A Guests Journalling

[The 'I' that i am..]

The I that i am, The 'I' that i was, The 'I' that i hope to become are all within me. A writer's journal.

Seems like there's a bit of a bash-a-guest going on still, somewhat milder though this time. That's good. It's become obvious because of people's inability to let the subject go that those of us who choose to post as guest continue to annoy certain posters who choose to use ID names. Funny how the habit of posters using ID names doesn't appear to annoy any of the guests. I could imply from this that guests are more tolerant than some of those who post using ID tags but I won't. That would be a too convenient and too superficial position to take.

Elevating the position of posters who use names to some elite superior force, or saying they are of more mature nature or further along in the healing process is myth. It is another  'ism', and can't possibly result in cohesion. The world already has too many 'isms' created out of 'fear of the different'.

Has anyone ever encountered sexism, dealt with sexual harrassment, gender issues, chauvinism. I don't think there would be one woman here who hasn't hundreds of times. What was the underlying motive of the perpetrator. Power. Seizing and maintaining power to be precise. It's an interesting study, the principles of the suffrage movement and the issues that have held this movement back, women being the 'last slaves.'

The situation that guests seem to repeatedly come up against here is a harsh intolerance from certain quarters. This displays a potential for bigotry which if left unaddressed leads to resentment and animosity and oppression, resulting eventually in 'cliques crowds and gangs' (good book). Minoritity groups of all races colours and creeds have had to try to deal with this issue of intolerance and it is operating on a mini-level here in cyber-world. But it has happened to woman forever so the woman's movement is I see one of the most vital movement's of all.

Quoting Virginia Woolf, "At any rate, when a subject is highly controversial - one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. One can only give one's audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, and the idiosyncrasies of the speaker."

To be whoever we want to be, and relate on our own terms, under our own conditions. That is FREEDOM. Isn't that what women want, what women now demand. And we won't accept anything less, because it's our right.

I believe this principle applies across all walks of life, even on this board and if any person denies or ridicules or attempts to deny or ridicule this right of freedom we have, they are oppressors and abusers themselves.

I am going to relate this to being guest as well. Guest is a legitimate accepted post option on this board and is also a minority group on this board. But in no way is it a lesser inferior group. A person may have no desire to form relationships or seek advice here. That doesn't mean that he or she hasn't dragged, then crawled, then stumbled, then walked the hard free road out of abusive relationships. Just because guests don't form relationships, this should not be taken as rejection by people who use names and ID. That is a tool available for those who wish or need to bond with others here. That is a valid, not to be ridiculed, aspect of posting here too. The positive side for the posters with names is that guests can't gang up on you throught he use of private mail. Guests have no private mail boxes to contact each other at. It seems that the system already favours the posters with names, so I wonder why that wouldn't be enough to satisfy those with ID tags.

Below is an excerpt from a poem quoted by Virginia Woolf in "A Room of One's Own," addressing the suppression of female creativity.

How are we fallen! fallen by mistaken rules,
And Education's more than Nature's fools;
Debarred from all improvements of the mind,
And to be dull, expected and designed;
And if someone would soar above the rest,
With warmer fancy, and ambition pressed,
So strong the opposing faction still appears,
The hopes to thrive can ne'er outweigh the fears.

by Lady Winchilsea 17th Century


How we are fallen, fallen by mistaken rules,

Debarred from all improvements of the mind.

And if someone would soar above the rest

I read those 3 lines and they peirce me in the light of guest bashing and what I see as a concerted attempt to suppress guest creativity and participation and involvment. Especially when someone hearkens back to an old bash-a-guest thread, starts it as a new topic and after only 2 sentences is referencing to N's. Here we go again. Round and round the mulberry bush. No, not all or I think any guests here are N's. I think an N wouldn't hang around here for more than 10 nano-seconds.

But the sad part is the trying, the naming, the endless attempting to construct these rules that suit you and only you. You don't take me into account, my need to be me, my freedom, my desires, my rights, the environment I need to soar in.

