(TIME TO SAY) GOOD-BYE TO TURNING TABLES

Last night I parted ways with a friend of mine.

Another one, you ask? Yes. It is weird to say that. Yes, another friend and I have decided it's better for us to go our separate ways. This latest one hurts just as much as the others, even if this person wasn't as much a part of my life as the others. This one wanted to know everything about me and my life, but shared very little about her life with me. I knew more than most do, sure, but looking back on it all now, I can't help but wonder if everything I do know - would it amount to anything significant? Then again, who gets to say what is significant and what isn't?

Maybe it's me. All of these friendships are crumbling around me, and yes, I'm left standing - for now. All statues begin to crumble after time, right? When I finally stand up for myself, I don't back down for fear of hurting them, they start to drop off like flies, but while they fall, they flail. Throwing punches, scrambling to get that last dagger thrown in hopes of what, redemption? They want to keep fighting, and want me to keep reaching out to save them, to fix everything, and us. I've now gotten to the point where I don't want to do it anymore. I'm tired. Exhausted. Drained. I give up on fighting for friendships, fighting to help make everyone else in my life better while letting myself slip away.

With that being said, a serious debate went into effect recently and something was pointed out to me, something I never even noticed, or realized, or even thought existed until recently. Go ahead and laugh, but I am now a firm believer in emotional vampires. Har har, yes, I know, it's a riot. But given the way my relationships have turned sour lately, I'm finally starting to understand why. Don't rule me out - listen to this:

Emotional Vampire: A co-dependent person who looks outside of themselves for self definition and self worth. They tend to be self obsessed, negative and controlling. They are in an emotional black hole and refuse to see that they have a problem.

Here are some signs of an Emotional Vampire

1. External referencing: distrusting own perceptions, lacking boundaries, believing one cannot survive without a relationship/addicted to relationships, fearing abandonment, believing in the perfect union.

2. Care-taking: become indispensable, become a victim

3. Self-centeredness: personalizing all events, assuming responsibility for other’s behavior.

4. Over-controlling: increasing control efforts when chaos increases, attempting to control everything and everyone, controlling without caring for those controlled, believing that with more effort you can fix the addict/family.

5. Feelings: unaware of feelings, distorting emotional experiences/accepting only acceptable feelings, fearfulness.

6. Dishonesty: managing all impressions made, omitting/lying about the truth, rigidity.

7. Gullibility: being a bad judge of character, unwillingness to confront, over-trusting, accepting what fits, wishes the way things were.

Now after saying all of this you are probably thinking..

“I don’t know anybody like that..I could tell if someone had all of those issues”

Wrong! Emotional Vampires can hide who they are very well because most of them have had this dark cloud over them their whole lives.

At first they usually come into your lives VERY positive and only give you positive feedback/messages. However usually after a period of time the truth starts to come out, you find out these people truly are not happy with life. They have very random mood swings. One minute they are “happy” and the next minute they are depressed and want to either isolate themselves from the world or bring you down to their level.

For example, have you ever experienced someone who questions or is annoyed when someone is happy? I mean the person is REALLY annoyed and doesn’t understand why people are happy and have a smile on their face. Trust me when I tell you that people like that are dead inside and will NEVER understand someone who is so full of life.

They look at people who aren’t Emotional Vampires as if they are THE PROBLEM and EV’s love to surround themselves with people who are just as depressed and lonely as them.

However on occasions they do want to come out of their black hole and that’s when they meet you, the positive person who on the majority of your days has a positive outlook on life. Now I figured that an EV coming out of their “Why me, I hate life” mood is either a manipulating person and their only goal is to tear you down or this person is trying to find a way to heal themselves and get out of the dark hole.

Being an Emotional Vampire is an addiction just like someone who is on narcotics. Until the person is ready to deal with their internal issues they will continue to feed off of that addiction because that’s where they are comfortable. Can you try to help? Sure, but don’t get too involved because TRUST ME you will be the one hurt in the end. Why? Early in the definition it states that EV’s are gullible and are a bad judge of character, therefore they will ALWAYS pick the opposite of what they need to get out of their black hole. They refuse to choose the people who stay real and encourage them because those aren’t acceptable feelings. They select the people that are like minded and that’s why they continue to have the fakes, misery, depression and the lost soul. So eventually someone who is comfortable in their ways will start to retaliate against you. Like I said before they don’t understand you, you are speaking a foreign language.

