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I Give Up – It’s Just Not Personal

08 Oct Posted by in Rachel Wahba | 1 comment
I Give Up – It’s Just Not Personal

Feelings come easily for me; I get mired in them. Especially hurt feelings. Loss laced with Fear. Hard stuff. I am wired to feel whether I want to or not. I have not mastered the skill of dissociation.

Working consciousness into my feelings keep them from turning into quicksand.

Wrestling with where to go with my feelings towards my ex-partner of 31 years is formidable.

The relationship as it was, is over, there is no going back.

Very hard for someone (me) with every single planet in Retrograde!

“You are over her, its being dumped you aren’t over,” my brother, my one sibling told me recently as I regressed into wishing we were still together.

RWMy ego and false sense of self-esteem immediately went into overdrive, the Rejection Channel blasting loud.

My feelings were hurt, my experience seriously misinterpreted. “Dumped?” Did he really say that? Did he just cancel out 31 years and the trauma for both of us over this break?

We “dump” garbage.

We flush and bury our dumps.

I regress in an instant to how my mother didn’t want me and how she got pregnant with me on her marriage night, how the nuns didn’t like me, how the Japanese taunted me as a “gaigin,” how I had the wrong skin color, and not enough money to be accepted by the foreign community that mattered so much at the time.

My rejections have the power to erase the appreciation and love I had even then with all the pain. I can push the default Rejection button and cancel out blessings of love that have multiplied exponentially since childhood and yes, even since the divorce.

Instead of defensively rejecting the “D” word I let it hover in my mind.

I felt and then saw what feeling “dumped,” did to me. It punctured my self-esteem. I gave the uncomfortable (to say the least) feeling, space.

Just like I grew to realize my mother was not ready to have a child, I know my partner left for her reasons.

It wasn’t personal.

It wasn’t that my mother “didn’t want me,” she wasn’t ready to be a mother.

I indulge feeling unwanted, dumped, rejected, I forget life is an ever-changing process, a lesson, a purifying karma burning purgatory, and life turns into hell. Everything is an ego trip, everything is about me, and this mystery called Life is reduced to a fraction of what it is. I forget it’s just a Trip, a Mystery, Magic.

Given my background and my wiring it will always be a struggle not to take everyone and everything personally and slip into quicksand.

My mother and I became very close friends when we became adults. It looks like it is happening now with my former wife.

I am not totally at home with this change yet, but I am beginning to see how this relationship works.

Loss is hard. It’s just not personal.

It is part of life even as it hits personally.

When I get this, I get it that my life works. Most of the time it more than works, its fun, filled with layers of connections, interests, and love.

I see how our divorce does not diminish me.

When I don’t privilege being unwanted, I flow.

Rachel Wahba is an Iraqi -Egyptian Jew, born in India, who grew up stateless in Japan. She is a blogger, writer, psychotherapist in San Francisco and Marin, and the co-founder of Olivia Travel/ Olivia Companies.

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One comment

  • Rachel, I love your writing. You are so truthful and open. It’s not everyone who is willing to admit the slow, painful and layered process of self understanding. Hang in there! Diane