walls

Patience and Perseverance

/ christyterese / Leave a comment

I have this great relationship in my life.  It’s with a rock.

 

No, seriously.  It’s a little quartz bit that is shaped to a point and it hangs from a chain.  It’s a pendulum, and it is changing my life with all sorts of insights. Today it told me that “What’s going on” with me emotionally is that I am struggling with perseverance and patience.  And that clashes with someone else’s challenge to cope with my “Drive to Win”.

 

If you know me, even a little bit, you understand this post fully right now.  I could basically stop typing and you could surmise the rest based on the juxtaposition of Patience and Drive to Win.  Because they struggle internally, but apparently that struggle is now coming out, and potentially driving away others whom I don’t wish to repel.  So …

 

I approached my day with as much patience and perseverance as I could muster.  And this day definitely took some of each. I needed to call the housing authority that subsidizes my rent, because I felt they had made an error in figuring my new rent amount after the approval of my accommodation request due to disability.  I talked to two people, and then they put in a request for the person that I spoke with on Friday and Monday to call me. I suggested he may know more about my case, considering we had discussed it twice already. He called me back, walked me through the same response I had gotten earlier, and then I patiently thanked him for his time, while still feeling a mistake was made.  

 

But I didn’t let my Drive to Win intervene.  I let it go and hung up the phone. Fifteen minutes later, I received another call.  I was correct. Anthony, who had been looking at my case repeatedly, noticed that I had not been given the utility amount for a two bedroom, and the change lowers my rent and increases my subsidy.  

 

There was a woman in line at the market earlier who could have driven me nuts.  She was very scattered and also chatty and I could have thought, “If she would shut up and focus I would get my coffee and tomato and get home much faster.”  But I reminded myself that patience was an important focus for me right now, and instead I said to myself, “Isn’t she adorable. I’m probably like that when my brain fog kicks in and I’m in public.  Good thing I usually have Luke along to do the things for me when I get all scattered. I wonder if I pull it off as adorable?”

 

And that response made my day go an entirely different direction.  

 

I left the store feeling peaceful and entertained and a bit joyful.  I’m pretty sure I was smiling. I laughed aloud at a text Adam sent and people looked at me like I was strange.  It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. And that was just a trip to the market.

 

I also went to the pharmacy.  I said I needed to know if I could go without one of my medications, since permission to refill hadn’t come in.  The tech forgot to ask the pharmacist. I gently reminded her and she called him over. He gave me three days worth of pills and told me to get in touch with my neurologist to get a new script in as soon as I could.  He didn’t want me experiencing symptoms. Perseverance and patience win again!

 

A little later today, an old partner, whom I used to help with work tasks he didn’t have the capacity to perform–like typing things and using big words, for instance–called and asked me how to get “a blank page to type on” to come up on his laptop.  

 

Breathe.  Breathe. Patience, Christy.

 

This one took a lot of extra patience and perseverance.  

 

He finally found “Office” on his desktop and then “Word” inside that.  And a happy cheer came from the phone as he found that blank page. I congratulated him and then politely ended the conversation.  

 

Minutes later, he called again.  “Could I bother you for a minute?”

 

“What is it that you need?”

 

“Well, you can figure this out and get this printed.  I can’t figure all this stuff out. You can do this in a minute.  Can’t I just come up and you can do it up there?”

 

Breathe.  Breathe. Breathe.  Patience, Christy. More patience, Christy.

 

“You just need to click the little print symbol, or go to “File” and then click “Print”, so I think you can handle it.”

 

“You’re better at this stuff.  I don’t know how this stuff works.  Why don’t I just bring it up there?”

 

“My printer isn’t connected to my Chromebook yet, so you will have to wait for me to transfer it to my tablet and print from there,” I said, hoping to deter him from utilizing my skill to do his job.

 

“Well come down here and use my printer then.”

 

“No. I don’t want to come down there.”   Breathe. Breathe.

 

“Okay.  I’ll be up in a minute.”

 

Breathe.  Breathe. Plug in the computer.  Move the desk away from the window.  Prepare to do the task with haste and grace and then go forward with your life.  

