What's real?

[rosencrantz]

I've tried several times in the past couple of weeks to start a thread about this but it's felt 'as if' there has been an energy pushing me away.  I've sat staring at the screen thinking instead, occasionally getting sidetracked by other people's thoughts and feelings. So it's all gone by in a bit of a haze.

Right now I feel for the first time in my life that I am standing on my own two feet.  I feel balanced.  And I also have the beginnings of a new voice.

I wanted to start this thread to talk about (explore, question, share) reality and perceptions of reality, about definitions and defining ourselves and others, but I'm not sure it matters any more.  

Why should I explain myself?  Should I explain myself?  I don't think so.  You don't need to know who I am to benefit from what I have to offer; and if my 'space and place' on this earth doesn't suit you, why give me hassle about it???  

Well, yes.  Of course, you must - I'm the messenger and you don't like my message; you assume I witnessed your guilt or your shame and you think that by stamping me out that you'll stamp out your feelings.  I don't mean to be a witness.  I don't intend to be unkind.  Actually, I didn't see the guilt or the shame.  I just saw what I saw.  And I'm struggling for the truth.  Your truth; my truth.  I want to know if what I perceive is true.  I'm desperate to have my perception validated.  By you. And you.  And you.

Why is it so important, what drives me to do the same thing over and over and over again?

I expect you guessed.  It's so simple, really.  My truth, my perceptions were invalidated as I grew up.  I wasn't just voiceless.  I was mindless.  First stop, the funny farm.  How can I be both mindless AND knowing.  

I acceed to my mother's control.  I am mindless.  I 'know' nothing.  I pretend that nothing exists.  My feelings aren't my feelings.  Even my body isn't mine.

But I am pulled by something without words to 'know'. I 'sense' the world out there, I know 'who you are', you invade me, your feelings  overwhelm me and I struggle to maintain my own sense of who I am.  And fail too often.  You want me to be you so that I can contain the pain.

I spend my life trying to find out who's who in this folie a deux and what it all means and how it can be made better.  Because truly I want to 'help'.  Oh God how much I want to reach you, who you really are, pull you out from that terrible place and look after you.  But God how you hurt me.  I just have to come near you and you fight me and spite me.  The more I reach in to you, the more you hurt me and I retire wounded, damaged, depleted.

Who am I talking to?  Well, you and you and you, I suppose - but, first, and last, my mother.

I am so very, very grateful to those people who are open to the heart/mind-gift I hold out.  They give me so much more than I give them.  I am so, so grateful.  And happy.  Over the moon.  Playful.  (Oh, no - excited, like a child, that's wrong! Let's get things back under control here.)

So how do I stop banging my head against a brick wall in everyday life when I still live in hope that my mother can come out of her disordered existence and say 'yes, I love you and I know who you really are - I knew all along really - and I value your many talents and I don't have to suck you dry any more so I can let you go'.

But I tell you, the reality had better not ever come to pass cos quite frankly the amount of pain and bullying I've had to withstand, when I pull you out of there, I don't want you around me. Ever.

http://www.mtoomey.com/theshamed.html

R

[Anonymous]

Right now I feel for the first time in my life that I am standing on my own two feet.  I feel balanced.  And I also have the beginnings of a new voice.

I wanted to start this thread to talk about (explore, question, share) reality and perceptions of reality, about definitions and defining ourselves and others, but I'm not sure it matters any more.  

But I tell you, the reality had better not ever come to pass cos quite frankly the amount of pain and bullying I've had to withstand, when I pull you out of there, I don't want you around me. Ever.

R

Hi Rosencrantz, I first feel the need to go off topic to these quotes (just briefly) above and say thankyou for being the one to recognize my reason? motivation? (whatever) for posting on RG's thread. I'm going to thankyou over there too. I got what I felt I had to say to RG off my chest and if RG chooses to ignore me, well I'll get over that.

I wonder why people here feel the need to defend him? Feel threatened by him being questioned? Is he infallible or something? Ooops, better not start it up here. Sorry. I would have thought he is more than capable of defending himself if he thought it was necessary. Anyway I'll  'STOP' now. I'm 'COMPLICATING' things once again. 'Sarcasm Here In Tended'  or 'SHIT' for short.!        

"During 1922 and 1923, as she was working on various drafts of a novel, Woolf came to feel that she had defined her own literary project in such an exhilarating way that it's challenge could sustain her even in the face of critical attack. On 18 february 1922, she writes in her diary, 'I have made up my mind that I'm not going to be popular, & so genuinely that I look upon disregard or abuse as part of my bargain. I'm to write what I like; & they're to say what they like.'

