Forgiveness

“…but now, when I think back to all that happened afterward, I get angry.  Because she may indeed have felt sorry, but regret is not repentance, and that is what we have not seen in Beulah, repentance that owns its part—that is, like the Word tells us, at once sorrow and self-knowledge and a changing of the mind.”  (emphases mine)  

Fire In Beulah by Rilla Askew

My intentions went awry.  Too early to shop at Good Will for the pants I need for work tomorrow, so I retreat to the apartment to write.  Pants I used to fit into easily now don’t.  Shit.  And I’m really not eating that much.  I do drink regularly, though, and I’ve wondered more than once that if I quit I’d naturally lose some weight.

Rereading last night the events surrounding Scott’s birth.  There's a lot to forgive there.

Martha and I talked a little at breakfast about Family as a sacralized notion.  I don’t really like the word, ‘notion’, but I don’t know what to call an abstraction that has become sacralized (god, have I been using that word a lot.).  An Article of Faith, maybe.  I think it is from that perspective that my father is coming  as he plans the Orcas Island family trip next summer.   I suppose that’s why divorce is so frowned on in his world.  It’s because it besmirches the abstraction of Marriage as another article of sanctity.   

It’s funny to think of these ideas of Marriage, Family, God, Country as a sort of pantheon of Beliefs which I get an image of as being a smooth front presented to the world.  What goes on behind those fronts is another matter altogether.

My insistence is that what’s inside match the front, so that the bunny is solid chocolate, not hollow.  I live with people who are determined that it is the exterior that counts; it’s more important than how anyone inside feels.  “We are a happy family, and that’s an order!” is kind of the imperative.  If you don’t FEEL happy within the bubble, then there’s something wrong—with YOU.  You are morally bereft if you don’t participate in the happy family, by trying to make others happy, and being happy yourself.  And if you’re not happy, then it’s selfish to let anyone know, because part of making other people happy is doing a good job of convincing them that you are.

I can just see how the worlds collide.  The abstractions that underpin Family, Marriage, God, Church, Country contain lots of unwritten rules about what is a trespass.  My dad felt trespassed by Connor’s innocent use of the word “balls”.  Some cherished notion of sanctity was violated.  Somewhere it is (un)written that there are Words that are inherently bad, so bad, that anyone who says them is  polluted.  And that he, as Elder/Grandfather, has been dishonored because 'the word' was said in his presence.  Thus ‘respect your elders’ was violated.  Honor thy mother and thy father.  

It seems that there are those who take advantage of the Sanctity of Family and Marriage and operate manipulatively under cover.  My grandfather comes to mind—he used the umbrella of Family to operate like a jerk, and have it tolerated, because of the sanctity of Father.  He used the abstraction to get his own way with impunity, because to oppose him was to damage the institution.  It appears that in each family bubble, there are some who feel free to run rampant and not apply the same rules to themselves as they apply to others.  

It seems like there are a whole lot more families that are in the hollow bunny brand of family, than the solid.  I want the solid.  I want to be with my parents and enjoy it, not because I’m supposed to, but because I do.  

Whistle-blowers are often mistreated.  It’s easy to see why:  they have undercut an illusion that all is well.  People are mad at them for undermining their delusions, not at whatever it is the whistle-blower has uncovered.  The Secretary of Defense of the United States, Donald Rumsfeld, was small enough to publicly name the soldier who did the right thing and turned in the pictures at Abu Ghraib.   The soldier is now a pariah in his home town and can't go home.

I suppose in a way, that’s what I've been spending years coming to terms with and what has fueled my writing.  I’m working through a realization that my family wants a hollow bunny, and I want a solid one.  And me living from a solid-bunny world in their hollow-bunny one is bound to cause some discord.  I think all my life I’ve realized that there are certain abstractions I’m supposed to be living, and there are feelings about them I’m supposed to be feeling that I’m not.  (I remember  as a very young child admitting to myself that I didn’t ‘love’ God.  I felt so sad, and so bad when I let myself know that.).  (I also remember, as a college student, having an awareness that I may have to ‘leave’ my family; that the life I was choosing would be unacceptable to them and they may cut me off.)  I guess as a very young child it didn’t take long to realize that it was best to go along and pretend.  Then I felt unworthy when my feelings didn’t match what I was supposed to be feeling:  worshipping God?  Prayer? 

One solution was to try to conjure up an intellectualization of what ‘worship’ feels like; what ‘loving god’ feels like, what ‘patriotism’ feels like, and then ‘feel’ them through will power.  In my quiet moments of self-honesty I found they weren’t enough to sustain me, these ‘feelings’ that required such energy to maintain.

An exception was the time that I embraced fundamentalist Christianity.  This time the feelings felt realer, and I was surrounded by a lot of others to help me keep on feeling them.  I wonder if that really is what happened when we moved to Virginia, was that I lost that support system—and that indeed was the spring from which I drew my feeling of relationship with God.  I hadn’t believed it, because that was the explanation of my family:  without the church, that church, basically my religiosity would go away.  At 14 years old, I thought that my relationship with God was enough, and should be.  My relationship with God shouldn’t depend on a certain group of people.  That was how I saw it.  This is the first time I’ve ever quite understood the significance of that group.  I do remember having an episode in Virginia of what I called, a ‘satanic attack’, where the core of my feelings about god were shaken.  (I’d started reading the Old Testament, which was pretty harsh.  And when I realized that the white people who came and exterminated the people they found on this continent were using the very rationale that the Israelites had used to invade Canaan--in fact, god gave them that rationale--, I was horrified.  I couldn’t reconcile this.  That may have been my first experience of my faith being shaken by some element of moral contradiction in the bible, and I was wary about threats ever since.  I remember in Northglenn in social studies a unit on interpersonal discussion and feeling so afraid that listening to others in the way we were being encouraged to do would cause me to lose my faith.)

 In Virginia I reached out by calling a Nazarene church to talk with the pastor's wife “Mrs. Brown”.  She was very kind and gave me the name of a girl my age I could call to talk to.  I talked with each of them, Mrs. Brown more than once, I think.  And then I was coming out of the office that had the phone (back in the days where they were connected to the wall) and my father happened to be passing at that moment and he wanted to know what I was doing in there.  Maybe it wasn’t an accident.  Maybe he’d actually heard me talking.  Maybe he even heard what I was saying; I don’t remember what it was, now.  When I told him I was talking on the phone he asked who with and I told him “my Friend”.  I don’t remember at which point I went to hug him and he pushed me away and told me he didn’t understand me.  And the sound in his voice said he didn’t want to, either.  It sounded like a giving up.  It was that kind of “I just don’t understand you.”  I’m appreciating a little the situation the 14 yr old me was in.  Just moved from a place she loved, with friends who loved her too, and a support system for her developing spirituality.  The days were long in Virginia and pretty unbroken, except for some trips over to my parents’ friends’ house to use their pool, or to use the pool at the military base nearby.  A lot of book reading and television.  Some babysitting—the mother kind of Bohemian who introduced me to Siddhartha and gave it to me to read.  I didn’t, because it scared me. > So I was bored and shaken by the old testament stuff I was reading and struggling alone to come up with the answers to the questions that were being raised.  I was judging myself for how I was feeling, and I felt like I’d lost my connection to god.  My father indicated that he thought I was to blame for my loneliness because I’d “never made an effort” to go and meet some people my age in the neighborhood of the house we were living in.   We were renting someone else’s home, which had forbidden areas that we’d never had before.  We were only to be there for the summer, then my father was going to Viet Nam and we were going to Colorado to live and be near grandparents and relatives. 

