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I have a lot of half-started dw entries. Things I get self-conscious about, things where I'm pretty sure the prose gets way too purple, things that feel like fishing for reassurances from somebody, somewhere. They don't feel quite the same as private journaling, they don't really have anywhere to live. I don't actually do much in the way of private journaling anymore, despite feeling like I should be. I tried long-form a couple times, but I get so flustered by the process, by my own handwriting, by the stop-start pace of it that it doesn't feel like I'm getting rid of anything and more like I'm doubling down on already existing anxiety.
Is that what I'm doing here? Getting rid of things? Does it feel better to hit post, to cling to this space (which I've been using in a variety of different ways since August of 2001)? It feels excessively self-indulgent to think too much about why I do this, to ask if I'm actually writing to the handful of people I know are still reading or if it's just endless sham viking funerals for my moods, pretending things are floating out of sight when they're really not.
There's a lot of things I've been learning about myself in the pandemic, and I suspect oodles more to learn, and not all of them are great. I mean, some are probably good areas for growth at some point in the distant future, when everything feels less like I'll only be holding on to the over-stacked tea tray as long as I'm not making any sudden movements. I'm not sure what's on the tea tray in this metaphor, probably some combination of the house-of-cards type functionality I'm patching together and some small hungry very sharks.
*deleted transitional paragraph about fitting into groups of people trying to collaborate on shared goals and how I don't know how to position myself because ugh.**
I think I've always identified as somewhere between a subplot and a stagehand, and I know I've worried desperately about a world where I'm not the protagonist of my own story. I've thought it a strength, a weakness, a choice, a byproduct, something I should really get over and something it's okay if I don't get over.
Someone recently pointed out in an unexpected context that of the four people talking, two seemed like they'd be raised to be leaders and two hadn't. I volunteered that I wasn't sure how I was seen, but that I was most definitely not raised to be a leader and the speaker confirmed that was how it appeared. It seemed like something I should bristle at, but didn't, but then worried that I should. I suspect much of all this angst is the tension between the "gifted" or the having-gone-to-fancy-college narrative and the internal narrative that my parents tried so hard to instill in me about my worth as a person, as a girl child, about what I could or should expect, about what I deserved.
I try to talk about my parents wryly, like describing an episode of a dated sitcom, and I try to figure out why I keep bothering to talk about or think about them. I guess it's baked into the world and I keep getting odd reminders of what having relationships with parents is like.
I spent a bunch of time in therapy this week trying to find different ways to look at the idea of having something I wanted to tell my parents before they died or we parted ways, and I couldn't find a way to make sense of it. If nothing I say is going to change anything, why would I say it? Julie gave me a couple ways where the saying of the thing was transformative to the person doing the saying regardless of how it was received, but mostly the idea just made me feel tired. In general, I think I sometimes want people to know how they hurt me, but if it's not going to change anything and it's just going to make me feel worse, why would I do it? (I think somewhere in here is the idea that if I could just find the right words, things would be different. Not sure exactly how, but a better-than-this different). I suspect there's not much left for my parents to withhold, most everything's already off the table. (not approving of anything I do has definitely lost of most of its sting after three and half decades) but I also know the idea of confronting them is sort of a limited time offer. They're in their seventies, they're in half-decent health, they're behaving not as poorly as they could be in regards to the pandemic, but they're probably going to die before I do, and there's going to be a point where if I suddenly realize I wanted to say something to them, there's not going to be a them around to say it to.
Maybe I just regret that I'm not going to regret not trying.
Is that what I'm doing here? Getting rid of things? Does it feel better to hit post, to cling to this space (which I've been using in a variety of different ways since August of 2001)? It feels excessively self-indulgent to think too much about why I do this, to ask if I'm actually writing to the handful of people I know are still reading or if it's just endless sham viking funerals for my moods, pretending things are floating out of sight when they're really not.
There's a lot of things I've been learning about myself in the pandemic, and I suspect oodles more to learn, and not all of them are great. I mean, some are probably good areas for growth at some point in the distant future, when everything feels less like I'll only be holding on to the over-stacked tea tray as long as I'm not making any sudden movements. I'm not sure what's on the tea tray in this metaphor, probably some combination of the house-of-cards type functionality I'm patching together and some small hungry very sharks.
*deleted transitional paragraph about fitting into groups of people trying to collaborate on shared goals and how I don't know how to position myself because ugh.**
I think I've always identified as somewhere between a subplot and a stagehand, and I know I've worried desperately about a world where I'm not the protagonist of my own story. I've thought it a strength, a weakness, a choice, a byproduct, something I should really get over and something it's okay if I don't get over.
Someone recently pointed out in an unexpected context that of the four people talking, two seemed like they'd be raised to be leaders and two hadn't. I volunteered that I wasn't sure how I was seen, but that I was most definitely not raised to be a leader and the speaker confirmed that was how it appeared. It seemed like something I should bristle at, but didn't, but then worried that I should. I suspect much of all this angst is the tension between the "gifted" or the having-gone-to-fancy-college narrative and the internal narrative that my parents tried so hard to instill in me about my worth as a person, as a girl child, about what I could or should expect, about what I deserved.
I try to talk about my parents wryly, like describing an episode of a dated sitcom, and I try to figure out why I keep bothering to talk about or think about them. I guess it's baked into the world and I keep getting odd reminders of what having relationships with parents is like.
I spent a bunch of time in therapy this week trying to find different ways to look at the idea of having something I wanted to tell my parents before they died or we parted ways, and I couldn't find a way to make sense of it. If nothing I say is going to change anything, why would I say it? Julie gave me a couple ways where the saying of the thing was transformative to the person doing the saying regardless of how it was received, but mostly the idea just made me feel tired. In general, I think I sometimes want people to know how they hurt me, but if it's not going to change anything and it's just going to make me feel worse, why would I do it? (I think somewhere in here is the idea that if I could just find the right words, things would be different. Not sure exactly how, but a better-than-this different). I suspect there's not much left for my parents to withhold, most everything's already off the table. (not approving of anything I do has definitely lost of most of its sting after three and half decades) but I also know the idea of confronting them is sort of a limited time offer. They're in their seventies, they're in half-decent health, they're behaving not as poorly as they could be in regards to the pandemic, but they're probably going to die before I do, and there's going to be a point where if I suddenly realize I wanted to say something to them, there's not going to be a them around to say it to.
Maybe I just regret that I'm not going to regret not trying.
