2009-02-28 4:33 p.m.
H i d e . a n d . S e e k
Ah, Imogen Heap:
Hide and Seek from Adam Polselli on Vimeo.
(Interesting interpretation of the song. Not one I'd have come up with at least. It's some guys film school project, hosted on vimeo, because youtube has some agreement with the label that the artist is on to entirely keep those videos from being embedded and posted around. Do the corporations not realize that this is only limiting their exposure to potential audiences? Jackasses.)
((And while we're here, allow me to say I FUCKING HATE YOUTUBE. That entire site has gone way downhill.))
...
It's Lent. Everyone keeps asking me what I'm giving up for it.
I don't know. There isn't that much that I can give up.
I mean. I don't really keep junk food on hand here. And I'm already a vegetarian. Going vegan on the budget I have would result in some serious malnutrition. I don't drink coffee. I don't even really drink tea all that often.
I have a sleep disorder, so giving up sleeping in is kind of useless, because one day's oversleeping is another day's undersleeping.
Procrastination is something that I'm trying to get over anyway, so it feels like a cheat to double it up for Lent.
...
The Chaplain here was talking about how the other option is some sort of reconciliation. He suggested things like prayer and meditation - reconciling with God, or whatever - but those just seem like excuses to procrastinate, knowing that I would *intend* to do something and it would never happen.
And then he suggested reconciliation with a person - or people - from whom we are estranged.
I got lots of those.
It's interesting because, on the one hand, I have a bunch of people, pretty well exemplified by Jorge el psicologo, telling me that my maxim "Being able to survive doesn't mean that it was ever okay" is perfectly true and valid, and that I don't have to integrate, explain, validate, embrace, or accept anything that is affecting my emotional and psychological health negatively. And that, because of experiences in my life, my problem is one of overcompensating for other people walking all over me. It's happened more than once where I go off on this long tirade about someone or other, and then catch myself, and then go back and start justifying everything for them. And it eventually gets to a point where it's like, how thin do these excuses have to get? Have any of these people ever bothered to even LOOK at my reasons for things, let alone make excuses for me? Is making excuses for people treating you badly EVER healthy? - All valid questions which demand answers. Answers I hate giving because they show exactly that what I'm doing is counterproductive at best, and actively harmful at worst.
On the other hand, though, there are all these other people, who I'll just categorize as Jesus because for the most part they're coming at this from a religious standpoint, who are insisting that if I can't - somehow - make things okay, then I am and will continue to be damaged spiritually. To them, the question is sort of a "which is worse? your life or your soul?" kind of a thing, but at the same time. Ugh. Why should the two be mutually exclusive?
Why does forgiveness always - to most people's minds at least - have to entail making yourself get to a point where you are back on good terms with people? Why can't forgiveness be "Okay, what happened is past, but I've moved beyond this in such a way that continuing to be around you would be regressing into patterns that are negative"? Why do people always assume that that means that I haven't forgiven? And why does that instantly translate into an assumption that I don't care about someone?!
It drives me up a wall.
I mean. There are some pretty striking examples of this situation in my life. My family, and my former friends, being two recent and huge ones.
In both cases, I can forgive. But that doesn't take the scars away. I can understand, but that doesn't erase the past. Forgiving and understanding doesn't mean forgetting - and if it did, then shame on me! You should never forget things. Ever. Understand, forgive, make excuses if you must. But if you forget...you're not just doing yourself a disservice. You're doing the other person one as well. I'm not talking about grudges. I'm talking about the fact that if you erase the memories of things that have happened, then the other person never gets a chance to learn from what happened and grow and mature from it.
So I can forgive. I've forgiven them all.
That doesn't mean that I particularly LIKE any of them. Or that I particularly want any of them anywhere within a ten mile radius of me.
There's a difference between liking and loving. If I like someone, then I'm perfectly fine with having them in my company. But that doesn't mean I particularly care what happens to them in anything other than a superficial manner. This is most of my acquaintances, co-workers, fellow students. People I know. People I like seeing. People whose birthdays I remember and who I do nice things for. But, in all honesty, if they've got something to bitch about, I'd really rather they don't come to me for it. There are exceptions, of course. There always are. And if someone is really having a hard time, I will make myself available to them. But it's not a consistent thing. I can't be everyone's friend all of the time. I'd go mad. So most people fall, at the best, on my Like list.
And then there are those I love. But the thing about love is that it just means that I care, deeply, about what happens to someone. I can love someone to the end of the earth - pick any of the three people living in my mother's home - but be perfectly fine with not seeing them for months or even years at a time. (Hell, at this point, if I don't see my mom again until one of us is about to die, I'd be sorely tempted to think it was too soon.) Loving does not entail liking. There are too many painful memories and moments, too many betrayals, too many lies, too much SHIT for liking to ever be truly possible. But that doesn't mean I don't care. And it doesn't mean I don't forgive. But they're always accusing me of hating them, and of holding grudges for things that are long over.
Why can't they - or my former friends - see that my avoidance of them is avoidance of the bad memories that their presence unfortunately but consistently invokes? I avoid them because I love them but don't like them - to not have to have the fact that I love them tainted by all the hell they've put me through.
(And of course there's a third category, that of adoration, which combines both liking and loving. This would be my true friends. R and K and A and a few others I've mentioned.)
...
The entire world is putting pressure on me to make things right. The category of people I dubbed "Jesus" are all at me to make things better. I'm the resident adult. If it's going to happen, it will be because I make it so.
But as Jorge et al. pointed out, how do you ever go about reconstructing the trust that has been repeatedly broken?
...
More importantly. How do I make some sort of reconciliation without compromising my mental health?
I'm at a fragile place right now. After more almost 2 decades of keeping MY ENTIRE LIFE (or very, very, very near to it) repressed, the dams broke. I couldn't keep everything back anymore, and it all came flooding forth in the most extravagantly bad way possible. I nearly failed courses. I relapsed into some disordered eating patterns (not a full fledged eating disorder, but getting there) and self-injurious tendencies just to keep my tenuous grasp on the reality around me. (You'd be amazed that that works, but it does.) I spent the entire summer melting down. I put R and K and A through an emotional wringer, because they chose to be there for me - especially R. He bore so much of the brunt of it. Mostly because he was a new friend, so I didn't care about destroying that relationship under the burdens I was carrying. Oddly, it made it stronger. I will forever be grateful for that.
It's good that the dams are being cleared. They weren't helping anything. But at the same time, I have to learn to handle having emotions. The slightest things set me off into huge explosions, and big things leave me hiding in my room for days on end. And with my family and my former friends, it's always a big thing.
Jorge says that this is a good thing and a bad thing. It's good, because I'm finally letting myself experience emotion. But it's bad, because I don't have any of the appropriate filters in place to keep from being overwhelmed. I still have to learn all that.
I have 4 months to learn all that.
But I'm in a place where I haven't yet learned all that. And I keep being haunted by images and memories of home. And the word "reconciliation", and the knowledge that it *has* to be me, keep floating through my brain. They're always with me, like the angel and devil that sit on people's shoulders. Reconciliation being the angel- I really would like for things to be peaceful, even if they can never go back to what they were. That it has to be me being the devil- I don't know if I'm strong enough or emotionally capable of dealing with things yet.
And so we go round and round and round the circle.
*sigh*
Nobody ever said it would be easy...
><
Anyway.
There was more I wanted to bitch about, but exhaustion has set in. So I might be back again tomorrow, or possibly during the week.
Not that anybody even seems to read this anymore, so probably no one will notice. But that's fine.
Sleep well, faceless Internets. Back | Older | Current | Next