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420: 10 Things Not to Say or Do When I am Sad

| Aspergers Girls

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10 Things Not to Say or Do When I am Sad

1. Don’t ask me to explain or reason my way out. When I am sad I have already evaluated everything ‘to death.’ I have looked at the pros and cons of my own life and my own suffering. I am no dummy. In fact, part of the problem I am so sad, is because I am so dang smart. I am my worst criticizer and have evaluated all the benefits of not being sad verses being happy a thousand times, and the worst part is that I cannot reason myself out of the sadness and feel happy.

2. Don’t tell me I need a pharmaceutical drug. Chances are, I’ve done my research or tried the drug before. My body is so very sensitive that any chemicals I put into my body cause adverse reactions. I get the so called ‘side effects.’ I am that less than 1%. I am the canary in the coalmine. I am the one you read about that gets the suicidal thoughts from anti-depressants and the one that has bizarre things happening to her body when I ingest foreign substances. I am already affected by the environmental pollutants, the toxins in our water and food, the hormones injected into products, and the chemicals that seep out of most homes. Truth is, I likely would be far happier if I lived in a world that didn’t reek of destruction.

3. Don’t tell me you know the reason for my sadness. More than likely, if it’s not my PMS or PMDD, or the result of an auto-immune disorder, or a variant enzyme, an allergic reaction, a virus or illness, or something or another that is deficient or out of whack, perhaps in my intestines or stomach, then it is situational. And not just the typical situations, like a bad day at work or a letdown. I have learned not to let ‘bad’ days affect me. I have ‘bad’ moments, each and every hour, I have ‘bad’ moments, and I choose to spend my day grasping onto the light and the goodness of the day. Only sometimes, I get tired of reaching and trying. My life is a struggle to fit in, to appear ‘normal,’ to follow the ‘rules,’ to even understand the ‘rules.’ I am exhausted. I am a warrior who wakes up every day with the past day erased, all the previous trials conquered gone, all the accomplishes vanished, and I have to start from square one to try to make sense of a world in which I do not feel I belong.

4. Don’t give me advice. You have no advice I have not heard, read, seen, felt, or experienced. One way or another I have studied what you will say. I have studied emotions and reactions in films, in music, in literature, even in nonsensical jokes and in animal behavior. I understand emotions and I understand my sadness. I read to understand myself and I even study you to understand myself. I know more than you think. I may not know the root cause, but I know that there isn’t an answer you have that I don’t have within myself. Your suggestions of correct verbiage, positive thoughts, rest, fresh air, exercise, meditation, visualization, diet, supplements, and the lot, do nothing more than boggle my brain and make me think you care more about your role as a want-to-be helper than you do about my pain. I can’t be the object of your fixing. I don’t want to be and refuse to take on that role. I am not less than you in my sadness and you do not have the secret key I need. I did not express I was sad because I look to you for answers. I told you of my sorrow because I just long to feel less alone.

5. Don’t tell me what I have to be grateful for. Don’t suggest I make a list. That is crap. To me I am grateful for the tiniest of thoughts, gifts, and actions that most people take advantage of. The near site of the dew of the grass, the soft smell of the fire-painted lily, the brilliance of a child’s laugh, the comfort of my favorite blanket, or favorite song..all these lift me. So much of the world lifts me. Many moments I travel in a world so extraordinary and filled with magic that I thank life for just my essence, to just to be in the midst of such glory. My list of gratefulness is not divided by good things or bad things. I stopped judging the right from wrong, and the just from the unjust, a long time ago. I live in the space in between the extremes of yes and no, and laugh at the ones who think their view is the only view. I can’t see making a list of all that is good without classifying at the same time in invisible ink what is bad, or worse, what others are lacking. I am no less and no more grateful than the homeless man on the street. If he is happy, I am happy. If he is sad, I am sad. To even make a list seems to me pompous and unjust, to single out how lucky I am in such a world of misfortune makes no sense, unless I hold greed as a virtue. Unless I see myself as dutifully worthy based on my profiting and others’ lacking. Unless I single out what is entirely missing from another to satisfy my own growing need for satisfaction. And anything of material I would attempt to scribe as benefit, I would rather break apart into a thousand pieces and feed the world. I don’t believe I can classify what happens in my life as good, bad, tragic, ugly, or beautiful. I only know it happens, and is happening. And for what reason is still to be seen. I know to let go and let my higher source lead. But when I am very, very sad, sometimes I forget how to release; I forget how to let go of the clinging of suffering. I forget I am not alone onto myself.