My mind needs to be free from names and identity. My identity is new and also still in the making, it's a work in progress, so is my essay on life. I can only write like this, free from your expectations. Free from your rules. In trying to make me become like you, or to make me you, you kill me, you kill my new fragile identity.

I question the creation of opposing factions where it is totally one-sided and created from one side. The constant pressure in trying to persuade others to conform to your needs or demands. And so many arguments are presented, genuine, sweet and caring. Like, how we want to get to know you better as guest? How can we form a relationship with you as guest? How can we give you help as guest?

These are all questions which I don't feel I can answer for anyone else, but for myelf I say I'm on a long journey of self-discovery and this board is a small part of it. I learn participating freely at my own comfortable pace, from my own comfortable distance. I learn from historical threads and the evolution and growth of different individuals. So much learning here, and I share here as I feel it's appropriate and if I have some experience I think may be of value to help someone encountering a problem that I believe I have passed through succesfully.

Interestingly, no guest has asked or event hought of demanding for the ability to use names to be removed. Or sugested that we make it compulsory for us all to be guests only with no message boxes.

How would the named feel if we 'guests' dedicated whole threads to this discussion, the discussion of your fate, demanding that you change to be like 'guets'.  Wouldn't it be a complete waste of time and complete absolute nonsense. And yet for some very strange reason you don't get. This is exactly how ludicrous your topics and posts re-guests in this regard appear to me.

There is enough room here for different identities. I guess if a named moves out to become guests there were reasons which only needed to be good enough for the person. This is not anyone elses decision. I think it's probably been the case more than once.

Whilever a harsh intolerance is propelled by the strong personalities, I can see that this habit will continue and will grow. Wouldn't it be ironic if because of intolerance, one day guests outnumber the named.

I am simply journalling here. All arguments I think have been heard on the other threads. I just wished to express my views here and why I feel the way that I do. I hope a spirit of tolerance can be extended to me, but if not, so be it, because I post as guest and ever more shall do so.


Guest

[Anonymous]

interesting post.
I feel I must post as guest too, in fact I think many people do.

I have only ever participated in a real life support group as a member once before, in my early twenties, and I hated it. I could sense the pain and anger and negativity of every other person in the room, and the facilitator seemed oblivious. I was terrified.

Since then I have learned quite a lot about group dynamics and I know a good group lets everyone have their turn and their voice, and members try to be positive and not attacking.

On the internet group dynamics can tend to become savage I've noticed, as people forget they are dealing with other humans, and it's all too easy to hit send and forget about it.

Interestingly though- I didn't read your post at first because the layout looked like 'the nasty guest's'.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your reply,

I am involved in a few small groups as well as one large work related group. I find groups a fascinating study. I read an excellent book 20 maybe 25 years ago about groups called 'Cliques, Crowds and Gangs." How groups evolve and the '100th monkey' principle plays itself out.

The best and worst aspects of group and gang mentality were researched by a fellow, the author.

He went 'undercover' to conduct his research which was very compelling. He joined gangs and groups and clubs of a diverse range and variety. He even became a member of a street -gang for a while. His findings were so interesting, especially how he found groups almost always followed the same unconscious path of construction and sometimes destruction.

In each group you get the leaders and the leaders off-siders or henchmen. Being the leaders right-hand man becomes a highly prized position, and is a very competitive place to be. Don't ever try to displace a right-hand man if you value your life, in other words. Then of course there are the followers, who include the carers and the jokers. The joker is an interesting character. His job is to relieve tension in the group when situations become heated, always by humour. Humour is a powerful, extremely effective tool but also can be destructive in some contexts. Creating humour about another human's pain for example. How often I have observed this in real life too.

Interestingly, these roles are often assumed by individuals unconsciously. Then there are the leadership battles, or perceived leadership threats that often result in collaterol damage to the group. This is where the carers come in. They try to help people feel better if they are discouraged or wounded by the group. The carers job is too look after those who are sick or have been injured by the group or members of the group itself. Then of course you get your facilitators whose job it is to organise events and activities that the leaders have decided everyone needs.

