over the shame in realizing what I thought was doing good, was really doing harm... I do no one any favors by trying to fix them, in essence, none of us has the power to cheat another out of this experience we call life.  The shame was in the fact that in my crusade to 'fix it' I was actually cheating myself.  I think we as humans do all possess the capacity to be empathic... some of us have the skill more finely tuned then others, and some of us work really hard to ignore it... but it's there.  It all boils down to our own level of consciousness. 

So all of these realizations have been recirculating in my brain and then I read this- Sexy Consciously Awake Women the two are seemingly unrelated, but in my mind, they are.  A few weeks back I was able to reconnect with a dear, dear friend I hadn't caught up with in over a year, our conversations are generally part hilarious, part ironic, part stimulating, and always real. This one was no exception. As we laughed and caught up a few things became apparent to me- I fucking love that chick- she's raw and empathic and we are FRIGHTENINGLY similar.  We both wear our hearts on our sleeve, but front like tough bitches, to mask our insecurities...  The downside to that is that we both experience the same sort of unlucky-in-love relationship bullshit. 

The connection between my own conscious journey and connecting with others pinging on a similar consciousness level has LONG eluded me... Beginning this conscious journey was pretty much the final nail in the coffin of my last serious relationship 4 or 5 years ago... so, really I only know how to be conscious and single, because thus far, doing the work on myself has not meant that I am instantly attracted to conscious people, or that I attract them... in fact, the few people I have casually dated in the last few years have been anything BUT conscious.  And the funny thing is, my friend and I discovered we both do it.  It's like we have some beacon for dating partners that are in need of 'emotional potty training' as the Sexy Consciously Awake chic phrases it.  The kicker, for me, is that NEITHER of us want to potty train.  In fact, we both got fired up by that SCAW piece (and it's follow up, did you catch that second piece? Dude. Read it- An Open Letter to Men From Sexy Consciously Awake Women). 

In these last 4-5 years of singledom, and nearly as many writing out my observations on this blog, I have made so many realizations... but we all know there is a marked difference between making realizations and putting those realizations to practice in our lives. I would really like to connect those dots in my own life. I want to be in a space where I feel comfortable letting myself just be.  Someone called me out on my 'fronting' this weekend and it's true, at my core, I am not the person I present at first, or even second, third, fourth meeting.  Sometimes I feel like I will never have the courage to be able to just be...I have made this realization eleventy-gillion times, what I need to remember is-

"You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.  Knowledge is basically useless without action.  Good things don’t come to those who wait; they come to those who work on meaningful goals.  Ask yourself what’s really important and then have the courage to build your life around your answer."

I think I am coming to a place in my life where I only have space for real and meaningful connections... I don't want or need time fillers or place holders.  I want to share a meal and great conversation.. I want to hold hands. I want to snuggle while watching PBS.  I want to laugh with someone. I want to drink the last drops of summer up, whilst swinging in a hammock at dusk...reveling in a moment shared. I want someone to be as genuinely interested in me as I am them. I want to give myself the freedom to cry in front of someone and not immediately feel as if I am a burden or an emotional basket case.  I want to recognize when the opportunity to do any of these things presents itself, and EMBRACE IT instead of running away or being awkward.  I want to take Tough Bitch, find the girl in the Freshly Pressed Dress and  go dance in the rain with them both.