6. Don’t tell me how wonderful I am. I know who I am. I know through and through. I know I am kind, gentle, sweet, generous, forgiving, genuine, giving, smart, keen, and many other positive attributes. I am not sad because I have lost sight of why I am enough. I know I am enough. I am sad because the world has lost sight of me. Because I long to reach out and connect but when I do, I often feel nothing reaching back. To touch another fully, is all I want. To touch in full extreme, without pretention, want, need, expectation, goal, or outcome. To just touch. I, as I wait in my own self-created exile, as I wait without the sense of feeling another, grow in sadness.

7. Don’t tell me ‘this too shall pass.’ I know the sayings and tons of other random words collected to form reprieve. I am an avid reader and collector of quotes. I am a philosopher, an artist, a creator. I have the heart of a lover, the mind of a composer, and the spirit of a warrior. I am brilliant in my creation, and I understand the ebbs and flows of life. I move like the sea with the moon. I move like the willow with the wind. I am affected by the give and take of the world, by nature, by weather, by other people, events, and tragedy. I dream things. I see things. I experience emotions in extremes, and sometimes cannot tell if I am carrying my own pain or the pain of another. People find me. I don’t know how, but they do. And I am a vessel of sorts, harboring the lonely through the storm. They crawl in with their tears and woes, and their aches leak through me, crushing me to the core. I know everything will pass. And I know still that life is a cycle, and like the seasons, my sorrow will come again. Do not attempt to help me to look forward to the end of my pain, help me to go through my pain.

8. Don’t criticize or mock me. I cannot help how I am. Do not call me ‘overboard,’ ‘too much,’ ‘too intense,’ or the like. I cannot help that I am the way I am. I can often control my behaviors and be the best person I can be, and I do this daily. But my emotions sometimes take over. I don’t know how or why, beyond conjecture, but they do. And the more I fight the wave of pain, the more the pain comes. Sometimes I need to submit. To be in the turmoil, so that the tunnel evaporates and the light comes again. I fret over the tiniest of perceived imperfections in the way I treat others. I judge myself for not being caring enough, attentive enough, or loving enough. I cannot lie without deep remorse. I cannot have enemies. I cannot even hate. I know not this emotion hate beyond the emotion of anger turned deep sadness. All is huge to me. There isn’t a small suffering. I hurt for the tiny spider as much as the buffalo. I long for the rescue of the persecuted innocent as much as the child without parent. I feel and take in such extreme happenings, and know not where to lay my burden down. Just as I spend all day, moment to moment, contemplating how to maneuver in a world that remains unfamiliar, I spend my inches of time trying to figure out how to again release my burden, where this time to bury my woe. Shall it be in words, in rhythm, in rhyme, in the deep wilderness real or the serenity of my imaginations? Will I get lost again in my escaping? Where shall I take this misery and when will I have my fill? Do not criticize me and do not tease me. Do not laugh or giggle your way into a stream of mockery aimed at me. I do not do what I do for attention or purpose. I do not do what I do because I want to. I do not do what I do because I am confused or made wrong. I am perfect in my being. I am just sad. I am sad. I am sad.

