Arousal & Disappointment…

There is nothing more disappointing than the knowledge that your projection has failed to land, and there is nothing more intoxicating than creating a new projection to cure you of your most recent disappointment…

Fuck, I have done this a lot. Like, a lot, a lot.

Over and over…

And I suppose on some level, I knew I was doing it, but it was so marginally involved in my conscious mind, it became easy to habituate and then it just became my life.

Projection is like a corrosive thread that is woven into the interior of your being. It is knotted and twisted and entangled in the very parts of you that are good, positive, healed and healing. It is impossible to really untangle it all without creating quite a fucking mess.

So we don’t. We just live with our projections and the cyclical process involved.

We create the projections to make up for the things we believe we inherently lack. We push forward in spite of the red flags, flashing lights and actual reality that is unfolding around us. We make excuses, justifications, reasons why this other person has just failed to live up to our all too lofty standards. And this is exactly where be become ensnared. The internal tangle now binds us and locks us into position. We have invested too much already so we stay hoping beyond all hope that those nagging doubts, fears and slights will somehow magically become a thing of the past.

I can see now, it is just a very painful cycle of arousal and disappointment played out over time and space. We need the arousal so we are content, in the beginning, to weather the disappointment. And the two become forever bonded with each other. If we have one, we must also have the other. If we only have arousal, then we seek the disappointment, and if we only have disappointment, we will seek to find arousal again. Vicious fucking cycle, really.

I am more convinced today I myself have chosen this awful downward spiral repeatedly. Normal seems boring…not that it is easy to find anyone normal today. We are all fucked up beyond measure and that might be ok if we didn’t attempt to cover that up and over with lies, manipulations and pretty words designed to keep us forever stuck in this endless loop.

So how do we change the familiar hell for an unfamiliar heaven?

I don’t have a fucking clue!

However, I will say being able to own your participation in this arousal/disappointment paradigm has to be a place to start. And I fucking own mine. I also think seeing that I have always been seeking something from someone else that has always been mine to give me, never going to get it from someone else. I think that is also a good foundational place to begin to change.

I project, always. And I can’t stop. I just do it. But I can know this and not allow this little factoid to slip into the distant past of my mind, carefully tucked into a place that renders it useless. No, this is something that I need keep in the foreground of my life. I have a tendency to project and that is what gets me going in this toxic spiral every fucking time. My projections. And that I have engaged for so long in this arousal/disappointment situation that it has become all I know. And it is hard to teach older dogs new tricks.

And I will own that I am not sure that I can give myself the time and space for healthy. To select someone who does not immediately launch me into arousal and then drop me into disappointment. I know that I want that, but my recent behavior says something else entirely. I see the disconnect, and I know how I have gotten there. I see it. I really do. Now just what do I do to really engage with it all differently?

Own it, at least that is what I am going with today. That and taking some time to regroup, heal and allow the horror of my last fucking relational nightmare to dissipate. This one hurt, this one wounded, this one rocked the foundation of all I thought I knew. I thought it was one thing and it was never, ever that thing. I see that now. I see how I allowed the mismatched words and behaviors to destabilize me. Leaving me walking the earth in search of solid ground. I see it all so clearly, NOW!

Sometimes you have to free fall, and then actually hit the earth to find that solid ground. Very painful process and I don’t recommend it. But I will tell you that this whole fucking mess has caused me to feel very protective of my life, my heart, my home and my body. I see that I need to take better care of all of those things. And in order to do that I am going to have to work hard to overwrite and dig out that corrosive thread of self destruction that my life appears to be shot through with…again, still.

I don’t know if I will ever get “there” but I know that in the past two months I have grown exponentially. I am happier even while grieving the love that I gave so freely that was thrown in my face and humiliated. I loved. He lied. And I suppose on some level I knew it all the time, I just so didn’t want that to be true. It was, the whole fucking time.

I know that healing requires me to swallow hard truths and assimilate them into my being. It is like this taking in of things that I would much rather deny, allows me to untangle that corrosive thread and get to it in ways that I cannot in any other way. Owning the projection and reality, and truth and pain is the access point for me to level up and out and away from toxic bullshit, my own included.

There has to be more to life than seeking arousal in the odd and delusional hope that someday I will get it and be able to avoid the inevitable disappointment of my original choice. Fuck, I really hope so. I really, really do.

For today, I am doing the work, owning the truths and doing my best to ensure that I am never again engaged with a person who cares nothing for me at all. That I can acknowledge and own that my projections, while lovely and alluring, are just there to fuck me over every single time. And so that is the only thing I will ever get…fucked, and not in a good way.

Growing up is hard to do, and it gets no easier the older you get. I suppose though I am grateful for it all. It took all of this fucktastrophe to get me here, and today, while things are not perfect, I am at least healing and moving on. And I am free, totally, fucking free. And that feels amazing today.