Didn't get ghosted but she called it quits. That's not what I got triggered about but I wanted to let you know what happened. She said she wasn't ready. I got the sense that was true. But she probably wasn't ready for someone like me especially. At least her conception of what someone like me would be like. And anyway I taught her how to see me. She sees me as an extension of how I wanted her to see me. So it's over and I haven't had any matches since. I matched with one woman but that fizzled. We had a long talk and then neither of us messaged the other again. They both deleted their accounts. I feel impatient to meet someone and try again. I'm thinking of going to a 4/20 event by myself on Saturday, and I'm thinking of microdosing for the first time for it. The possibility for strangeness and insanity seems at its max, but then, I can always leave.
I feel desperate to meet someone and that desperation is going to pretty much preclude the outcome of meeting someone. I can't give up the desire for that outcome. I want to control. I want it so badly because I'm afraid it won't happen, and probably because I feel like I need it to be ok. "If I could only have this then my life would be perfect." But then there will be the next thing that I need to make my life perfect. I imagine one little thing is wrong with it, and instead of doing something about that thing, I try to fix it with something else. I try to fix a creative problem, or whatever, with a relationship. Or a spiritual problem with a physical solution. But, it's easy to lapse into these mindsets as self defenses, just another way to protect myself.
Anyway, I feel craving pretty much around the clock now, and especially when I get home and I'm alone. So there's that. I wonder if it has something to do with the new job and feeling uncomfortable. This environment is trying, and this craving is my solution. I went to two meetings so far this week, I had a another meeting with a recovery buddy where we discussed step work. I'm doing what I can to keep this thing at bay. It's when I'm at home alone that things get trying, and the weekends, too, are challenging. Last weekend I was essentially "hunting" all Saturday. If I'm lonely, and I am, I need to do some healthy things to remedy that, and I feel like I'm trying to outlast the addiction. I don't know which of us is going to cave first. I probably won't win. I've spent my whole life fighting life and it hasn't gotten me far. All I've got to show for it is a beat up body.
Anyway, let me tell you why I got triggered. I thought a guy at work called me a name. Yes, it's as childish as it sounds. And I realized I'm extremely fragile. I knew I cared what people thought about me but I didn't know I lived and died by it. I spent all afternoon mulling it over, rationalizing. I thought he was saying something about my work ethic. And I was feeling insecure because I don't know what to do. I was basically destroyed. But in the process I got to see what it felt like to have someone think poorly of me and not like me. I got to see the pain I was afraid of, and how I live my life trying to be everything to everyone, because I want them to like me. I do want them to like me, but it goes beyond that. I need them to like me in order to survive, because otherwise I don't feel safe. As if I'm in danger if people don't like me.
At the last job I worked there was an older gentleman there who said "Ross, are you ok? Do you like yourself? There's no reason not to like yourself. I know why I do what I do. I make people like me because that's how I survived." He saw himself in me. He saw a lot. He was a wise man. One time he asked me if I get bored a lot. And I do. Because I'm afraid people won't understand me. But anyway he saw this behavior in himself and he accepted it. He didn't even try to change it. I see it and I judge myself mercilessly for it. Later on I realized this guy at work wasn't making fun of me, and then I felt guilty that I wasn't really nice to him. I avoid him because he reminds me of a dangerous guy I used to work with. It's uncanny. It's uncanny to the point where I wonder if I made some cosmic wrong turn. But he's an ok guy. We're just at different stages and I think he's not a great influence. Or maybe, if I engage with him, I could be a good influence on him, and he could help me not take myself so seriously. But I feel like I'm too tempted by the darkness and afraid of it. I'm afraid I won't come back.
I thought he was making fun of me and I was preparing myself for a hostile work environment but now I don't think that was the case. I think he was being sensitive about showing me something. And I mulled this over and mulled it over and it crushed me. I was at the gym and I was spiraling. I saw how fragile I was and for a moment I thought it might be good to let it break, so I could build myself up again, but for a while I was completely destroyed.
I'm so afraid of what other people think about me I don't live my own life. And even now I feel better, not because I feel confident in myself, but because I think it's ok, he actually likes me. But it's late and I don't want to be too judgmental toward myself. It's easy to forget my strengths but, what number of things needs to happen before I can feel good about myself? At what point do I stop needing external things to feel good, and start giving myself the love I deserve, just because I deserve it? Last year I got a new car. Then I got a new job. Things didn't get better. Now I want a girlfriend. Then what? I'll want to get published. Then what? I'll want a lot of money and I'll want to travel etc. etc. It will never end.
"Trigger" 2. One could call triggers "life lessons," just as easily because I think that's what these are. I've been praying to get what I need, to be taken in the right direction for healing and I think that's what this is. The beauty of it is that prayers are never answered in the way you think they will be. The infinite creativity that's taking place all the time cannot be comprehended. It's like talking to the oracle: people didn't get the answers they thought they did because they weren't asking the right questions. I ask for what's best for my life, and get something completely different from what I thought it would be. That is the essence of magic.
Anyway, life lesson 2. I contact this woman I met a while back and ask if she has any magic mushrooms because I want to start micro dosing. She tells me she doesn't grow them, but everyone thinks she does and it's really annoying. I say "haha, ya everyone's out for a thrill." She says "you basically did the same thing." I say "ya because you said you grew them." She said, "I told you I grew gourmet mushrooms AND YOU ASKED IF I HAD MAGIC MUSHROOMS." I was getting frustrated now because she was right. I said, "well it seemed like a logical question." She said "yes it seems like it but it's not if you know anything about mushrooms, and it's really annoying that people keep asking. They don't know anything about mushrooms." In this I learned two things. 1 is about mushrooms and the other is about the way I see people, and treat people. There's a part of me who I know is trying to protect me who doesn't see much in people. He is arrogant and thinks very little of them. I was thinking this of her in the way that I responded to what she said about people being annoying. I didn't think she was serious. I didn't take her seriously. To my credit, it seems like so few people are serious nowadays. Myself included. Myself especially. We're not willing to get much out of our bubbles and if we are it's because we want something or because we think that person will enhance our experience of the bubble somehow, and not because we want to have our world changed by the experience of another person. We don't want our world to change. We want it to stay exactly the same but we just want it...better. I think it's ironic that this person doesn't sell mushrooms because to me, she embodies so much the spirit of the mushroom, in that she teaches. So few people bother to go out of their way to teach a lesson like that. It's so much easier just to say "no I don't have them and I won't. And then we never see or speak to each other ever again. I was given a gift though and I was taught a valuable lesson. I felt like an asshole afterwards because in some ways I was being an asshole. She woke me up a little more. I was given a gift and I felt bad about myself after but there's really no need for that. She didn't seem to judge me for it. I felt guilt that I wasn't really a serious person. But she didn't say anything about that. I thought it. She taught me a lesson. Mushrooms teach lessons too and sometimes they are harsh because they are not teaching the intellect they are teaching the soul. And the ego bears the brunt of those lessons and it hurts. Life can teach lessons too but it's often people who teach them so one can be grateful one way or another for the roles they play in our lives whether we think those roles are positive or negative. In the end it might all end up being the same thing. I have another view of myself now after today's lessons. A view of myself as imperfect, which is harsh because I so often need to think of myself as perfect in order to survive. And I can take those lessons forward and be grateful for what happened or I can don that perfectionism again and keep getting taught those same lessons until I get the message. I can learn how to listen or I can keep on telling myself the same old stories. Will it be my way, or the spiritual way? I think they both go to the same place, but one is a lot more painful.
Comments