Just a quick update for those newbies just joining me here, as well as those who keep returning:
Whatever you think you might know, if you haven’t read every single post from beginning to end, you’ll never have the full story, never see the fullness of my growth as a human, and my potential to continue to grow, still. You see, I know things, learn things, hear things, file it all away. You should realize now that even all of those posts don't tell the full story, the ones that are there are the ones that I have chosen to still share. There are more, always more. Unpublished, reverted to draft, saved for later only to hang out for years and years. Corrections, curations, concise, and even-wordier versions of the same thing…what does it all mean!? It means, my dear readers, that you have access to information that I have selected to give, things that I have worked through, things that I am still working on—it really shouldn’t mean as much to you as it will ever mean to me. Want to know why? Because it’s for me. Unfortunately, for some of you, it was never about anything else but me, as selfish as it sounds. You’re welcome to keep coming back here and checking what little progress that I have made in life, and I guess what I really want other people to understand is that this will always only ever be a small part of me, about me. You think that I should, would, tell you everything? Ha! I’m telling you what I think might be helpful if you are on your own journey to finding your true self, of healing trauma, or even just learning to navigate life’s many challenges.
The thing is, I don’t know that I ever even truly cared if anyone else can understand me, who I truly am, and what I’m trying to accomplish in my life. I thought that I did until I realized that it may not actually be possible to be fully understood as a person by another human being. My own age would lead me to believe that there is still progress to be made on all fronts, as I am old enough to know better but too old to give a shit what anyone else thinks about it. It turns out, a massive amount of steroids really just reveals my hidden anger and frustrations about silly things, but, when they finally taper to the end, I discovered that all my ranting was mostly just for fun and entertainment purposes. I really think that no one but my closest family members, the one I as born into and the one that I have created in life, actually truly know me, and even I am skeptical of that. Addison didn’t even realize that I had graduated college. Kiddo, I graduated college while I was pregnant with you! It’s just that I didn’t ever finish my Master’s degree. It hardly seems worth the effort it might take to do it now, as the return on that investment may never actually come to fruition. And all of that's ok. If I have shown my vulnerability to you, there's a reason for it--usually lack of food or sleep will push me into a moment in which it is rather difficult not to reveal my feelings. I would honestly rather not. You see, I spoke to some people who are nice at work yesterday and assured them that they don't have to go out of their way to try to talk to me or be nice to me. It's ok that I am unwanted. I can feel it, but I don't know that I can do anything about it yet. I suppose people are waiting for me to be mean to them, I guess? Were you mean to me? I am the mirror, I am the foil sometimes, people! It's what you don't understand about that that will eventually create the difficulty. If you treat me with kindness and politeness, you will not be surprised that I return the same. If you treat me with harshness and anger, it's what will be returned. Not every single time, as, you know, progress, but mostly that has been my function throughout time. I was once of the mind that one should be nice even if other people are not nice in return. I literally cannot do that all the time. I don't think that it is actually helpful, or healthy, to continue to take heaps of shit from people, and just keep letting it happen. Dad told me that his father had taught him, when he was young, that he could take a little shit but he didn't have to let anyone rub it in. I subscribe to another way entirely: Do no harm, take no shit. I also can't just let other people take a bunch of shit right in front of me and say nothing, do nothing. See, progress! I tell you, I had a person with whom I worked ask me about the letter to the editor that I wrote in high school--people are so silly to think that I wouldn't have changed or grown as a person since then--about not posting the Ten Commandments in our schools without offering equal space for the other religions to post theirs, and that perhaps the Golden Rule should be posted instead, as its likeness can be found in most major religions. What I said during that meeting, after chuckling, was that sometimes karma doesn't act fast enough for my satisfaction and that I'll not be letting anyone just shit all over me all the time anymore. The truth is, I can take a little shit but I ain't ever going to give you the opportunity to rub it in without getting some of it all over you as well. If you give me shit, and you get it right back, I think that's just fine. Maybe some day I will be able to look at you and say, ok, sure, heap it on. I don't think that day will ever actually come, though, because maybe I don't want it to! I think I related here that I had told my sister that I was sick of being nice to people--the part that I did't write, that I felt didn't even need to be said, was that I'm only sick of being nice to shitty human beings, especially when they can't be bothered to be kind to themselves or others. I can see you changing, making a little effort, and I will adjust my tactics to reflect those changes. I won't seek out to punish you for things that you have done to me that were unkind, I will just wait until it sorts itself out, like always. But I was mean to the lady who was shitty and unkind to me and I only feel a little bad about it. I don't know what her damage is, it hardly matters what the root cause of her suffering is, only that she has it and sometimes doesn't know what to do with it. That's okay, we all have been there, or will be there, at one point or another. I can forgive people and move forward and the default mode has always been polite. I don't know that I could outright be mean to someone who is actually showing me and other people kindness on a regular basis. If you're questioning my actions, perhaps I am also questioning yours and your motives. I always have. I probably always will.
