My Truth

[Hopalong]

I think you were emanating some lovely energy that those ducks were drawn to!

 

Hops

[Meh]

I think this is my all time favorite movie: Water by Director Deepa Mehta

The main character is a little girl who becomes a widow and is banished to dwell in a compound with other widows in India. These women are powerless, poor, voiceless.

The director had to stop her first attempt at making the movie because too many people intervened and protested. It was an affront to social norms I guess. The movie was set back in 1938, but it seems that it is still a topic of contention for some people.

I think it's interesting how far people will go to cover-up and keep hidden those people who are mistreated/out casted/abused etc. Many people have a big stake in keeping other's voiceless and powerless. Some part of them depends on the powerlessness of others, how pathetic is that.

So after about 5-6 years the director recuperated, got more money together and began filming again in a different country and had to recast the actors.

I admire what this director was doing, her courage, determination, patience and the fact that she heard this voice and story, the voice of the widows and had to make it known to the world. She was speaking for a voiceless group by making the movie.

I loved the scenes in the widow compound, they are so human, I think the actresses did not wear any make up. The director intentionally tried to make the movie as beautiful as possible to counterbalance the sadness of the subject.

[Meh]

Resentment

So it seems to me that there are nuances, shades of anger.
Maybe I will come back to this word again. I'm not sure what is in there.
I noticed the other day that I had been carrying around the emotion of resentment and I realized this is another form of anger.
For years I thought that I could not relate to angry people, turns out I was angry the whole time in a subdued deeper layer of me.
I carried around my anger in the form of secret resentment. I think.

My mother would never forgive me for being angry. I know I'm chewing cud here, but I'm gonna do it, repeat it until it makes more sense, or goes somewhere.

[Meh]

My parents failed to fullfull their responsibilities as parents.

This feels like a strong statement to me. It makes me feel a little less guilty for cutting them off.

In a way my parents were failures. (I know this sounds harsh). There is something about this that is significant to me though.
What is it?

Socially we are suppose to forgive our parents faults, but to what degree?
How much parental failure is socially acceptable?
If a parent tries but doesn't do it right the first time, yeah I guess they get points for trying.
If the parents never try, then why should they get "parent points"

How would a person earn "parent points"?
Reading books to their kids.
Talking directly to their children as if the child's world was important.
Taking the children's needs into consideration when making family decisions.
Throwing B-Day parties for the kids.


I just can not make up in the present time what did not happen when I was a kid.
There is no changing the past, no rewriting history.
So I just blocked it. I ripped those sheets out of the book, and replaced them with blank ones.

[Meh]

I'm rambling on pointlessly. I guess I can erase any of this stuff that just turns out to be blop.

So last Sunday I went to church and got up and walked out midway before the reverend had ended her sermon.

I was noticing that I was becoming angry as I sat there in church and decided that I do not have to make myself sit there in discomfort.
My anger itself is not bad. My anger tells me that the point of the sermon was not resonating with me, and was not true for me.
The reverend seemed so sure that the sermon was applicable to everyone. The theme of her speech was that people need to say they are sorry more often and apologize more for wrongs that we do to others.

I'm imagining that the Rev. saw me glowering and crossing my arms and zoning out at her speech and I'm imagining that she interprets that to mean I especially need to learn how to say "I'm sorry". Oh Grrrrr. Now this is just what is going on in my mind but there have been real experiences where this sort of thing happens where a person could not be more off in their interpretation of me.

I wonder how can I be so advanced and so behind at the same time. Intellectually I have more sophisticated understanding of these concepts then the dam preacher has but emotionally I am retarded.

It strikes me that there is this feeling that many people just don't understand us, don't "get us".
This had been really hard during the time of growing up, the adults who are suppose to be experts who just don't understand and because they don't understand we are wrong.

Even as an adult I still get annoyed at people who do not understand. Especially in church.

It is a lonely road, it really is.

[Meh]

So, I can't remember if I wrote this or not, I will read myself backwards at some point.

