Posts Tagged Relationships
Why flinging yourself off the ledge is a good thing.
Posted by Lotus, aka Sarcastic Mom in Mental/Emotional, Relationships, Self, Therapy, Writing, {W}rite-Of-Passage Challenge on January 19, 2010
I have written, in the past, about how I truly enjoy spending time alone.
This is not to say that I don’t enjoy the company of others, or that I don’t have genuine interest in people. I thoroughly enjoy time with friends and acquaintances alike, and I’d say that other human beings interest me more than almost anything else.
These things, enjoying time with others as well as time alone, are not mutually exclusive. While I like people, I need a considerable amount of time to myself. I always have, and I always will. There is a sense of overload if I’m around too many people at once or for too long. I literally require the decompression that being alone brings.
I revel in being isolated in quiet, adore to be wrapped in nothing but my thoughts. There is a level of reflection and philosophy that I am incapable of reaching in any way other than alone in stillness. On the other hand, I delight in pounding my brain with loud music and smiling at a room that holds only me while I assault my surroundings with my interpretations of the lyrics and melodies. This is like medicine for my soul. I need it as much as I regularly need to feel sunshine on my skin.
So yes, I like to be alone. I like to have my thoughts to myself, to be able to control my environment, to be the master of my domain at any given moment. I am a hair away from saying that my sanity actually hinges on my having time alone regularly.
And so it feels odd to say that I’m horribly afraid of being alone.
I don’t think I’ve ever really admitted that. I’m afraid to truly stand on my own. Confessing that is difficult for me. I have always valued strength and independence, wanted those qualities for myself. Yet I feel as if I hold my head high on the outside, while in reality, I often tremble and cower inside myself.
Many years ago, fearing that he would never marry me, I suggested to my long time boyfriend that we part ways. He had given me some ominous answers to some very pointed questions, and my heart was registering some unwelcome and heartbreaking truths.
I told him that I felt I had lost myself in him. It would have been unfair of me to blame him for that, and I most certainly didn’t, but I had allowed myself to be dependent on him for so much, practical as well as emotional, for so long. I’d poured myself into him. I always knew I shouldn’t but I felt powerless to stop doing it.
When I realized that he would likely one day need to flee the suffocation of my pressing need, that he would surely turn and walk from me eventually, I panicked. I felt the crushing fear of falling alone on that impending day. How could I protect myself? How could I learn to be stronger?
I had to force a situation that would make me let go and step away. Inside, I knew I had to take a leap, to make myself learn how to stand alone. Jumping, after all, always seems easier than falling.
It is not. Falling happens. Jumping takes courage.
He did not disagree with me that we should part ways. Even though it was my suggestion, I have always been pained by that.
And so, what happened then, after separating myself painfully from my best friend of 7 years? Did I spend a good deal of time alone afterwards, learning to trust my ability to be an independent person? No. I lacked the courage to jump.
I am so ashamed of that.
I immediately started dating the man who would later become my husband. I leaned on him as hard as he would let me. He let me lean in all the way. My ex told me in a sad tone, after learning I was seeing someone else so soon, “You are dependent. You just go from one man to the next, always looking for someone to take care of you because you’re afraid.”
I was stung by his words, angered. I dismissed them as jealousy.
The kicker was that I secretly knew he was right.
I held my head high and moved on. I said to myself that I couldn’t walk from the love John was offering me, that I couldn’t allow myself to pass up a chance at happiness. I told myself I’d regret it mightily one day if I did.
Those things are true, I was not lying to myself.
But the other truth, the one I’ve never admitted outside my own head is that I was also afraid to do what I had set out to do. I was frightened to stand completely alone in the world, daring it to knock me down.
“What if it really does?” I thought. I wasn’t confident enough in myself to believe I could get back up.
Was it a mistake that I did not take that time and learn the value of being strong in myself? In a way, yes, very much.
You see, it is not so much that I am truly weak, or unable to stand on my own, to be a strong person and take care of myself. Even through my fear there is a knowledge in my core that I am strong enough. Fear has a way of making you near-sighted, though. I am often unable to see my core. I believe the lies that my insecurity whispers so close to my trembling ears in moments of doubt.
I do not regret loving my husband. And how could I regret a union that brought me the joy that is my son? I do not. This is my life. I take my past and wrap it like a bow around the person I have become. I cannot change my past, but I can most certainly examine it, always reflecting on where I have been, learning, and watching where I am headed. I am the constant analyzer, if you will.
The mistake was not that I allowed myself to love and be loved. That is never a mistake.