I realize now that my father was probably hurt when he found me on the phone.  I’d reached out to a stranger instead of him.  He couldn’t understand that; and he treated it as if I’d done something wrong.  He pushed a vulnerable and confused 14 year old away from him and never ever returned to say he was sorry.  He probably thought I was the one who should be sorry.

Anyway, that was the context where I did have a ‘satanic attack’ which basically was a sort of peaking of psychic pain and I would cry and cry.  I can see now that my parents thought that the church in New York had scared me, and that I thought the literal devil was coming to get me.  I think that’s what I said when I went to their room in the middle of the night after crying and crying alone for a while.  I did reach out to them then, and I think I said, something like ‘he’s’ –I can’t remember the exact words.  Maybe I said ‘he’ was ‘tempting’ me, or ‘testing’ me.  I almost get hold of the word, and then it disappears..  It wasn’t my word, it was the word or words in a small booklet I’d read by an evangelist.  I kept it in my little diary; wonder if that’s still there.  Maybe it was, ‘testing’.  Maybe it was ‘trying to tempt me away.’  They wanted to know who and I said, ‘Satan’.  So they probably didn’t realize I was feeling under attack at a spiritual, core beliefs level—not a literal devil.  That would make the things my dad said at some point make sense; where he criticized the church I’d given my heart to, said that God doesn’t want us to be ‘scared’.  He thought the church had ‘scared’ me with visions of hell.  That misunderstanding intensified my isolation.

I’m just realizing how very alone I felt, and actually was.  But that was when I started seriously writing.    Some enduring part of me was born in that time.

I should probably pause here and go over to Good Will which is surely open now.

Before I go, though, I remember that that time felt like a very terrible time to me.  I felt forsaken by god.  The doubts I was feeling were tearing me.  I remember finding bible verses that gave comfort; I read religious books.  Bought one at Walgreen’s bookstore:  “How to Find Peace With God” by Billy Graham.  I bought another; can’t remember its name.  For a while I looked back on that time as a sort of standard to measure psychic pain against.  I saw it as having been, really, really bad and I feared ever feeling that way again.

It’s true my relationship with god was never quite the same, though I tried to make it be for quite a number of years before I gave it up.  When I did surrender, it was actually like a physical sensation.  I remember having read in “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” about Phaedrus having felt a ‘slipping’ inside.  That was how I characterized the sensation inside me.

Perhaps what I had nearly 6 years ago was one of those experiences—a peaking of psychic pain, a satanic attack.  It came after a while of thinking I could make things work with Gary; with his mother.  For a while I believed I could cover myself with a membrane where their behavior wouldn’t penetrate and wound.  If I could make myself impermeable to the things that were making me so miserable with them—their expectations, their demands that they get their own way and be able to act with impunity and expect me to be the one who would give way, and betray no hint that it was their demands I was giving way to—if I could do that, then at least 50% of the conflicts we were having would be gone.  I thought I could do it then.  In fact, I was ready to stop counseling.  I thought I’d achieved what I’d come into counseling for.  I thought I’d achieved what I was lacking—some inner serenity and a certain ability to slow time to observe in slow-motion what was happening so I didn’t have my options limited by my reactions.  I blamed myself for that.  I began to realize that I had to become nearly enlightened to be around them.  So that if Gary treated me as if I’d just done something wrong when I hadn’t, rather than react I might be able to say, “would you like to restate that?” or something artfully deflecting.  Or I might be able to say, “What are you really wanting?” or “what are you mad at?”

I guess those were my choices to paths for staying.  Go numb, or get enlightened.  Let Gary have the privilege he seems to be claiming, and his mother claims—the right to never have their actions questioned while they did things that were hurtful in service to themselves.

He honestly doesn’t seem to think that it’s an unreasonable demand, not even request, that someone else see the world so perfectly through his eyes that they would behave as if they were him.  He doesn’t seem to see that it's not reasonable to treat questions like challenges—mutiny, even.  Or criticism.  And he doesn’t seem to realize that these are the things that caused the erosion of the bonds that tied me to him.  And, Marriage, Husband, Family, as sacred abstractions aren’t enough to keep me in it.

And so that puts me at odds with people who see the Institution as primary, and that people exist to serve the institution, and not the other way around.

Perhaps this is part of the next evolution of culture.  That’s why the quote from “Fire In Beulah” appealed so much to me.  If institutions and Religion and God and Family and Marriage  and Church are meant to keep human beings together, paradoxically, they are perpetuating separateness.  Because the much vaunted ‘forgiveness’ (which is usually demanded of the victim with no demands on the perpetrator) really only works when it’s a meeting and unity of two.  It’s the self-knowledge, repentance, and genuine sorrow of the one who owns what they’ve done and sees what effect it has on someone else that initiates a process of opening hearts and restoration of unity.  I was thinking about going to the grocery store a little later and wanting to go through the self-serve check-out to avoid meeting whats-his-face snotty checker when I was reminded of an odd encounter I had years ago at a mountain shop that used to be at the Uptown Center.  It was a family-owned business.  I think it might have been a misunderstanding between a son and me where we had sharp words.  I think I walked away—it had to do with my crampons, they were in that shop for some reason.  Maybe to get new strapping.  Maybe I asked when they’d be ready and he assumed I was criticizing him because they weren’t ready already.  I think I paused outside of the store, then went back in.  Perhaps I realized the nature of the misunderstanding; something made it seem like a good thing to turn around and go back in.  I think I did it right away.  I don’t think I just came back later to get the crampons.  And we both had a genuinely smiling reconciliation where he admitted his mistake and I mine.  There was real joy, real unity there with a stranger I never saw again.  But I realize that to be so honest, and vulnerable--that’s what’s demanded of the new humanity.  Evolution has funneled humans into community in order to survive, and religion is a mechanism that evolved to keep humans in community (if tribally).  Ironically at this point it perpetuates separateness.  I had more oneness in the moment with the guy in the outdoor store than I’ve had with people who are supposed to be close to me:  Dad, Mom, Gary, Gary’s mom.  That’s not to say that those moments of true meeting and forgiveness haven’t happened with my own family, but they didn’t keep happening.   They were the exception.  What's unspoken is, ‘we can’t bear to see what we’ve done, and so we’re going to blame you if you try to make us, and what we want from you is that you forgive us without our having to see what we’ve done or participate with you in the forgiveness process.’

I suppose the best I can do is live my solid-bunny world within their hollow-bunny world, and have faith that I will be able to deal with the fall-out.  And I'll cherish a hope that I can find other solid-bunny people who want their relationships to be authentic.

Time Capsule

Scott was preparing to depart on a trip and he didn't want to go.  Spring break, long drive to north and eastern Washington with Gary and Connor to see Grandpa, Gary's father.  To put it mildly, Grandpa Gary is not a storybook grandpa, the unconditional-love kind.  Scott was adamant that he not go, and I gently told him that I had to work and could not be home with him and so he had to.

