You grow where you are planted. Depending on the environment and and what you are fed greatly influences what you fruit. Being attached and enmeshed, it is hard to see that one is growing in the wrong soil. Not having what you need and unable to ask for it brings, about the wrong fruit (vipāka if you will.) Having grown up in this environment I would like to believe that I can identify when I am in this situation. Time and time again I am proven wrong. Each time though it gets quicker I am able to identify in a much more timely manner that I am in the wrong soil.
I have come to realize that the main question I should be asking in my relationships is “will it feed you?” Is the environment fulfilling, sustaining? The constant interplay of feeding and being feed the give and take is it there, or I am sacrificing who and what I am, like a man on a sinking ship bailing water to keep a float?
Over the past year this thought would come upon me like a cold wave of nausea. Am I being fed? Am I able to feed? The answer was always different, colored, checkered in an array of inter playable justification, self loathing, and, desire for more. This led to yet another road of self discovery. What was it I truly needed? Separating the wants from the desires, The idealization from the truth. Being able to identify emotional needs and separate them from emotional wants is a long hard journey. Environmental factors always played a lot in decisions. Societal ideas always crashing in on the thought process (I blame Disney.) Poor communication skills when expressing emotional needs was also a difficult wall to climb.
What I found to be true is no matter how well you are explaining it. No matter how clear your communication of your needs are, if the person you are talking to does not have the ability to meet them they will not be met. Seems like a simple enough concept to understand, it took me a while to catch on. In the end I learned that we have no control over anything but ourselves. No amount of talking will change this. All you can do is make your case state your needs clearly. If they are met fantastic. If they are not, the responsibility lies with you. What are you going to do to make sure you are getting what you need?
In the right environment people grow. in the wrong environment people can grow even more. At the end of it all however you will not be your best in the wrong soil. You will not produce good fruit unless you are fed what you need to bloom.
Am I being fed? Am I Feeding?
I Know now. I never saw it before, but I see it now. The fact is I am very much like her,( we react the same way to stress.) I have a peculiar insight into her mind. It only makes sense that our relationship for many years was one of adversity. I never gave her a chance really ,never tried to see things from her perspective. The pain and hurt from her actions were too close too new, even though it had been 20 years. Pain demands to be felt and seems to compound until it is. When not given the space and time for expression it festers, like a septic infection of the soul.
Death clears all scoreboards. In the light of never seeing someone again, or feeling them, most things we keep score about seem very small and insignificant. It’s hard to see when you are in it, and they are alive. The hurts and expectations of change are all there, and strong brimming and bubbling right at the surface of our awareness. If they would just do this, or say that. Why can’t they just….
Crawling out of my skin. So let the circus begin.