On oxygen

A story about proper roles:: ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON may 24th 2022

I am traveling right now. I haven’t left the country since the pandemic forced me in.

And so… I meet travelling Emily again.

I started working with my now beloved therapist at the end of Feb 2020, so I had a session today with her, and she goes, “IS THIS TRAVEL EMILY? HOLY SHIT!”

And I went, “Oh my god, yes, you haven’t met her yet.”

And then she said something like holy shit, Travel Emily is amazing. And I said, well how the fuck do you think I got all the insight before? TRAVELLING!

I love and hate traveling.

I love it largely because it allows me to not hide from myself.

I grew up with sagittarius dominant family members. My dad is a sag sun and both my mom and my brother are sag risings. I also was in a long term partnership with a sag rising. And lemme tell you, I don’t get it like they do. Suitcases make them giddy. I do not like living out of a suitcase. I actually loathe it. I’ve wanted to be back home so many times in the past few days, if I am being honest.

AND AND AND… There is something correct about this for me. It is allowing me to be stripped of my routine, of the ways I am comfortable denying what I want, or what I need, for example to see what is really there.

I am fully available to myself when I am travelling. I am remembering a part of me that died when the pandemic happened. So many parts of me came alive when covid kept me home, but another part of me died. When I am living out of a suitcase, I am more vulnerable. I am more raw. I am more stressed and freaked out and unsure and I get to decide how I treat myself in that. It is an immense practice. It is a chance to reparent myself. It is a chance to love myself. It is a chance to see where I’m really at. What I really crave. What my body is asking, demanding even, that I can just push away when I have more familiarity.

Like for example, something stressful happened in the past hour and I wanted to resource by getting on this substack app and writing. This is who I truly am. A documenter of life. An observer of life. Also known as a writer.

If I wasn’t travelling and probably a bit more comfortable, maybe I would have said to myself, ah I’ll just skip it, but no I had a fervent thirst to start typing on my keyboard.

This is who I am.

I love to engage with life. I love to ask questions and have life answer me. I love to try something and see what happens.

The question I keep thinking of is… how many times have you disregarded your own consent to not be difficult?

It’s a question for you. It’s a question for me.

My answer is more times than I can count. Probably more times than I can remember, actually.

How are we not connected to ourselves because we think we are burdens?

Probably in all sorts of ways, right?

I am realizing in life that my biggest fear is being like my mom or my dad. At least the version of them in my childhood, the ones who harmed me. I do not want to ever make anyone feel like they made me feel, and so I rarely put on my own mask before I assist another person.

But this means… I have no oxygen a lot.

I’ve refused so many times to put on my own mask first, because I thought that would make me like them.

They failed me in a lot of ways, yes. It was their job to take care of me emotionally and physically and even spiritually. They did not always do that.

But here’s what I did - that a lot of developmental trauma survivors do - I started trying to resolve my trauma by being who I wanted them to be to other people. So I did whatever they never did for everyone else … hoping that would resolve it for me. If I didn’t hurt anyone else like they hurt me, if I took care of people, like truly took care of them (honestly in really parental ways), then I got this illusion for my inner child that it existed, that it was possible, that she was healed.

I externalized trying to resolve my trauma.

I cannot be like them was my mantra. What was immature (said in a really loving way) about this psychology was that it was a child’s way of coping. I could not realize that my parents had a proper role to fulfil and that I did not (and still currently do not) have the role of parent to child. Yet, I started treating everyone like my child and me the parent. Clients; partners; friends. I’ll take care of them the way they didn’t take care of me. I cannot be like them.

But how misplaced…

I am not a parent. I did not take on the responsibility of having a child. And I shan’t be taking it unless I know I can fulfil it. I believe that’s the grown thing to do.

To get into proper role is really important in nervous system health. It’s easy with a job like mine to not be in proper role. To step into parent role for example for a client. Or in romantic relationships… how easy is it for this pattern to show up in taking on parental unconditional love for a partner instead of staying in a place of peer relationship. Adult romantic relationships for example should be conditional, actually. But when you’re not in the proper role of peer relating, damn, you don’t realize that.

So I’ve been getting into proper role. In all areas of my life.

And the way I resolve my trauma now is more like this: you deserve oxygen. That doesn’t make you like them. It’s just the bare minimum.