To Be Yourself or Not to Be, That is the Question

Will the person your lover truly is please stand up?

FUTURE

It’s amazing what I’ve come to understand through having this experience. 

1.)    If a person refuses to be honest about who they really are, YOU DON’T HAVE A RELATIONSHIP with that person. It may look as if you do, it may feel as if you do, but really you don’t. (And I have to interject here: WTF?? Isn’t it the whole point of relationship to be known and loved for who you really are?)

2.)    It isn’t possible to experience happiness in your life without LIVING AS THE PERSON YOU TRULY ARE. 

3.)    I read this once in a book about ADD. I don’t think it’s only true of ADHD, it’s true in all of life. What I read was, you either have problems, or you have symptoms. If you refuse to be who you are, and opt instead to be who you have to be to please others, you have symptoms. You have the symptoms of chronic depression, lack of faith in the goodness and purpose in life, sadness, maybe boredom. (And Chi’s horoscope has these themes in spades. When I knew him, so did he.) You can get attached to some outside addiction that makes up for the joy you should feel in being who you really are and doing what you really love. But if you insist on going your own way and others aren’t happy, then you have problems…with other people in your life.

4.)    Why else would you pretend to be someone you’re not? To like things you really don’t like, to pursue a career that really doesn’t make you happy? Someone else wanted you to.

5.)    And here are the problems you will have: One, other people will be mad at you, the way my mother was mad at me if I showed ANY sign of changing my mind about this career I had settled on when I was four. A BBC show about people in this career once played on PBS when I was a little girl. My mother insisted that I watch it and got angry with me when I didn’t want to! (The problem was that the actors were all British and spoke very quickly in strongly accented English, and my eight-year-old brain couldn’t understand what they said. I lost interest because I could not follow the program. And my mother got mad at me!) Imagine the reaction I got when, years later, I did what any high schooler should and explored other careers. What am I doing today? You guessed it. The underlying message from these people is, “You’re supposed to give ME what I WANT!” Or, two, the people are upset and crying. “You want what? You’re divorcing MY MOM! You’re breaking up OUR FAMILY!”

If you have low self esteem, you will buy right into all of number 5. In the first place, you have such low self esteem you don’t believe you have any right to be who you are if someone else says you should be some other way. And you don’t believe you’re good enough for anyone to love you the way you really are.

So, the only person who says they love you threatens to withdraw love if you don’t give them what they want, thus violating your own personhood and your own freedom. 

(Thought:If they don’t love you the way you really are, they don’t really love YOU, do they? They should find someone who’s more like what they really want.)

In the second case, you’ve experienced so much pain through your own low self esteem, and been treated so badly yourself, you don’t want to make ANYBODY else feel that way, ever. Especially not, for instance, your precious children. (Even if those children are, say, in their thirties now and have homes of their own.)

BUT, you’ve lied to those precious children since they were born, about who you really are, the home they were really living in, and the healthiest and happiest way for humans to live. You did it because they were young and little and tender and still forming, and you wanted them to grow up happy and healthy. 

And they did. They did grow up wayyy healthier and happier than you did. And, yes, it’s hard for kids to give up that shining ideal of the way they thought their childhood was, that’s true. 

But if your kids could really understand, do you think they’d want you to be this unhappy? Would you recommend it for them?

                                               ***

Ah, astrology. 


Robert Hand is a famous astrologer from Maine who has written perhaps the best book on transits ever. In astrology, the chart you were born with tells you about your character and your potential in life. Transits are used together with the natal chart in order to make predictions. Your natal chart tells you what will happen; your transits tell you when. 


Looking ahead many years, Chi’s transits start, right about now, to do something very interesting. About two thirds of his transits describe a person who stays on the path he was on when we first got together. A person with lowlowlowlow self esteem, who won’t be himself in relationships, who gives himself away for other people’s approval, and ends up in so much pain he can’t stand it and has another affair. 


(In another relationship. The timing of which, unfortunately, seems to coincide with ME being cheated on.) 


The other one third of his transits describe a person who’s growing, who heals from childhood abuse, who finds his own self worth, who becomes whole and ends his life in a much, much better place. 

My transits describe, uniformly, a relationship with an unhealed codependent that pretty much ruins my life, and whom I eventually have to leave.

