Had to do it

Started Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert the other day and the following really spoke to me:

"But I disappear into the person I love. I am the permeable membrane. If I love you, you can have everything. You can have my time, my devotion, my ass, my money, my family, my dog, my dog's money, my dog's time - everything. If I love you, I will carry for you all your pain, I will assume for you all your debts (in every definition of the word), I will protect you from your own insecurity. I will project upon you all sorts of good qualities that you have never actually cultivated in yourself and I will buy Christmas presents for your entire family. I will give you the sun and the rain, and if they are not available, I will give you a sun check and a rain check. I will give you all of this and more, until I get so exhausted and depleted that the only way I can recover my energy is by becoming infatuated with someone else." (p 65).

Minus #1 That I do not, as is suggested immediately following this passage, take on the personality characteristcs of my significant other and #2 I do not move on to become infatuated with someone else because I am still throwing myself into the first person - this is me.

Reading it so perfectly laid out it was as if I sat down and wrote it myself. That is what I do, that is what I have done, that is what I need to stop doing. I need to have a relationship with myself that would fit this description. I need to try at least. I've been the cheerleader (and a part of me always will be), but I am going to start/continue cheering for myself first and let everything else fall into place. Because if you are literally pouring yourself into someone else they either A. become that person and resent you for changing them or B. They don't change and you feel drained, exhausted and like a failure and you resent them or C. Just take and take and take until you have absolutely nothing left to give.

I would have never bought this book for myself and am so delighted it was bought for me. Once again, skeptic book snob me was proven wrong. And once again I am so happy it happened.