 

As soon as he arrived I texted another man and asked him to call in a few minutes time to give me an excuse to shove out this one.  But he was with a client. I said I would make another excuse, but maybe he should call when he was done working, just to be certain I was freed from these clutches.  He said that wouldn’t be until 8. I’m not that patient. I would have to deal with this situation on my own.

 

But, frankly, the texts to the other man were part of dealing with the situation.  The jealousy meter on the ex-partner went up to “fuck this bitch, I’m outta here” with my second coy smile and giggle at the arrival of a text.  And we weren’t talking about anything to be coy or giggling about, but I knew that the fact that someone else had my adoration and attention would frustrate him.  It’s a terrible way to play with a person’s emotion to get the outcome I want. I can admit that without hesitation. But I don’t really have any shame over it, because I have been used for his outcomes time and again, without even a thought about my care or concern at all.  And I was being used by him at this present moment. He had a task that he didn’t want to try to accomplish on his own, so he bullied his way into getting me to do it for him. So, I fought back with my text game, and it worked. I was patient enough to complete the task that he needed me to complete–simply typing out some names and addresses, and then he went on his way.  

 

Now I am impatiently wondering if I will still get a call from my other friend after he finishes work.  Which is probably the worst impatience I could have, because he is one who cannot stomach my Drive to Win, and I cannot be impatient with him.  So, all of this patience today and all of my persevering is for naught if I cannot hold onto it for the long-term.

 

The long-term is kind of how patience works though, right?  Playing the long game. Waiting for the right moment. Anticipating the needs of others.  Being able to stop demanding instant gratification.

 

I fail at those things a lot just because I am super open and available as a person.  I say what I feel. I put things out there. And I am accustomed to being around people who are comfortable with that.  

 

I suppose I have always known that there are people who are not comfortable with that.  But those people simply were not my friends. They were outside the circle where I spend most of my time living.  And the thought that the shy, quiet, slow-moving, considering deeply, and taking their time to decide people should have space in my circle, and that I needed to make a space for them wasn’t one that concerned me much until now.

 

He isn’t a bore.  He isn’t a nerdy, weird, unsocialized guy.  He just has lots of layers of stuff. It takes time and energy to get beyond the surface.  And there are nights when I want to break it open and get in there and figure it out and know it–whatever is down inside there.  That isn’t how he works, though, so trying to do that won’t work. Only Patience and Perseverance and letting go of my Drive to Win will work.  The only way to know what is beyond the surface is to wait and watch and be present and let things slowly unfold.

 

I don’t need to be different to do that.  I just need to see differently to do that.  I just need to interact differently to do that.  That doesn’t change who I am or how I am, at my core.  It just opens me up to a possibility that I hadn’t taken the time to make available before.  It gives me an opportunity to learn a way of interacting that is foreign, but may have beautiful results.  

 

So, my rock told me today that I have to focus my attention on patience and perseverance and not my drive to win.  And it is proving to be an excellent guide.

 

It is a guide.  And that is what I call it.  Before I use it I have a mini incantation that I say, basically ending in “my guiding stone you shall be”.  It helps me find the way when I don’t really know which direction I need to point myself.

 

There are days when you wake up feeling strong and ready and full and you just go.  You know where to go and how to go and you do life. And there are days that you need a little guidance.  Today my guidance came from a little bit of quartz. It is a really smart bit of quartz, I think. It gave me excellent advice.  

 

I’ll keep working on Perseverance and Patience.  I’ll keep trying to let go of my Drive to Win. If the Divine is offering me guidance that says these changes will serve me well, I believe that it is true.  And I do believe that my bit of quartz is one way the Divine speaks. That seems foreign to many, I am sure. But seeing is believing, in many cases, and I have seen over and over that this little pendulum tells me the truest of things and the best of things.  I’ve grown to trust it over time. And I guess that is what it is asking of me now–to grow to trust people over time, if time is what it takes for them to let down all of their walls and let others see them truly.

 

I think I can do that.  It won’t be the easiest journey upon which I have embarked, but it might be a great one.  