I will reiterate: you don't have to go out of your way to be friendly or nice to me, it's not necessary. Will I return that friendliness and kindness with the same vigor as I return the hatred and anger that I receive? Absofuckinlutely. It's just that, I don't want to worry that you're going to be friendly and kind to me, perhaps even befriend me, and then once you get to know me, attempt to use the things that you know about me against me, to hurt me, or try to hurt me, for reasons I will never understand. That's what has been done to me all my life. I realized, much too late, that most of the friends that I ever had were just not good people. The 'best friend' that I had my last year of high school? She wasn't really that great of a friend to me, it turned out, and when I moved back here and ran into her at the ex's house she said, "You know I didn't fuck him, right?" I think she went on to say that she wouldn't have done that to me or something like that. "You can have him, I don't want him," was my response. I was polite and nice to her when I saw her that day, as she had been to me. But she isn't my friend. Hell, she probably never really was my friend. I will never know, really, if any of them were. I don't know that it matters now.
Playfulness comes when you are comfortable in your environment and you have healed your trauma. I can be playful, I can do things that I enjoy in a playful manner, and even make the occasional attempt at a joke, although not always successfully. I can also just be plain weird. That's okay, too. I know I have said some off-the-cuff shit to some people just to kinda gage their responses and their reactions. It's not ever planned, it just comes out of my mouth without my thinking, if I don't stop it. Oh fucking well. I have tried really hard to not talk to people as much, whether or not that's good remains to be seen. What I do know for sure is that when people say some off-the-cuff shit to me and I find it weird, I can't seem to completely control my facial expressions in response to it. One day someone told me, unprompted, that her kid was a psycho. And then went on to say that they were four years old. I tried to say as little as possible to this person, because, who the fuck says that about their own child, and to a stranger? I don't want to know the person that says that about their own child. I also heard a woman go on and on about birds the other day, before smiling and tuning out the conversation completely to concentrate on my work and try not to make more mistakes. I'm sorry about all your illnesses, guys, I'm sorry about your negative experiences with nature. I'm sorry that you think that my reactions to assholes is me being intentionally mean. It's a reaction. Ain't none of that shit that's going on in anyone else's life any of my fucking business. Not because I don't care about you as a human being, but because that's your life, and I'm definitely not playing a part in it. I am an extra on the set. I'm here merely for the appearance of many people in the background. That's it. Sometimes I am the mirror, the foil. Sometimes I am the lesson. Mostly, I am just learning my own lesson.
