Conumdrum of the Day

As I work through the stresses in my life, and try to identify the "me" that got buried down inside, there has been a lot that has come up for me that I haven't dealt with.

How does one who has been conditioned and ingrained to put everyone else first, stop? I talked to my therapist about this, and she reminded me that its always a choice. But she did mention that she can tell that what I do is actually out of genuine love for other people, and not some need to be martyr. She keeps talking about the love that she feels that comes from me, and I have to agree that is very powerful. I love everyone, and although popular culture and science likes to direct that thought as impossible, I still believe it to be true. I won't go extreme and assume evil people in the mix, but most people get the love from me freely.

Agape love, the greatest love of all. What is it really? I've been told that it's loving with everything you have inside of you without condition or thought. Its sharing that love and not restricting it at all. I try to love that way, and I want to be loved that way.

I have lived for other people for so long that I don't know exactly what it is that I want for myself. Its funny. I've taken on other people's expectations of me as my own. I could argue that I'm strong enough to say that if I didn't want it for myself I wouldn't have taken it on, but that argument is possibly weak. I have a high need to be liked, so I become the person they want me to be, and hide the pieces that they don't want to see. I'm not living fully with them.

I've been upset over the last few nights, basically man-trouble in my life. I'm trying to get over feelings I have for a friend, who just wants to be friends with me. I've read "he's not that into you," so I know the story and how it works. So I have to move on, and to be honest, I'm not even sure if the feelings are more than friend-like or if I'm feeling this way because the friendship means so much to me. I could be misreading all of this because I feel total acceptance. That's not the point of me sharing this... the point is that me being upset the last couple of nights has upset my mother. She's not used to seeing me emotional, and her response is for me to stop being this way and get over it. I told her that I can't help it, that I'm exploring being more emotional and honest about my emotions, opposed to bottling them all inside. She thinks I'm making myself upset over things I don't know as fact, and doesn't know how to handle me this way. She thinks I'm going to dissolve down and just want to sleep all the time and cry. That's not what I want to do at all, actually I have all of this energy to do things about my life. I told her that wasn't going to happen, but my tears are bothering her. I found myself trying to stuff my emotions to not upset her. Thus not being genuine. There goes my cycle again. She wanted to take me to the doctor or something, to increase my meds, but I explained that I was fine. I was just being emotional because I realized that I have to move on and find someone else, and I don't want to. She's one of the ones that needs me to be a certain way.