When he'd regained some mastery of himself we walked toward the door.  I told him I'd be waiting for him with open arms.  His head snapped up and turned so he could see me.  "What?  What did you say?"  I repeated, "I'll be waiting for you with open arms."  He said, "What does that mean?"  I opened my arms and told him it meant I would be waiting to put my arms around him again.  He nodded to show he understood, and seemed different as he climbed into the car.  His frame of mind seemed different, and that change took much of the suffering out of leaving.  I could feel it.

I talked with both boys a number of times while they were gone.  On one of the particularly trying days I was trying to comfort Scott, when suddenly he said resolutely:  "Remember, Mom, open arms."  I repeated back to him, "Yes, Scott.  Open arms."

It's become a sort of talisman between us.  When we say goodbye we'll briefly hold out arms open and mouth, 'open arms' to each other.

The other day in the course of my job my route took me past an Adventist Church:  Open Arms.  I told Scott later that I'd thought of him when I drove past.  He said, "That must be a nice church."

Since this is birthday time for him I was thinking of him the other day as an infant, napping on our bed. I heard him cry through the monitor and so went upstairs to get him.  I opened the door, and through his tears shot a look of pure joy.  It was like a river running into the ocean.  Laughter and smiles even as he was carried by the momentum of crying.

These are my desert island memories.  If I was to be stranded on a desert island and only had a few images to keep with me, these would be among them.

That, and the moment that Scott's teacher Rob read this to him at his 'graduation' (from 5th grade to middle school):

How to be Scott Deborason

You need to have a deeply inquisitive mind.  But you also

need to be willing to be patient.  You discover new things

and you think about them for a long time.  You must let

things mull over in your head and more specifically your heart

until they feel like they will explode from your chest.  But make

sure that you always find a way to share what is in your heart,

it lets others see you in a way they never imagined.

Make sure you are willing to work hard and deal with frustration.

When frustration comes make sure that you don't tell anyone for a while.

Make us pull it out of you.  But make sure you know that you'll feel

so much better once others are there to lend a hand or an ear.

Remember to have the nerve to stand up on a chair in front of

the class and read your stories with enthusiasm and recklessness.

GREAT SNAKES! man you have a funny side.

But most of all never forget that you have so much to offer the world.

Never let the world forget that.  Keep pestering us until we fully

understand how great you are.

Adam hid himself because he was ashamed

In 1974 I was 17 going on 18, a new high school graduate.  I was in love with Rick, my first love.

He brought over an album to play on my father's new turntable--yes, vinyl.  The album was Robin Trowers' "Bridge of Sighs".

It skipped on the turntable.  Other albums skipped on the turntable, but not consistently.

"Bridge of Sighs" skipped consistently.  My father asked to borrow it so he could take the turntable back to the electronics store and demonstrate the defect.

My dad was still in the Air Force then.  He still had a crew cut.  Polyester leisure pants with flares at the bottom.  Diamond pattern.

Here's the story he told:

Arriving at the stereo store with the turntable and the album, the sales associate bypassed all question about product failure by claiming that the album wasn't my father's.  The associate said, "With that haircut, and those clothes, it can't be yours."  For whatever reason my father didn't pick the rational response which was, "Yes, this isn't mine, but that is secondary to the fact that this turntable skips."  Instead, he claimed that the album was his.  To his way of thinking, since the guy had no real way of knowing, then for all intents and purposes the album was his.

He didn't consider that most people who looked like him probably would not own that album.  He himself was the evidence that the album wasn't his.  It was as glaringly obvious as if he was a dog wearing a cat's mask and claiming he was a cat.

Telling the Truth was paramount in my family.  A lie was heavily punished.

Yet, there's a subtext that says if no one is able to prove otherwise, then a lie can be the truth.  That fine print was denied to children, only adults were eligible.

Where am I going with this?

Apologies have been an issue in my family.  The men in the family have had trouble with it.  There has been a sense that an apology is a knuckling under; an admission of inferiority, an acknowledgement of abject worthlessness and deserving humiliation.

I suppose they came from a dominator culture.  One was either a dominator or submissive.  There was shame in submitting, yet adults insisted on it from their children.

Years ago, just before I began to date Gary, my grandparents paid a visit to my parents, and they drove up from California to Oregon to see me.  I noticed that my grandfather's stance was anger.  He was mean to servers--I had to slip back to them as the family exited the restaurant and tell them not to feel bad and apologize for him.  (One was in tears) The Rolling Stones were coming to Seattle; an image of Keith Richards on the television and my grandfather remarking, "Don't you hate to think of being in Heaven with him?"  Later I learned from my cousin that he and my grandmother had been fighting to a point that they were unbearable to my aunt who told them to "go somewhere.  Anywhere.  Go away for a while."  The destination was here, with me.  On a road trip my grandmother and I were alone at a table.  The bitterness spilled out; I don't remember the trigger.  Something about the things my grandfather would do, the things he would say:  "And he will never apologize."  I remember another conversation, another time, when she was feeling more kindly disposed toward him:  "He told me, 'I know I should say it, but I just can't get it out.'"

Why?  Why should apologies be so hard?  Well, if they mean what I wrote above, then I can see why someone just "can't get it out."  Can't apologies mean, "I can't bear this rift between us, and I want so much to restore and heal our connection.  My heart is open, and I'm so sorry for what I did/said/whatever."?

Later I learned that my grandfather, and his twin, were forced as children, for the amusement of their father, to put on boxing gloves and fight. (They were number 6 and 7, in a family of 9 children).  (The twin went to World War II, but didn't fight...he had a kind of nervous breakdown)

There is a corollary to the apology-being-difficult-for-men-of-the-family fact.  It is a refusal to hold anyone accountable for their actions.  There is a fear to call wrong behavior wrong behavior and ask for an explanation (and, an apology, if called for).  There is a demand to validate a lie, to the point that a person calling it what it is is more of an offender than the person who lied.  There is a weird compulsion to protect an aggressor from the knowledge that s/he is an aggressor.  The expectation is to protect the feelings of the perpetrator of a wrong.

And it's all driven by fear.  Of what?  Disconnection, I think.  Or, perhaps, exposure. I've been pursuing this for a while.  I think there must be some shame in the family that has been papered over, and there is an imperative to maintain the fiction that all is well.  In fact, we're an idealized family; we're "close".  If we see anything that tells us different we are to deny it, and our worth as a person depends on our ability to do so...and to convince ourselves.  We are to lie, and to lie to ourselves about the fact that we are lying.  And then we are to hide from ourselves that we have lied to ourselves.

This has meant that children can't tell the Truth where it matters.

I'm hoping that the buck has stopped here.  I'm hoping that someday my sons will be able to tell me I succeeded in stopping the buck, here.

