Expectations (long)

Expectations

Lately I have been pondering the realm of expectations, those I have of myself, those I have of others, and those that others have of me.  Since I don’t eat for emotional comfort any more, all of these expectations have been pushed out of the shadows and into a rather harsh light.  I can’t hide from these expectations and I am finding that I don’t really want to do that any more, either. 

In relationships, anyway, I think expectations are a reflection of your emotional needs.  An unpleasant truth for me is that I have spent most of my adult life being unaware or afraid of my emotional needs.  It is not that my needs have fundamentally changed since surgery…it is just that I have had to really face some of them for the first time, even if they don’t all fit into a nice little package of “normal" ……I can’t afford to be ashamed of them, nor can I go on without addressing them in some fashion without the risk of becoming bitter or withdrawn somewhere down the line.  

A seemingly monumental problem with these “new", or rather “discovered", needs is that they don’t always fit with the people or cir****tances that have defined your life to date.  For most people, your life’s history, based on understanding and communicating your own basic needs and expectations to others at home and at work, serves to define you, to establish the context in which you exist and function as you interact with others from day to day and year to year.   If, instead, you have done as I have done and either denied or hidden from some of your own fundamental emotional needs for a long time so as not to create or invite conflict, you can find yourself in a terrible quandary that has the potential to tear you apart emotionally. 

Once you become aware of your own emotional needs, substantially changing your life so that more of your needs are met, pushing your needs aside to avoid conflict and pain for yourself and the other people in your life, or grasping at a compromise are all options with no right answer.  Lately I have found myself mentally turning from one alternative to the other, to the other, to the other, ad nauseum.   There is no obvious or righteous path to take, yet doing nothing amounts to giving up and succumbing to despair and emotional death.  I refuse to give up.

Instead, I am working on revealing my needs and expectations to the important people in my life and exploring my options for work because my present cir****tances seem emotionally untenable.  Since I am messing about with the foundation underneath my life as I have known it to date, I know that I ought to be careful and take a measured approach to change over time.  I know that intellectually, but I feel this sense of urgency to make changes, to explore what it means to be me now that I more fully understand myself, and I get impatient when things get in the way of the progress I want to make.  I suppose it is better to be impatient and irritable for awhile as I sort things out rather than to give in to despair and depression by doing nothing or relegating my emotions into hiding again.

RP