Struggling

Lately I have been struggling with how to fit some of my new understandings about me into my life.  The big one of late is how to show kindness and generosity to particular people.  For me it is people whose pain I understand, whose situation I understand and yet people who I need to be away from to honour myself.  These people are the ones that completely drag me down and threaten to take me back to a dark place.  When I am around them it takes so much energy just to keep myself level.  And so, on one hand, I know I need to stay away from them to take of myself.

On the other hand, I also know that is part of me to feel compassion and to want to be kind with others, no matter who.  And so I struggle with this.  I have never been good at setting boundaries and often just plain didn't.  This was definitely one of the sources of depression for me.  So now, I try to set boundaries, and yet sometimes, particularly with these same people, I feel like a big meanie by setting them.

Some of it perhaps is that I am still working on really believing that I have a right to put myself first.  But I also understand, at least on some level, that if I don't do this I am going to end up back in the black hole also.  And then, I guess not only am I not able to help others, I will need to crawl my way back out of it.

No real resolution on this blog.  Just a lot of conflict and struggle.