Case In Point

As a companion to my earlier post


Diary, 1998

There must be something wrong with me that I keep seeing this.  That I…obsess on it.  That when it's present I can’t see anything else I feel so anxious about it.  There must be something wrong with me that I feel so anxious about it it becomes huge.  There must be something wrong with me that I see it but they don’t.  I have to be nuts and arrogant to think I see ^nuancesthings in their behavior that they say aren’t there.  My sick jealousy drove a wedge between me and Gary while his grandmother was dying and I have only myself to blame.  I’m building their relationship all out of proportion and then I do things to come between them.  I’m the one who’s sick.  I must be crazy.  I was deranged so badly by having a sick little sister that I read threats into their relationship where there are none.  The only solution is to confess everything to them both and ask their pardon, and see Darlene at least once a week.  Darlene is rude to me because she’s justifiably angry with me for asserting my relationship with her son.  I deserve her to ignore me, and to take my seat in the car, and to talk only to Gary.  I deserve her treatment of me.  All this resistance to her is shadow boxing without a shred of evidence.  The reason I can’t defend myself is because I have no defense—my feelings are indefensible.  There is no inappropriate attachment between her and Gary—only my imagination.  I couldn’t sustain eye contact with her at the beach because I knew I was in the wrong & knew I’d behaved indefensibly—wanting to be able to finish so we could be home in time to rest a little bit because we had to be up early to take Connor to the doctor…that was a selfish want in comparison with a need for closure to have dinner in Cannon Beach and pay for it too.  Even though we don’t really have much money and some big bills coming up we should suck it up and do it anyway.  And I shouldn’t want it to be known that its because of me that Gary could do that.  I’m just narrow and twisted inside—I’ve got to be, to be jealous of a man’s relationship with his mother, and arrogant enough to think I can analyze it and presume that they’re in denial about it.

  I feel kind of sick inside, to think of ending this entry here.  I don’t think I can write my way out of this, though, and I needed to write my worst fears about all this—that this is all a fabrication of my mind ^and that I’ve been subjecting Gary and Darlene to needless pain.

  If I were going into counselling, from that point of view—I would be asking for treatment to help me with obsessive thoughts and feelings that cause me to act in ways that are counter-productive and may ultimately threaten my marriage.  I would ask to find a way to ignore my feelings that cause me to feel possessive of Gary and competitive with Darlene.  There must be something wrong with me.

  What set this whole thing off was that I discovered today that Gary’s mother had come over here yesterday when Craig came by with Jenny; and Gary had concealed it from me.  (But why should he feel he should have to tell me?)  She’d brought over some pie—only enough for Gary, and her, and Craig, and Jenny.  He and I had had a soft and productive talk about her, and the trouble in our relationship around her both last night, and the night before…yet he still felt he had to conceal that she’d come.  I found out by finding a bakery box in the recycling when I went out to the garage.

  I feel a heaviness in my heart—a weight.

  I have to let this go unresolved—dream on it some.  I will embrace this circumstance as an oppurtunity to grow—even if it means away from Gary (a complicated matter when we have a child).  I will embrace this as an oppurtunity to grow, even if it means all my worst fears I wrote on the past few pages are true and that I am very wrong.  I need to permit that possibility, even if it makes my heart just sink, sink, sink.  (Perhaps what I sense is the temptation to give in; let Darlene have her way & then maybe what’s left over will be OK—and maybe there’ll be relief from the painful strife that’s gone on so long.

I was articulating my worst fears.  What I see now was that it suited her just fine that I was hamstrung by these doubts, because they made me that much less likely to interfere with  her access to my husband.  She would rather not consider that maybe her relationship with her son was enmeshed, because she would not "bear the trial of being disagreeable" with herself.  Therefore if anything in my behavior reflected a hint of this, the accusations were harsh.  My achilles heel was my fear that maybe I was these things.  How could I prove to myself that I wasn't?  Wasn't I just rationalizing?  She believed these things about me, and she would have me believe them too.  I made it convenient for her.*

*One of the biggest perks of this separation from Gary is that I'm no longer obligated to be around her --except maybe weddings and graduations. I can live with that.

Keeping up appearances

"If you are serenely willing to bear the trial of being displeasing to yourself, you will be for Jesus a pleasant place of shelter"    Saint Theresa of Lisieux, as quoted by M. Scott Peck in People of the Lie

Who goes on to say:  “The evil do not serenely bear the trial of being displeasing to themselves.  In fact, they don’t bear it at all.”

The content of the story is not important here.  There is a deeper Story from which the particulars of my story spring which is that there are people around who cannot bear their own failings.  So they outsource the burden to the people around them—turning others into mirrors who’d better only reflect back the images of themselves they want to see.  If these people become parents, their child never knows anything different.  All s/he knows is that s/he is punished if something reflected back is an unflattering truth.  They learn quickly what is acceptable.  What does a child do when it realizes that its perception of the Truth is at odds with the 'truth' that more powerful people want it to believe?

Some exceptional people are able to stay with their Truth, and can swim against the current of belief which would also have them believe that they are bad people.  And some accept without question that good people do whatever it is that pleases the people who have power over them.  They are good people to the extent that they can deny anything they encounter that contradicts what they are supposed to be reflecting, and behave as if.

Self-doubt is the most potent of methods for tolerating giving to others what feels false to give.  If I’m not liking something someone is asking of me it must be because I’m selfish, or mean.  If my experience tells me different from a received truth, then I must be mistaken.  If my gut calls “pudding” shit, then it must be because something’s wrong at my very core.  Maybe it’s because there’s shit inside of me and I’m projecting it outward onto innocents.  Maybe I’m not accepting enough, too judgemental.  Maybe I’m not enlightened enough.  These people would rather I believe these things about myself, than face the truth about themselves.

I don’t know if everyone lives some version of this, or if it’s just an obscure psychic corner of the universe I was born into.  I’m not entirely sure what to do with this, or to what extent it continues to be invested in my life.

It does pose a puzzle about what to do about the people who continue to insist that only the image that flatters them is reflected back to them.  I can't avoid them forever.

Poor Backslider*

I've been deeply ashamed of my fear of what others think of me.  Being afraid has caused me to do things I didn't particularly want to do, in order to not risk displeasing someone else.  When Shannon asked me once when I'd lost connection with myself I assumed it was because I'd given up something I wanted in favor of what someone else wanted in order to avoid them thinking less of me.  Something about the prospect made me feel so horrible inside I just couldn't face that feeling and it was easier to  give in.

Then culture changed on me, and all at once we were supposed to be able to say no. Enter the shame of not being able to say no or set limits (remember the assertiveness training fad?  "When I Say No I Feel Guilty"?).  All at once, in order to please others, I had to show some spine, and not just go along.

Now there was a bind.

I see now, as I've written before, that there was a very real fear that if I displeased someone, if I disrupted their own fragile sense of self (ego), they would blame me and break connection.  In order to maintain connection with them, I'd see myself the way they saw me (selfish, small, mean, etc), but at the price of staying connected to my own perspective.

My history of Christian fundamentalism predisposes me to think of life in a "Pilgrim's Progress" sort of way.  One is going forward, or one is backsliding.  Last week, on the roof, my discomfort with the woman parking herself within my family circle was compounded by my thoughts that the whole episode  represented backsliding in the progress I've made.  I felt that familiar feeling of bind.  Was my inability to resolve the situation without removing myself from it undermining this new Self I've been working so hard to build?

So I took it in to Shannon as grist for the mill.  I told her that whenever I'd imagine any means of getting what I wanted that involved personally asking the lady to go, well, it just felt impossible.  I couldn't imagine doing it without it being hurtful and humiliating, no matter how gently I asked.  I'd feel a wall of horror at the prospect.  My dilemma was that in this situation I was able to stay in complete connection with myself and my desire to separate (at least that's progress--in the past I would have blamed myself and put away those feelings and forced myself to engage), and I couldn't do that and be one with her.  How do I "be one" with someone I desperately want to go?

