Ever Increasing Circles

Does anyone else feel like they go round in circles? I used to not notice it so much but over the last few years my self-awareness has increased, as I got more into holistic wellbeing, reiki and self-development, I noticed it when I did my second degree, People reminded me of others from the past with the same nice or annoying personality traits. Places were familiar, even though I was in a different city. Because I was doing something different I didn't pay much attention to these similarities, but looking back I think it was trying to teach me about repeating the same mistakes. What is they say? Same shit, different day? I have worked hard to break free of repeating these cycles professionally, eventually realising that I was a creative and that trying to be an academic was never going to make me happy. I now like to learn on my own terms. Personally, patterns are a little harder to break. Emotional involvements with family or past lovers are deep-rooted and it can take many months, even years to break free of negative or potentially damaging cycles.



Why do we stay in situations that harm us? I know there are many different reasons, because I've pretty much been used most of them myself. Familiarity, misplaced loyalty, some kind of comfort, an excuse for not moving on. Sometimes I feel like I have to buoy up my family and then have to remind myself that it's not my job, and that I am a naturally positive person, despite some pretty extreme things that have happened to me. Sometimes other people enable us to carry on living a life that we think is ok, for the time being it'll do, there's no harm in not rocking the boat, at the detriment of our own personal growth or happiness. I am aware of doing this in certain aspects of my life at the moment, as I don't really want to take responsibility and be "an adult." Who likes bills and staying in? No, better compromise on one thing so the party can carry on, even though I get highly frustrated and often stuck in the middle at my parents. I'd rather have the expensive shoes and the holidays than my own space. Since when? What has happened to me? I am one of the most independent people I know. Am I scared after everything spectacularly turned to crap in the past? After the things I worked for got pulled from underneath me and somewhere deep in my subconscious I am petrified of it happening again? WIll I eventually carry through on my frequent threats to move abroad and sack it all off?

Don't even get me on to romantic relationships. They have a habit of coming back around like a demented roundabout if you let them. Loneliness and insecurity rear their ugly heads, often simultaneously just for effect, and before you know it you are settling for a situation that didn't serve you well from the past that you promised you would never repeat again. The fact of the matter is, unless you make it your mission to be a serial dater or social butterfly, is everyone out there in the position to jump straight from one relationship to the next? Doesn't that have its own pitfalls? I know from my experience that I can erase a lot of the crap that happened and focus on the good things, tell myself things will be different, that people have matured and grown, but don't two people just fall back into their old patterns together? I know they do. People and situations can move on but it's amazing how we can go back to acting in a certain way around someone because of habit. It's weird. Is it bad to want to meet and experience situations with lots of different people and not just one?

Lots of questions, lots of past experience, lots of baggage. All I know is that I have to believe I have the strength to break certain patterns to grow and evolve. Because evolution is inevitable, unless you hide from it.