Echoes upon echoes

My head is so very heavy, weighing down on my neck, drooping like a wilted daisy, these few remaining petals precariously dangling. There’s a cloud inside my mind that’s filled with rumbling, grumpy thunder. I can’t seem to ignore it. 

“round and round and round”

Cyclical thoughts all about repeating patterns, round and round and round. How do these patterns seem to find me so easily? Or am I finding them? That’s the worry right there. Am I setting myself up to find these same circumstances? Am I doing it hoping I’ll behave differently? Am I putting on a play for my lone obsession with witnessing it again and again?

In life, in repetitive practice, here’s how these things seem to happen:

I requested a rule of conduct between us, watched him break it, and I ran straight to my cozy blanket of denial. I hid and said, “Oh ok, I trust you still.” Flash forward five months later and I request something similar of someone else, watch them break it, and say “Oh ok, it’s fine.” It’s only in the heart pounding beats of a panic attack do I realize I don’t trust, not any more.

 

I caught him lying, while wearing my soggy blanket of denial about my head, I reached for bargaining and said, “well maybe that’s ok but no more, no further.” A year later I discover someone else lying about such similar subject matter and I stall out, I see the lie and I pause. I sit stuttering watching the people around me for clues. It’s only two weeks later I find a pebble of indignation making my bed of sadness uncomfortable.

There’s countless tiny moments like these over the course of the past year. I suddenly go so still realizing I’m in yet another loop. I launch myself toward my familiar habits of conciliation and soothing the others around me. So often those people are the same ones in the loop with me, they’re lying, breaking my trust, and confessing. 

“you were right to hurt me”

I ache to fix and to help. I empathize, and in many ways this isn’t necessarily negative, but I do it almost too much. I tip so closely toward “you were right to hurt me” because I’m top heavy from all these clouded thoughts. 

“I deserve better”

It’s only lately, in the most recent instances of these loops do I lean back. I pull my head up as I realize why someone may have done something, but I keep for myself the thought of “I deserve better.” My sad, hopeful heart wishing that things had been different; it dreams that I’ll find a better way forward with these people. My realistic, logical mind tells me to shore up and build higher and higher boundaries.

So I sit at a saddened stalemate wanting to fix and wanting to retreat. I wrestle with myself, all the while hoping this is the last time on this loop, that I’ll get to step off soon.