I don't know that I will ever be comfortable around new people. I don't trust people. I want to be able to do these things, and I think that, eventually, it may work out that I can, but I don't expect it to happen any time soon, and neither should you. All of the things that have happened in my life, I have learned from them--and what I have learned, really, is how truly cruel people can be to one another. It's not a lesson that is easily forgotten. I don't want your pity and I don't want to keep bashing all the dead horses that are lying around on this blog, but something has to give. I worked on, in therapy, as a goal, to be able to be touched by other people and not recoil at the thought of it. My ex husband knows this. I think he sought to use this information against me. What he doesn't know, though, is that I told him that I didn't like to be touched but the part I didn't say to him was that I didn't want to be touched by him. I don't know why I bothered to spare that motherfucker's feelings when he never would do that for me and my own feelings. Oh well. My knee-jerk reaction to him touching me at the waist with both his hands, unexpectedly, to 'keep me from falling,' when, during the holidays, we had bustled into the utility room behind our kid, only for him to turn around and come back as I was on his heels, was to say, "don't fucking touch me!" I had been working on it in therapy. And it tumbled out of my mouth automatically and I was so happy that it did, because that was the small goal. He got so angry and upset, even after I told him that I didn't really want anyone to fucking touch me, that I didn't particularly like it, and that it wasn't just him, that he just left abruptly at Christmas--of course, this was after we had separated and he was there because my sister was concerned he might lose power and freeze to death because of the winter storm. But, what I had said about not wanting to be touched was a kind of a lie, one of those little white ones that are 'okay' to tell people so their feelings don't get hurt, as it was explained to me when I was a small child who was trying so hard to understand the difference between a little white lie and all the other lies. The truth is that I just didn't want him to fucking touch me. I wanted for people, especially those who actually care about me, to be able to touch me without me absolutely hating it. I wanted to be able to be hugged by another human being and not be just waiting for them to let go because it just made me uncomfortable. I wanted to be able to return the hug. I did it successfully not too long ago. The day that I hugged someone who had just recently met me, someone who was trying to be nice to me, and was able to return the hug without feeling uncomfortable about it--I considered that day a success for me. I had done the thing that I had set a small goal to be able to do! Yay! (mock my words and small joys all you like, it only makes me more glad to be able to spread joy when I can) And, even though that person had seemed like, at least to me, at the time, to be attempting to be friendly and get to know me, I withheld the things that I once might have shared about myself, like I have learned to do to protect myself from those who seek to harm me with that information. I learned that from someone who abused me. Don't share anything with an abuser that might be used later to hurt you--it's just too bad that you never really know what that is until someone attempts to use it against you. I have not yet unlearned the things that I made a habit of doing to protect me. I have yet to learn to trust people that I don't know, and even those that I do know, I am still skeptical as to their motivations at times. Maybe that will change. Maybe people will show me that there is a reason for that to change. I don't know, yet, though, that that's the case.
You see, the jury is still out, they are weighing all the things that you've said and done all your days and are trying to decide if you are a friend or a foe. I seek to have neither at the moment. All one has ever given me is the other. Friend turned to foe, foe turned to friend. It's impossible to see things in the rainbow spectrum of colors when, especially at first glance, everything seems so black and white. What you don't know is that I bought the books that teach people--trained professionals--to deal with people like me. When I cracked the cover of that first book, I learned something about myself that they were never going to outright tell me, as it is not their strategy to divulge all the information that they have and the way that it is laid out to them, even if it would help someone like me. What I learned that day was that, yes, I can be described as seeing things only in black and white sometimes, but I can choose to try to be another way as well. It just takes effort. And a lot of practice. I'm still not great at seeing the full spectrum of colors of every situation, I usually only see in black and white dichotomies when I am struggling, ill, or even just at the first, initial, glance. It sometimes takes effort on my part to be able to see the things as a color on the spectrum of all possible things. Not everything is black and white, even though it would seem like it might make things simpler if they were. The truth is that people aren't all good or all bad. They and their actions lie along the colorful spectrum of all things as well, and to think otherwise is a fallacy. I know this already, of course, I am just relating it to you here and now, as it seems that, for this moment in time, I seek for those who think they know me to understand me better, even if they can never truly know me. That's what I am feeling in this moment. Just try to keep in mind that moments and feelings change and are ever-fleeting, at least for me. I don't know about everyone else's, but mine are different from moment to moment, day to day, week to week. Always changing, always. One therapist described adapting to the changes in my emotions throughout the day, throughout a week, a month, et cetera, as riding the waves. I have been riding these waves for a long time now. Sometimes the waters are flat and would make a sailor sad, other times the waves are choppy, stirred up by gusty winds. The point is that they never stop fluctuating. That is just the way of things. It may not be that way for other people, I can't pretend to know what everyone goes through all the time, but if it feels anything like what I have been through during my life here, then I know for sure that I can, and do, empathize.