I am, understandably, concerned.

Robert Hand writes that each transit between two planets is describing something that’s taking place in your life, in a cycle of events. First there’s a conjunction: from your perspective, the planets are eclipsing one another in the heavens. This formation is often noted when people are starting some new endeavor. Then you get an easy transit as they move apart. A sextile. (These are the degrees in angles as the planets move apart.) 


If you started something that wasn’t a good idea at the conjunction, it will look like it’s working okay during the “easy” transits. Then you hit a difficult one—a square, that’s a ninety degree angle. It denotes a time of stress. If you made a bad decision at the conjunction, it now starts to look bad again. You have the choice: to drop it and start something new, or to try to stick with it. If you stick with it, you will get easy going again. Then comes the second time of stress: the opposition. The planets are one hundred eighty degrees apart. Down below, people are often having some challenging times again. If you didn’t ditch that bad situation when you got the square, and you tried to stick it out, now you will really be sorry. I look ahead to the times I worry about, and here is this same cycle.

If you make a good decision, you don’t have to have a horrible time when the planets square and opp. 


If you made a good decision and things are going well, the square and opp can actually push you into a period of success and further growth. But, as my life progresses and finishes, first, apparently with Chi, and then without him, I have clearly made a very bad choice somewhere along the line. 

                                    ***

Now, what could my bad decision be? 


Here coming up soon I have one transit that tells me I am getting mixed messages from someone, and I’m told that it’s not just him, it’s a problem with the interaction of both people. And when I first read that a year and a half ago, I went,


"Huh? But I love Chi! I’m offering up all the love I can. I’m treating him WAY better than Rory! Why wouldn’t he want me? What am I doing wrong??”

What AM I doing wrong, in this hypothetical timeline that, thank heavens, hasn’t happened yet?


What’s my bad decision?

Reviewing the above, it’s entirely possible that it’s this: ACCEPTING DISHONESTY INTO MY LIFE. The fundamental dishonesty of a person who just can’t accept that he really is an okay guy, and it really is okay to be who you are in your own life. 

Why do I want to make this bad decision?

Because I’m lonely, sad, and unhappy. Because Chi is gone, and because I miss him. Because he’s the only person besides Simon, who ever felt like a soul mate to me, in my entire life. 

Chi can be wonderful. WHEN HE’S BEING HONEST. WHEN HE’S APPEARING AS HIS REAL SELF. Which he did with me once, more than he ever had with anyone else in his entire life, and it was an honor. A privilege. His trust was one of the most precious things I have ever held.

But when I accept an affair because I’m afraid of never seeing him again, I foster dishonesty and unhealthy habits that need to be broken. And it may very well be that because I fostered them here, they stay around for the rest of his life, ruining his life, and ruining my life, too.

Because I was afraid to risk losing him. Because I was afraid he didn’t really love me. Because I was afraid of being alone.

BUT,

If a person lives in dishonesty in his relationships, YOU AREN’T REALLY WITH THAT PERSON ANYWAY.

You are with a picture they are holding up in front of their true face, in order for you to love them.

Codependents do that. Because they believe they are such substandard human beings that no one could ever truly love them the way they really are.

And this is a result of childhood abuse. See how important it is that society helps parents be the healthiest they can be?

The thing is, I want who Chi really is. I know that person. He showed me, back when he trusted me. And I know that person is special. That’s the person I really want.

I may enter an affair trying to reach and keep that person, but because he isn’t strong enough to believe he’s really a good person, that it’s okay to be who he really is, and that it’s okay to leave a situation where he isn’t loved for who he really is,

what I’m doing accepting him in this condition, is encouraging him to keep on hiding who he really is anyway. 
 

Because now he’s got to hide an affair. And he gets to beat up on himself for what a bad guy he is for having one (ignoring all the real reasons there’s trouble in his marriage.) 


And all the real reasons being who he really is—finally, before he dies of old age—is a good thing to do. And I can see this, in our old conversations, I really can. Lines like, when he was about to move out, "I needed to do this anyway for myself. Or I would have died inside." "I feel like I'm moving toward myself. I stand in the distance, waiting. Does that make sense?" "I think my life can only have the chance of being happy if I take charge of it."


