There's a group of us planning to go to Peru together to the ayahuasca retreat. Two people I know pretty well. One person I know but don't really know him as an adult and the remaining two people I've never met. One of them I've decided to reach out to since he and I are the only two not going with a close... other person. Also, my cousin has told me a lot about him and he seems like a good fit for someone to become friends with. It's really hard for me to allow people into my heart space which probably doesn't seem true because I can fairly easily share personal details about myself but that doesn't actually mean they are in my heart space. That takes a lot of time and me seeing that under bad circumstances they aren't going to vanish. I readily admit that I do not have a healthy view of connecting with other humans. So far though, we are having fun emailing back and forth and getting to know each other. It's been a really long time since I've even done that. Maybe 5 years since the last person and in case you are wondering, that person did ditch me while I was dealing with cancer, so that doesn't really prove anything positive. If anything it reinforces my walls.
I feel like it's possible this could be a way for me to possibly learn how to be more open to people, not just in information but also friendship. This is a guy who is sensitive and shy and I suspect, probably bullied. He can deal with my cousin's personality so I don't really worry about him not being able to deal with mine because she and I both can get real bossy and steam roll people. In all the emails and things we've said, one thing stuck out... So much so that I've been obsessed with analyzing it and thinking about it non stop for days. He said, "You seem like a very caring person".
I do seem like that, don't I? But am I? He knows a lot but also doesn't know a lot. So then I just kept wondering if I'm really a caring person. I avoid people. I don't like crowds. I don't like getting sucked up into someone else's drama but I also don't want to cause any drama. I think I used to be overly caring. I used to be overly involved in other people's drama. I used to ask more questions and talk more and give more hugs. Now it seems to be a conscious decision to do any of that. It's no longer something I want to do or a natural way of being. Talking to strangers comes natural. When I was a young person I loved asking people the deep stuff. I loved knowing all about them but I also kind of power tripped on that. It bothers me a lot who I used to be. Not because I was friendly or outgoing or could talk to strangers easily. It was that sometimes I was manipulative of people once I knew their secrets. Once I realized I wanted to be better than that, I stopped asking people questions. I felt like people would tell me their personal things if they wanted to but I no longer wanted to try to pry things out of them. Problem is, some people take that as not caring... to respect their privacy. Both ways have an up and down side to them. I think the other part of me not prying has to do with being empathic. Also in my younger days I was constantly getting... information? I don't know... emotional energy from people, along with snapshots or internal messages about *why* they were feeling the way they were feeling. Even perfect strangers. Like I could go up to someone and say, "Are you okay? You look like you just broke up with someone you really loved" and they would look terrified and say, "How the fuck did you know that?" I mean it got to the point where people were scared or angry towards me and I was constantly getting overwhelmed in public places anyway so I figured out how to block people out. Honestly it was a little like watching other people drown in 2 feet of water and instead of jumping in to lift them up, I'd just watch them flounder around and either drown or stand the fuck up. It was frustrating as hell and took me a long time to STOP caring. I had to for my own sanity.
I remember feeling like the screams of a million people were in my head. People in pain, in anguish. I have had problems of depression and anxiety my entire life and this just compounded it. Me feeling all that did nothing to help others. If I thought feeling their pain could diminish it somehow for them I would have taken it but pain doesn't work that way. It's happy to reproduce endlessly. I learned that trying to help a person in pain when they didn't want it was essentially robbing them of an important life lesson. It wasn't a conscious thing but that's what I finally came up with as to why people would get pissed off. To cushion another person's fall is pretty much damning them to go through it all over again because pain is the best teacher. After that I made a decision that I would not help unless specifically asked or given permission and if I helped and my assistance was ignored, then I don't help again.
It's weird to think back on what I used to be able to do. I could literally get a stream of consciousness about a person if I put effort into it. It was like channeling. I would just start getting a stream of information and just go on and on. I had the ability to get into their heads. See inside of them. It was most frustrating when I could see a bad seed and no one else could see it but me. I'd try to warn people that the person was not a good person. That they were going to cause major pain but then I'd be called paranoid, jealous, a horrible person. Eventually they would see it after the damage was done and by then I was abandoned already by these people who thought I was being mean before. They would rarely come back to me and say, "OMG you were right. We are sorry we doubted you." Nope. I just got to say, "Look at that. I was right and yet I'm still alone." Yay.
