We would do better to name and grieve the loss and blame no one and expect nothing.
I keep thinking about what that psychoanalyst kept asking me: what is about wanting that is hard for you? And I felt that to answer him would kill me. That he was asking something of me to get better, that I could not do.
And it turned out that at least one of the things he wanted was to have sex with patients. Or looked at another way, he did not sufficiently control his wants which ended up destroying his life and him.
I think wanting is unlimited and without end. There is no one thing that settles it once and for all. That is why Ebay and marketing and Amazon exist. Because wanting is the one thing that is endless and infinitely malleable. Until we understand that it is something that we can tame and control.
I used to hate the idea of "settling" in life. Cutting short my possibilities, to accept what was already. I wanted always to strive to get to some place where I would feel enough. Be enough. It was not about having things.
But now I realize everything was already there. Like M and his Mother feel and live. Each of them feels content and grateful for what they are, they have.
And since M has dedicated himself to reconnect with his children, no matter his hurt and rejection, he has them too. Four of his children went to their grandparents house to hook up cable TV. Each drove to a different part of the city to get needed components, communicating by phone. Imagine how that feels for him to have his kids back. M is very proud, and a little by arrogant. He is very defensive and feels tremendous vulnerability when he feels accused.
He decided to do whatever it took to recommit to his children. For his Mother. So that his children who live near her, would help them. I believe M feels he has everything he needs, because he does not "want" anything. If something comes along (a sterling silver with a gold wash showed up yesterday, from Ebay--I saw he wanted it but told him it looked femme. "Do you think I will lose my balls?" he said in defiance.
There is a lesson in that. M trusts himself. He defines himself. He does not feel he is changed by anything he puts on or how others feel about him. That is why what my sister did to him with her gaze trying to dehumanize him could never have worked. She had to avert her eyes first.
Maybe that is why they say 98% of life is showing up.
Cedar, these few lines you wrote, could be, each of them expanded to books. When I read that statement, I think, *well you can't really live life if you stay in bed...." But then there is the other meaning...that one has to show up "present." Because one can be just as insulated out among people as not.
We never know at all what is happening compared to what we believe may be happening.
So then when I read this I think, our perceptions delimit what we experience. And our attitudes delimit it even more. And our expectation even more. And our unspoken and unknown wants even more.
Or, to what we expect to happen.
Yes. How to develop practices that make us available.
I find myself dreading interaction with my son, and feeling bitterness in relation to him. I believe it must be related to the above. I am not showing up with my son. I am unavailable.
I think it is true that our behaviors will be different while we are in contact with people who see things differently than we do.
Could it not be, Cedar and Insane, that (like with my son and I) that there are all kinds of defenses involved...the majority of which we are unaware of? Layers and layers of wants, and expectations, and the awareness (and bitterness that comes from it) that they have not been and will not be fulfilled?
And with our families, there is fear, and the memories of untold hurts and anger, and self-blame for all of the things for which we hold ourselves responsible...because
they taught us we were or we held that belief because it was safer? The only kind of safe choice was to sacrifice ourselves.
So wanting for us...is charged with all of these cross currents that now can be named and purged. But how? How to get back to steady state when everything has become such a tangled maze?
Have you seen photos of the gardens in England that are mazes (I forgot the exact name. But you get lost in them. Looked at from above they are beautiful.) Would it not be a wondrous thing to think of ourselves in this way. To reclaim our garden of mazes and to lovingly cultivate a means to reclaim them? (And build a bridge over to not get lost?)
I believe there really is a genetic component to all this.
I think we could not be like them, IC.
Cedar, may it not be either/or? Could it be both? Like Schizophrenia. For a long time there was thought to be an environmental trigger/component. I do not know how I feel or think about this. I do not know what the current thinking is.
But that Psychiatrist whose book I bought, Peter Breggins, spoke about a Scandinavian country, Finland, I think, which now has no Schizophrenia. Not because there is not the proclivity but because the response to psychosis is social, is environmental. Their treatment modality is to surround the afflicted person. To bind them with love. And because a diagnosis of Schizophrenia requires 6 months duration of symptoms, nearly everybody remits, before the 6 month criteria.
So looking at it this way, it is our response which is the problematic thing. Which would fit with the writings on this thread. It is our expectations. Our responses. The lens through which we view and respond to the event.
In my family, I am not considered normal. I am the romantic one, the one who just doesn't get it. Maybe, they are the ones who are not normal.
Yes. I was that too. The vulnerable one. Sensitive.
If I think of the dynamic with my son in this way, I become the problematic one. Because as long as I react to him with disappointment, fear, unmet expectations, and wants, I continue to create a problem.
This is not to say that he does not have responsibility. But I do too. And I am the only one over which I have control.
At some point, I give up, lose faith with myself, where another person plows ahead.
Yes and no.
I am thinking about the woman who owns the gallery. Yes. She has put into place her vision. She has allowed herself to do that. She believed in herself or came to believe in herself.
But we are doing it too. It does not happen all at once.
Our problem is that we accuse ourselves as failing, every single time, there is an issue, and obstacle, a temporary pause. A wanting that is not immediately filled.
We accuse ourselves as failing and do not hold faith. That is what has to change.
It could be that we are in the midst of creating something unbelievably powerful. That we are right in the middle of it. And right this second we could claim it. But because we have paused for a moment, we are not holding faith. That is what needs to change, with ourselves and our mates and especially our children.
Except I do not know how to do it. Step one: name it. Step two: ???
I read yesterday talked about narcissism in general, and malignant narcissism in particular, as evolving over time through a series of immoral choices.
Yes. I agree absolutely with this. Remember how I write about narcissists coming to sociopathy in their fifties, so frequently? When their grandiose needs and hopes have been dashed they turn to immoral means to achieve redress and to make a last ditch effort to succeed. Like Nixon.
Which would mean it is not genetic after all.
It could be both, no?
I am back to 98 percent is just showing up. There are so many ways to understand that.
So much, lately, I am filled with love and gratitude to have M. (When I think like this I think, OMG, what if he leaves? And then I remember that I am not a baby that without parents would die. Or that if he leaves, it would not mean that I am not OK, not lovable. I would still exist. All of these things seem at risk for me...in loving and being loved.)
Why did I not have somebody like him before? Was it that I did not show up? Emotionally. Was it that nobody like him showed up? Did we create it because only at late fifties and sixties we were each sufficiently destroyed (in expectations, arrogance, attitudes) that we were present?
How to make sense of this so that I live better? Live more morally? Live?
I am just the one they picked to blame for their own problems and I know this now.
A scapegoat. An identified patient. A role.
The issue though is that our identities are bound up with how they treated us, and how we responded to them by cutting off parts of ourselves, our energies, or wants.
Thank you Serenity and all. Very interesting thread.
COPA