9. Don’t abandon me. Do not leave my side, if I need you there. Do not hang up the phone, if I am crying. Do not say you will return, and then not call. Don’t say something, and not mean it. Don’t lie to try to make me feel better. Tell me straight what you think. You covering up only makes things worse. The world is already unsafe with its lies and trickery. I need you to be safe. I need your word to be strong. I need your integrity, your honesty, your truth. I need you to be that light that I am, to prove to me again you are here and I am not alone. If you do this, if you are loyal and true, when my sadness goes, when it is lifted, I shall be at your side with the beauty I am, pleasing you in your times of suffering, and holding your hand in your deepest need.

10. Don’t perceive me as something I am not. Try not to label me. To find the answer that brings you closure. It is not my job in life to fit neatly in a box for your comfort. My moods are my moods, my pain, my pain. My emotion is not a reflection of you, nor a product of you, any more than my happiness. I don’t expect anything of you in your pain and sorrow, so please don’t expect anything of me. Don’t make me your martyr, your angel, or your giving-spirit. Don’t make me the melancholic one or the hopeless creature. I am what I am, and what you create of me is neither here nor there, no less truth than what I create. I need you to try to not see me through the eyes of fear, but through the eyes of love. To bathe me in acceptance and forgiveness. To love me enough in my completion that you in turn love yourself in completion. If you can do that, if you can look past my ‘flaws,’ past the definition and existence of ‘flaws,’ and see into my suffering the very spirit reborn into darkness, soon to be sprung into light, then I shall have hope. If I can see me as hope, I will be hope. If you can hold me as hope, I shall be the very essence that you perceive in your grasp. And we can meet there, in that space between the suffering and hope, and merge, per chance, in that shimmer of a second, as one.

417: First Self-portrait & My Emotional Road Trip

| Aspergers Girls

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Yesterday’s painting: My Kingdom for Your Heart. Poem to match can be found at my spiritual/art blog: Belly of a Star.

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The day before yesterday’s painting: Paisley Three

Last night my husband dreamt I sold a painting for a lot of money. I told him I will not sell my soul. However, I will consider photographing my soul and making prints for greeting cards.

I am craving pizza.

Painting all day is like having ‘relations’ all day. That means sex. And no, I haven’t had sex all day in decades. (oops, am I over-sharing?)

Now I am craving chocolate…dark.

I have been super good to myself about accepting my various stages of ‘moods’ and ‘needs.’ I love me very much, and know that when I am sick or when someone I know dies, I might sink myself into creation of some sort. Someone did die, I’m not just throwing that in there for effect. That would be odd.

The project of the week is painting! I loveeeeee painting. For the first time in my life I understand faces! Although, when I paint, it looks nothing like in my imagination. Except today. Today I came super close.

This is how I used to see bodies and faces:

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It definitely feels like a calling to carve out all the agape love inside of me. The paintings kind of look like dead people to me though. Dead people alone, or dead people with someone trying to wake them up. I know this has to do with my own spiritual journey. In fact in looking back at my paintings over the last few months, it is fascinating to see in my art at times: no body, white space for body, body with closed eyes, body with one figure with closed eyes and one figure with opened eyes, etc. The paintings’ faces follow my own insight into self and later into the All.

Yep, you are part of the All, too. Which means… you are me… I will give you a moment to process that and catch your breath. Scary thought, indeed. Here is a paintbrush and a canvas, so you can soothe your pitter-pattering heart.

My husband doesn’t appreciate when I talk about most people being in a state of sleep, kind of like they’re dead. I tell him not to worry that when he wakes up, he’ll understand. Did I mention that I just finished Jesus and the Lost Goddess, and finally have found the linear connection between Buddhism, Gnostic Christians, and Islam! So that’s a bonus. Seems lots of spiritual belief systems think lots of people are sound asleep.

I’d like to be asleep right about now. The passion to create has been outstanding for weeks. Unbelievable really. I painted for seven hours today, and still have a lot of angst and love in me. The energy of the painting bellow is STILL off. I’d like to bring back their faces and wipe out the green line.