There was a woman who spent some time with me as a kid, she actually liked me. She got a sudden illness, had brain surgery and turned into a veggie. This probably was very traumatic to me as a kid. I do remember being very concerned and wishing, wishing, and hoping with all my might that she would be ok, some sort of miracle would happen and she might come out of the coma ok.

Since she taught me how to ride a bike, and was the only person who believed in me when I was a kid this must have been really traumatic. I don't remember crying. Are children suppose to know how to grieve? Was it weird that I did not cry? I have no clue.

When I went through my list of things that I need to forgive myself for, she was on the list. I did not go to see her in the hospital, I wanted to, but my father would not take me. I have carried guilt for this. Not holding her hand in the hospital.
I'm sure that as a little kid I believed that I could go to the hospital and do something that the doctors couldn't do, that I could have fixed her somehow. I know that this is irrational as an adult but that seems to be in my emotions.

Maybe every event when I should have felt grief instead I blamed myself.

I think my mother may have been a bit jealous of this person even.
You know, not only did my mother not give me love but I think she would have disliked it if any other person had given me love.
I'm not sure, I think I'm over analyzing.

[Meh]

I never got to say goodbye to her, I think this is a big deal, I never got to express to her how important she was to me.
Ok, I'm in a cafe and this is starting to make tears well up in my eyes. There is definitely something residual with this.

I guess it doesn't matter, there really probably is no way to say goodbye to people who die before their time.
There is nothing to say. No words make it better, no words can make sense of it.

I wanted to live with her, I wanted to spend all my time with her, I think she probably would have adopted me if I didn't have "parents".

I think she felt sorry for me, I think she knew how my life was not good.

I think I remember feeling depressed even before this happened, but maybe I became more depressed after she was gone.

She didn't see anything wrong with me.
In her eyes there was nothing wrong with me, I was just a normal kid to her.

[Meh]

I have this thought and it's sort of making me breath hard, or something else in the air is making be breath hard.

The thought is that Nar-people have the lowest self-esteem of all. This is contrary to some belief systems. It seems to me that children of Nar-people learn bad habits of low self esteem and have to embody low-self esteem in some ways but mostly as an expression of the low self esteem that the Nar people have.

Maybe children willingly take on some of the lies because it is hard for a child to see their parents as failures, to see their parents as weak. (Breath) Yep, this is true for me.

I'm a co-conspirator in a Nar persons low self esteem. I help them feel good about themselves by feeling bad about me.
Oh, yes... that is something right there. Heck yeah!
Well, F*ck that sh*t.... Snarly. Me. I'm feeling snarly. I don't want to fall into that trap ever again. I've giving myself the right to be a b*tch. So concerned about being nice. Nice enough to play along with a Nar-person.

Nar people can not act out their own low-self esteem so they must see other people acting out their low self-esteem for them.

Eh, maybe this is way off. Hum. No, there is something to that. I guess maybe the term is "projection"? I'm not good with all the technical terms.

Nar-people project their low self esteem onto their children. Yeah, that sounds right to me.
The Nar-people disown the parts of themselves that they don't like and get other people to act out these parts.
Nar-people long to see the badness in others.
Nar people create and bring out the badness in others, just so they can feel right in the world.
How flipin lame-o is that.

I'm ruminating on this one.

A nar-persons self esteem is fragile and depends on devaluing others.
They are very manipulative and that gives them power but they are not empowered people.
Nar people are experts at controlling others.
They are dependent on controlling their victims.
A nar person is acting out their unresolved self esteem problems on their victims.
I know this to be true regarding my mother.

I know that there is a core to my spirit that is solid. I may not have great social skills or something, I may not have power over the universe but I do believe there is a solid core in me somewhere. There is a part of me that is definitely not a coward.