The harm was in not allowing myself a chance to see the living proof of my own strength. If I had jumped, I’d know for sure that I can fly, and that would have banished my fear of falling infinitely.
Today’s post is my answer to Broccoli, a writing challenge at {W}rite-of-Passage.
The following people took the challenge, too.
The stuff that gets in the way.
Posted by Lotus, aka Sarcastic Mom in Depression, Mental/Emotional, Relationships, Writing on November 3, 2009
So, I have a confession: I have been having a hard time keeping my shit together lately. See also: Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis (fatigue, joint pain, muscle weakness, hair loss, and more!), See also: Miscarriage Anniversary Looming, See also: Financial Distress, See also: Marital Issues, See also: I’m a headcase.
And it is true that I have had something like Writer’s Block for some time. I have long spaces of time when I believe I have nothing to say that you will be interested in reading. I sit down and think, “Surely I can come up with something!” And I open a text file and I stare at it, thinking. Nothing comes. Nothing is worth coming.
Then, other nights, I write things, posts, in text files and then I do not publish them. Because they suck. You would think they are stupid. (So I tell myself.) This would be more like Sharer’s Block? Blogging Anxiety? I Suckaphobia?
And then there are all the things that won’t come when I sit down to write them to you because there are other things that block them – things I can’t talk to you about. What I mean by that is I have issues I WANT to share with you, but it feels weird to talk about this thing when I know I haven’t told you about thoooose things.
Do I write about those things? Hell yes I do. Is the writing good? I think so. Will I share it with you?
I can’t.
Some things you just can’t post to the world because they aren’t only yours to post, does that make sense?
But the more of those things that I have, the harder it gets for me to come here and talk to you about everything else, like my friends. That’s kind of how I’ve always felt when writing these posts. I know it’s somewhat silly to think that way, and I’m not trying to be mushy and sentimental to win you over. It’s just the tone I always feel inside when I write to YOU.
This is not an academic essay I’m writing – though I can write those, I’ve completed tons of them in my time, and none too shabby, I’ll have you know. It’s not a performance piece, where I just need to elicit emotion with whatever works. It’s not fiction, where I can spin any tale just to delight. It isn’t a review, where all I really have to do is lay out the way it works and what I think of it.
It’s an ongoing conversation I’m having with you about my life.
When there are bumps that invariably happen from my life intersecting with the lives of others, sometimes I can’t talk about those bumps. Because it’s not my place to have the conversation that they might or might not want to have with you about THEIR lives.
So then, I guess I just have to say, Friends, there is(are) something(s) that is(are) affecting me in some way(s) that we can’t talk about. And now I have to find a path around that(them) so I can keep talking to you about my other life stuff.
And that’s hard for me to do. I’m emotional and the things I experience have a way of leaking and spilling out onto the rest of my life. I should learn to compartmentalize more. I don’t know.
And maybe this whole thing seems STUPID to you, because “DUH, LOTUS. We ALL have things we keep to ourselves. We ALL have stories we don’t tell everyone. Hell, most people don’t feel the need to tell everyone half the shit you think the world needs to know. I mean, really, you tell us practically every time you have your period. GET A FILTER.” And OKAY, FINE. But the thing is, I’m still developing as a writer and a blogger. This place defined itself to me from the start as My Blog: Where I Tell You What Runs Through My Head. My idea of “what this is” has changed. I can’t tell you what runs through my head when I’d have to tell you that Mr. C did horrible thing Y and I want to strangle his face until it turns blue and falls off. Because you know, Mr. C has privacy rights. I can’t tell you that I have a constant issue with Problem ABC and I think it’s because Mrs. W did batshit crazy thing X and it impacted me in a really profound way.
I can tell you about how I feel, but I can’t always tell you why. And that’s kind of douchey. But Mr. C and Mrs. W own their own stuff, and I can’t tell it for them.
My family and friends have privacy rights. Those assholes.
So let’s just say, that among other things, it’s taking me time, in fits and spurts to keep telling you my stories without telling you their stories.
Maybe one day there will be a time to talk about those things. Perhaps there never will. I’m trying to find a way to be okay with that and hoping I can just move past it.
I’m learning that it IS okay not to tell you everything (zomg) but I have to say it out loud for some reason. I think, if I say this out loud right now, it’s going to help me move this block.
For now, maybe just saying to you that I’ll tell you most of everything, but not some stuff, will help me climb over this boulder, that mountain, and occasionally kick those rocks out of my way, so we can keep walking this path together.
I mean, it would be such a shame to miss the colors this season with you. The foliage is so beautiful just up ahead.

















you said