 

Operation Patience, here I come … or wait, I suppose.

Project

/ christyterese / Leave a comment

Over the last several weeks I have been embarking on a project to increase my wall art.  I’ve lived in this apartment for five years now, and it is about time that I make the walls my own, instead of just putting a few things on existing nails leftover from someone else’s decorating.

It is a bit strange that there are any leftover nails, since the apartment was rehabbed before I moved in, but either there was a laziness about my apartment’s painters, or the nails that stayed were deeply embedded and left after some effort for removal failed.  But regardless of why they remain, I have used them for my own purposes, and put up a few pictures in the places that had some hardware already installed.

When my daughter and I moved in here, I had recently had surgery and couldn’t lift anything, so friends and family loaded my belongings on one end of the move, and nearby family unloaded those belongings and placed the heavy things in the places to which I pointed on the other end.  And while I am very grateful for the help that I received, once we were alone in the apartment that first evening, it still seemed overwhelming.  Unpacking each box and placing everything where it would come to belong was arduous, and more so because I wasn’t supposed to carry heavy things, and I own too many heavy things.  Even the boxes of bedding become heavy if you pack tightly enough—and I packed tightly enough.

So, turning the bare space into home took a long time.  And filling the spaces where we had left items behind also took time.  I’ve always used moving as an opportunity to purge, and I got rid of a lot of things before the packing even took place.  But over time, I had furniture and shelving and décor to make this house a home.  Except the walls.

I don’t know if it is the habit of moving every year for many years, or my own feelings of not being able to put roots down, or not having the energy to measure and countersink and nail that has kept the walls mostly bare.  I suspect that it has more to do with the feelings, but I can’t always find reasons for what I do with precision.

I do know that I have somehow shifted my thinking, and I want to cover the walls with items and words and pictures that make me feel comfortable and at home.

But, like all the projects around here, this one is about a quarter of the way to completion.

I have the habit of not finishing things.  And it isn’t because I am lazy … though I can claim fatigue and illness keep me from getting things done.  It probably has more to do with boredom.  I start a thing excited about the process of doing and with great expectations for the final product.  But hours or days or months down the road, I don’t find it fun, and I don’t care about it much, and I completely lose interest.

This habit results in all sorts of unfinished projects.  In a corner, there is a bin full of denim and denim strips that is meant to be a braided rug.  On my drafting table lie two unfinished canvases that are meant to be art over my bed.  In another two bins there are piles of fabric that are to be used for quilt making, once I can figure out how it is that I used to sew—clearly it is not a skill that I remember with ease.  There are coasters my mom painted that never got a coat of varnish as her dementia began to affect her art, which are still waiting for that coat of varnish.  I have a ball of yarn still wrapped around knitting needles in a bag, a potential scarf with multiple holes, because I suck at knitting, frankly.  There is a pitch fork setting on the landing where I requested the landlord leave it, so I could plant a row of lavender bushes along the side fence.

I clearly don’t discriminate.  Sewing, paper crafts, photo albums, gardening, and painting all sit unfinished and create disarray in my office/art studio space. I have tried to work out, time and again, why I lose interest in everything and complete almost nothing.  And I have no answer better than “I am an innovator”.

It is true.  I am an innovator.  I have all the ideas and little of the follow-through.  If I could be paid to think of new and interesting ideas, I would never have another financial struggle.  I am extraordinarily gifted in brainstorming, creating, and starting things.  I am really bad at the finishing of those things.

And while I don’t know that innovation is the full reason behind me not completing projects, it does point to some truths about me that should not be ignored.

I lose interest.  I need to be drawn into a thing, and it has to keep revealing itself as new and interesting. And I suspect this applies to all of my life.

The other day I had a second date with someone.  As we talked over our cups of tea, she told me the same story she had told me on date one.  She repeated the same information not just once, but twice, in one date—and the second date.  There should have been new things to talk about on date two!  And, just like that, I was disinterested not only in the repetitive stories, but also in the person telling them.  I wasn’t drawn in.  She didn’t reveal herself in new and interesting ways.  I even wondered if she was dating so many women that she didn’t actually remember to whom she had expressed what stories.  And our own story has likely ended because she told me hers twice.