They DO NOT want to hear

“Love yourself”,

“Stop worrying about things you can’t control”

“Get the courage to stand up for yourself and have a different approach in life”

They rather hear

“Why are people treating me like this”

“Why can’t I be happy”

“If this person would only love me I would feel complete and better about myself”

If you are dealing with an Emotional Vampire, you only have 3 options in this scenario: Fix it, Accept it or Remove yourself from it. If you have been dealing with this EV for a while you probably see by now trying to fix it hasn’t worked and accepting it still drains you. So at this point you might want to remove yourself from it. Now of course this maybe easier said than done because you may care about that person. However what it comes down to is……..who do you love more, you or them?

That, sums up every one of my failing relationships lately. It also means I have A LOT to think about. Because, as it states above, it comes down to one thing. Who do I love more? Myself, or them? At this point, I think I've made my decision and now it's a matter of standing strong behind that decision. The sadness will pass at some point, and maybe as time goes on, I'll start to feel like myself again.

Maybe.

IT'LL ALL GET (BETTER IN TIME)

I know, I know, two blog posts in two days - who would have guessed it? I'll be honest, I didn't plan on blog again for a very long, but today is a new day and things have changed. My mind is racing, still. So many thoughts and feelings are swirling around inside my brain, some want to get out and others don't. Which leaves me in a bit of a stalemate, don't you think? If not, you should.

It's hard to say one thing, then feel another. I say it's time to let go, then I feel an ounce of sadness wrapped up with it, which leaves me sitting with my hands clutched tight, each finger is slowly uncurling. I'm left with that overwhelming fear of what will happen if the last finger loses grip. Will I survive in the end? I've survived worse, after all. In my last post, I did describe myself as a fighter, yes? I can't make this post about how I'm a coward, now can I? Who wants to read the thoughts of a hypocrite? Not me.

This morning I felt a lot of sorrow. I realized that maybe I'm still attached and I'm unwilling to distance myself as much as I talked myself up to believe I was. I wallowed a little, remembering the good times, looking through pictures and old emails - only to find myself admittedly making a mistake. Then the rest of the day developed. Now? Well, now I feel sorrow for a different reason. I'm mostly feeling unappreciated and frustrated, which makes me angry. My emotions are all over the place now and I'm sitting here attempting to remind myself to just breathe. Relax. Don't be irrational, don't say things that will be hurtful, don't keep holding on and just let what is, be.

When I feel as much as I have in the last few days, I can't help but think about the bigger picture. What's the point of everything going on? What's the point of feeling the way I feel? Is there a point at all or is it all just wasted energy? Thinking of the bigger picture, I think I can chalk this current state in life to another reason why I consider myself 'a bridge' in a lot of relationships. I'm always the one who helps someone get from point a to point b. Whether that be a boy who wasn't quite ready to fall in love, who I helped to restart their heart, and is now in love with someone else; or a best friend who barely knew who she was, that I helped open up to the world and she's now beautiful, happy and everything she wanted - without me. It's part of growing up. People come and go, right? Every moment in time is just another piece to the puzzle, helping you, and me, become who we want, get where we need to go, discover what the world has in store for us, and that's all right. It's healthy, and beautiful. But is that all this world has in store for me; to let me take the broken and mend them so they can shine - be bigger, better, happier?

I'm the support system. Always have been, really. I am the bridge. I help rebuild from the rubble, help whomever cross that bridge, and then it's burned down. That person moves on and I'm left to smolder in the ashes left behind. Everyone needs a bridge, right? We all have things we need to face that we cannot do alone. Some people simply jump off the end, others take the help in order to cross the trouble waters, then there are some like me - we take the long way. The scenic route. I'd rather feel it all. Let me walk along the water's edge, never to get wet, move through the mud and the broken branches off the forest. I continue on the undeveloped path and wait until I find the next person who needs help, see if they are worth offering a piece of my soul to or not, before I decide to move along.

Now, thinking about that, did I just answer my own question? If I'm not a writer, who am I? What am I? I'm a bridge. All right. Now it's a matter of accepting that, or fighting for something better. I deserve more, don't I? When does it stop being about everyone else, and when does it start to be about me? When is the time for me to shed the weight of everyone else and step out on my own, for myself? Would it be now? Am I back at square one? Let go and move on?

