Finders keepers losers weepers.

I heard today on Sirius Radio, “The greater the selfishness, the bigger the hurt or wound.  When you are so injured that you can’t see beyond your injuries, it makes you very self-centered.”  It was on the Dr. Robin Smith’s show.

 

It gave me a greater understanding of myself. 

 

I can now see where I am able to see others, to be with others, to focus on not only my needs but theirs as well, that I can even consider the other person is a huge miracle.

 

What is even more amazing is that the more hurt we are the less we focus on the actual wound but instead look around and see others “not tending us”.

 

What had amazed me was my mother’s blindness, how in the greatest turmoil, it was always “what about me?”

 

What about me?  That seemed so childish, so selfish, so not being a grown mom.  Yet this not only explains her actions, but it also shows that she is a deeply injured woman. 

 

She tends not to see the damage of her children let alone herself. 

 

It is hard to see the damaged self, when that is the self you have always been.  It is like tearing apart yourself in hopes of mending yourself, to rip and then fix, it seems an insane thing to do.

 

Somehow I was able to see the wound, to look at it’s origin and how I lived my life as a wounded person, and now have had the chance to heal myself from the inside out.

 

Now that I know the reason for her behavior, it does make sense why it is she is the way she is doing what it is she does.

 

The advice Dr. Robin gave this man was that he had to deal with the relationship in the reality of what it was.  He had to decide to either have a relationship with a self- absorbed woman or begin to grieve for the woman he wanted her to be.

 

And it truly is a grieving process in my experience.  I am not sure if I can remember all the stages of grief or their order, but I know there is anger, bargaining, denial, acceptance and it seems there should be one more, that there were five total.

 

Without really understanding or knowing what I was actually doing I somehow walked through the stages of grief with my mother.  It is like she has passed on.

 

What is comforting for me to know is that I am in agreement with the psychologists.

 

She was just one of many that I had to grieve, that I had to let go of the ideal and grab on to the real and then to let that go. 

 

Two others I had to release in grief came back to town from away.  My husband bumped into one of them, they are in town for the weekend helping another brother with his addition on his home.  Time moves on for them, it is like having the ghost of yesterdays past arrive in live living color.

 

Will I see them, I will if it is in the cards. What will be our interaction? What will I say, what will they?

 

When you have already grieved the loss of who they can’t be, and see them as the injured souls they are, it leaves me in a space of don’t know.

 

I can’t pretend them to be someone they are not, nor can I pretend that are not who they are.  Confusing, I know, I am confused a lot.

 

They are the ghosts of yesterday, the walking dead, the dead relationships in a live body, impossible to interact with?

 

Death usually is the death of the body and then the relationship dies as well, this is a backwards.

 

What we grieve for then is not the loss of the body, for I see bodies but suffer the loss of relationships that were housed in those bodies.

 

It isn’t the bodies of my siblings and parents I miss, I miss being part of their relationships.  The healthy adult me knows that it is for the best to be separate, the little girl, the dreamer, hopeful and wishful still pops up within me.  If only….

 

For now I must quiet the little girl’s voice and over power it with one of wisdom and understanding.  Their wounds are not mine to heal.

 

I must skip on, heading in the direction that will honor me and my pathway, I can only glance but fleetingly at those I lost along the way, it is not good for me to stare too long.

 

As I turn and walk away, I know again what I am leaving behind.  A soul lost in the sea of darkness with a wound screaming for attention, but it is not my attention it needs, it is theirs.  I want them to turn inwards, go deeply within to find their peace, love and joy, it isn’t mine to give, it is theirs to find.

 

“Finders keepers losers weepers!”