Six months later she feels even more certain: 'There's no doubt in my mind that I have found out how to begin (at 40) to say something in my own voice; & that interests me so that I feel I can go ahead without praise.'

I feel like this. I am bravely developing my voice now that I have found it. Personally I find Virginia Woolf's life tremendously inspiring. She was abused as a child and I can't imagine what it was like having so many of her family members die when she was young.

She recognised and diaried that she didn't find her own voice till she was 40. When she finally did understood it as a deal the deal and accepted that.

The deal, I say what I like & you don't have to like it.
I must be allowed to say it, and you must be allowed to not like it.
You may even criticise and reject.
Because I accept this up front, that you will criticise, I have no problem with you criticising. I see this as a very small price to pay to develop my voice.

So when you say does it matter. YES! YES! YES! it matters. I hear you working on developing your voice all the time.

For me, I find I'm using my voice, my mother's voice, other's voices, novelists voices, even Fran Fine's voice sometimes. But in the end I really only want to use my own.

I'm learning to single it out from the crowd more and more. I'm not going to respond to people auto-sarcastically anymore from habit learned from (unparental) training. I'm developing my own voice even with my own signature brand of sarcasm thanks! Appropriate for certain special deserving souls. And I'll use it unapologetically.

I won't continue to use my humour willy nilly, randomly as I was taught. I will develop my own form of humour, not using it to persecute or cause the innocent pain. The old saying "every joke has a victim" is true.

From me to you, you must post what you want to talk about and develop those ideas of yours. Combat fatigue is very draining. I do want to be around when you get further developed. Keep the ideas flowing, your ideas, your kernel from your heart. You give so much input to others and spend lots of time exploring other people 's issues.

I love to read, (and I do read your comments a lot) when you use this skill on your own personal issues.

I don't wear victimhood well. I'm a survivor. I don't relate well to victims, I admit it. The locus of control, I know, is within me, Thank God. I take full responsibility for the changes I need to make.

That'll have to do for now, I just got kicked off the comp. damn. And I was just winding up and no time to edit. Oh well, but hey one more thing, what happened to the commander sub-title. It was sooo intimidating        I loved it. That was well-meant light hearted ribbing R, just a joke. Remember every joke has a victim.  


Guest

[Wildflower]

I expect you guessed. It's so simple, really. My truth, my perceptions were invalidated as I grew up. I wasn't just voiceless. I was mindless. First stop, the funny farm. How can I be both mindless AND knowing.

I’m an only child, too (referring to your other post), and I was in a position where I was forced to learn how to grow up on my own – without guidance.  I had to know everything in order to survive.  At least, I had to convince myself that I knew exactly what was coming so that I could feel in control.  On the outside, everyone thought I did have it under control, but it was only a shell.   My senior year in college, I literally discovered the existence of that shell – and I knew it was protecting what was left of me: a little girl.  That knowing person, all prickly and defensive, had to fend off the world, or so she thought.  It worked.  That shell helped get me away from home, and it has taken me years to finally break through it.  This board, and specifically you, have helped blast away the remaining walls of that shell.  My tough exterior has crumbled.

But as I wrote in another entry, I was so far gone into fantasy by the end of high school.  You could say I was mindless.  Inside that strong shell, the space that wasn’t taken up with that tiny shred of me was filled completely with sticky, goopy confusion.  I was like a blind person acting like a sighted person, hands outstretched.  Bumping into walls.

I hope this helps R.  I think I can relate to your experience with being both mindless and knowing, and I hope that, at the very least, it will help you feel less alone with these feelings.

So how do I stop banging my head against a brick wall in everyday life when I still live in hope that my mother can come out of her disordered existence and say 'yes, I love you and I know who you really are - I knew all along really - and I value your many talents and I don't have to suck you dry any more so I can let you go'.

You know she never will, R.  She’s too sick.  She can’t say these things, or she would have said them sooner.  Or maybe it would be better to say, she may be able to say these things some day, but hopefully you will have moved on by then – and it’ll be like found money when she does.  A pleasant, out-of-the-blue surprise.  That’s how I think about my dad sometimes.

But there are people here who can hear you.  Know you.  There are already people here who value your talents.  I know it’s an online forum, and these past few days have been crazy, but hopefully things will settle down.  What I’m saying is, let your mom go, and let others (lots of others) fill in the gaps wherever and whenever and however they can.

Take care R.  And go out and play like a little child for a while.  You deserve it.

Wildflower

P.S. - I hope that nothing I said has upset you.  If I have, I'm deeply sorry.  Just know that it was not my intention.