From Oct. 2018
Energy vampires.
We've all been there. Minding your own business, and suddenly someone, usually a relative stranger, swoops in and tries too hard to help, or to make something (that wasn't hard to begin with) "easier" for you. Seemingly helpful, these smarmy, needy folk, can't seem to get their need for control, recognition or aknowledgement met directly so they manipulate, herd, probe to get enough info to place themselves in some imagined level of connection or intimacy and ZAPPPPP!
(Some might be so conditioned to this coping strategy, that they don't consciously realize what the hell they are doing. Maybe they don't even KNOW they are indirect or manipulative, they are so checked out themselves, -but as Dean on Supernatural says "a monster is still a monster Sam".)
EVERYTHING GOES NUMB, and you are totally, inconsolably drained. Usually without even knowing why until much later when the venom wears off. Don't worry, there is already someone at your elbow to "help" you some more. -That moment of incoherent, confusion is what they were priming you for. Time for the second swoop. Time to ram that stinger home. Time to try and suck you dry. -Unless you are savvy enough to realize you need Emergency SELF CARE, not their care. And you make a get away. Run baby Run. Call in favors if you have too.
You breathe, you reorient, you begin to come back to yourself enough to know you need a deep cleansing, pronto. Strip off the layers, the faster the better. And after you shed the clothes, the vibe, the outer layer of psychic skin they tentaceled onto, you begin to thaw, usually in the shower. You finally proceed to peice together what happened. Then you either crumble and hide and look to some advanced self care, or you get really angry, and begin to mend all your cracked defenses.
After 45 years of the former, I've gotten good at constructing my defense system to rarely be Tangled by one on my home turf anymore. I now tend toward the later. And I will be making some subtle and not so subtle changes about who I talk to in the locker room at my exercise class after this.
Meanwhile, we open the door for this wonderful discussion for self care, boundaries for self and others, and the perks and pitfalls of communication, expectation and perception....
Blessed be my lovelies. You DO you, and that is enough.
