"I say what I have to"

[omnia_mutantur]

I dropped the steamer on myself Thursday morning, and so have a chain of burns across the inside of my left arm.  They didn't seem too bad at first, but then they all blistered, and then I ripped them open by accidentally so now I have an elaborate system of giant bandaids, and they seem to be hurting more and more as time passes.

Delight posted something on g+ about virtues, and passiveness and all sorts of other things, and I said community was one of my virtues, , and I keep poking at that.  Mostly, I'm trying to figure whether or not I'm interested in working on community building when I don't feel like part of the community.  

I volunteer for the Artisan's Asylum.   About 3 out of 4 weeks after work,   wednesday afternoons, I trudge there from Union Square and spend a couple hours filing.  Nothing complicated, nothing requiring anything more than a reasonably intelligent monkey.  And it's soothing, and the gentleman for whom I file praises me in good ways, but it is certainly nothing that brings me into contact with anyone else.  And I've done this before, with Passim, with Arisia, with NARAL.   I went to Boskone this weekend, and felt awkward and out of sorts.

So I assume that it's me, I'm too spiky, I don't have the right skill sets, I don't know how to make causal friends, I don't have the right definition of community.     I'm drawn to people in crisis, I feel best and most useful when someone has something they want to talk about or something they need, I'm most comfortable if I'm providing some sort of added value.  And that sometimes blossoms into something real, something beautiful, but mostly it doesn't.  I keep thinking quiet competence gets rewarded, and maybe it does, and I'm just not treasuring the right things.

I've been told, by more people than I care to dwell on, that I have unreasonable demands, I want too much.  My therapist and I have spent a ludicrous amount of time unpacking the fact that I learned that very early, very quickly, and I internalized the idea that it is my job to protect people from bearing the full brunt of me.   And I lose people, all the time, because I want too much, because I'm too much work.

This all sounds very self-pitying.  In my head, my voice is more matter-of-fact than it is coming across.
 

But back to the original question, am I going to get emotional satisfaction from working on/ helping a thing that I don't feel like I'm part of?   Am I incapable of feeling like I am part of something and so I should discard the condition as unfulfillable?  Do I wait? Do I keep community-hopping, looking for a thing that I don't even know the shape of?

Well, cat-cuddling is prescribed for all ills, so I'm going to take this weird restlessness, put it on a shelf, and make small furry things happy.

 

Comments

[rosefox]

In my head, my voice is more matter-of-fact than it is coming across.

That tone is how jerkbrain-voice attempts to fool you into thinking it's saying reasonable rational things.

(Spoiler: it isn't.)

I'm drawn to people in crisis, I feel best and most useful when someone has something they want to talk about or something they need, I'm most comfortable if I'm providing some sort of added value.

I do this too, and part of it is that I genuinely like helping people, but part is the notion that if I'm useful I won't be rejected. A lot of people have spent a lot of time over the years trying to get me to believe that I can be welcomed without providing utility. It's still a very foreign notion.

I think this sort of thing is the flip side of believing that you ask too much or want too much. It all has roots in the commodification of self, in the idea that relationships are transactional and the value of a person can be calculated in some fashion. If you want too much it's because you provide insufficient return. If you add value then perhaps you will be allowed to occasionally balance that with wants, or you will be rewarded with friendship. But that's not friendship; it's commerce.

I hope this doesn't come across as critical. As I said, this is stuff I'm working on very hard myself (and I'm sure that's skewing my perception of your comments here, so feel free to tell me if I'm off base).