I don't know. When that happens enough times then I just wondered what was the point to put all the time and energy into people just to have them bail anyway? It was so painful to have people I truly cared about and loved tell me that I was hard to love, that I was an anchor or a burden. It hurt so much that it was easier to just let my bleeding heart just go behind a wall. I've had the best liars in my life that would lie straight to my face with real tears streaming down their cheeks... and it was all a lie. So words mean jack shit to me. I've heard it, seen it, felt it. I mean I've had amazing intuition and at the same time, when I've totally trusted a person, gave them the power to crush me like I was made of paper and throw me away like I'm nothing. Certain aspects of humanity are so bizarre and foreign to me that I've often joked I must have come from an alien planet and somehow wandered into a teleporter and got beamed to Earth.
I mean I've been a bully before but to purposely do harm to another person is to harm myself. It hurts me to hurt another person so it's totally bizarre to see humans purposely hurt each other and then get actual pleasure from that pain. No matter how much I have disliked another person, I've never... well have I never sought to harm them on purpose? I probably have in passive aggressive ways. Yeah, sure I have. I don't think I got actual pleasure from it though. I do think I've hurt in a way that I wanted to hurt back in a moment of anger or frustration but it's like speaking the truth but being blunt about it. That's how I probably hurt others. My intention is not to harm though. It's to get through to them. If I am to the point where I think a relationship is hopeless, I just walk away and sever the connection. There's nothing to say at that point so why waste the energy?
Now when it comes to animals, that's a different story. Same about nature on the planet. I am willing to destroy or die to protect it if I think it will help. My issues regarding caring seem to only be directed at humans. I just think of humans as a cancer that just consume and destroy and there aren't enough humans that care to balance out the ones that don't. I'll run out in traffic to keep an animal from getting run over and have many times. I think almost everything I do for fun and pleasure these days has to do with making animals happy and want to be in my yard. It's one of the few joys I have left is just watching them eat and drink and play on all the things I've provided for them.
It's been a long time since I've encountered a question about myself that I didn't already know. I've spent so much of my life analyzing my feelings, thoughts and actions that I feel like I really know myself but this one caught me off guard. I haven't noticed how much about me has changed over the years. I no longer smile at strangers. I no longer talk to strangers all the time. I no longer want to go to social events regularly, if at all. I no longer give people the benefit of the doubt. Not really. It seems like that on the face of it but I'm cynical on the inside. I have a much harder time forming emotional connections with people because I see them as a danger from the get go. Not that I'm afraid of them but I'm just so exhausted by life and by pain. I just feel like it's a lot of work and energy to put into a species that is flippant and cruel and disconnected. I don't know how to deal with that. The other people in my life who I really feel are caring and get where I'm coming from are just as withdrawn as I am for the same reasons so we rarely talk. Kind of ironic and funny really.
So I guess the answer is, I am very caring about a few humans and everything else living, and so far I'm enjoying this new potential friendship. I'm not in the habit of projecting where a connection will go though so I'll just stay in the present and see where it goes, which might be a cool friendship or might die like the rest. Time will tell.
Also not that anyone actually reads this, don't confuse my words with romantic love. That's one thing that really fucking annoys me about people. They think love must be romantic and like is for friends. There are people in my life that I truly love and would take a bullet for but have never felt anything romantic for them. I have an ex girlfriend who STILL believes that my heartbreak over losing a friend who I let into my heart was a secret romantic thing. Maybe I'm just a freak but when I let someone in and they ditch me, it hurts like hell. It's the same level of pain as with a romantic relationship and maybe worse. It's just how I'm wired which is why it's fucking terrified to let someone in like that... because other people don't seem to feel things like I do and can just toss people away like garbage. Like is for acquaintances. Love is for anyone close to my heart. Love and sex is for romantic relationships.
