If you've been following me you know my life is a mass of change and assholes. Last night I had a very telling dream about how I feel and how my actions push men away and how I have to change the way I feel about me to get off the merry go round.
The dream: In the dream I was at my brother's wedding but my mother seated me and the kids outside the room. Everyone else was inside the room. I was not part of the family photo session, the ceremony, the reception. I was ignored, forgotten and physically removed from the action.
In the dream I got very upset when we were back at the house. I screamed at my mother, I cried, I poured out my heart. I went over every slight, listed out every other family event I wasn't invited to, seated outside of, and demanded she apologize, make up for it, make me feel better. Guess what. She got mad I was ruining the wedding. She rationalized, came up with excuses, put the blame on me, belittled my feelings, laughed at the drama.
In the dream I told other family members about how I felt and they would tell me I didn't understand what they were going through and why I had to be seated outside to keep the family peace because there wasn't enough room inside and heaven forbid one of them were seated out there. Until I started listing off how I was outside of every family celebration, never invited, forgotten and then they started in on my mother and how unfair she was being. Still she pushed back, didn't relent, didn't make me feel better. I did not matter.
Finally, in the dream I walked away. I packed up the kids and left telling her not to contact us ever again. Suddenly she was buying me gifts, planning trips that included us, and trying to do whatever she could to make things better. However, the more she did the more angry I got, the more hurt, the more slights, insults, and injustice I remembered. For example, my ex husband and his mother were seated in the room at my brother's wedding, why were they even invited? If they weren't there would have been room for me and the kids. I was trying to make her pay, get her to give more, apologize more, feel worse than she did. I was miserable. I couldn't feel happy with the gifts, the attention, the apology.
That's the dream streamlined, of course there were many more people, lots more action, and even finer symbolic details.
I don't keep a dream journal. I don't analyze my dreams or even care to really remember them. This one struck me as significant this morning because it's very telling of my marriage, dating life, and even the relationship I have with my mother. It's telling because it tells me how I act, how I demand attention, how I hang on hoping for those crumbs of decency I believe I am entitled to. I play the martyr, the victim, hoping others will feel sorry for me and fight my battle for me.
Currently, I don't feel like I matter. I don't feel cared about, heard, or even loved and that's because I'm not.
I am on a merry go round of hurt, pain, emotional baggage. I know that until I can store that baggage in the overhead compartment for good because I matter to me, I care about me, I love me, I will never matter to anyone else.
The question becomes, how to jump off this merry go round? How to love myself?
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