Alternatively, it becomes the whole groups job to look after those injured by outsiders. The carers mentality tends to understanding and encouragment, sometimes deflecting group hostility onto themselves while they are tending the sick and wounded. The carers also are the main ones to contribute in maintaining a good retention rate. They work at keeping people in the group. The carers want a big happy family and tend to avoid contemplating group politics. The 4 personalities can be so complimentary I find.

I still find the whole concept and study of groups fascinating and I definitely see the principles of the group mentality at work here too. I'm a member or a writers group and we meet twice a month. Been in it now for a few years. Having my work critiqued a person or people who I may have previously given what could be interpreted as an 'unfavourable' or 'negative' critique to can be an extremely uneasy experience.

What I have learned to do is to accept the critique and look for truth in it. I refuse to go to that place in my head where my heart wants me to go. That place that will so easily allow me to dispose of the critique with speed and precision, without giving it any value. It's where my mind would convince me that the person gave me a harsh critique because they are holding a grudge, and they resent me. This thought preocess is theif and would rob me from growth and development.

I don't go there anymore, fortunately. The leader of my writing group took out time with me and was able to impart this lesson to me in my early days. She's many times published and I've learned a lot from her. I think this is the most valuable lesson to date she has given me.

'When subject to cricism or a critique, separate the person from the criticism. Imagine in your mind that the critique is coming from someone you love and respect, even God, if you're religious. Then turn the criticism or critique this way and that. Look up from underneath and down from above, and investigate it without fear. Look for the beauty of truth in it. If none appears then dispose of it gently, with the full appreciation that someone took the time to care enough to read your work and form an opinion and risk sharing their personal perpspective with you'. I love this thought, I know it's helped me in family and life issues too, not just with with writing, but it did there too. It put me in a much more healthy 'group mindset' whenever choosing to be involved or relate as a part of a group.

Yes, I suppose the safety that the internet affords allows people to respond more savagely. I would suspect that this savagery was in them all along though. We only ever see the surface with most people we meet. I think there may be beauty too in savagery.

The 'I' that i am, the 'I' that i was, the 'I' that I hope to become, are all within me and still journalling. Thanks.

[Anonymous]

I'm just pondering and mulling through my own thoughts here on Pandora's thread, "Loving the self-absorbed." Guest and Pandora's question's regarding why some of us become the bad guy or are made to feel like that. Feel free to read and no comment necessary.

WARNING! WARNING! it's a longy and it's actually a type of therapy for me.

I feel I have a thought to jag on this topic of Pandora's, so I'm hunting for it here. I know I fall into this type of guilt mentality too, even though I know better. I don't want to cause a log-jam over there with this, my rambling, so I've brought my thoughts over here to my journalling. I feel under no restriction here.

I know I was definitely the bad guy in most everbody's eyes after I left my first husband. I felt so guilty and responsible for everything that was unhappy about that marriage. I just couldn't make it work, and I know how damn hard I tried.

I got the kids, and he got the friends and family.

He was a very-self absorbed individual, plegmatic by nature, and anyone who understands the basic temperaments knows that certain types express aggression differently. He was a passive aggressive. Anti-social, stubborn, cutting dry humour, punishing, withdrawing, critical, gossiping and a couch potato. He reacted very negatively to any authority figures and hated all police for some strange reason. He wasn't a criminal though.

He hated being told what to do at work by bosses or at home by me. It used to drive me up the wall. I had to be very careful in asking him to do things with the kids or around the house. It had to presented in such a way that it he would think it was his idea or somehow would mainly be of benefit to him.

