I took about a year off from here. There was so much to do in my life. Some crisis, some joy, some just the everyday in and out of life. What I was really trying to do was learn. Figure out what it was that was keeping me in so much pain and confusion. I would work my ass off to get it right : be kind, be honest, no hypocrisy or manipulation and still it felt that I was constantly getting slammed to the ground when I least expected it. I was beyond naive, I always have been. Gullible was - and probably still is - an adjective a lot of people used with me. And then , of course, if you read me before (that year when I did post) you remember the tales of abuse - in my childhood, adolescence and beyond. But at a certain point - your life just isn't about that anymore. You've worked it out , intellectually at least. You've cut the offenders to shreds in your mind or in therapy and then forgiven them and then cut them up again - if you've been at it long enough. I've finally wound up someplace between compassion - empathy - and I just want to move on-ness.
That means - I don't trust people so much anymore. I don't need them to like me quite as much. And I don't take the blame for everything anymore. If you've fucked up, you better own it. I can work with that. Otherwise, I may not cut you off, but I'm walking way over here. These changes, and I think they are good changes, came because I had, finally, found a therapist that was trustworthy enough to help me understand that I knew more than I thought I did and it would be ok to put it to use. In other words, the whole victim thing, just wasn't working anymore. And by the way, people don't choose to be victims.....they are VICTIMIZED. And once that happens it's probably going to happen again and again until it becomes a way of life. And when it's a way of life, it's just that - your life - you don't know anything different. With a lot of help from a lot of people this last year, I know something different. And the amazing thing is that they have all been people who know what I'm talking about because they've been there or are there, still struggling to unravel it and they are good, they are good people. It will always be one of the saddest things for me to comprehend in life - that people who haven't suffered don't generally know how to help people who are suffering. Of course there are exceptions, I know that, I've just never encountered many of them in my life.
So anyway, I feel I've learned enough to come back here, but it's still kind of hard. I don't know why it should be, because everybody I read is just like me. Wanting to be loved, accepted. Sharing what's in their hearts - which is actually a lot of pain, doubt, angst and anger (if you read with an open heart) mixed with the joy and small triumphs that keep them going (keep us all going). And actually, I find just as much inspiration and motivation for my own life from the kind sharing of the harder parts of your life as I do from the fun stuff. And that does not exclude the many decorating blogs that I read by any means. Those people, talented and industrious as they are, reveal more pain and need between the lines than they know.....
But I struggle still, and I'd probably better get used to it. Because it seems that most of us are in doubt as to whether or not we are accepted, loved, heard. And this is the core of what I struggle with - so bear with me as I relate this short little tale :
When I was in about, oh, fourth grade, I guess - so that would make me about 9 or 10 - there was this really, really popular girl, Cecelia, who was rich and pretty to boot. Cecelia, or Cea as she was called (because all popular girls get cool nicknames...) sent out invitations for her birthday party. Skinny, little poor me (and we were poor, dirt poor) with her stringy hair and scaly, red rimmed eyes ( I had conjunctivitis - I was so stressed already!) wanted in the worst way to be invited like all the other girls. When that invitation didn't show up in my desk, I wrote a note to Cea, saying that I would please love to be invited to her party (wouldn't ya' know I'd do that?) That afternoon, as I came out to the playground for recess, there was Cecelia - standing at the incinerator with a ring of laughing girls around her, tearing into small bits, that fluttered down into the smoldering ashes, that heartfelt note from that lonely little girl. She looked up at me, that securely popular, pretty girl and smiled. The biggest most confident smile you can imagine. She's changed. I know she has because over the years I've encountered her a few times, in the grocery store and once in the mall and she was kind - in that overly, gracious way that reveals repent without actually saying the words. So I forgive her. I mean, my gosh, we were kids, all is forgiven. And I think life has probably dealt her a few, so that she sees life through a different filter now, or at least it felt like that when I saw her. But for me it's still there. That small rejection has been in my pocket all the rest of my life, like a tiny sharp edged stone. I have moved boulders of anger and despair over far greater crimes committed against me, yet still, that little rock remains.
I think no matter what I do, it may always remain. So I accept it. I accept that I will always worry about whether I am accepted, loved, heard. Maybe we all do. Maybe we all carry little rocks in our pockets and in spite of them we just get on with life. That's what I intend to do, rocks and all.
