Horrible Love

Have you ever been in love?  Horrible isn't it?  It makes you so vulnerable.  It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up.  You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life.... You give them a piece of you.  They didn't ask for it.  They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore.  Love takes hostages.  It gets inside you.  It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart.  It hurts.  Not just in the imagination.  Not just in the mind.  It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain.  I hate love.  ~Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

Be Brave... Be Vulnerable

"It is not necessary to be strong in every place if, in the place you are vulnerable, you are loved." ~ Robert Brault


The constant tension between being strong and independent and simultaneously open to receiving  love and care is a lot harder than I first thought. Perhaps it's only me. Perhaps I am just an unfortunate collection of experiences and emotions that makes it difficult for me to allow myself the luxury, or the necessity, of being dependent on someone else for some emotional support. There is always the worry that I'll lose something. Lose the love, lose the safety, lose the ability to be strong for myself. But as I move along in the world I am learning that it is through love, through accepting that I am loved, that I am growing in strength.
The irony is that I am the people pleaser, the doormat, the emotional scaffolding for other people in many areas of my life. Yet, I am the emotionally detached one on many levels. It's not that I don't want to give- it's that I haven't learnt how to. And now, I find myself in a position where I want to give of myself. More than ever before, I feel the urge to be able to free myself from the emotional strictures of a Spartan, but I have only one method of learning; Trial and Error.
Trial
Being taken out of my comfort zone and not having an excuse, an explanation or a desire to give up. Dragging myself through an emotional fire-storm that threatens to consume my very soul. Some emotions are useful and others are not. Some are poisonous and some hurt while they heal. But they all teach us something about ourselves. To be put in a position where you not only question your motives, but your very emotions as well- that is a Trial.
Error
Realising, after the fact, that you've stuffed up. Wanting to change what you've done, said, felt. Knowing that you can't. Hoping that in future you'll see yourself coming and avoid the catastrophe that is you. This is Error.
Having the strength to tolerate Trial and forgive yourself for Error is the basis of Vulnerability. The acceptance of Vulnerability is the work of Bravery.


Be Brave...Be Vulnerable

Authenticity

As humans we are social animals. We live in relation to other people and as such we have ways of being that are socially regulated and socially constructed. And all for good reason. Through our relationships with others we are able to form our world and our reality. How many of your accomplishments in life are entirely your own? How many did you achieve without the help of a teacher, a facilitator, a support network or a role model? Would they even be worthy of praise if there were nobody around to applaud you?

This is, of course, a problem for our own ideas of autonomy and identity. We all like to believe that we are individuals, separate and distinct from others. Whilst this notion is not entirely wrong, it is slightly misguided. This idea that we have of our own personal identity has led to the parallel idea of our own authenticity. The statement of “who I really am”. As if in some way we have a being that is not dependent on our interactions with others, not affected by our exchanges. We spend a lot of our time involved in sorting out who we really are and who we are when with other people. And trying to be true to ourselves.

And then we meet someone who ‘allows’ us to be ourselves. In whose presence we feel safe, and loved enough, to reveal ‘who we really are’. But the beauty of it is that it feels natural. It feels authentic. You just are who you are without any thought of being so. Your focus shifts from yourself to the other because you are not self-conscious. And mysteriously we feel like this is the one person in the world who ‘gets’ us.

However, this is not so much a mystery as it is a gift. It is the gift of creation. The creation of a meaningful relationship and interaction that allows you to construct yourself in ways that you are happy with. You are not so much revealing your ‘true self’ as you are creating a self that you are happy with. The other person happens to be in a dance with you, in which you both feel like you know the steps. The flow between you seems both easy and exciting and you soon forget, at least consciously, that you are busy building a social ‘you’. If you were with another person would you still make the same choices, feel the same way, and do the same things as you do with this person?

So then what is your individuality? Where does your authenticity lie? Someone once said that between action and reaction, between cause and effect, lays the realm of choice. Your choices are the mediator between your reality and your inner world, your individuality. In every moment we can make choices. Choices that are consistent with your principles, your values, your beliefs. When we find someone with whom we interact on such an easy and successful level it is because the choices are easy. They fit the notions that you already have of how the world should be, how the other person is, and how you are. These notions are malleable and can be adjusted where necessary, assuming they do not entirely overthrow your worldview. But I digress. The point to be had here is that our authenticity is not a separateness from others. It is not a sense of ‘being different’ from others. It is that when we are engaged in the dance of relating, we make consistent and congruent choices, but which are mediated and aware of the unique interaction at hand. We can be ourselves by becoming a social being with others. We are allowed to make these choices and express these opinions only when we are given the opportunity to relate to another human being.

