The Prison of Helping.
I used to do this thing where I let men use my body to heal themselves. I thought that the more I loved someone, the more I could help them.
I used my sex, heart, soul, mind, and everything about me as a salve for their wounds, even if it made my own wounds bigger.
I tried to save them from repercussions of their actions, so we could stay together.
I didn’t mind being with them even if it hurt me or it felt neglectful or abusive. I just liked the feeling of being needed and wanted.
I liked being Florence Nightingale. I liked feeling important, and the idea that someone’s happiness and self-worth depended on me.
I wrote a poem about it a long time ago. One line read, “Let me give birth to your tragedies so you can get some sleep.”
I thought it was right to bleed myself dry for a kiss.
I mistook helping for love.
I mistook saving for partnership.
I let I want you be just as good as I love you, and I tried to fill in all the gaps with good effort.
I was always walking on eggshells, not allowed to talk about their addictions, their hurts, but felt it all like a brick and carried it in my heart. At least I knew how to make them happy.
To tell you the truth, it made the sex hotter.
If something felt deeply wrong, it was like “Oh, I’m with you despite you, look how hot and romantic this is.”
It turned me on to re-traumatize myself, by being close to men who would not love me in the way I deserved to be loved.
Maybe it was my childhood sexual abuse, maybe it was the divorce, maybe it’s just the shadow in all people — that propensity for being ignored and diminished sometimes.
It took me years and years to channel my healing gifts into my work and not into my partnerships.
This is the normal struggle for healers: sometimes when our gifts are new and not fully developed, we think we need to help everyone except ourselves.
We get upset when someone is mean towards us because deep down we are trying to fix them and make them better, even when we know we can’t.
We spend all of this energy trying to make people better, love us in a fuller way, have better lives, and forget ourselves in the process.
But today we make a choice.
We choose to channel all of that hunger for love, closeness, intimacy, for saving and being saved, to our own precious souls.
We only spend time where we are getting spiritually and heart-fully fed.
We bring our hands back to our body and feel our own skin.
We take care of our own healing first. We no longer get dragged around by someone else’s drama.
We don’t need that distraction anymore.
We are fully awakening more every day to our right to be here, even if we help no one and just lie around in our pajamas all day.
To being there for ourselves and letting in that bliss of being.
***
Maria Palumbo is here to help you create your legacy by healing your shit first. See how she can help you out by scheduling a complimentary call here, and follow her movement of radical healing via her website. She can be also contacted via MariaPalumbo.com or Facebook.
***
{Join us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & Pinterest}