hanging my tomorrows on the bones of yesterday

A mutual friend of the ex-friend and I were catching up, and in the course of talking about how therapy is going for each of us, I got off on a tangent about ex-friend M. I still have Big Feelings about it, I guess, because at the end of the ten minute rant I finished with "and I feel like I invested so much more into that relationship than she did" and friend Z told me to give that some more thought.

So: this is me, giving it more thought. Today, let's do the RAIN meditation, I think. I need to not get blame-y and judgmental of myself right before therapy. Or at all, ideally. That sounds like a bad plan.

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R is for Recognize - I do a thing, possibly a lot, where I invest more than other people in relationships, and only see it long after the situation has melted down.

A is for Allow - I am allowed to choose to invest more than other people. I am allowed to be unaware of the full import of my actions in the moment. It may not be an ideal use of my time and resources, but there is nothing inherently unethical about it, and I was allowed to feel these feelings and do the over-investiture.

I is for Investigate With Kindness - I have questions about my over-investment into relationships like: "why do I do that?"; "what am I really getting out of it?"; "is it just something that I was trained to do and haven't really reflected on?"; "do I still feel unworthy of friendship, like I need to buy my friendships, or is this just a leftover behaviour from back when I had shame?".

N is for Neutrality / Natural Awareness - I was definitely trained to do it, by parents, teachers, authors, and the behaviour was reinforced (possibly unconsciously) by many of my friends and lovers, who benefited from it. I don't think I feel inferior anymore, but I'm still behaving like I am not enough, and that is irrational, and I should maybe replace that with some better emotional investments.

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I feel sad for myself that I was taken advantage of, and sad and let down by people who were supposed to love me. I am going to take some time to feel my feelings about this and then go through a list of friends to see if I am getting out of the friendship anywhere close to what I'm putting in, and then adjust expectations and actions according to that. But right now I'm going to listen to my Self Love playlist and knit in bed with some tylenol.

(I also feel upset that M is trashing me to other friends, which is a complicating factor, but probably one I should have expected, given her history of splitting. I'm not worried about her convincing anyone who knows me, it's just hurtful to be accused of stuff I would never do, in absentia, and it's aggravating.)