Month: August 2018

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Conditional love

I had a lot to say yesterday but stopped at 500 words. Then I kept on thinking. But what was I thinking about?

Yesterday I called my True Self a bitch – which may be a little unfair. She’s just… I didn’t really hear from her much last night. I woke about half four, got up and had the last of my antibiotics and a drink of water, played a programme on iPlayer, dozed off at some point then woke up before the end and tried to rewind but couldn’t get the touch screen on my phone to respond properly (common problem),finally managed to get it back further than I wanted to then played to the end and by this time it was getting on for 7, so got up and sorted out a few things in the bedroom then had breakfast, hung the washing out, came on here and faffed about some more.

I started thinking about despair yesterday. It was very strong yesterday morning. Where does it come from and why? What is the shape of it? Absence of love. Inability to accept love because it is directed at the lover’s perception of who I am, not the true me. The true me is loved by no one, including me. All love is conditional on conforming to the lover’s idea of who I should be.

The sense that when I’m giving of myself, the truest I can be, the ideas, feelings, thoughts inside me, everything  I have to offer is not wanted, not understood, rejected, ignored, discarded. Valueless. If no one else can see and value who I am, how can I?  I am lost, I am nothing.

When I was young I hoped one day that someone would understand me, see me for who I am. I can only be myself, after all, I can’t be anyone else. So love me for who I am. But who ever wants to do that? Instead they would rather tell me the person they love is me. But then what happens when they see the true me? When they realise I can’t live up to their idea? They get angry and tell me to stop being like this, they want me to be like that. Love is conditional on my ability to live up to what they want. This is the crux of everything.

I have tried for so long. And I get angry and frustrated and afraid and lonely. Because who am I really? Who am I if I can’t be who you want me to be? I can only be myself.

So, I will be myself. I will do everything I can to be myself. People will not like this. They will try to ‘help’ me, to ‘encourage’ me, but they won’t succeed. I will be myself and I will write about my true feelings. I can’t write short stories or novels or funny little snippets. I will write about myself and they won’t read it, but that’s fine.

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Madwoman in the Attic

If I was going to write, how would I start?

I had the beginning of a poem earlier when I was watering the plants, if I can remember what it was:

If you could see me as I am…? Something like that.

But it’s gone now. Bugger.

Anyway, no one sees me as I am. That’s the point. The old chestnut.

If I keep picking and picking and picking away at this, will it ever lead on to something else, some kind of breakthrough or revelation?

Wish I could remember that effing poem. It’s gone now. It had a good rhythm to it, and some internal rhymes. Something about: ‘…where the broken rivers run…’ I remember thinking – how can a river break? But it didn’t matter because it fitted. Bloody obscurity for its own sake, that’s what it was. And ‘through the cracks between the pavement…’

About the real me who is inescapable and always torments me but no one can ever see it/her.

You see, the myth is that when you find your True Self, everything will make sense and you’ll find peace. Except my True Self is a bitch. The more I get to know her the worse it all gets. She’s the one who makes me cry in the night with despair, but I can’t stop her or ignore her or get away from her because she’s me.

And if I say: ‘I will accept myself as I am’ that means accepting her. If I can’t root her out I can never find peace. But the more I dig away at her, the deeper the wound she leaves. So what does it mean to accept her?

Accepting loneliness. Accepting anger. Letting go of the dream of ‘love’, but without resentment.

The path of acceptance feels like the path of papering over the cracks. Or perhaps a better metaphor, filling in the cracks in the pavement with wet mud, which dries out and crumbles or washes away in the rain. I remember doing that as a child, over and over again. It never worked, but I kept on playing at it. Till I got bored and gave up. Which, of course, is what I always do.

Can I escape into meditation? How deep into that despair do you have to go to find a place where you can rest in emptiness?

The woman who cries in the night is trapped – labyrinth, hall of mirrors, which is the correct metaphor? Or that one from the Cat Stevens song when you end up back where you started?

Whatever, she is in a trap: she cries for love, but when she cries no one can love her. So she cries for the knowledge that she will never find the love she craves. Because love is always partial and conditional: ‘We will love you on condition that you stay happy and don’t give in to despair.’

So the despair has to be hidden away. The Madwoman in the Attic. She’s still there.