For someone who can recognize patterns very well, there is one that I execute over and over which I thought nothing of but has been deeply formative. I call it palliative care for the soul. But I should probably explore what that means first.
When I grieve, or my heart breaks, or I get to an emotional boiling point, I withdraw completely. I cut the source of my pain thoroughly, and with surgical precision. To an extent, this is healthy. Because I do this, I left an emotionally abusive relationship, as well as some that were empty of love from one or both parties. The only thing that will stop me from leaving is if there is an obligation inherent to the bond itself. As is my situation now. My duties to my daughter are my primary concern, and it would take a horde of horses to pull me away from giving my daughter the best childhood possible. When I reread this, I feel the words give the impression of martyrdom. I don't consider the choice a sacrifice because erasing generational trauma is my north star and I don't consider this situation to be the worse possible outcome I could have landed in.
The problem with my pattern is not leaving. If I give chances and I am given chances and nothing changes, then I feel that to deprive each other of the opportunity to find joy elsewhere is selfish. I consider my primary duty in my half of the relationship is to do my part to nurture it, not to force any of the parties to have the desire to nurture. My problem is that I overfunction, fix, nurture and give in the name of "deserving" love, and then resent more and more as exhaustion hits and landing on the aforementioned withdrawal. But I’m veering too far from my point.
My pragmatism has a fail point in that it tries to erase pain with logic. So I tell myself a story. I flatter myself that I am fair in my stories, but I know many times I also form my story even knowing how deeply fragmented my knowledge is, especially in situations where the partner was averse to hard conversations.
I grieve the wrong thing or don’t grieve at all and leave it at that and just go to the next thing. But if one lives one’s life without digging deep to the painful root of our own patterns, the patterns will never change. I consider that the second reason I haven’t forced a rupture to my marriage yet. If my partner finds his person, I will support it. But since he hasn’t, we focus on our child because I'm not in a safe emotional place right now and he's just doing his thing.
If tomorrow I had the opportunity to meet a person and start a real relationship, I would know I am not ready. Because of the lack of real introspection I know for a fact that I could not sustain anything in the long term. I consider what I do palliative care. It’s the mental health effort I expend to myself with the sole goal of simply regulating my nervous system and surviving the life I and others built for me. I never bother to rewire the lessons my life taught me. I do care akin to that we offer to bring comfort to those who are soon to leave us.
My soul is alive. It is not dying. Yet I treat it like a crystallized thing soon to leave because I fear that work. How much longer will I have the strength to live as I do without my pain seeping out and poisoning everyone and myself? I used to think that if I grit my teeth for one more decade that will be enough. But I noticed an escalation in my hurt and realize that the reboot needs to happen now.
I propose to myself that I do the harder work. Even if it is harder than burying the pain with palliative care. I need to say no, embrace my silence, trust my own intelligence, value myself, listen to new music, live my days differently. Make art and stop solely using external validation to sustain my own fragile self esteem. By identifying the faulty wires, by rethinking my faulty mental models about what I deserve as a person is the only way to leave palliative emotional care, and gain the clarity I need to truly and wholly heal.