Shannon wanted to know if there was anything inside of me that reminded me of this woman.  Yes, I suppose it would be the me who's felt humiliated when I'd thought I was a wanted presence and instead the opposite was true.  Or I'd thought something was true and found out later that everyone but me knew different.  That's when I realized--those feelings I'd have whenever I imagined telling the woman the truth--that was me, this part in me, connecting to that part in her.  But, I was resisting the connection.  That's what felt like the dilemma.  I was afraid I was reverting to my old history of fear of displeasing someone.  I think it may be different now.  I think the real discomfort came from my empathy with her--or, with the part of me that she reminded me of.  Maybe when I feel resistance like that in company with other people, it's a signal to me that I'm vibrating to something in them that is true of something in me, but I'm complicating it by resisting.  Shannon said, "You'll have to play with this.  But I wonder if you'd find that if you stayed one with that part of you in her, if the resonance from vibration at that shared frequency might resolve the whole dilemma."

Now there's a challenge.  I'm not very adept at staying self-aware in 'field conditions'.  It's going to take a shift to experience resistance as resonance instead of as dislike or self-recrimination.

But I like the idea that maybe there is no backsliding.  Shannon said, "You can't go back."


*from the song "Poor Backslider" by Greg Brown

The One-ness Experiment--day 14

Recap of nearly 5 years of therapy:  I learned to disconnect from myself in order to be in connection with others.  To disconnect from myself I had to not-see much of what I saw.  I had to not-feel much of what I felt.  To not-see and not-feel I had to put my very perceptions in doubt.  I got really good at it.  The result was I was snarled in a knot I couldn't begin to evaluate and unravel.  My very foundation of thinking was disrupted whenever I'd try to figure this out, by the conviction that I couldn't trust myself.

I spent several years with Shannon's support, realizing that I had assumed a burden of responsibility that wasn't mine to assume.  I harbored the doubt that with every conflict I was somehow at fault, due to some ineptness, selfishness, or flaw within.  I took the perspective of the Other, because I wanted to be fair.   I discovered that taking on the perspective of the Other meant abandoning my own perspective.   As I became aware of the pattern I began to realize that I didn't have to do that.  I mulled it over.  I wasn't comfortable with the idea of closing out the perspectives of others--God knows I knew enough people who did that.  They were often bullies, self-righteous; I didn't want to be that.  So I came to understand that the question was, "How can I see the perspective of Others without losing my own?"  Shannon answered, "By being One with them."

I asked, in an earlier post, what this looks like in real life.  I've been experimenting ever since.  What does Oneness look like; what does it have to do with:

The apartment building I live in has 25 floors.  The 25th is the roof, which has picnic tables, a barbecue, lounge chairs.  The management hosted a party yesterday; they probably do it every year.  Up on the roof, from 10 to 2 yesterday.  Hot dogs, ice cream, lemonade would be served.  Residents would display their art, their talents.

It's my turn to live here, since Friday evening. Gary brought the boys over Saturday around 12:30 so we could go to the party.  My car was already in the space that we rent.  Gary said he'd 'jacked' someone else's spot.  I asked what happened if that person came back.  He said they'd just left.  I said, "What if they were just going to the store, and coming back shortly?"  He said they could just take one of the open spots.  I asked about the people who were paying for those "open" spots.  He said it was no big deal, it would all get sorted out.  I told him to take the boys up on the roof; I would take the car he'd parked in the lot and find a place on the street.

I joined them a little later.  A middle-aged woman was displaying her belly-dancing talent to Connor's embarrassment. I joined him, Scott, and Gary on some lounge chairs.  We hadn't been there long when a woman came over asking how long we'd lived here.  To my surprise she pulled up a chair and sat down.  I remember the odd feeling of encroachment inside; very different from an experience of welcome.  We talked for a bit; how long we had lived at the apt--and I realized that at any moment a decision might be required:  how much to tell her about our 'living arrangement'.  How much did we want to reveal to a stranger?  I steered the conversation to what kinds of interesting restaurants and shops were around the building, when I noticed she was holding a "bingo" card.  Kind of a creative mixer device, she was to mark off a square for various "finds"--challenges.  Looking over, I could see several.  She was to find someone who'd lived in the building for over 10 years (hence her question, but that didn't explain why she pulled up a chair).  She was to find someone who'd been to Europe.  Someone who liked sushi.  Not a bad idea, the bingo card.  Maybe I'll borrow it someday if I have a party with a lot of people who don't know each other.  Yesterday I saw it as an opportunity.  I'd realized I wasn't taking pleasure in her being with us, and I wanted her to go away.  I'd noticed that I'd come close to abandoning my connection with myself in order to pretend she was a wanted guest.  I didn't want to model that for the boys, but the dilemma was that I could not think of a middle ground between asking her to leave, and putting up with her until she decided to go.  It seemed she was settling in.  In calling attention to the bingo game I hoped to remind her that she'd come for a purpose, she'd fulfilled it, and she could move on to other people.  I asked her if we'd helped her in filling in her card.  She said we had; asked us if we liked sushi.  We do.  She was curious about how my boys had come to like it.  Connor said off-handedly that when he was once a 'picky eater' he wouldn't have even tried it.  She said she had some kind of background as a nutritionist; was always interested in what turned someone from being finicky to not.  He said he didn't know, he just became hungry for things he hadn't been before.  This was kind of an interesting topic for me, since I'd endured years of his pickiness.  I never forced him to eat, though I did try the suggestion of insisting he take "one bite" of anything new he was resisting.  It didn't last long, that experiment, and I didn't force the issue.  It clearly didn't work for our family to force even "one bite" on him.  I lived for years with people remarking on his refusal to eat, to try things and held to my inner lifeline that he would not starve himself, and that he would someday grow beyond a palate of Fruit Loops, cheese crackers, macaroni and cheese.  So it's sweet to see that he has indeed become an omnivorous eater, and didn't require any pushing of the river on my part.  I mentioned that I too had been a picky eater, who came from an era where parents forced their children to eat.  I said that I have a very broad range of food interests now, and having been forced to eat did not have anything to do with it; it was merely a matter of maturity and development.  She asked Connor if I'd made him take tastes of things.  She wanted to know if I'd kept a variety of different foods in the refrigerator, had a variety of dishes available.  Connor didn't seem comfortable, I wasn't comfortable, and I sat with the dilemma.  What did Oneness mean in a situation like this?  I couldn't imagine it meant having to be at the mercy of this woman, but neither could I imagine myself asking her to go.  Had I already "abandoned myself" because I hadn't?  When she was exchanging a few words with Gary I excused myself, got up, took away our plates to put in the trash, looked at some of the displayed artwork.  I hoped she'd be gone when I got back.  She wasn't.  It was a strange quandary.  I didn't want to be unassertive, but neither did I want to be a doormat.  I was clear inside that her presence felt like an intrusion, but I just couldn't come up with any way of sending her away that didn't feel too harsh to me.  The only way I could see to get her to leave was to leave ourselves, and the second there was an opening in the conversation I talked to the boys about moving on to our next agenda item.  As courteously as possible we pulled away and said goodbye.