That might seem harsh to some—especially those who are very accommodating and accustomed to routine.  But it doesn’t seem harsh to me, because that is how I approach all sorts of things.  I need that interest and I need that newness and I need things to change.  The reasons behind that need are vast and complex and numerous, I suspect.   The reasons are also, likely, contradictory—adding to the cognitive dissonance and dichotomy that I am prone to struggle with in life.

I think that I might always want change because I am afraid of stability, and I am afraid of endings, and I am afraid of stasis.  But I am afraid of those things because I want those things.  (Yes, I am aware that makes no sense.)  I would love to end the moving and find security and become a permanent fixture in a space of my own.  But I don’t believe that I am capable of that ending and finding and becoming, based on the events of my past.  I’ve lost faith in the idea that I can be home.

Security was very much lacking in my youth.  And not because I wasn’t offered a loving home or my needs weren’t met, physically.  My parents worked hard to provide for me, and I am ever grateful.  But I also felt captive and wanted to escape my childhood home, my town, my church, my school, and more.  I never felt home and safe and whole in any of those spaces.  I still don’t.  I might never feel home and safe and whole in those spaces.  And because I didn’t feel home and safe and whole, I longed for that.  I looked in all sorts of places for that feeling.  I think a few times I came close to finding that feeling, but something always stepped in the way, and restrained me as I tried to reach out for it.  Every time I thought I had found wholeness and a place to call home, it was torn from me or shattered or inaccessible.  And every time that shattering and tearing happened, I became more convinced that I wasn’t allowed to feel home.  I would never be whole.  I would never stay.

So, I keep moving, and I don’t dare to finish the projects and put the things on the wall.  I fear that the moment I claim this space as my home, it will be taken from me.  And that threat looms larger given my financial stress and disabled status.  I don’t trust that this is home.  I don’t trust that there will ever be one for me.  I’ve lost much of the hope that I can own a home, or feel at home, or ever be whole.  And my projects are like my soul—not complete.

I think there is some comfort to be found, however.  And I think that comfort comes in the starting of every new project.  I believe that the constant beginnings mean that I am still fighting toward the idea that home can happen, and that wholeness can be found, and that art installation isn’t necessarily a death sentence for the walls around me.  I trust that the new projects are proofs of the security and ownership and stasis to come.  I believe that one day my longing will be answered with fullness, and all of these projects can be completed—even the project that is my soul.

It might still take some months or years to complete the rug and the quilts and the art pieces for my walls.  And maybe some of those projects will be crossed off the list and the materials discarded or repurposed at some point.  But many of them will one day be finished and added to my home.

I have created a comfortable space here, in my spacious and sunny Westside apartment.  And even if it isn’t my permanent home, I am determined to claim more and more of it, for the time being.  I have finished some projects—building an amazing desk, creating a peaceful and inviting yoga and meditation space, curating the perfect guest room items to make others feel welcome, putting together the bits and pieces that come in the box of pre-drilled furniture items.  I think I can safely say that I will complete more projects over time.  And I think that I can safely say that I will work through the challenges of wholeness and home that present themselves as I work on completing those projects.

Hopefully, at some point, I can find enough peace and wholeness within myself that I don’t feel the need and longing that creates strife for my spirit, and makes me fear the loss and lack that accompany insecurity.  I still work to keep new ideas of a beautiful future at the forefront of my mind.  I work to keep on creating and brainstorming.  I imagine the home of my dreams.  It isn’t extravagant and it isn’t large.  It is just comfortable, bright, and happy.

And there are lots of finished projects on the walls.

Feeling

/ christyterese / Leave a comment

I have embarked upon the KonMari method of tidying my home and my life.  And it is a lot of damned work!  To collect all of your things is, in itself, a huge task.  To go through all of them is even more of a struggle.

But it is also a gift.

