Why We Just Keep On Bleeding

 There's blood on the floor; did you notice it was yours? As you negotiated your way through distant parents, difficult siblings, disgruntled co-workers, disloyal friends or disintegrating relationships were you even aware that damage was being inflicted on the deepest parts of you? Had you been aware of the movement of energy you would have noticed that every time you negotiated with someone who didn't really care and settled for less, you accepted a plea bargain and the sentence that accompanied it. The energy of your life-blood was slowly seeping away, disintegrating into nothingness.

You may not notice it has happened until there is nothing left to sustain you or you have been forced to look at reality in a relationship and discovered how little value you really had to someone who has always been difficult. Were you foolish or blind, did you really not see? No one is blinder than he who sees yet refuses to read the handwriting on the wall. It's usually that obvious to the people who really do care about you; "Why would you do it," they wonder.

Why indeed? Because you, the victim has somehow convinced yourself that you are the strong one and are saving the perpetrator whom you have been plea bargaining with or on behalf of. It is denial at its highest calling; it has transformed into delusion and it feels so much better than the reality of an unloving or abusive relationship. There is solace here as you hide from the pain and restore your soul with platitudes about why you are doing it. You have a vision, you can see what they can become or imagine you know what they really mean, even when their words and actions tell you in the cruelest ways. They don't mean what they say and did not intentionally do what they did; these are the frequent explanations of self-appointed 'saviors'... but they did. When it all falls apart, that is the explanation they give, "I didn't lie, I told you so."

When we believe in someone in the face of obvious evidence that they have not earned our loyalty or trust we have run every caution and stop light along the way. All of the safeguards that were put into place as we arrived in this journey called life have been carefully and deliberately discarded as each violation occurred.

And so, like the sailor who has survived the perfect storm, we are washed ashore, battered, broken and bruised, perhaps even dazed as we stare at the devastation wrought by our refusal to read that handwriting on the wall that we dismissed as we kept on bleeding. Should you give up? No, you should give thanks, because you made it and are intact; despite the pain. And no, you did not deserve it, you permitted it. Reading can be so important, and never more so than being in touch with and reading your own energy. It might have told you 'no deal.'