So what would Oneness look like in a situation like this?  I suppose the younger me would have resisted the feelings of aversion I was having toward her and redoubled my efforts to connect with her in conversation.  I would have felt there was something wrong in me, some prejudice, or in-graciousness that made me want to run the other way, so I would have pushed the feeling away and not let myself know I didn't want to talk to her.  I don't know that I would have been resisting her, but I would have been resisting my inclination to move away.  So I stayed at One with myself, even if it meant feeling the discomfort of being with her and not knowing how to separate.  I wonder, if I'd managed to be at One with her at the same time if I may have found another way to separate which wouldn't have meant that my family and I would have to leave the roof?  I thought of being in connection with her, but I don't think I managed to do it.

It's a paradox.  I think I found a way to be At One with myself, while not denying unpleasant feelings I was having.  I don't know if I've figured out a way to be At One with someone I'm feeling uncomfortable with, let alone do both simultaneously.  I think that my inability to pull that off probably reinforced a feeling of duality--me against her.

All of this is trivial in comparison with the horror and violence of That Day 10 years ago when the jets crashed, hundreds died at the Pentagon and on the planes, thousands in the twin towers.  But isn't duality the common element?  In the early days and weeks after the attacks, it seemed I was seeing a reflective, thoughtful America.  I remember hearing on the radio that people who hadn't spoken in years were inspired to reach out to each other.  I remember hearing that the impulse toward unity prevailed, early on.  It seems it was drowned out.  Duality begets and feeds on itself, with a vengeance.  But maybe there's hope in knowing that at least at first, the impulse was toward kindness, and oneness.

Experimenting

I did some experimenting this week with the concept of becoming One with people around me.  I watched a jet take off from the apartment window and imagined myself One with the passengers on that plane.

"What was that like?" asked Sharon.  "I...I don't...know..."  Because something felt different inside, but in the vaguest of ways, like the hazy edges of a dream that are impossible to describe.

I experimented closer to where I live.  In the absence of any obvious separation activity, such as arguments, I thought of some people I've disliked.  Or I've thought of behavior I didn't like from people I do.  I tried to apply becoming One with them.

Now this had a much more tangible effect.  I realized  that by connecting in this way with someone, the whole picture shifted.  Of one person who has a need to one-up and has seemed grasping and self-righteous, I had a very different experience.  I was able to locate the Me in Her and understand the ways that I want to be "right", and feel anxious about being "wrong".  Feeling this, I could also see that the experience of being "right" is a mistaken attempt at connection.  Or what passes for it.  Somewhere in this life, a belief that being better-than came to feel like the Connection humans seek.  If not in connection with others, than at least within oneself.    Connection understood this way is oppositional--striving-against enhances that feeling of unity.  I realized that true Connection is always there, always available, hiding in plain sight, and that one doesn't need to strive for it, or enhance it by attempting to take it from someone else.  I realized this as a direct consequence of imagining myself at One with the Other.  I think I even felt...compassion.  And not in the compassion-through-will-power sense.  It rose in response to Seeing what I saw.  And recognizing that this experience of need and scarcity exists inside of me, too.  And in that sense, it's true that if we see a quality in another person, it's because we have it within us.

That's such a change from how I understood it before.  I'd heard and acknowledged it was probably true that what I didn't like in someone was a quality of mine too, but that idea was undermining, not empowering.  If I dislike something, and the disliking means that I'm guilty of the things I don't like, then how do I have any leverage in negotiation when our wants collide?  Also, in addition to disliking this person, or what they do, I have to dislike myself, too.  Then I was simply confused and lost touch with my Self, because I couldn't think through it.   My very ground of understanding was quaking.  Before I could deal with this person I had to try to sort out if I really was like them.  And I was too knotted up to be able to do that effectively.  I was a deer in headlights.

I tried to "cultivate" compassion, but my feelings always got in the way.

This new version of that old lesson doesn't look much different on the surface, but how it changes things.  Disliking something in someone is indeed an opportunity to meet and accept and help mature that element in me.  Separating that quality from myself and polarizing in opposition does provide a kind of inner solidity, because it concentrates a sense of myself (without those hated elements), but it's at the expense of wholeness.  This shift sort of changes the "is it me or is it them" question.  Because the answer is "Yes".

When my children were very young and were just beginning to grapple with the feelings of ownership and desire, I can see that behaviors that our culture once branded as "selfish" were really just the crude beginnings of mastering identity, separation, and negotiation.  In this way, raising children has been very spiritual for me, because as they've developed I've recognized (and remembered) their behavioral and emotional states from an adult perspective.  I can see that desirable behavior isn't a result of shaming immaturity.  In a large part, it's a function of development  (with some adult shaping needed to organize and give meaning to their learning).  As children get older and develop, they begin to understand that while they are separate beings, they don't need that object as a part of their self- identification and begin to value their friends more than things.  There was nothing I could have done to "teach" them that.  They simply matured.

Sometimes we don't.

If I become One with Another, I see the me in them, and the them in me (just as I saw the me in my children, and my children in me).  I thought of my MIL, and realized that a lot of her behavior is motivated by a desire for connection. Unfortunately it's coupled with a belief in scarcity, and thus anxiety about losing it and misguided ways of seeking it.  I recognize the part of myself that longs to be close to someone, and can't bear the thought of my own behavior pushing someone further away.  I see the part of me that is so anxious about loss that I try to grasp, I need to be loved "best of all"--nothing else will do.  And so I redouble the efforts that only undercut the quality of my relationships.

In this way healing and understanding can come disguised as someone I don't like.  I get it now.

"Very good", said Sharon.  Now, do you feel like it might be possible to be in a room..."  "--I don't know if I'd go that far..."  laughter

I haven't actually tried this yet in field conditions.  As I said, there have been no arguments or conflicts this week (knocking on wood).  But it seems that having that sense of equanimity while in conflict or in tricky situations might be a tall order.  Can I really apply what I think I know in theory to fully-dimensional real-life?

And, I notice I feel afraid, a little.  Does feeling compassion for someone make me vulnerable to them?  Will I merely find myself giving way to their whims and desires?

And, I realize that I also gain some sense of inner cohesion and inner connection when I'm in opposition to someone.  I can extend the sense of connection by finding someone to share the opposition to the Other with, and there is a sense of satisfaction in that.  And while I'm sitting here, and I can see that this is an altered and inferior sense of oneness, it seems there may be a vacuum if I don't have that anymore.  In a way I'm afraid to give it up.

And I still don't feel quite ready to be in a room with these people...

Stay tuned.

One

I noticed a progression in my last two blog posts.  I can see that I was exploring the ways that one gives oneself over to another.  How someone can give up themselves, in the context of a life, and in the context of a conversation with a friend.

Since my last post I had an opportunity to explore the question of giving oneself up in the context of an important and intimate friendship.

Again the precipitating event wasn't a big deal:  Marti and I have had a standing date for breakfast every Saturday for years and years.  Our usual practice has been to email each other to confirm it.  I didn't this time, because we'd stated our intention at the prior week's breakfast.  Marti is a highly responsible and reliable person.  I didn't think it necessary.  But that Saturday I arrived, and she didn't.