[Meh]

In some messed up way Nar people are probably trying to find their own aliveness through their victims suffering.
Because the aliveness does not come from being right or powerful or the best the aliveness comes from authentic expression.
Nar people can not bring themselves to authentic expression because it would show their own low self-esteem.
The more a nar person see's their victims suffering the more the nar-person hates the victim because the nar person is still not expressing their own suffering, they are not emoting their own "badness" or weakness.
They have to see the weakness in others over and over and over. They are addicted to seeing the weakness in others. Narcissist's addiction to weakness in others is a compensation for their own inability to express their own weakness.
Hum... thinking...
A person who is always looking for how they are better then another person does not have high self esteem. A person who has good self esteem, I think is probably content.
Nar-people are anything but content.

[Ami]

Your writing is beautiful. Thank you for sharing , Helen. A great writer brings a person to  conclusions they could not access themselves.  They show the reader how to see the world  more "real".
 Bill is a natural writer, too.
 I think one of my gifts is appreciating beautiful writing. I could never do it like you or Bill do but I can appreciate it.
 Forgive me if I am embarrassing you.      Ami

[Meh]

I'm looking at a brand new baby, naked, wrapped in a fuzzy soft blanket here in this cafe. The world really is new to them, sort of blank slate. Their little eyes look out of their blob of a body and take it all in. A new birth. A new beginning.

I think about how messed up it is for a Nar-parent to use the opportunity of a new, helpless life coming into the world, to use this little entity, this little being, little baby for their own messed up problems. Taking the weakest, most powerless, dependent thing an infant and using them as their garbage dump.

When parents try to throw away their kids, they are trying to throw themselves away. And they need their little garbage cans like a sickness.

In some ways I do feel sorry for myself for what I have missed out on. But the dumb Nar-parents did miss out also. They missed out on their chance to set things right, to right themselves, to create a real family. They did not take the opportunity of a new birth, new life, to celebrate life itself.

They could have read some F'in parenting books. They could have just appreciated some miracle in a new birth. They could have seen a new person and thought "How cool is that!". They could have been fascinated and inspired by the newly emerging personality.

[Meh]

Your writing is beautiful. Thank you for sharing , Helen. A great writer brings a person to  conclusions they could not access themselves.  They show the reader how to see the world  more "real".
 Bill is a natural writer, too.
 I think one of my gifts is appreciating beautiful writing. I could never do it like you or Bill do but I can appreciate it.
 Forgive me if I am embarrassing you.      Ami

Hi Ami, How's it going?

I try not to claim anyone else's "truth" or "realness",  just my own. I want other people to come to their own conclusions. I think to a degree all people live with their own versions of "reality".

I'm sort of just writing out loud, ruminating, following a path without knowing where it's going.
Ami, I'm sure you have gifts that don't involve appreciating other people, I know that your music is one of those gifts. Didn't your Nar-mother make you do that, to appreciate her exclusively?

I'm not embarrassed, but maybe worried that you are appreciating me too much?

You talk about your badness, and appreciate other people.
I want you to appreciate yourself. I know that I can not command you to do that.
I think you probably need and deserve appreciation yourself?   

[Ami]

Yes, Helen, you are right --all things must have a balance .I am discovering my gifts and trying to appreciate them. We all are special and have unique qualities to enjoy and give to other. You are right about that.          Ami

[Meh]

Yes, Helen, you are right --all things must have a balance .I am discovering my gifts and trying to appreciate them. We all are special and have unique qualities to enjoy and give to other. You are right about that.          Ami

I remember doing a self-inventory of my "skills" and "talents" and I came up with something like "seeing the strengths in other people".
I figure as children of Nar-parents we are always putting ourselves second, we even see our ability to put ourselves second as a talent?

I never got a promotion for helping my co-workers be their best... I got promotions for my own knowledge and working like a dog.

Bringing out the best in others generally isn't valued that much in our society...

Well, Ami, Thank you if you are just trying to bring out the best in me, I just want to make sure you are not putting yourself second. KWIM?

[Ami]

I am not idealzing you, Helen. I know it feels scary when s/one seems to be idealizing us. My M put me way up high and then put me way down low.
 I am just a freak for good writing!            Ami