Let go and move on. Okay. Here goes nothing (or everything).

(SO HARD TO) SEE MYSELF WITHOUT

It has been eight months since I last sat down in front of a computer screen and wondered 'what do I have to say'? Never mind just in front of a computer screen, but in every aspect of my life. I slowly began to emotionally shut down. My opinions are being kept to myself, that protective casing has formed around me and I've been waiting for the storm to blow over. Little did I realize that the storm was a slow moving one, and one I realized I wasn't fully prepared for. While I was trying to ready myself, get my defenses going, I ended up shedding a skin somewhere along the way and now, I'm left more exposed then I originally intended.

A lot has changed in eight months. Some good, some bad. Can't have one without the other, right? Or at least, that is what we've been groomed to believe. If we believe at all. What are we suppose to believe in? God? A higher power? Our friends? Family? Business partners? What about ourselves? I use to say that I had faith in myself, I only needed to believe in myself - but when that option is taken away, where am I suppose to turn? I've been bred to rely on myself for my own happiness, and I've done just that for a good portion of my life. Luckily, that was aided by the fact that I've never been alone. In my head, maybe, but physically? Never. Why? I was graced with a twin. I've never had to exist without her, and even if for some reason we aren't spending our lives together as we have for nearly twenty six years, I find peace in knowing that she still exists. We were brought into this world together, even if we don't depart it together, we'll always be together. She is the better part of me, really, even if she's impatient, irrational and has anger issues, her flaws are my strengths, as mine, I'd like to think, are hers. We exist together, even when we try to create our own individuals amongst each other. Because of her, I know that in this big, strange, scary universe, I'm never alone.

I'm never alone. I fight for the quiet time I need, and though everyone in my life who cares about me, tends to fight me along the way, I am granted that freedom from time to time. I fight for a lot of things. I've always fought for myself. For my sister. For my father. I fight, too much. I fight at work, to get what I want, what I deserve. I fight for my sanity. I fight for my writing, my creative ability to do something better with this world. I fight everyone, and no one at the same time. Most importantly, I fight myself. In the last few months, I've grown tired of fighting. When November finally arrived, I felt like my eyes were wide open for the first time. I was fighting all this time to become myself, to be the writer I knew I could be, the wonderful person I know I am, the once in a lifetime epic friend I've proven myself to be. So much fighting, with nothing to show for it. My relationships were becoming one sided, I was being lost in the crowd, drowning in everyone else's wants, or needs. I was finally putting others before me, which felt great. Until I disappeared. Take away the title of 'aspiring writer' and what am I left with? A plus size, one perfectly kept, shell of a woman. I gave everything I could to several people in my life and what did I get in return? Nothing. I'm not saying I needed praise, or thanks, appreciation - any of that. I needed, above all, recognition. I needed someone to offer me their hand because they wanted to hold my hand for the right reasons, and not for their own selfish ones.

All of that leads me to right now. What is happening right now? I'm letting go, something I've never been good at. I understand that things happen for a reason, if they are meant to be, they'll develop on their own. Friendships, happiness, love, it all needs to happen on its own. So I've let go of wanting to be a writer. If whatever 'talent' I have is meant to be shared with the world, it will. I'm not fighting for that creative desire to strike me again, I'm letting it go. As for friendships? I'm not fighting for them anymore. I've lost my strength to continue holding on, and being the only one to do so. As it's been said, 'I'm wiping my hands clean'. I'm letting go. What's done, is done and it's time to move on. The past is nothing more than the past. Time to chalk it up to lessons learned, face value is all it is now.

And what about happiness and love, you're wondering? Well, they are two peas in a pod. If you don't love yourself, you won't ever be happy. With that said, I'll speak for myself now. I know that I will love myself, truly love myself, again one day. When that happens? I'll break that protective casing around me and I'll pull my head from the sand.

Hopefully some day soon, I'll be able to return to this blog with that unquestionable fire, that passion I once had burning inside of me. Until then? I am what I am. If you don't like it? I won't apologize any longer for the current state I'm in, or who I am right in this moment. It's all or nothing, now.