The curse of kindness

I kneel in front of him, I literally kiss his feet and I say:
– I love you from the depths of my heart, and even if you leave me I will feel gratitude for our love.
He looks at me from a distance, as if my words don’t really concern him.

There is this moment, when I really want him to see me, where I am not kneeling in front of him, where I am not trying to show him the grandeur of my love. There is this moment when I have given up the idea of reaching in to him, it’s this moment when I am so desperate to being seen, that I am prepared to show myself without any disguises, where I am prepared to be seen as a fool, or as stupidly weak.

The night before we had had one of our eternal battles, our inner children crying and begging to be seen, and my inner child with a feeling of being beaten to the ground, because his inner child demanded all the space. I could see myself trying to console him, leaving my own needs to be seen behind, because his inner child cried higher than mine.

As usual I lost the battle. I ended up surrendering to his inner child, to the stubborn, angry, envious and blaming child in him, surrendering to his needs and, and in this sequence, abandoning my own inner child. Again.

But in this moment, in the twilight of the morning, my inner child is tapping at my back, she is screaming, she is in rage. She wants me to stand up for me, and she needs me to do that, in some kind of confrontation with him.

The night before, before my surrender, I had really tried to be visible to him. I had tried to get his consolations, his love and his commitment to me and to us. I had failed, as countless occasions before, I had failed.

And now I stand there in the twilight. I am desperate. I know that my words don’t reach him. I know that me kneeling in front of him doesn’t reach him. I know that me massaging his feet with essential oil doesn’t reach him. But what would?

My inner child demands action from me. She wants me to show her that she is important. She wants me to prove my love to her. And she yells at me that it’s necessary to do that through waking him up.

I am devastated. I am exhausted. I speak to him, and he answers as if not hearing me, not noticing my desperation inside.

I stand there in my robe. I walk into the bathroom. I put on the cold-water tap. I shower in ice cold water. Then I go out in to the hallway and stand there. My robe dripping cold water into the carpet, I feel the cold cloth towards my skin. I stand there, eyes closed, in a silent, wet, freezing, meditation.

He doesn’t act.

I stand there for five minutes, until my body starts to warm up again. Then I go into the shower again, cooling myself. Out in the hallway again. Silence. Dripping. No response.

After another five minutes, time for ice cold shower again.

Still no movement, no words, nothing from him. I have decided to do this ritual until I get some sort of response. I do this to tell my inner child that I hear her. I am prepared to be this drama queen, to exaggerate this much, to make her understand that I do love her, I am not just there to give him love, to make him feel good. I need to be there for me as well.

It takes more than fifteen minutes for him to react, for him to undress me, for him to give me a warming hug.

And it was worth it. It was a way for me to tell my inner child that I am important, that a love relationship is about the people being in a relation, not just one of them.

I have lead groups for ages. Often I start by saying: Be kind to yourself. I’ve always had a hunch that this “being kind to” is really about me, being kind to myself.

The other day I suddenly realized something new. I realized that kindness could be a curse.

Look at this woman kneeling in front of her beloved. Look at her begging him to acknowledge her love for him. Look at her willingness to give him anything to get a response for him. Look at me, a sucker for love and recognition.

Through my life I have considered myself as being a good girl. I have seen how the good girl in me has served me, and made me stumble and trip at times. I have seen how she has tried to do things to deserve love.

And now I get in contact with the kind girl in me. A persona who has worked undercover, who has been invisible to me, and who is a much needier kind than my good girl.

Kindness. Sometimes I have loved this quality, and sometimes I have despised it. I once had a very nice and kind boyfriend, and it triggered the bitch in me. I didn’t have the capacity to receive his loving kindness. I turned him down. I laughed at him. I was very arrogant.

Now I am able to see his love and his willingness and my own incapacity to being loved and how I needed to flee from his love. His kindness hurt me. And maybe, but just maybe, I felt a bit manipulated by his kindness. Maybe I felt that behind this kindness lured a neediness I really didn’t like? Or that this reminded me of something I didn’t really want to get in touch with. An old wound, still sore.

And now it’s possible for me to see how I have used kindness to get love. It’s possible for me to see that it wasn’t acceptable for me to be needy – a weak trait – so I choose the kindness strategy. Until now I have been totally unaware of this pattern. How one quality in me, can disguise something else, something deeper, something that would hurt more to dig up and scrutinize.

I have used kindness to get love. I have hoped that my care and kindness would give me love in return. I have traded kindness for love.

When did it start? Was this strategy there from my childhood? Did I use kindness to feel loved by my parents? Is my kindness connected to co-dependency? This inner child in me, forcing me to stand there ice cold in the hallway, what was she trying to tell me? What patterns in me did she uncover in that precise moment?

I get an epiphany around kindness. That kindness has been a curse in my life. That kindness actually has separated me from myself.

I realize that I have learned that being kind to another is the most important. I have learned that other persons sorrow, shortcomings, grieving’s, challenges, has been more important than mine. That being kind to myself would be to be egoistic. And in consequence with that, that self-love is something to be suspicious about.

And paradoxically, me being surrounded by people demanding, in an energetic way, me to being kind to them, at the same time seeing them as being… egoistic… forgetting to give me more kindness in return.

It doesn’t work to get love from being kind, if there is this hidden agenda: “If I am kind to you, you will give me love in return.” I need to start out from my self, giving me love, and then spreading it to others.

I need to change perspective. I need to change focus.

And I am so surprised. I thought that I already had done the homework.

And I here I stand… knowing what is necessary to do:
I need to be kind to me.
I need to listen to my inner voice.
I need to listen to my heart.
I need to say no to what doesn’t serve.
I need to say yes to that which serves.
And it scares the shit out of me.