But you do want to get rid of me

She looked back at me.

That glance over her should.

I was shocked. She doesn’t normally even acknowledge my existence.

Still the solid, black, wall. Stuck on the right side of me. But also the glue that is all over. The sticky glue. The sense that nothing, no matter what, is going to be hard. To be just off by a little bit. That to do anything requires that much more energy.

Just like the movies, our eyes locked.

Slow-mo and all.

But you do want to get rid of me,

she said.

And she was right. I do. Or well rather parts of me do.

I can say all I want that “I just want to hear your story. I want to understand you” and I do. But not because I ONLY or JUST want to know.

I want to know so that I can undo. So that I can fix. So that I can make it be different.

I do want to change her.

She sees that as getting rid of her.

Maybe that’s semantics.

Maybe it’s not.

But either way I do not want what she has to give.

What she has to be right now.

I don’t want to live like this.

It’s one thing to live with external challenges and make sense of them. But to have my own self be against me?

That I do not want.

I can endure hard things. I can act in service of my values when the things out there. But when it is me against me?

No thank you.

This I do not want.

But there are so many voices to navigate around this one. Everyone has something to say.

It feels tiring just thinking about how I would navigate through this. To get to the end.

This is the loop of IFS that seems never ending - that there is ALWAYS another protector.

For me at least.