So then, remember that we are meant to be social. We are meant to live in harmony with others by becoming social when the time is right. No man is an island. Nor should he be. Have faith in your principles, your convictions and yourself. And you will soon find ‘yourself’ present in every interaction with another.

A Bad Year

To be honest, this year has been a pretty bad one. Weird really, if you consider that since I turned 18 I’ve had this strange notion that the year I turned 23 on the 23^rd day of the 2^nd month, that it would be somehow special or lucky. That it would be my ‘power year’. Needless to say, life turned out differently.

This year has been both painful emotionally and painful physically. It’s been filled with disappointment and with sadness. It’s been an all-round horror story. My family and friends have had their fair share, and I will admit that not all the bad things have been my own personal suffering. But sometimes it’s the very people we love and who are hurt that bring us the most pain, because we are sometimes unable to lift them out of their sorrow, and the helplessness stings.

On Tuesday the 6^th of February, at around 16:00 the Plettenberg Bay Airport lost radar contact with the Italtile Ltd company aircraft. Nine people left a gaping hole in the lives of many, many more as they stepped from this world into another and their lives became memories. My mother knew them all personally, and amongst them was her best friend and confidant. Her friend left a space so big that it would take countless others to fill her place. In truth, it never could be filled. And holding the position she does, my mother had to sit, for months afterwards, and deal with other people’s grief, confusion and anger. Between 8am and 5pm she couldn’t feel her own grief, her own confusion, her own anger. But when she got home, often late, she did. And all I could do was sit with her.

Do you understand the pain of being helpless to remove someone else’s hurt? Do you know what it’s like to watch someone you love crumble inside like an empty building decays whilst the façade remains? It shouldn’t have been as bad as it was, but when you’ve buried both parents, and your husband, and when you’ve been in a church for funerals more times than you can remember, it gets to you. I have never met anybody as strong as my mother. And whilst I don’t deny that there are people who have experienced worse, and overcome more, it will always be my mother who defines courage, determination, perseverance and love.

A few months later her niece committed suicide. They weren’t close, but she stood by her brother and her sister-in-law and offered as much as she could. They were fortunate enough to have a strong support network and whilst they struggle still, they know that they are loved and supported.

As facetious as it sounds, my academics took a dive. My own personal standard was not met and I felt both disappointed and frustrated. Objectively, I still did well. But my future is riding on the marks that I achieve and the next year, possibly three, are determined by my ability to impress those whose job it is to judge my performance. And so achieve I must. But I did not. Not like I hoped I would. And now, it comes to the end of my year and I have failed to gain access to my ‘plan B’ whilst ‘plan A’ doesn’t look hopeful. And there’s nothing I can do about it now. Such is life, I guess…

Cheyenne, our 13 year old Rottweiler, and the last living reminder of my stepfather, passed away. She died of depression. As laughable as it may or may not sound, she starved herself into heaven. She recovered from her operation well. She wasn’t in any pain. She had no infection or complications. She just wouldn’t eat, or drink. She just wouldn’t live. And to think that just a week beforehand she was running circles around our little Jack Russell terrier. I’m not really a dog person, but I can honestly say that she had the most caring nature of any animal I have ever encountered. She was as much a part of our family as I am, and my mother took it hard. Yes, we have a new companion, who actually lived with Cheyenne through her last days. He was probably the last things she saw. But he’s no replacement, nor should he be.

And just today, a few hours earlier, I dropped my stupidly expensive phone which will cost a stupid amount to fix and which I would be stupid to pay. But such is life, I guess…

There’s no moral to this story. It just is. Life continues. The birds are still chirping in the dusky light outside. The rain still falls softly. I have many things to be grateful for.

I have my family, whom I’m beginning to appreciate more and more.

I have my health.

I have new and old friends.

I have a new love in my life.

I have the good fortune of a roof over my head and food in my stomach.

And in the end, what’s past is past. It will only live with me as long as I hold it.

