![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Post-victimhood
Jul. 13th, 2011 12:56 pmTrying to work my way out of victimhood. It's like a Fire Swamp and I'm running from Humperdinck. There's lots of lightening quicksand.
I'm stuck on the caring for Mom thing. My life's on hold. I got myself into it, I know that. Don't know how to get myself out.
Jim Rohn once said that average five people you hang out most with appears in your life. Their average salary is close to yours. Their average happiness is close to yours. Their average lifestyle is close to yours.
My five?
Mom. Dad. Robyn. UUS:E. Online.
(I was hard-pressed to come up with five people.)
- The Mom & Dad influence keep me in the same place I've always been.
- Robyn's cool. She actually sees stuff in me that I have a hard time seeing. She's also breaking out of a twenty-year cycle of giving for others but caring nothing for herself.
- UUS:E gives me lots of sympathy and attention, which gives me incentive to stay where I am.
- Facebook/Twitter: Lots of sympathy for struggles there, unless I don't post about them. Oh, the temptation.
- LJ: well, I have over 7000 entries, nearly all of which are talking about my "troubles".
Maintaining an addiction to food makes me a hero - a struggle that I have to overcome. Without the struggle, would I be a hero? Would I get attention? Not from this source.
Falling in love with unavailable people gets me lots of attention and reinforces my low-level of self-worth.
Keeping myself in this mom-caring situation also makes me a hero. A struggling self-sacrificing beloved daughter.
Drama.
It's bullshit.
I find that I can't even imagine a life without my parents. What the hell does that say? I absolutely adore them and they are wonderful people. But, what does that say that without them I have no self-definition?
My particular hot button is people telling me I don't have a right to exist. Some part of me wants to exist.
I describe my future to others and it usually includes inheriting these two houses and staying in New England for the rest of my life. And it makes me sad. I am making do with their life. I feel guilty because I haven't produced grandchildren to raise in these houses. I feel guilty that my grandparents built the SGbury house and without heirs, it will pass out of the family. And on and on. What the hell does any of it have to do with me?
And this, I think, is what stops me from any kind of success. If I don't have a vision for myself, then my vision is created by well-meaning others.
Sometimes I think that if my mother hadn't gotten sick, I'd be free. But it's not true - I'd just have another crisis. Moving from crisis to crisis appears to be the point. The hero's journey. As soon as I got free of daily care of my Mom, I got sucked back into it. And now Dad's saying once again that he won't hire a caretaker until I get a job, which is ridiculous. At least he's paying me this time - but that pulls me in deeper.
So I wonder - when am I going to stop going around in this damn hamster-wheel?
Thing is, when I think about leaving it - the hamster wheel - I start to panic. I come up with every excuse in the book as to why I can't do what's required. I have a gold medal in self-sabotage.
I'm conscious that I need to reprogram. Change my sacred circle of five. From today forward, I'm going to spend one day a week away from my current influences. Become far more authentic than I have been. There's a wealth of tools out there to do it, although I'm not confident I can succeed.
But I have to. I've gotta get out of the swamp.
I'm stuck on the caring for Mom thing. My life's on hold. I got myself into it, I know that. Don't know how to get myself out.
Jim Rohn once said that average five people you hang out most with appears in your life. Their average salary is close to yours. Their average happiness is close to yours. Their average lifestyle is close to yours.
My five?
Mom. Dad. Robyn. UUS:E. Online.
(I was hard-pressed to come up with five people.)
- The Mom & Dad influence keep me in the same place I've always been.
- Robyn's cool. She actually sees stuff in me that I have a hard time seeing. She's also breaking out of a twenty-year cycle of giving for others but caring nothing for herself.
- UUS:E gives me lots of sympathy and attention, which gives me incentive to stay where I am.
- Facebook/Twitter: Lots of sympathy for struggles there, unless I don't post about them. Oh, the temptation.
- LJ: well, I have over 7000 entries, nearly all of which are talking about my "troubles".
Maintaining an addiction to food makes me a hero - a struggle that I have to overcome. Without the struggle, would I be a hero? Would I get attention? Not from this source.
Falling in love with unavailable people gets me lots of attention and reinforces my low-level of self-worth.
Keeping myself in this mom-caring situation also makes me a hero. A struggling self-sacrificing beloved daughter.
Drama.
It's bullshit.
I find that I can't even imagine a life without my parents. What the hell does that say? I absolutely adore them and they are wonderful people. But, what does that say that without them I have no self-definition?
My particular hot button is people telling me I don't have a right to exist. Some part of me wants to exist.
I describe my future to others and it usually includes inheriting these two houses and staying in New England for the rest of my life. And it makes me sad. I am making do with their life. I feel guilty because I haven't produced grandchildren to raise in these houses. I feel guilty that my grandparents built the SGbury house and without heirs, it will pass out of the family. And on and on. What the hell does any of it have to do with me?
And this, I think, is what stops me from any kind of success. If I don't have a vision for myself, then my vision is created by well-meaning others.
Sometimes I think that if my mother hadn't gotten sick, I'd be free. But it's not true - I'd just have another crisis. Moving from crisis to crisis appears to be the point. The hero's journey. As soon as I got free of daily care of my Mom, I got sucked back into it. And now Dad's saying once again that he won't hire a caretaker until I get a job, which is ridiculous. At least he's paying me this time - but that pulls me in deeper.
So I wonder - when am I going to stop going around in this damn hamster-wheel?
Thing is, when I think about leaving it - the hamster wheel - I start to panic. I come up with every excuse in the book as to why I can't do what's required. I have a gold medal in self-sabotage.
I'm conscious that I need to reprogram. Change my sacred circle of five. From today forward, I'm going to spend one day a week away from my current influences. Become far more authentic than I have been. There's a wealth of tools out there to do it, although I'm not confident I can succeed.
But I have to. I've gotta get out of the swamp.
