I’ve noticed myself within the past year feeling called to tell people at times, “Please let me know if I’m ever being an asshole to you. If I’m being an asshole please let me know, or if I’m not showing up for you in a way you want please just make a request.”
As you’ve probably noticed if you’ve been following me, I’ve been waist-deep in my own process this year, and I have, at times, felt self-focused in ways that I’m not always entirely comfortable with. I am putting so much energy into analyzing and alchemizing my own experience for the sake of healing and improving that I’m not always as present with friends as I feel I used to be able to be (although I suppose it’s possible that in my growth I’m just more conscious of it now when I’m not), and there are times I feel guilty about that. And so when I remember, I remind my friends to clearly voice their needs so that I can do my best to meet them. With some people this has worked really well, and with others it seems less so.
And then I wonder if maybe it’s not that I’m being self-focused – maybe it’s just that I’ve stopped focusing on others as a means of bypassing myself. Maybe it’s that I’ve finally stopped anticipating everyone’s needs all the time as a means of escaping myself. And maybe some people are reacting better to that than others.
I feel as if I’ve gone through a lot of close connections in the last couple years. I’ve had instantaneous where-have-you-been-all-my-life bonds with people that seem to have faded or drifted just as quickly and then been replaced with new ones. On a vibrational level, it makes sense that if I’m consciously growing and changing my core self, then the kind of people I attract will change as well – a sort of conscious reversal of “you become the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with” to “you attract spending time with the 5 people you are most becoming.”
But I can’t help examining the shakiness of this, the feeling of being ungrounded even if for the sake of evolving, and wondering if I’m secretly culpable of losing people out of neglect. Part of me feels that maybe this growth process itself is addictive, constantly pulling me away from connection and into self-care (as well as a shit-ton of study and creatorship that can often leave me burned out), and I wonder how much longer this is going to be a viable way to exist. I’m not planning on stopping before I feel I’ve reached the finish line but I think I’m ready to start calling in a landing on solid ground.
In the meantime, I have decided not to blame myself for ceasing to be a mindreader. And I’m choosing to look at the situation from this perspective in order to give myself permission to also articulate my own needs to others, and to see that as helpful to them rather than burdensome – to call into question all the times I expected others to be mindreaders because I was afraid to ask for what I wanted.
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