Broken Water Pitcher

I had a conversation with my girlfriend this morning, as I do every morning before work, and we discussed why she seems to have to deal with the same situations over and over again in regards to her relationship with her husband and her relationships with men before that. She never quite found herself to be in a satisifying relationship and doesn't quite understand why.

I told her that in order for me to heal, and not continue to repeat the same pattern over and over again, I needed to look deep into my childhood and find out who and/or what affected me in the way it did, and molded me into the person I am, and fix the things that needed to be fixed, in order to be whole for the first time in my life.

I said, "Look at it this way, you have a broken water pitcher, you keep filling it with water, but when you go to pour yourself a glass, the pitcher is empty. You will never get a glass of water from that pitcher, until you fix the pitcher first".

I had to "fix" the things in me that were broken. I didn't know until recently that I was broken. It took me doing the work, to travel back to the beginning, to discover what had happened to me, and what I needed to do to correct the wrongs in my life.

I remember, like it was yesterday, asking my Mother if I was pretty, and receiving the answer, "No, your not pretty, although you are my daughter so you are pretty to me, but the world won't think so". I was 9 years old. I joked about it, my entire adult life, but honestly, that was just one of the many examples in my childhood, that beat me down, made me feel unworthy, made me who I am. The thousands of fibers in our being, that was just one of the many.

All of the things that I had suffered through or was affected by, as a child, has made me who I am, or was, as an adult. It makes us who we all are, as adults. There are many reasons why we are who we are, we just each, as individuals, need to look at our pasts, to discover that. Take the journey backwards, and than take the OTHER fork in the road and start "fixing" ourselves so we no longer have the strong needs and desires to be validated by someone else in our lives, to not define ourselves by who accepts us or loves. Once we are able to do that, we no longer have the strong desires to be validated that we once had.

If we don't take these steps, the pattern will continue to repeat itself, and we will continually find ourselves back in the same situation, over and over, and over again.

It's a painful journey, but a necessary one. The important thing is, once this is done, the NPD's of the world, will never be a part of yours again. My best to everyone, always, in their recovery.