I made several phone calls, and even texted her (a big deal for me since I don't have a texting plan with my phone).  No answer; I gave her a half hour and left.  It worked out fine, since my grocery store was close by and I used the time to do the week's shopping.  I hoped she was ok.

Later in the day I found a message from her in my voice mail, with a heartfelt and sincere apology...she'd completely forgotten and had driven out to Toni's place in the Gorge.  I felt myself move into the wonderful place of our hearts meeting and dissolving any rift, until her message kept going and she said something about us "missing each other", a misunderstanding.  It's "dangerous" to not call her.

Which brought me up short.  "Misunderstanding", and "missing each other" belonged to a different kind of reality, one where there was sort of a shared responsibility.  There was no misunderstanding or confusion on my part:  we have a standing date every Saturday, we'd agreed that it was on when we last saw each other, so I'd seen no need to confirm.  "It's Marti" was what I thought; she doesn't need reminding.  So I understood perfectly.  And we didn't "miss" each other because she was nowhere near me.

The inconsistency of the world she was coming from with the world I was living in was a small one.  She was saying a happened, and I was pretty sure it was b.

So what do I do with this?  I didn't call her for several days as I thought it over.  One--it wasn't that big a deal.  The place wasn't far from my house, I got my shopping done, all I lost was a half hour (the cafe even bought my coffee for me!).  Maybe I did "share" some responsibility for having not contacted her to confirm ("but it was Marti") (and, confirmation goes the other way too.  I'm not the designated confirmer).  Two--it's such a small shift, the difference in our realities.  Why not go ahead and let it pass without comment?  Three--I can't think of a way to discuss this with her without seeming nit-picky and small  Four--If it's important to her to believe that the mistake was between us, rather than her own, why not do a dear friend the kindness of letting her version of the story stand?  Five--I can't think of any way to talk about this that doesn't sound like I'm a bully, forcing her arm behind her back til she says, "OK!  It was my fault!  All my fault!"  Six--I can't think of any way of talking about this that wouldn't seem accusing, wouldn't make her defensive, wouldn't bring on counter-accusations...wouldn't alter our friendship.

I see that all of the above was a classic and nearly involuntary talking myself out of something by putting my own self into doubt.  It's simple.  I love Marti and want to be in connection with her.  That connection is threatened, potentially, by correcting her version of the story.  If I break connection with mySelf, as I was systematically doing above, I can stay in connection with her.

The trouble with that is, I'd have to be out of Self-connection on an ongoing basis, because what I know to be true would be like the pea under the mattress.

Another problem with talking about it with her though, is that I (also nearly involuntarily) take on the perspective of the person I'm talking to.  And when I do, I can't get back to whatever it was that was informing me.  I only see myself through the other person's eyes, and in that context it's possible I am nitpicky, bullying, overly sensitive, legalistic, and accusing.  And I come away feeling totally yucky and confused.  I suppose fear of that can be added as a number Seven above.

Sharon said I allow the Other's perspective in out of a desire for fairness.  But once the Other's perspective is in me I lose myself.  The door is closed and I can't get back.

I thought about it over the week.  Particularly interesting was the hint that I was attempting connection with the Other in taking on their perspective.  I was attempting to be at One with them, but it was at the price of my connection within my Self.

So when I saw Sharon again I said, "So the question becomes, how can I be open to Another's perspective without losing myself?"  She said, "By becoming One with them."


Say WHAT????

She said, "If you consider the Other to be a part of you, and that other is yelling at you, it's very different to wonder why you are yelling at you?  What's angry in my Self?"

Now is this really possible?  Really?

"So when did you lose your connection with your Self?"

Denise inspired this post with her very kind comments on my last.

I've been mining an incident that's kind of related to "I don't do that anymore".  It's a surprise that I'd be able to find so much in what amounted to a simple awkward conversation.   I suppose there are all kinds of ways someone can give up themSelves in order to accommodate somebody else.

"I don't do that anymore" came back to haunt me in a different guise.

The incident was this:  bookreading group night.  Sitting in conversation with Marybeth who asks how things are going with the separation, the switching off of house to apartment, and the job.  It's brief filler talk, meant to last until dinner is served.  Marybeth wanted to know if I'd set the boys up with chores for helping out.

For me this is kind of like being asked if I breast or bottle-feed my baby.  Or if I let them play videogames, or how many hours they play.  There's already a right answer, and often I'm on the wrong side of it.

This question had the feel of that.  I could feel the air around me bend into the gravity of a world where children should have chores, where any answer but yes carries some kind of whiff of apology.  The world becomes tipped that way and anything said feels like justification of a deficiency.

I took a deep breath and said, "Well, no.  I just ask them for help when I feel like I need it, and it seems to work out."

The truth is that I've made half-hearted attempts to get job charts and codify chore assignment.  And the fact is that my heart hasn't been in it.  I don't have a problem with the status quo, where 'help' is fluid and ad hoc.  I don't feel over-burdened.

But Marybeth went on:  "When I lived in India the women were fascinated with the freedom of American women.  And they'd bemoan the lack of freedom in their lives.  And I'd say, 'The place to start is your sons.  Raise your sons so they'll assume equal responsibility.'  Indian women spoil their sons", she went on.  "And spoiled sons grow up with a sense of entitlement that perpetuates the problem on to the next generation."

Who the hell can argue with that?

So I was in turmoil.  She's just said something that in principle I agree with, yet I'm not really practicing in my home.  Furthermore, the vibe I'm getting from her feels as if she's attempting to persuade me.  I'm feeling something that says she wants agreement.  At least it feels like something is expected of me.  And I don't feel honest with a specific endorsement and I can't bring myself to even nod.  It was a mini-dilemma, with a woman I don't see but once a month, but consider a friend.  I split the difference and in essence crossed my fingers behind my back.  I gave her the agreement she was looking for to discharge the unease, but in my mind I was agreeing only with the principle:  "women shouldn't spoil their sons".

But I'm feeling a thickening in the air between us.  The hallmarks of a meaningful conversation are missing.   I absolutely can't think of anything to say.  I'm a deer in headlights.  I sense it, and I wonder if she's sensing it too.  After all, if the animation that makes a conversation a conversation drains, isn't that noticeable?  Could she sense that I wasn't in entire agreement?  Because she pressed her point a little further.

Then we were called to dinner.

That's it.  I've been thinking about it ever since when I have some time to muse.  Each time I think about it I see another facet.

At first I focused on the sense I'd had that agreement was sought, and disagreement carried a penalty--of a hint of shame, of apology.  As I considered it, it occurred to me that if I felt like there wasn't a conversation, in a way it was because there wasn't.  She had her own agenda, which was to convince me that the boys should have chores.  She was presenting reasons why I should be doing it, and in a sense was trespassing.  I'd sensed a power struggle and I handled it by letting her think she'd 'won'.  Yet I felt strange and awkward after that.

So, I reasoned, some of what was going on was I was feeling trespassed upon and didn't assert my boundaries.  And I was feeling unauthentic in that I was having these feelings and not telling her.  In other words, I was representing myself as other than what I am.

