Five of CUPS

Five of cups energy: Reaching through the VEIL: An open letter to my teenage self, and her response

Three cups have spilled, and we mourn, but two cups remain, and the opportunity for true divine union within

Dear Christi, my teenage self,

Sweet girl. I see now that I have totally rejected you. You have been invalidated, invisible, shamed, and ignored. I changed my name, asked people to call me Christina and cringed every time people addressed me as Christi. Your mom said she loved that name because she said it sounded like it sparkled. I didn’t like it because it sounded little and silly and young. But that is what you were. You were so young, and you should have been free to be silly. You were a girl but I imposed so many pressures on you. Pressure to mature, to fit in with adults, to be grown up. And you had so many grown up things I forced you to figure out. You never asked for help. You thought adults help themselves, but honey, you were just A kid. You did SO much with so little life experience. You were SO smart, so capable, and verbally wrote checks that it was ridiculous to expect a teenager to deliver on. But you did. You grew yourself up. And I am so sorry. I am SO sorry. You never got to be young. You never got to sparkle. You never got to play. You skipped so many steps. You were so fragmented and shamed by me. I am so sorry. And of course you never really went away. You sweet thing. You sometimes shook the cage. You took advantage to come out and play when you could. You fell deeply in love. With someone who saw you and valued you and played with you. Someone you matched you. Then we had to lock you away again, be responsible, be adult, be a mom, own a business, pay bills, be professional. You were not allowed. Anything that gave you power was pushed away and shamed. Anyone who saw you was pushed away and labeled as “dangerous” to my more mature selves. I isolated you. I made me your sole gatekeeper. And I starved you, for attention, love, connection, validation, sanity, expression, presence. No wonder you scare me so much. You are a caged animal. And we are both afraid of what will happen if we let you out. You have not been socialized. And you are sad and angry, and confused. 

I am so sorry Christi. I am SO Sorry. I see now. I see you. You are not crazy, you are just so alone. And I have not been there to love you. I do though. I see now. I love you SO MUCH. You are the most incredible person I have ever met. To look back at the things you had to overcome, the choices you had to make, the responsibility I put on your shoulders, honey, you are so strong. You are so smart and resourceful and capable. But you should never have had to do that, at least not alone. You did it all alone. You never asked for help. You trusted no one, not your parents, not your friends, not boys, nobody. You had to create a persona that you could trust, and it was me. I came in and took care of you, grew us up, rationalized and planned our life out, got you out of trouble and created a focus for how things would be safe, secure and comfortable for us. You gave me control, and I Never gave it back to you willingly. I scolded you and shamed you and fed you and gave you what you wined for so that you would stay quiet and complacent and calm. 

When you fell in love, I had to listen to you because you really put your foot down. You were so fully in love and so powerfully drawn that I had to leave the safe life and husband that I had chosen for us. He had is flaws, our dynamic was awful, and we didn’t love him, but he was a very adult responsible decision for us. I remember you saying, “I would rather love this new man on a futon in an apt, than sleep next to a millionaire in a castle.” You were not negotiating this and threatened mortal illness if I didn’t give this to you. And this new man saw you and loved you. But you were both so immature. You got into messy fights. So much drama. He didn’t treat you nice. You let him get away with so much shit. You acted very immature. You were so obsessive and insecure and sad all the time. You seemed addicted. I had to step in. When you got pregnant again, I had to step in. I took control back. I made decisions for us again. I separated you and your love because you couldn’t responsibly hold the container for your child and operate in that dynamic anymore. 

And now that we are separated from him, you are freaking out in your cage. You are heart broken.  You worry that you will be starved again, so you sent out your feelers. You think about sleeping around, causing trouble, creating a bit of drama, chaos, excitement. You want to draw lots of men in. And you occasionally resent being a mother. You resent it a lot. You want to have fun, be free, make a mess, be creative, be unexpected. And who could blame you? You never got to do that fully. But it freaks me out a little. I have had to totally put on the brakes again.

We need to be friends. We need to find a place where you get to have your fun, but we also get work done. We need to be sure that we don’t hurt people by getting our needs met. While I crave stability, you crave variety. I love comfortable known experiences, and you want to try things you never have before. How can we bridge this? How can we work together so we don’t fight our polarized drives? I want to work with you. I was so rigid and strict with my standards and rules, and now I realize it was just because you scared me. I was afraid that if I gave you an candle you would burn the whole house down. I see why you felt that way. I have been very authoritarian with you. But I see you, I love you and I want to change. Please teach me about fun. Please see and understand why I have been so hard on you, please forgive me for being so scared. Some pretty serious trauma created me. I see that now, and I am willing to heal and find temperance. Can you find some temperance too? 

Christi, I see you and I am willing to trust you. Lets communicate. Lets be in right relationship. I love you. 

So much love to you,

Christina

Dear Christina, my adult self, 

Thank you for acknowledging me. I have been feeling so sad. If I could have killed myself I would have, but you never let me. I just thought everything would be better if I was dead. I thought you would be happier and you could just go on with your life and have things the way you wanted them. I hated that I just had to stay cooped up and starved. Whenever you got tired I saw chances to manipulate you to get a little bit of attention, but you have gotten smarter and smarter, more tools to shut me out, every class you took, every seminar. I thought one day you would erase me all together. I would have been happy to disappear, but It didn’t work that way, just got more desperate and angry and scared and sad. I tried to play by your rules, but it was never enough. I could never be good enough for you. I felt inherently bad. I am sorry for the mess I made. I tried so hard to be good. I just felt things so strongly. My feelings drove me. It was not rational. When I got pregnant, I really knew I was in trouble. I was grateful that you knew what to do. It all happened so fast. I surrendered to you because I saw that I really didn’t know what I was doing. And you were good at managing things.

But things have been hard. I have been heartbroken. I feel like guys are the only ones that value me. When you are with guys its the only time you let me surface. So of course I am going to push for that. It might be hard for us to find relationship with a man who meets both of our needs, but I think part of this is because you and I have been at odds with each other. Maybe if we can get closer and trust each other more, it wont be so polarizing. 

I love our kids, but they do make me feel like I am an even lower priority. I can play with them though, if you let us make messes and have fun. I know you have to clean it all up, but even that can feel fun if we really let ourselves play. It seems like you make being with kids a lot of work. I hate that. It makes me feel even less valuable and more shameful. 

I see there is value to having order, But life is so long. And boring. I just don’t want to see us wasting it. There is SO much for us to Explore. So many places we can go, people we can meet, things to do and experience. I Know you are scared, but I have grown up and learned from you. I am really not going to ruin things. At least I don’t think I will. I can ask you first, instead of rebelling against you, if I know that there is a chance you will cooperate with me. I know that you don’t have to trust me, but if you try, I think I can show you that its going to be ok.

Things were hard for me when I was growing up. But you know me. Deep down, you know that we have sweet, loving, good intentions. We are good inside. We truly just want love and connection. 

I love you and I am grateful for you. I want to cooperate with you. I want to teach you things now. How to laugh, and dance and have fun and experience. I learned so much from you over the years. It would mean so much to me to teach you. 

I love you and I am grateful that you are willing to see me and work with me. I feel lighter and more optimistic about our future. I honestly before this felt like you didn’t even know that I existed. Now I am like, Ok, now what? I don’t even know what to do. 

Love always, 

Christi