I have a huge pile of laundry, like seven loads of clean clothes staring me down. I really want to erase that green line and paint.

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charcoal sketching

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trying to steal a heart

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Heart not stolen

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Me (in my 20s)

a few hours after this post….and I think I am done as done can be. ❤

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412: How to Create a Female with Aspergers

| Aspergers Girls

How to create a female with Aspergers

Gather unworldly ingredients selected from the finest of giving spirits
Place the all into a one-of-a-kind crystal bowl of beauty
Sprinkle in lots and lots and lots of unconditional love
Add a dash of spunk and assertiveness
Blend in gigantic masses of insight, perspective, energy and focus
Layer in aspects of divinity, forethought, accomplishment and inner-truth
Add sliced and diced reality
Stir in heightened awareness with a spoon smothered in wholesome goodness
Taste for the pure sweetness
Crack open the shell of authentic being and let the light drip into the blessed mixture
Whisk with wit and wisdom
Inhale the aroma of tender-hearted empathy
Embrace the healing sunshine in soothing hands
Form into cute balls of reasonable gratitude, generosity and forgiveness
Let the happiness of service and angel-kisses tickle the senses
Peek at the forming essence of angelic eyes of knowing
Watch the dough rise with the delicate rays of understanding, freedom and creativity
Bring into the creation the nurturing warmth of spirit
Divide and blend into the form of one cherished being
Baste with opportunity, benefit and connection
Cook until tender but firm in belief, integrity, and strength
Set wings upon her hopes and dreams
Place her on the window of soul-knowledge
And in joyous celebration let her flight be a light to the world

~ Samantha Craft, Everyday Aspergers

410: Belly of a Star: New Blog

| Aspergers Girls

Hello lovely loves. I have done some soul-searching…big surprise, and with the help of some friends who listened and offered some ideas, (thank you, thank you),I gave myself some incubation time (new for me, as I used to make quick and rash decisions to end the limbo-state of angst), and have started a new blog.

As I explained to my husband today, I started feeling like a fraud here at Everyday. I know I am not, and I know I haven’t partook in trickery, but I was feeling a bit off balance. In reflection, I realized my focus is likely not returning to the unraveling of Aspergers and the finding of self, as I have pretty much found my self and understood Aspergers in-depth. I suppose I could teach about Aspergers and strategies, and techniques, and such, but that is not where my heart’s intention is at the current moment.

Now that I have ‘found’ myself again, (thanks to many of you), and learned to accept myself, I am finding this silly little-self has plunged deeply into wanting to lose herself, e.g., become mindful, fully present, compassionate, loving and kind with my mind on the benefit of all and not of self. Will I stay in this mindset? I don’t have a clue.

Some very interesting things are happening; if you have been privy to my journey, you know about my visions. Well this morning, I was taking my short drive home from dropping of my son and I had this image and ‘vision.’ I saw my dog in all her cuteness and all her pain-in-the-buttness (her nickname is spastic colon but it should be spastic bladder!) and I had this image of her having the Buddha in her or the light of God, or Jesus, or any of the number of love-filled sources. And I thought I ought to try to practice seeing her in compassion, too. This vision went on for some time: me seeing my dog in different ways, people seeing my dog in different ways. When I got home and read the new book I recently purchased, I turned to the next chapter and the prose was exactly about seeing the Buddha in your dog! Now this was just too much. Events like this continue to happen. Almost every post I write, if I go and read from a spiritual text after writing, the words are typically about what I have just written about. I find this very validating and confirming.

I continue to get a jolt in my heart when someone judges me or judges someone else. I don’t know what that is about. It hurts like a huge electric shock. I feel it. I see it. I accept it. And then it is gone. Before I would have held onto the judgment and taken the words in as my truth. I know I cannot please everyone. However, I still don’t understand why people need to take defense to what I write. It just seems like plain silliness. Sometimes I can see that they are very much upholding their truth as the truth—and I suppose that is their right. I just don’t choose to uphold my truth as having to be someone else’s truth or way, and think the world would be a much happier place if others stopped pushing their belief systems on people. Just my two-cents.