This morning, I went through all the stacks of paper that have accumulated on my desk as I sought to cleanse the past from my file boxes.  When I initially began this project, I had five stacks of paper:  theology stuff, philosophy stuff, sexuality stuff, resources, and the pile where things I couldn’t decide upon waited for further consideration.  And I fully intended to neatly file the remaining papers, and felt proud that I had accomplished creating a big bag of items to remove from my space.  After I began the art of tidying, and touched every item, and considered whether or not it sparked joy in me, I took those five stacks and narrowed them to about eleven pages, leaving two huge bags that I cannot carry for the trash heap.

Eleven pages.  That is all that sparked joy out of the mounds of items that I had previously thought I must or I wanted or I needed to keep.

The KonMari method is a way of choosing what you love.  And you do this by physically handling every item.  When I first began the process, and began touching each sheet of paper, I thought this would take me years to get through just the items on my desk.  But I was wrong.  I began to know immediately the things that I touched which touched my heart.  I sprinted through the process of cleaning my desk.  It took less than an hour to find the beautiful Wonder Woman covered work surface, and to feel free of all of that paper.

Just touching it let me know whether I loved it or not.  Just the feeling.

I’ve spent most of my life repressing one feeling or another, and in the process became an unfeeling being—untouched by what surrounded me and dissociating from the world and from myself.  Distance from feelings is sort of the norm for a lot of people in my history.  Somehow stoicism and “strength” have been placed in honor and to not show emotion or break down or cry have been ways that people around me approached life.

But that way of approaching life sucks.

Once those walled off places in my being where all the emotions were being stuffed began to crack, a flood of emotion happened.  And with that flood of emotion came care and compassion and love and passion and desire and purpose.  All of those things are good.  But in pushing back the anger or frustration or fear or confusion in my life, I was also making it impossible to wade in the waters of all those beautiful things.  They are all mixed together.  You can’t hide one and hold another.  You either feel or you don’t.

Feeling things can be really difficult at times … especially those times that bring up the anger or frustration or fear or confusion.  But feeling things can also be amazing and awe-inspiring and utterly fabulous!  And understanding that both are natural and normal, and that judgments of “good” or “bad” or “right” or “wrong” are not helpful or correct, but embracing all of them as a part of the human experience, brings great freedom and joy.

I am finding joy in eleven pages today.  I am finding joy in letting go of what doesn’t help me and embracing that which does.  I am finding joy in accepting that things serve us well for a time, and then we must send them on their way.  I am finding joy in touching and feeling and embracing and releasing.

There is another method that I am reminded of during this process.  Morita therapy is something that my daughter introduced me to, and it has become a great help, which parallels my experience with the KonMari method in some ways.  Morita therapy is based in accepting emotions—recognizing them and honoring them, but not necessarily needing to act upon them.  You feel all of the things, and judge none of them as good or bad, right or wrong, but just let them be.  Then you hold what you wish and release what you don’t wish to hold.  You just let the feelings come and go.  You needn’t act upon them.  So, when you feel anger, it is valid, but you needn’t punch people as a result.  You simply feel the anger, let it be present, and then send it on its way.  When you feel anxiety, or happiness, or fear, or peace, or whatever emotion may be present, you let it be felt and validate its presence, and then choose to act or not to act upon that feeling.  This is a rather simplistic explanation of the method, but explaining more fully would take up too many words and too much of my time.  You can easily find more information on Morita, just Google that shit. (Technology is fabulous sometimes!)

So, I sit at my very clean desk, and I think about feeling.  I think about touching my belongings and how easily I can feel whether a thing brings me joy or not.  And I think about touching my soul, and how it should probably be just as easy to know which emotions and thoughts and actions will bring me joy.  But for some reason it isn’t.

I blame conditioning by a patriarchal heteronormative society.

I blame lots and lots of things on conditioning by a patriarchal heteronormative society.  It deserves to carry that blame. It really screws up a multitude of things.

