#just realizing my whole blow-up and whatnot is what my astro app warned me about not doing during mercury retro in aries

[engagedtobefree]

The past several days have been a whirlwind of emotion. I started with disbelief that quickly blossomed into grief, that then even more quickly bottomed out into rage, that then softly melted into emptiness. Then the cycle repeated. Now I am here and I don't know what shifted, but somehow I balanced myself out.

It's like I'm sitting here and I'm pulling the dagger out, the dagger that I had my hands on, the dagger that someone else had their hands on too, and it hurts. It does, it fucking hurts. There's a lot of blood, it's all mine, but the wound has been cauterized. I've stopped bleeding. Now there's just the wound to take care of.

I've been reeling. I've been trying to pinpoint the place that hurts the most, then I realize that the wound is everywhere. It's all over me. The wound is so big that maybe I am the entire wound.

For a long time in my life, whenever someone hurt me, I'd also hurt myself in turn. Doing that almost killed me. I have worked really hard at walking away from punishing myself unnecessarily, and I've come a really long way. I don't hurt myself like that anymore. When someone hurts me, I can defend myself better now, or even cut them loose, or at the very minimum work on healing myself rather than hurt myself further. But there are still times where I'm complicit in allowing someone to hurt me. I am kind, hopeful, empathetic, and naively trusting even when I try to have my guard up around everyone I meet. It's like finding that soft spot on the belly of the beast; I have my weaknesses and I don't know for sure but, I think that they might be plainly out there for others to see. They know where to stab. They know what would hurt me the most. Then they take that lunge and jab.

I wrote in one of my fits of rage: I want payback, I want it to hurt. But I don't. I could never do that to anyone. I want to nurse myself back to health after this. I don't want to be like any of the people who have wronged me, who have hurt me in cruel and senseless ways. I can point out all the wounds and scars, and you can ask me how many I've avenged. I'll point to none. I'll drop my hands. I'm soft, I'm sensitive, I'm a very vulnerable type of person, even if I don't always come across that way in real life. But one thing I'm not is broken beyond any sort of repair. Pieces break off and I put them back on, and it doesn't always look great, but I put them back nonetheless. The pain changes me, morphs me into this new creature that I have to get re-acquainted with, and then in the end, I see the beauty. I see that putting myself back together has been the best decision I could ever make. That the hurt and the pain and all of the shit has never made me throw those pieces at someone else in a vile attempt at revenge. I rage and it lasts a day or a few days, then I allow the real feeling of grief to take over. I don't like it, but I'd rather be hurt than doing the hurting. It's become apparent to me recently that not everyone is like this. Some people let the pain harden them or they go out and they hurt others in turn. I always assume the best of people, but I have to recognize that not everyone wants to be or do better, they just expect it of others. I never want to turn into that type of person.

It's very strange how I've arrived to this place of wanting to heal after only a few days. I think in some way, that has to be a testament to how much work I've already done in the past. The thing happens, I feel it as deeply as I can right afterwards, and then I put on my work boots and get to work.

Honestly, as much as my life has felt really shitty since the new year has began, I kind of needed this wake-up call. I needed the push. I needed someone I trusted to betray my trust because I have been overly-focused on that aspect in my life. Not just the trusting, but the other people. I observe people a lot, I observe interactions as they are taking place, I look for any details, I play it all back later. I look for what it tells me about myself. I look for how it can make me better myself, how I can show up better. But sometimes I look too hard out into the world and not enough within myself. I look for the answers and solutions in other people, and it's not there. It's never going to be there. Then my progress gets stifled because I forgot to apply the changes I wanted to make because I started focusing too much outwardly again. I've been slowly realizing that but haven't been able to make that shift fully until now. I needed the hurt and the misplaced trust because I haven't been trusting myself. I've been hurting myself by doubting myself and by not turning inward as often as I should. I'm changing that now.

This is a time I need to retreat. I need to be quiet and listen to myself and myself only. I'm looking at all of these people and situations in life, some more than others, and trying to figure out what everything means and it's exhausting. I'm exhausted. I want to take off those observation glasses and simply look now. Just see people as they are and allow them to show up in all of their messy ways just like I do. That doesn't mean I'm going to tolerate being treated poorly, but I can at least stop trying so hard to figure out whether I can trust someone or not. The answers don't lie in my overthinking. I have to stop focusing on what other people are doing, what they're giving, how they're communicating, what they're being clear on, how they're showing up. I need to focus on giving my 100%, what I'm doing, what I'm giving, how I'm communicating, what I'm being clear on, how I'm showing up. I need to stay soft, but I also need to open. The outside stuff at this point matters less than anything else ever could. What I need I already have. What I'm looking for is already here. I have to keep reaching towards it, and one day, someone somewhere is going to reach back towards the same thing, and I know this will all be worth it.