I still have opinions and attachments, obviously. The day I pretend I don’t, call me on it. Because the day I don’t, I won’t be here. I will be floating and invisible. I promise not to haunt you, if you leave chocolate on your night stand. Dark, please.

I was thinking today (hehe) that at moments it appears to be easier walking in this world as a meanie rather than a kind person. People might not like you when you’re mean, but they trust you. They don’t think you are hiding anything and don’t think you have an agenda. Around these parts, in the world I mean, some people get very suspicious of optimistic, giving, authentic, and caring people. It’s like sometimes people are waiting for me to mess up, or be flawed, or say something mean, so they can shout: “Ah-ha! See! Caught Ya!” It’s a bit disconcerting, but definitely part of my journey. I don’t think I will ever truly comprehend loud, aggressive, and in-your-face types of people. I know it (whatever it is) takes all types, and surely if it was a loud, aggressive, in-your-face dog, I would still love the dog, and hope the dog would calm down long enough for me to get close and cuddle. I suppose I see angry people this way, too. I am waiting in the backdrop watching them in their own discomfort and defense, wondering if I can ever truly approach without risking a bite.

I am so not perfect in my humanness. So greatly flawed in my frailties. But in my spirit and in my connection to the all, I am a rockstar. And thusly I seek comfort in my being, accept my journey as is, even with the sudden bolts.

One last thing, a temporary truth, to me, does not imply no faith, or blind faith, or no God, or no source, it just implies, (for me, at least), that I recognize my perception of the world changes from moment to moment based on my emotions, mood, health, environment, exposure, learnings, stimuli, etcetera. Temporary truth can mean a truth I will hold onto until I die, as life is temporary. Or it could be a truth I let go of tomorrow. I find peace in the phrase temporary truth because I feel if others offered me their temporary truth instead of dogma, rigidness, and self-righteousness (at least what I perceive as such) I wouldn’t get those bolts of discomfort.

I am truly not the arguing and debating type. It’s not that I don’t have the wits for it, or the ammunition, or the guts, I just lack the desire to prove a point, when I am not attached to points. I am attached to not being attached… and that’s where I am at. And after four-decades of being stuck like Velcro to MY truths, it feels tremendously freeing to step away and release the heavy burden of what is and what is right.

I still have a personality of course—I just don’t need to prove I am any one to any one anymore.

In concerning this blog, I will continue to write a few posts a month, I think, but only related to ASD. As I was saying, I felt a bit like a fraud, as my blog is pulling a large audience in search of Aspergers, and my genre had quickly turned to mostly spiritual awakenings. By starting another blog, I am giving the reader the freedom to choose if he or she wants to listen to my spiritual thoughts, instead of being bombarded with them. I like this decision. And look forward to the new journey. I will see you here soon. I am sure something is bound to come up not related to the invisibleness of not being—like a barking boob of a person that immediately pulls me out of my state of Zen…. Hehehehe (see I can still fit in, nicely)

Until we meet again, much love and hugs.

Xo ~ Sam

My New Blog is Here:

Meet Your Fellow Belly: About SAM

I am super surprised pain-in-the-buttness isn’t a word! Silly spell check. Come on, this is earth!

409: Unconditional and Conditional Love

| Aspergers Girls

( I am writing more because a lot is going on with our extended family. I process to find relief. If you don’t see me around for a bit, I might take a break. Hugs and love ~ Sam)

I have had the opportunity to experience a variety of friendships. In so doing, I have learned a lot about myself and love. For the majority of my life I felt a false-love from others and gave out false-love. Even though I felt the false-love, I didn’t recognize the falsehood for what it was. I was an active participant in the illusion. Most of these friendships were based on need. This desire was masked as possible fulfillment and completion. I know now no one can complete me.