*shivers* Yes, it does make sense. (And, no shit.)

I really don’t know if the transits coming up in all of our horoscopes are going to really happen or not. Maybe Chi and Rory made some good decisions at the time of their last conjunctions. Maybe this square works out fabulously for them.

But I did see some photos of Rory’s recent "promotion." And I do think that a picture, in this case, may really be worth a thousand words.

There are some huge transits coming up for all three of us. And the dates all match for each person. Like it or not, these three charts, mine, Chi’s, and Rory’s, are all linked. 

Pluto transits. Seven years. HUGE.

If what’s forecasted actually comes to pass, I need to understand that it’s HONESTY, or it’s NOTHING. My job is to raise the bar all the way to the top, and hold it there. People need to appear in life the way they really are, else there can be no happiness.

I’ve raised the bar for Rory. Chi told me as much the night he dumped me.

I’ve done that for myself. But there’s one person I have so far declined to do that for. 

Chi.

                                      ***

This is going to be hard to do. I love Chi. I miss him. He’s the second love of my life.

But I need to look at it this way.

1.)    What does this person do WAY TOO WELL? Lying, acting, pretending, and duplicity. Not because he's a bad person, but because he's an insecure person. Pretending to be on the outside what others want, in order to get their approval. Because he doesn’t have enough of his own. And what does an affair give you great practice at? Lying, acting, pretending, and duplicity. 


   What’s one thing that, if you conduct a secret affair, cheating on your spouse, you aren’t getting any practice at at all? APPEARING TO THE SIGNIFICANT PEOPLE IN YOUR LIFE, THE WAY YOU REALLY ARE. 


   Oh, and what other thing could this sweet, darling, smart, sharp man stand to be better at? Handling anger openly, honestly, and up front, instead of subverting it and getting back at someone covertly while making nicey-nice on the outside. 


   Trust me, nobody wants to be with a person who does that.

2.)    If I should accept a person who refuses to be his real self into my life, I’m alone for the rest of my life anyway! First, figuratively, because THE RELATIONSHIP IS FAKE. I’m not being shared with and trusted with who the person really is, the way I was for the four months we were together, anyhow. Then, literally, because when a person betrays their own soul to show up the way they think someone else wants them to show up, the pain of self-betrayal becomes so great that he starts resenting me, talking about me to other people, attracts another affair, and things break down so badly from there that eventually I leave him and I’m all alone anyway. At seventy-one. When nobody wants to break up.

This is why anything, anything, anything I do in the next six months that supports lying, acting, pretending, or any kind of duplicity constitutes a very serious moral and ethical violation on my part, no matter how Rory’s acting or how apparent it is to me that he really needs to get out of there. (Which was apparent to me when we first started talking, and on the night he broke up with me!) 


And, you know what?? I've actually got a transit coming up advising me of that very thing. Um, guess when that is???


Plus, in the words of astrologer Alice Portman, when she looked at both our charts for me, “These people have to do it on their own, otherwise they don’t learn anything.” Because this person, more than anything else—just as ALL PEOPLE DO—needs to start showing up in the world AS WHO HE REALLY IS.

And demanding exactly that, sticking up for only that, holding out for exactly that, and never accepting less than that for or from that person—

That’s what love is.

NOT, “I’ll love you if you give me this.”

I’ll tell you one thing, “I’ll love you if and when you give me this” wasn’t what my marriage with Simon was all about. Each person was WHO THEY WERE, and that was why we were so happy together.

If I insist on this, and it turns out that I lose Chi forever,

TOO FUCKING BAD FOR ME.

Even if I never find another place to belong, ever in my whole life. Even if I’m sad. Even if I grieve for what might have been. Even if I miss better times. Even if I’m alone for the rest of my life. Even if I never find anyone else, no other soul mate relationship, ever, ever again.



                                      ***

I might need some help with this.

I miss Chi. I have literally pined away for the man for two solid years now.

If astrological predictions come true, I may need to be held accountable. If you’re reading this blog, and a report should show up that Chi came back and we slept together, or we’re carrying on in cyberspace (again), I formally request that my readers show up in the comment box and FLOG ME TO DEATH.

You might even show up sooner than that, if I happen to post up that I've heard from him again.


It’s important.

Thank you.