Somehow “strength” became synonymous with not showing emotion—that stoicism that I mentioned earlier.  And that meant building walls.  And even after they broke and the flood happened I kept trying to rebuild the walls.  Society wanted me to, after all.  Seeing and experiencing someone else’s flood makes your own walls crack a little.  So, avoiding anyone’s emotions seems a safe route to keeping your own walled in.  And when you fight for such a long time to patch walls, it becomes a struggle to do anything but … even when you know the patching is futile and robs you of the ability to fully experience joys and passions and loves.  It becomes a struggle to know yourself and accept your feelings.  It becomes a challenge to keep the walls down.  You keep feeling like you ought to put them back up.  And you feel vulnerable when you are walking around town without walls while all the others around you are locked behind rows and rows of brick and mortar.

But vulnerability is strength.  It brings happiness.  It offers you a more fulfilling life. And it frees you to feel all emotions, and to experience the fullness of humanity.

So, today I am vowing to touch all the things, and to feel everything—every part of my life, both internal and external—and to release what isn’t helping me and to hold what sparks joy.

And it is going to be a lot of damned work!

But it is also going to be a gift.

In the Name of Love

/ christyterese / 1 Comment

I was doing a bit of reading last night, in an attempt to fill insomnia time with something that makes it seem less like insomnia and more like productivity or entertainment.  The book is one I am almost ashamed to be reading, because its pages are covered with philosophies of giving = getting, and those philosophies almost always include a measure of victim-blaming and exclude concepts of systemic or institutional factors and their influence upon one’s current situation.  So, I usually get annoyed with such philosophies quite quickly, and sometimes I even get really angry with these types of books—yelling at no person in particular about the ways that my bed was not made alone, so no, I don’t have to “lie in it” unless those who victimized me have to lie in a bed far worse. (The number of times I have been told that I made my own bed, and should now lie in it makes me shudder.)

What I gave to the universe was NOT equal to what I received.  Innocence and autonomy lost at a young age cannot be blamed on the innocent who do not choose their victimization.  Did I make some unsavory choices in my lifetime?  Absolutely.  But did I make them without any influence of childhood trauma?  No, I did not.

I gave the universe love and empathy and kindness and creativity and beauty.  It gave me a lot of terrible crap in return.

But, I kept reading the book with the really messed up philosophy of giving = getting, because the thing it kept saying I needed to give and receive was love.  And as I read, it occurred to me that at certain points and in particular situations, I have stopped giving love.  The reason I stopped giving it, was likely because I wasn’t seeing a return on my investment, and because I have complex PTSD and suffer from chronic pain and am an addict and have all these reasons that the world became a place that hurts you, and not one that loves in return.  So, my choice to be mistrusting and build walls and shove my earbuds in my ears and blast Kesha instead of listening to my seatmate on the bus is a valid one, considering all the aforementioned reasons.  But, it isn’t getting me what I want.  And, let’s face it, what I want is what every being on the planet wants:  LOVE.

The challenge for someone who has been so deeply wounded that the scars will never heal is to continue to offer love and trust and vulnerability, even after doing so created the conditions for your wounding to happen.  When you offer someone your trust, and they betray it, or when you offer your vulnerable self, and someone takes advantage of that and uses your openness to harm you, it makes it really difficult to keep offering up your heart and mind and body to another—hoping that by some miracle this time is different and that this offering of your heart doesn’t add brokenness upon brokenness.

In some ways, we should never expect victims to trust again.  In many situations, the one who has been wronged should never give pardon and should never offer another the chance to wrong them in a similar manner.  Why should they?

The answer, again, is love.

Love is the reason I give pardon for past offenses.  But, that hasn’t put me, in some automatic fashion, back into a space where I can receive love with ease.  Because I try very hard to protect myself from further injury.  And that protection requires shutting people out and keeping people at a distance and creating walls and not opening up too quickly.

A friend once told me that I was not vulnerable.   And I was shocked by that statement, because I have been candid about my struggles for many years.  I feel like I share readily with people.  And I do share my story, but I do not share myself.  I don’t put my heart where it can be harmed.  My story doesn’t need to tell about the ways I feel vulnerable today.  I can offer a history without opening myself to others.  And that was the distinction that my friend was seeking to make.  He wanted me to understand that I couldn’t be known and loved if I had an alligator-filled moat around my heart.