I still hold all of these people in love and light. All of my friends continue to be some of my greatest teachers. I don’t choose to see any wrong in where I have traveled, and hold no one in my life responsible, not even my self. I have forgiven me and all. I place no judgment on any of my past or current friends either. I see them as lovely lights and filled with goodness. I don’t see them based on their actions but based on their hearts.

I was a player in the game of false-love, particularly in relation to men. Most of this telling is based on reflecting back to my behavior in pre-marriage years. I think if I had read what I have written below in my twenties, I never would have seen the ‘truth’ of it, and gone on living in denial. Maybe I even would have been spiteful and angry. I think if I had read this prose in my thirties, I would have thought I already loved unconditionally, and this was a waste of my time. I would have thought the person was preaching or trying to teach what I knew. If I read this last month, I would have thought, interesting, but I know this already. But it wasn’t clear to me until recently. Dynamically clear.

For now when someone claims to love me with a conditional type of love, I don’t feel love from them. I don’t know why, but all falsehoods affect me to a great degree. I don’t even know how I see this false-love, but I do. That’s not to say that people who proclaim to love me don’t love me. I believe they do. I believe a part of them does. But I believe a greater part is in constant battle with an unmasked, unnamed, and unforgiving fear. I believe this fear constantly transforms who I am when interpreted by another. I become what another projects from fear. In rare cases I become the light of love. This, and only this, is when fear is eradicated from its shell of illusion.

There is a struggle for people to find love and claim love, because they haven’t yet found the love inside themselves.

This false-love scares me momentarily, until I dismiss the fear.

It scares me because when another feels the illusion of fear, I feel the separation.

I have those in my life now that love me unconditionally. There is much freedom in this, to be me and be loved for me. I am not loved based on my outcomes or what I do or do not do. But even I, in my relationships with others, slip back into conditional love; this is very evident in my marriage and with my children. I continue to release judgment on self and others, and to learn. I am fortunate to have such experiences available.

When I am loved unconditionally I feel fed and nurtured. When I am loved by someone with conditions, I feel caged and judged. I am learning to not feel caged and judged, and to see this as illusion too, but it is taking some practice.

Lately, I am becoming more of a projection of what another choses to see in me. I can feel this in my depths. I become what another believes he or she sees. I become, in essence what they hold within. I have heard of this happening to other people, as well. So I am not alone in this experience. It is interesting to watch as I transform based on another’s deep level. I do not at this time think I am choosing to still see “fear.” I recognize the beauty and light in all, and see the fear only as illusion, nothing more. I can’t see beyond the beauty into fear, because there is no fear at the foundation.

I know I am still learning and growing.

I no longer choose to buy into another’s pain; especially when their pain is projected onto me, as if I did something or didn’t do something to cause the hurt. I do not have the power to knock down or to build up a person. Only source and a person’s own self can affect the spirit. I do have the power to love, and in this love to bring wholeness to self. Everyone has a choice to accept what he or she thinks I am saying or to reject it. To take in what he or she interprets as my truth or to decline. To say thank you and receive or say thank you, but no thanks. In this way, ultimately it is the receiver’s choice to determine what he or she takes in. I choose to take in all as truth and none as truth. I choose not to pick and choose. Unless someone is speaking from a place of fear, then I typically, when aware, politely decline. I prefer not to take on another’s fear-projection.

I believe there are only two roots: Love or Fear. All truth grows from there. Take a fruit off of the branch and examine it for what the fruit is. Rotten equals Fear. Ripe equals Love. One can tell much from the end product. Take the final outcome and drive backwards to the root. Where there is pain, there was fear to begin with manifested in false-love—illusion. Where there is mutual healing, there is love—the only existence.

Again this is my temporary truth.

