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 | Blogs > Ari_fairy > Ari-Wood > Imperfection |
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I've been working through something today...and I'm not sure I'm any closer to an answer now than I was last night when the question was asked. I mean...I have an answer...and I have a ready-made excuse...but the real answer...how do I change part of my nature...even when it is no longer an essential piece of my life? It always seems to help me focus on what I want to accomplish...and how to do it...when I simply sit down and let my thoughts flow. This is not a pity party...nor a trip down memory lane...but rather an evaluation of the reasons behind specific...behaviors/patterns...and the hope that I can find a way to move past those behaviors. I was thinking about the lessons I learned as a young child/woman....that shaped such a large part of the person I am today. It's ok to think about those lessons now because they no longer have the power to take me apart at the seams. They are simply a part of what once was...and is no more. It's a nice way to look at your past. One of the first lessons I learned in life was that love hurts. It is aggressive, forceful, painful...and scary as hell. I'm not really sure when I first understood that what I had been told was love...was really something rather more twisted than that....and I began to wonder why it was that I had been...fed to the lions, as it were. Perhaps my mother truly never knew...and I often prefer to think of it that way....but every time she sent me into my father's room to take him his medicine....I resisted...I cringed...I begged....I did not want to have to do it. My father used to tell me that if I ever "told" my mother....she would hate me...she would never speak to me again. He often told me that he loved me best in the whole world and my mother would hate me for that. My mother has always been a cold and distant woman. Although talkative on a wide variety of impersonal subjects, she is not demonstrative, nor is she in the least bit affectionate. It wasn't long in my life before I began to associate those trips into my father's bedroom with my mother's lack of hugs and kisses; with her refusal to ever say she loved me; with the cruelty she used to inflict punishment. I wasn't loveable because my father loved me so much. As I grew older and began to understand what was happening in my life....I began to believe that I wasn't loveable because I was so dirty...so unacceptable...so imperfect. Imperfection is a hard cross to bear. I wanted my mother to love me. I wanted her to just once tell me that I had done something....anything....well. I was far too young to understand that it was her problem...and not mine. All children need to be loved; need to know that they are wanted...and...at some point...we need to hear words of praise for the people we are becoming. I would give anything...and ultimately everything...for whatever morsels my mother would dole out. I would become....perfect. I know that's an impossible goal, but when you are 7 years old....nothing is impossible. I learned that having the best grades in school would at least get my mother to tell other people how smart I was even if she wouldn't tell me that. In fact, she often tells each of us how much smarter one of our siblings or our nieces and nephews are than we. It wasn't love or even approval...but it was the most my mother can comfortably give me. I wouldn't understand that until I was an adult. Somewhere in between...I learned not to care if my mother ever appreciated me...because there was nothing to appreciate about me. Don't feel sorry for those words...I don't live them today....but I did for a very long time. Deep down....I believed that I was simply....evil....bad...just a very hateful and ugly person. Strangely...along with that belief...I also somehow believed that someday God would make me a person worthy of being loved....and someone would love me. Sad when our perspective of ourself is so warped that our only confidence comes from other people's views of us. It might have happened that way...except that I was too different for people to be comfortable with me. My blind eye bothered other students in school and when we see something different about others...our first response is often to laugh at that difference. It isn't usually done in a gentle and loving manner...but in the most hurtful way we can devise. No matter what else happened in my life...I always walked my own path...and that too was an oddity in a peer group of people all wanting pretty much to be the same...and to be acceptable. I had learned that I was never going to be approved of...so why should I care? It didn't stop me from trying to be the best, though....and even in that...I sowed the seeds for my own failure. I could be the best student in the school...but I was also the youngest....and I was strange and different...and people generally avoided me. I hadn't yet learned my place, you know....the place where strange people are meant to be. High school can be a very ugly place. Do you remember how young and impressionable you were in high school? Do you remember your first love? Do you remember how deep and vivid and real it was? And when it faded....and you moved on to the next love....it was painful and bitter...and then sweet and loving again....such a roller coaster ride we all took on our emotions. I didn't much ride that roller coaster. I was too afraid of boys/men....I didn't want them to touch me. And when I finally met the first man I felt...even a little comfortable being touched by...oh yes...I was in love. He was the man who would love me forever and save me from my family. Most of my friends were sexually experienced long before I ever came close. It wasn't that I didn't want to know the feelings they talked about...it was that...someone would touch me...and I would just freeze. I was so afraid of every touch. I'm not really sure how we ended up married....when we met, he didn't like me. I was the older sister to his best friends very underage girlfriend...and I was often left to be responsible for my sister. He really disliked when I would have to go to their house to try to drag my sis home. It would be months....and lots of convincing before I went on a date with him...it was only as a favor to my sis...who asked me and our best friend to date her boyfriend's room mates one night. If I hadn't been drunk that night...I'm pretty sure I'd have still frozen up when he touched me...but...drinking loosens all inhibitions...and for the first time in my life....I felt those feelings my friends had talked about. I felt hunger....and desire....and for the first time...I felt my own sexuality. Still...confusion was a byword of our relationship. He liked keeping me off center. "I'm not coming back again; I don't want to see you again...." and then three days later...the phone calls..."I love you...I'm coming up to see you this weekend." It wasn't healthy...it wasn't love...it was what I was used to...the idea that love hurt....that I was not good enough to ever be loved....and at the same time....he loved me. Once again...if I could just be perfect.....maybe I could be good enough...maybe I could be loved. Feel the passion, walk in peace, live in love....Ari 
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7/13/2008 8:24 pm |
I miss your emails..
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7/14/2008 4:03 pm |
I miss your emails.. 
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