I'm not sure what the point of all this is, really, this time. A lot of people have said a lot of weird shit to me, as I certainly have to them, over the years, and I just can't be bothered to try and figure out why anymore. If you seek to harm me, then so be it. I will continue to set boundaries where I think it's necessary. I will continue to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all when things seem to get difficult, or weird, for no reason that is easily apparent to me. I thought, for a while, that if I just kept pouring out all the good I had to give in the world, that it would just keep coming back to me. Now I struggle to understand why all everyone seems to want to do is try to virtue-signal their way into one another's good graces. I am confused by everyone's lack of accountability--even if it is only to themselves. Why can't other people police their own behavior as they seem to do others so easily? I seek to understand other people but I never really have, and I guess maybe I never really will. I think maybe that has to be okay, too. I don't understand you! You certainly may never understand me, and I gave up on being understood ages ago. As a small child I gave up on understanding why I am so different from others and why so many other people view me, how I am, how I didn't choose to be, as some sort of threat or affront to them personally. I just know that it happens, it continues to happen, it will probably always happen. I gotta let that shit go too. It's going to take effort to make progress there.
I don't know that it was the right choice, but I chose to show some vulnerability to the people who have been kind to me, to let them know that I was struggling to feel comfortable in that place. I don't know if it was alright for me to have done so. I feel like I showed them how they might be able to hurt me. I guess, if they choose to, they will try to hurt me even if I don't want them to, even if I don't do anything that warrants ill will. I was not very nice to the lady who smacked me on the shoulder when we worked next to each other earlier in the week. I told her that I thought I liked it better when she wasn't speaking to me. I was not very kind at all when she kept giving back the things I was making for repairs--repairs that I am fairly certain wouldn't have been necessary if she hadn't been actively tearing the shit up. I had laughed it off because it was ridiculous and just thought that laughter was a much better response than to get angry about it. I don't know that that was alright on my part, but it's what happened and I only feel a little bad about it, and only because I think that she probably isn't an awful person but, rather, someone who doesn't quite fit in either. Maybe she has had similar difficulties in adjusting to the challenges in life as I have had in my own? When she had smacked my shoulder, she may have been attempting to include me in playfulness that I don't feel safe or comfortable enough to participate in. I have seen and heard other people aggravate each other playfully at work and I don't feel safe to let my guard down anywhere except when I am all by myself or with people who are very close to me already. Even then, when people who are close to me are around, there's still a little bit of me that is guarded. A little bit of me that holds back on what I truly feel and think, always. I don't know that I will ever be comfortable enough with anyone to let my guard down fully, ever. I don't know that I ever really have. I don't know that I can. That's probably something else that I should work on, but I don't know that I can fix that at all and I don't know that I should.
So, do with this information what you will. Just try not to understand me without first attempting to fully understand yourself.
When I woke up this morning, the sound of birds chirping greeted me and I decided to come here and work on the things that I have struggled with recently. I know that I haven't done everything perfectly in this life and that we all have our own struggles in doing right and being kind and I try to keep that in mind when I can--is that something that you can work on as well? Is it possible for you to forgive? Am I capable of forgiving others and letting things go? I guess there's always more work to be done because I would definitely like to find out if I am capable of letting things go, of really forgiving people for being shitty. Shouldn't I continue to attempt it anyway???
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