...."Life's not fair," he said.

my Dad taught me "life's not fair." as an adult, just last year (2019), Dad suggested i "give as much as i want, but don't expect anything in return." these kinds of messages, among others, imprint a psyche...for me, they made manifest in toxic, turbulent, codependent relationships.

i’ve dealt with low self esteem (i hid it well, y'all), addiction, self loathing, a need to validate worth on an uncanny capacity to help/advise/uplift other people with my presence and advice... textbook codependency. over the years, i’ve vacillated between horribly manipulative, relatively narcissistic men who either needed to be rescued, or sought to control me. i’ve attracted numerous envious, narcissistic women coveted my energy, or slept with the noncommittal, sensitive, eccentric men i’ve so dearly loved.

….the third time a woman treated me this way, i intuited she was sleeping with my beloved. the experience awoke incredible emapthic and psychic sensitivities, as i descended into the “Dark Night of the Soul.” alone... i learned to trust myself first and foremost after the woman i called “friend;” an intimate confidant, spiritual mentor, and my energy healing practitioner violated my being… the man i was in love with blamed me for poking around in his sex life. (these examples serve as fine examples of "gas-lighting, btw. defined as manipulating (someone) by psychological means into questioning their own sanity.)

after a lifetime of identifying with damaged, toxic ways of behaving and relating; manifesting a deep seeded need to experience relationship chaos, i began to let it all go. over the course of 2019 i unraveled. i learned to say no. i released the people who could not muster the courage to blurt out a messy, albeit authentic ILY, nonetheless show up once the words escaped *my lips. i moved away from imbalanced, codependent, competitive relationships, and stopped seeking to "partner" with humans outside of self.

i began to give my practice to mySELF; to love myself, choose myself, reclaim and heal myself... i AM an adept hypnotherapist, quantum healer, and Reiki Master after all. my hypnotic healing practice empowered me to follow painful, patterned threads back to their inception; it unplugged me from the wonky, subconscious programming that conditioned me to move toward these kinds of fucked up, abusive relationships in the first place.

and at this point, an article like this surely tugs the heart-strings. i’m grateful to say they no longer strike a chord. (...deep gratitude to the stellar humans, mostly women, who have shown up to love, support, elevate me as i emerge. you know who you are. and I LOVE YOU. allways.)