“Consider how much more you often suffer from your anger and grief, than from those very things for which you are angry and grieved.” ~Marcus Antonius

Jealousy- in two parts. (2)

Catharsis

I saw him next, fully armed with my self-righteous anger. And my immediate instincts were to ignore him. To visibly show my displeasure. To make him feel, somehow, even a small part of the pain and the hurt. He approached, with what seemed to me, an air of guilt and deceit around him. He spoke to me in his usual honey sweet way but for some reason, this time, it nauseated and cloyed my mind. My heart flared up with disgust. And then the strangest thing happened.

I saw it in his eyes. It stopped me mid-charge as I rushed to make him feel my pain. I saw…hurt. I had succeeded before I even realised it. He could sense that something was wrong and his usually bubbly state was reduced to an anxious gaze and a slightly forced smile. Unfortunately for him, his decision to tell me even more ‘bad news’ resulted in my anger taking over again. And I automatically assumed (imagined) that he was lying to me. Once again, no proof needed. I successfully ignored him for the rest of the hour. When he came up to say goodbye, purposefully coming close and touching my arm gently, to force me to look into his eyes, I turned a cold glare and a stone smile on him.

Bad idea.

My heart broke. Those golden-hazel eyes bored right through me and the realisation of my stupidity flashed through my mind in a million disjointed pictures- like a giant mash-up of all the shit that my jealous imagination had fed me. And I realised that I, by myself, at the command of my jealousy, had created the very monster that I claimed to be fighting. I had completed the self-fulfilling prophecy. My actions towards him had hurt him and he had put his guard up. He erected those walls between me and him because he was being attacked. And now they became real. They moved from the realm of my imagination into his feelings and his very real reactions. I imagined them, and they came to life.

So you see: jealousy is creative. It builds castles in the sky and then makes you pay the rent in pain and suffering. But how to defeat the green eyed monster? To kill the demon within?

I firmly believe it begins with the realisation that your feelings are your own. No person can ever put their feelings inside of you. You are the gate keeper. You are the one who decides how you will react to each and every visiting emotion. And there are ways in which you can do this.

Self-reflection is one. It is the longest and the most difficult process of the lot but it is more rewarding and stable than all the others put together. It begins with questions. Honest questions to your heart and your mind. Questions that make you look at yourself from a perspective other than your own instinctual nature. Why? How?

Relinquish control of the outside world; it is only an illusion of control. You cannot physically make anyone love you. You cannot bend their emotions or their will. But you can mend your own. You can decide how you will react, and how you will feel. You are the master of your own ship. When you so firmly enmesh yourself in the imaginings of your jealousy you are giving away your power to that emotion. Those ideas in your head are fantasies. They are not real. They can never truly represent or understand what is actually occurring. So put them in a glass box. Examine where they come from. Why do you feel jealous? What is the cause of the jealousy? What is the purpose of the jealousy? How is it serving you right now? Realise that you cannot control the act of feeling jealous in the first instance. Something sparks it off and only then do you become aware of it. But now that you are aware of it, you can choose how to react.

What would have happened had I chosen to react differently? If I had tried my hardest to put aside my feelings and genuinely greet my friend? That hurt that he experienced would not have been caused by me, and he would not have retreated to behind his walls. And my jealous imagination would not have been validated. It would be disproved, giving me back the power. When we engage in this kind of conscious thought we can build strong, beautiful relationships because we make others feel safe. We allow them to learn to love us because we make them feel that we are a safe haven for their love and respect. Focus on what you’re doing instead of what you think they are doing.

Here’s a question for you to think about:

Are our emotions the consequences or the causes of how we are thinking?

Jealousy- in two parts. (1)

Genesis

Jealousy is probably the most creative emotion any human can conceive of. Even more so than love. It’s like a hot spark softly landing in a bed of dry sawdust. It smoulders for a second and then ignites- flames rapidly rising and consuming everything until there is nothing but ash and soot and choking smoke. And that’s how it always starts with me. A tiny spark.

I am no stranger to jealousy because it has a long history with me. We are like old opponents, wary of each other but comfortable in the other’s presence, that is, until we join battle again. But this time it surprised me. I can’t even remember clearly what the spark was. Being left out again? Or the idea that I had been lied to? No proof, but none needed. The flames are doing their work. And it’s oh-so-beautifully creative!! What started out as a slight disappointment grew into a simmering anger. And a simmering anger grew into a cold frustration, which grew into a desire to lash out.

