If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise.
Robert Fritz
For the first 40 years of my life I did nothing more than compromise myself and invite others to do likewise. I was constantly torn apart trying to make everyone happy. I pleased nobody in the end, least of all myself. Things are different, because I see the cost of love and life from a completely opposite point of view nowadays.
I believe any affection that demands the death of self before it is given is too dear a bargain, by far. I could not find any happiness from someone doing something for me that caused them unhappiness. I could not enjoy a pleasure that inspired pain. And anyone who really loves me will feel the same concern about the cost of what they ask of me as I do about what I ask of them. But my past makes the asking a difficult thing, to say the least.
I am more apt to take what is given freely than to demand more than is offered. If I have to wrestle affection from someone I simply do not want any part of it. That does not mean that I take shit from others, it means that anyone who professes to really love me will not need to be begged to do it correctly. A healthy love will never seek to destroy. But victims of love litter the landscape, I know because I once rested there myself. Like recognizes like, yanno!
The choices I make in the pursuit of my happiness are colored by the things I have survived. Knowing what I do not want is sometimes much more important than being certain of what I do. I would much rather suffer the agony of loneliness because I am alone than live with the deeper pain of being isolated within a relationship. I will not give up my right to make my own choices, or limit my choices when in the end I am the one that will pay the price for the things I do or fail to do.
There is a freedom to that, but it also puts all responsibility at my door. I can no longer place the blame for any unhappiness upon others. I can not act the victim while living a life that is chosen by me. True realization of that unavoidable fact is driving me toward the building of a life that is as equal in value to the cost of the living of it. Balancing the scales is my job now.
THINK ABOUT IT
LET IT GROW
THEN DECIDE