I remember how often we would be getting ready to go out, he'd get himself ready and watch TV while I'd be getting myself and the kids ready. If I asked him to help, or made any request at all he'd say "If you ask me or interrupt me one more time we're not going." I didn't drive a car back then, and the kids and I learnt not to interrupt him. He meant it. So many times, we'd all be nearly ready or ready to go out, and because he was interrupted, he just wouldn't go, so we couldn't either.

A christmas party, friends birthday party, church function, so many times he would just throw the car keys down and watch TV and not take us. It was awful. Other people never saw this side of him in depth though. If his boss criticised his work, he'd just quit. That was it, employed one day unemployed the next. Didn't matter that we had bills and kids. But the other side of his coin is he's a great friend to others. People who don't live with him really like him.

I remember he would go to, and throw himself into working bee's at our church and mow the minister's lawn, and clean windows. Our lawn was 2 feet high and risin', and he didn't care. The kids couldn't play in the yard for fear of snakes. We had acreage at the time. "I told you, nag me one more time about the lawn and you'll be doing it yourself. Right. I'm not doing it now." Zot. End of story. Stubborn as a mule. And nothing could budge him.

In the end I tried to make our marriage work by starting my own home-based business, to have regular income supply. That was foresight because he eventually gave up on working completely. It probably also contributed to him giving up work when he saw the money coming in. My business grew and became quite successful and after a few more years of limping along with him as an extra child to care for I divorced him.

But before I divorced him he was mainly at home, watching TV or playing records. I was working and he just plain refused to help in any way. He never cooked, washed, cleaned, he even put a lock on the inside of the bedroom door so that the kids wouldn't and couldn't disturb him. I slept in another room with the baby.

The messes I would come home too were unbelievable, and often dangerous. I found my two year old one night asleep outside the dad's bedroom door on the floor. He'd cried himself to sleep, locked out, because daddy wouldn't open the door.

Little kids making sandwiches for their dinner with large sharp cutting knives, and I'd find all the ingredients on the kitchen floor because they played with it all, or one was too small to reach the benchtop. Dinner in the fridge just needing heating up on the stove by the responsible adult who instead chose to lock himself away playing DOORS albums.

I don't remember the details of the specific incident that sent me out to get an order on him to move out of the house. But I do remember being impacted, like a lightning bolt, of the futility of what I was doing. Keeping my family together and literally working my fingers to the bone to keep it together. Because of my messed-up childhood I wanted more than anything for my kids to grow up with their two parents under the same roof and be normal, and able to fit into the world. Not be fringe-dwellers like I had felt I was. Then I saw, gradually at first, then vis lightnin-bolt what it was really like for them. It wasn't normal or healthy or happy. Now I'd seen it, that it was my fault, I had the responsibility to do something about it.

After he was evicted, he was shocked and devastated and over about a 6 month period regularly wrote me sad heart-wrenching letters on how much he loved me, how he could see how he'd taken me for granted, how different he would be in the future if I took him back.

Later I found out how he was preserving his dignity while at  the same time writing me these love letters. He was telling his family and our friends nasty stories about me, saying he had nothing but contempt for me, saying things like "She's a big-shot busines woman now, and has thrown away her family and religion for money."

I didn't fall for his false promises fortunately, even though I did think he was capable of change. I just didn't believe he could change the way I believed he needed too. No matter how much his heart may have hurt.

It's like the Thomas the servant says in 'A Man For All Seasons' , "I wish water was beer, but it's not!!!"  That water could never become beer. Once I knew what I needed and wanted, and what our children needed it became easy, in as sense.

Our friends thought my business success had gone to my head. I got shunned at our church in a major way. That was a terrible period. It felt like the Moses parting the Red Sea when I walked into that church after I'd put divorce proceedings in place and had him evicted. All I saw were rows of turned backs when I went to church a few more times. If I started to walk over to an old circle of friends to say hi, they would rapidly disperse into the crowd. Close friends cut me off, accusing of being selfish, and self-centred. These people had been my closest friends for years. I got over this too eventually.