I’ve improved a bit at letting people into that space.  The drawbridge goes down for my dad, and for my friend Luke, and for my daughter.  But, as time passes and I read books with terrible philosophies that tell me I get what I give, I realize that there is a tiny crumb of truth to the chapter that tells me I am not receiving what I am not giving.  Because I cannot expect love and trust and vulnerability from another if I won’t offer it to them as well.  And maybe one of the challenges to opening up is that I want the other to do it first, but their wounded parts want me to open up first—we do a dance of waiting and hoping and not receiving because neither of us wants to open up a space where a sword strike might land.  We all wait to remove our armor until the other has removed theirs.  And that gets none of us any closer to the love and trust and vulnerability that is required to further the relationship (be that a friendship or a familial tie or a marriage or whatever).

Yesterday, I was talking with my dad and said that my website seemed aptly named when I started posting online.  I really thought that I was learning to be whole.  But now I am realizing that I instead need to accept that I am broken, and that I might continue to break, so I ought to have chosen a website named “accepting that I am broken”.  He and I both, as though it had been practiced, said at once “Maybe, accepting the broken is how you learn to be whole.”  And I believe that may be the crux of the matter.  I need to accept breaking as a part of offering love.  And I need to acknowledge that offering love first is the best and fastest way to connect to others and to receive love in return.

I will get a few jabs from the protections (or even weapons) of others in the process.  I may increase my scars.  But, I will also be in a position to encourage others to let down their defenses if I have already dropped mine.

So, “Vulnerability” goes on the list of things I am working to improve.  And the shameful book of giving love to get more of it will probably be read to completion in a first attempt at finding the vulnerable self hidden deep beneath my strength and intellect and independence and lack of eye contact and background noise-removing earbuds.  I won’t paint a target on my chest.  But I will try to lower my sword, at the very least.  And hopefully, that won’t injure too much, and I can move on to removing one more bit of protection and psychological isolation.

I anticipate that this process will take years.  I’m heavily guarded.  But, it is a step in the right direction, I am sure, so I am committed to heading down that path.

I know that honesty begets honesty.  I know that trust begets trust.  I know that openness begets openness.  I even wrote a paper on such connections in an undergraduate communications course.  But, for some reason (or for many valid and obvious reasons) I stopped believing that love begets love.  It does.  It doesn’t always and instantaneously, but it will eventually bring you love in return.

So, here is a start at being open:   I don’t have enough love in my life.  I’m deeply wounded, in ways I am afraid to express, because many people in my past have shut me out rather than deal with the depth and breadth of my pain.  All the times I have allowed that pain to surface and become evident, people rejected me, avoided me, or insinuated I was some form of “crazy”.  But, I am trying very hard not to let the response of those people be shaped in my mind as the normative response to pain.  I am trying very hard not to let others shame me for expressing my suffering.  I am cutting out of my life the people that are gangrenous and make my wounds deeper and more affecting.  But, to the rest of you, I am going to try to open myself up and let down defenses.

This blog might get uglier before it becomes more beautiful as a result.

No amount of good grammar can make what ails me seem like entertaining prose.  Some of it—much of it—is a horror story.  But, I’m going to start letting it be such, and not sugar-coating struggle in ways that I believed protected me from harm.  I can’t be protected from what was.  But I can look with hope at what is yet to come.  And I refuse to believe that my story is a tragedy.  There will be a happy ending, but before that happy end, I need to find my way to vulnerability, and unceasing love … an epic goal, so maybe my life is an epic tale.  I like that idea.  I think I shall embrace my life as an epic story, with a glorious end yet to be written.  In the end, as with most epic tales, the main character finds love and peace and good, so I will embrace those, and perhaps emulating them will actually bring them nearer.

I hope I haven’t just agreed to the terrible philosophies of giving = getting.  But, I will at least admit to believing that proximity to good brings about more good.  In the moments when all seems lost, there is a good guide, or a good friend to carry you forward, or some good to fight for after a rallying, inspiring speech.  I need to start finding ways to trust in the good.  I need to find ways to start believing in love, once more.  And one way to believe in it, is to give it.

So, here I stand, ready to give more love.  I’ll let you know what I get in return.