Pieces Of Me

The relationships we come to engage and invest in over a lifetime are countless. Each significant for how they guide us in shaping the boundaries we will go on to test. There exists no filter or trailer to peer into what’s to come and in all honesty, what benefits could be reaped of being able to fast forward to the best and worst parts of the people we’ve let in. To whichever depth of intimacy or investment we commit to others, whether it be as voluntary and conscious of a decision as a friendship or as fixed as a complicated dynamic with a parent, the risk of giving your energy to others is something we all take a gamble on. Every person we invest in, calls to be unpackaged. Understood for their many complex parts. Though this in itself is not inherently dangerous, it’s a gamble that for people alike myself who tend to take on a more caretaking role pose greater risk. Something I recently came to tackle was where my tendency to becoming intertwined into justifiably toxic relationships was rooted in. A narrative much more common among people around me than given credit. What began as my perhaps involuntary inclination to provide a support network for people in my family, social circle and love life, came to take on a life of its own. While those around me delved into the complexities of navigating their own growth, this came to be something I involuntarily adopted as my job to travel along side. A human safety net of sorts.

At the sight of an issue, it took unprecedented priority, all else paling in comparison. A form of self-sacrifice that became so intensely intertwined into my personality, it warped my understanding of what it meant to be kind, generous, giving. It came to be a game of “If I don’ts”. If I don’t offer my companionship, my help and my time who will? With that came the tendency to excuse losing my initial role as an equal. The bad days, sacrificed nights and inconsistency was validated and excused based on the relationship’s pretext I had on file in my brain. A mental logging of why this apparent unbalanced relationship was swaying in favour of the one deemed wounded and why “this time” it could be excused. With an identity fully propped up on being a nurturer, all other spaces in life were flooded with irrelevance. At the root of it all, it comes to be a game of accommodation and tolerance. You come to recognize that as you increasingly become unequal, there remains little room for redemption. As you accept the dynamic lacking its balance, the scales tip further and thus limit the room left for the relationship. As histories lengthen and emotions increase, these experiences of bringing people in and letting others out is but one element of the several components serving to form the human experience that molds us all. An experience that is an ongoing ebb and flow of how life seems to work with and for us.

an article by Lauchland Lee