I lost his family for a long time, and these were people I'd come to love and accept as my own family. That was hard. They completely rejected me for years, during the loneliest period of my life. After we divorced I contacted my ex-brother and sister-in-law (Church minister's themelves) who I had always felt particularly close too. I asked if my son could come and holiday with them because he was missing them. They told me that I didn't deserve their help.

Everyone abandoned me and our children at that time, except for a couple of very close personal friends from my pre-marriage days. These were people who if they came to visit me, my ex would ignore them and go out or go to bed. But everyone else at the time seemed to want to see me fall flat on my face, I think. I came to terms with this eventually and don't hold it against them. I rationalised that they didn't want to be seen to be helping me make my escape. They didn't want to be seen to be condoning me or supporting me because of their closer family ties with my ex.

Thankfully I didn't fall flat on my face, and my kids were and are much happier and healthier and eventually so am I.  

Anyway, I grew up a lot in those hard early post-divorce years, and after 15 years in that marriage I realised the cold harsh truth.  It could only ever have 'worked' on his terms. I'm glad I have a new life far away from that one.  

I guess the key is having a solid foundation of self-knowledge, to support us and to rely on during the trials of life and love. I guess for me personally it is, "To Know Thyself" which as a child was totally opposed by my caretakers. I didn't exist at all as a person with needs. My job was to meet the needs of others.

Listening to sexual conquest stories from a parent at pre-school age.
One set of clothes for everthing. And I mean it, just one set for school, sunday-school, friends parties, "You grow too quickly, no point you having more than one set of clothes, you'll just grow out of them." That was humiliating, I mean really humiliating. And we weren't poverty stricken. Making breakfast in bed for the parent before I went to school, being quiet, learning to walk 3 inches above the floor. Thank goodness for books. They've been my sanity. And thanks for reading if you got this far. I warned ya', it's a longy. Till we meet again,  

The 'I' that i am, the 'I' that i was, the 'I' that i hope to become, and still journalling

[write]

I remember how often we would be getting ready to go out, he'd get himself ready and watch TV while I'd be getting myself and the kids ready. If I asked him to help, or made any request at all he'd say "If you ask me or interrupt me one more time we're not going." I didn't drive a car back then, and the kids and I learnt not to interrupt him. He meant it. So many times, we'd all be nearly ready or ready to go out, and because he was interrupted, he just wouldn't go, so we couldn't either.


this is mentioned in Lundy Bancroft's book 'WHy Does he do that? Inside the minds of angry and controlling men'
It's a control thing and a way to make you suffer and jump through hoops.

Sounds like you've come through a lot.

Your church experience is one of the reasons I don't like organised religion much.

[Anonymous]

I remember how often we would be getting ready to go out, he'd get himself ready and watch TV while I'd be getting myself and the kids ready. If I asked him to help, or made any request at all he'd say "If you ask me or interrupt me one more time we're not going." I didn't drive a car back then, and the kids and I learnt not to interrupt him. He meant it. So many times, we'd all be nearly ready or ready to go out, and because he was interrupted, he just wouldn't go, so we couldn't either.


this is mentioned in Lundy Bancroft's book 'WHy Does he do that? Inside the minds of angry and controlling men'
It's a control thing and a way to make you suffer and jump through hoops.

Sounds like you've come through a lot.

Your church experience is one of the reasons I don't like organised religion much.

Thanks write, that book is on my list of 'to reads'. You just reminded me.
And I agree with you, my church experience is now one of the reaons I don't like organised religion any more either. I don't think about him or bother trying to analyse him much anymore, he was such a closed book. I've never quite worked out what he was.

But he's never re-married or even dated as far as my kids know, my kids have a lot to with him. He loves being a bachelor boy, lives like Jerry Seinfeld. Incredibly neat and clean. Keeps his yard neat now. Keeps a job. Does everything he can for the kids. Helps me out occassionally. Still goes to church and has the same friends. I sometimes think I we were just completely incompatible, and he was never eman to be married. Too much pressure.

Thanks