In objective terms it starts with a perceived insult. It can be real or imagined, but your ego thinks that it has been hurt. You’re ignored or passed over for another person. Perhaps you’re not feeling wanted, or not feeling wanted enough. Perhaps you want what another is getting. And even, possibly, you want what you had before. But all of these wants share one thing in common- creative embellishment. Jealousy takes the mundane and makes it magical because in order for it to thrive it needs to make you think that you are inferior to the ‘other’. It needs you to believe that you are somehow being cheated of something you really want and need.

I wanted the attention. I wanted the love. I wanted the admiration, the time, the respect, the feeling of being wanted. I wanted to feel important to him. But he chose to spend his time with others. And my imagination filled in the blanks. In truth, he has every right. I do not have a sole mandate on his time, or his attention. He is another human with another life that is fully his own. And my imagination lied to me. When he went out, for a day- a single day in his whole span of life, in my whole span of life- my jealousy told me that he had chosen. It told me that all those things that I wanted were being given to another, to use or waste as they pleased. And my imagination told me that he was doing it because he really wanted to give it away to someone other than I. And my jealousy made up these wonderful fantasies of smiles and laughter and love between him and another- all because my jealousy took over my imagination. And my ego cried out in pain. And when it could cry no more, it rose up with a steely look in its eye and it went to sharpen its knife. It went to make plans of war. It sent out spies and it built a fort of hurt around it. And when it was ready it marched out to battle…

. . . To witness the bloody fight see part 2- Catharsis. . .

Love Thy Self, but not too much...

Sometimes it happens. Things come along that confuse you. For no particular reason you’re thrown into a world you don’t recognise. Its familiar but it’s not. As one character says in the film War Boys:

“It’s like I’m walking down a street, and I know it so well that I don’t even have to think about where I’m going. I’ve been down it a million times before. And then suddenly I realise that I’m in someplace new. Someplace I’ve never been before. But it feels like I’ve been here my whole life.”

And that’s exactly it. It’s that unknown that becomes your reality. It’s the natural change that happened of its own accord. And it scares you and intrigues you at the same time.

Things change between my friends and I. Sometimes it’s for the worse and sometimes for the better. But things do change. And at one stage I was afraid of that. I was afraid that it would mean the end of something or that the change would bring about a new way of being that might not live up to its past. But experience begins to teach me otherwise. Relationships are living organisms. They grow and mature. Sometimes they get ill and sometimes they recover from illness. Other times they die. But most importantly, they are alive with possibility. They happen at the level of change.

Probably hardest to deal with is the fact that a relationship is an interaction where both people can grow separately but not drift apart. My personhood, my identity, is not up for consumption by the other party. Nor are they my slave. I can only exist in a relationship if my boundaries are flexible but still present. The minute someone seeks to have a symbiotic relationship with me, they have lost the battle, and the war. I am one person and you are one person. I cannot know what you are thinking and you will never understand my motives completely. And this is not a sign of a failure but rather the sign of a healthy respect for the fact that you’re in a relationship with me as another human being. Symbiosis is essentially being in a relationship with yourself, which is pointless. When someone says to me ‘I know what you’re thinking’ or ‘we always think alike’ it reflects to me the notion that this person wants us to be symbiotic. It does not in any way represent reality. It represents their desire to be merged. An understandable desire, to be sure, but it is nothing more than a subconscious yearning to achieve personal validation. What better way to feel that your own opinions are justified than to find someone who completely agrees with you?

The inherent flaw in symbiotic relationships is that they are generally one-sided. One person gives and one person takes. One person becomes the emotional donor that sustains the other. One person wants to be completely in tune with the other in order to feel validated whilst the other tries their hardest to fulfil the role because they want to be needed. But in the end, the donor burns out. They cannot long withstand the constant demands on their energy, their personality, their essence or their love. And the partner is left wanting more.

Well, I have reached just such a stage. And I’d love to find a way through it that doesn’t involve running from the problem. I’d like to find the path of greatest growth, for both myself and my friend. And through it all I only hope that we can come to share a deeper love and a greater understanding of where we fit into each other’s lives, as individuals and on our common ground. And most importantly, I hope that in every relationship you and I come to realise the value of our own identity as well as the value of being able to love someone else for their own individuality. Because at the end of the day, the person you love should not be you.