My personal interpretation that assists me:

What true friendship is: Unconditional love.

What unconditional love is: Love without want, need, perimeters and/or expectations.

What want and needs are: Self-based, ego-centered desires that one thinks will make him or her happy. Also known as illusions and/or the path to suffering.

What perimeters are: Rigidness and separation; the judge emerging to decide if another has been deemed sufficient in their actions.

What unconditional loving friendship isn’t: All relations not based on unconditional love; in other words, all relations based on conditional, false-love, aka fear.

What unconditional love is not: False-love, also known as fear.

What fear is: An illusion often manifested in various actions and/or emotions that aren’t stemmed from love.

All false-love breeds fear and pain; all true love breeds more love. This true love can lead to spontaneous awakening and healing.

When one does not feel unconditional love, either the giver is loving with false-love or the receiver is misinterpreting the gift of genuine love.

This is not love: Expectations, martyrdom, fear-based desire, giving to receive, condition based giving, imagined selfless-giving, self-projection, owning, self-based desire, deeming one special or above the rest, caring more about self than other or caring more about other than self, blame, self-loathing in the name of love, fearing the future, needs based on outcome.

In love there is no hurt. All pain is self-inflicted.

Indicators of false-love:

Look at what a giving, loving, caring person I am, why can’t you love me like I love you?

I sacrifice for you, why can’t you sacrifice for me?

I am not good enough to be your friend.

You aren’t enough.

You should do this…

You disappointed me.

You won’t/don’t love me.

If you loved me, you would….

If you do this it will all be better.

You are the best person in the world.

You are hurting me.

People can have a mutual loving relationship based on unconditional love with moments of neediness and pain; unconditional love can fluctuate just like the seasons. No one is expected to be a perfect anything. Especially not a perfect lover or perfect friend. To suggest so, would be automatic judgment and separation. However healing happens when one starts to recognize his or her actions based on fear. Then self-healing can begin to take place in the one. After the one self has begun the healing process, the other in the friendship, noting the changes in his/her friend, will either continue in a state of fear, fight the change before also seeking self-understanding, or naturally seek out the friendship to heal in a way reflected in the healed or healing friend. In this way conditional love can bring both parties to pure love based on unconditional love.

If both partners are not ready, strong, and compassionate about growth and self-awareness, blame and jealousy quickly arises and the friendship may end. Yet, being this was a friendship based on false-love the illusion is what ends, not the friendship. This enables both to be free. One to go on to further unconditional love and the other to decide to remain in denial, suffering, and repeated pain or to seek out self-love. No one is right or wrong, better or worse; they are where they are.

In some cases someone who has learned self-love will be in a friendship with someone with conditional-based love. In this instant the person who continues to love unconditionally, despite the other’s projections, demands, and needs, can reflect back the ideal form of love and in this way transform the other trapped in a pain cycle.

True love heals when one capable of unconditional love simply is.

Again my temporary truth.

Strong indicators of conditional false-love:

No desire to celebrate a friend’s successes.

Not wanting to share the friendship with anyone else.

Thinking you are the best and/or only person for that person.

Changing actions or making decisions in an attempt to gain attention.

Obsessing about the person.

Thinking you are responsible for a friend’s growth, success, triumph, or accomplishments.

Thinking you are a person’s savior, teacher, protector, or safety.

Giving self-credit for another’s joy.

Thinking you have the answers another seeks and needs.

Thinking you were used, abused, or mistreated.

Jealousy of other people in the friend’s life.

Judging and putting down a friend’s friends.

Evaluating a friend’s choices, behaviors, mannerisms, and way of being.

Feeling the need to set a friend straight, so he can see your way.

Secretly or overtly harboring feelings of hurt and a sense of abandonment about the relationship.

Talking to someone about a friendship using harmful words about the friend.

How friendship appears:

A reflection of the love a person holds about his or her inner self.

What unconditional love-based friendship feels like:
Coming Home