But the conversation didn't seem to leave room for anything but a kind of shame-facedness in disagreeing, because again, who can argue with what she was saying?  And, while it might be possible to have a conversation that included my quasi-diagreement without having to wear a cone of shame, it would take some time to get there, which we didn't have.

So in a sense I was putting "blame" on Marybeth with a narrative that she wasn't seeing me at all in the conversation, but was seeking something.

That's certainly plausible.  That's what's in common, I think, with many unsolicited advice givers.  An implication of a kind of superiority:  I'm doing something that you're not and you should be like me.  This superiority requires agreement to be maintained in the giver's psyche--it depends on validation.

When I talked about it with my counselor, she suggested that Marybeth could have just been operating under the assumption that I was in total agreement already, vs trying to convince me of something.

Which opened up another can of worms.  A very old one, which is probably what kept me in a bad marriage.  If I'm feeling something from someone that's negative, since it's being processed by me and filtered through me, how do I know it's not merely a projection?  (And if I'm 'projecting', what is it I'm projecting?  Am I projecting self-disapproval onto them directed toward me?  Am I really kicking myself for not having the boys do regular chores, but making the Other the vehicle?)  And if I can't know that it's not a projection, then how can I trust myself at all?  I've spent a lifetime exploring this very question.  It kept me from being able to objectively evaluate the nature of many of the conflicts I had with Gary.  Sharon had spent nearly 5 years helping me lean into listening to this voice, and now I've got to question it again?

Looking again at what was present in that moment:  A sense of being 'accused' of spoiling my kids and contributing to gender inequity in the world.  I think there was a realization that while I agree with the principle of raising boys to be responsible men, the way I'm doing it probably doesn't clear the bar she seemed to be setting.  And that was a conflict, because to get to anywhere except acknowledging my 'lack' and getting more evangelization would take a while and we didn't have it.  But here I am with this circle that's begging to be closed with my agreement.  And my brain was blank when it came to other areas of engagement that might circumvent this dilemma.  I think another thing present was that I like Marybeth.  And I sense that she gives me a kind of credit for intimacy and closeness of friendship that hasn't yet been backed up with a bulk of intimate conversations and shared experience.  I sensed that she was offering me an opportunity for connection to back up that credit, and I was going to have to let it go by.  And just today I realized that a hidden element that was also present in that moment was that I sensed I was accusing her.  I was accusing her of giving unsolicited advice, for misreading me as a person who 'needs' help, of having an agenda that she was pressing at the expense of seeing me in the conversation.  I was accusing a well-meaning friend of encroachment.

As someone who has felt accused much of her life, it takes a lot to get me to accuse others.  I'm allergic to it and would rather accuse myself by default than accuse someone else.  Especially a friend.

No wonder I was a deer in headlights.

I guess the takeaway is that I became good at sensing what people want from me.  And implicit was a condition that this "something" was required to satisfy their own self-esteem needs.  To withhold was to hurt.  Case in point:  another conversation about the boys doing chores.  A kitchen table of a friend.  After a long list of things I should do to which I responded with silence, one of the women asked.  I replied that while their good intentions are appreciated, I'm someone who needs to find my own way, organically, from inside of me.  And anything I've said about various difficulties in my life at that time should not be construed as a call for help.  I said it in a factual tone with no intent of anger behind it.  She actually began to cry.

So there are many faces to the conditions where one can lose herself.  The pernicious ones are more obvious.  The well-meaning ones, well, those are more deeply rooted.

One year on, six months on

One year ago I had just begun a new job, working outside of the home for the first time in 11 years.  My first day was May 26, so this time last year I was still aquiver with the abrupt shift in lives.  I got the job so six months ago I could get the apartment where I sit right now.

Six months ago I began the culmination, the logical consequence as it were, to years of exhaustive examination of my marriage, my self.  I was sifting through every single detail to find a way to stay in that life, and not be here in this.  I suppose all of that searching distilled to a single question:  "Is it my fault it's not working, and if it is, can I change myself so it will?"

I didn't have very stable ground from which to be objective because I've always felt confused about whether or not something is my fault.  I've certainly been afraid that "things" are my fault, in the deer-in-headlights sense.

So, were things not working because I was too selfish?  If I became angry because Gary was unreasonable, was I too sensitive?  Too quick-on-the-trigger to react?  An angry, mean person at core?  Someone who felt inherently inferior and so when Gary was scornful when I didn't read his mind accurately it confirmed my own sense of worthlessness and that's why I'd get angry?  Did I just not have a sense of humor?  Was I 'just' a chronically unhappy person who brought everyone around her down too?  Someone no one could make happy?

I certainly was afraid I was those things. In trying to confront those accusations I was sort of cut off at the knees by my awareness that people often rationalize their bad behavior, and why should I be so special that I wasn't?  How would I know if I wasn't 'just' rationalizing?

So it took years to work my way through what a different kind of person may have cleared up in a few minutes.  Self-doubt had been a strategy a long time ago that I developed to help me tolerate situations I was powerless to change.  Then my own strategy hamstrung me so that I was powerless to change.

Years ago I saw "A Clockwork Orange".  A brilliantly horrifying movie, but what reached into my psyche and totally disturbed me was the aversion "therapy" our psychopathic subject  underwent once he was caught and brought to justice.  Any of you who know the story know that he was a totally repugnant and violent hooligan;  that he was 'cured' by being forced to watch images of violence and sex while being fed a drug that would make him violently ill.  Eventually nausea was so tightly associated with aggression that the slightest hint of aggression rendered him helpless.  The scene at the end where he himself is jumped and is unable to defend himself--in fact, his own natural defenses now wrapped him up and delivered him like a package to his attackers--haunted me for days.  I'd seen violent images in movies before but this one really got to me, at my core.  I see why now.  It was an extreme representation of my own dilemma, which was my own strategy for being with people whose behavior I couldn't understand, which often seemed capricious, arbitrary, and unfair.  (Yeah, I guess I'm talking about my parents, but not in the "blame" sense.  They were products of their own culture, time, and upbringing.  I can say that there were things I needed to do to adapt to the implicit demands of my culture, as expressed through the people who raised and love me that have not served me well.  I can say this while knowing deeply that I love my parents.)

I got pretty good at it, and so was well-groomed for the marriage I chose.  Once I was able to clear up the baggage about whether or not I was a flawed individual and that's why I was seeing things the way I saw them, it really became very simple.  What does the marriage need to succeed? Are we willing to do what it takes?

To feel satisfied in a marriage, I need to be with a partner who is willing to negotiate disagreement and build bridges after rifts.  This means being with someone who is timely in airing grievances (rather than storing them up and then leaking resentful feelings like a cracked gas tank).  In short, I need someone who has the tools to partner with me to bring a marriage back into emotional equilibrium when something has disrupted it.  I believe I have the tools in my own personal skillset, but I see that I can no more do it for both of us then I could fly if I was a bird with one wing.  And he needs a partner who is either thick-skinned, impervious to passive aggression, totally devoted, or willing to absorb and hold whatever he dishes out without a need to hold him accountable or otherwise bother him with it.  He is unwilling or unable to be the partner I need, and after 5 years of examining this marriage from every angle to see if I could be the partner he needs I see that I cannot.  Or, I could, but I'd have to undercut myself with self-doubt in order to tolerate it.

I don't do that any more.