I woke this morning to a fundamental shift. In myself. Cool.
I have been really cranky for the last two days. My Beau had asked me to do something. I did, putting quite a bit of thought and effort into it. Oh, and it was writing, so pretty far up the scale of important to me. Not that I have a reputation for mellowness, except about dust bunnies. And that's more laziness than mellowness.
He didn't really answer. I thought about it and said that I didn't want to keep writing if he was not going to answer. Engage, damn it.
I sent another one yesterday. Again a minimal joke reply. I felt hurt and angry.
In the house I was raised in, if you were "legitimately angry", you had license to confront. Sometimes the parties would fight about whether it was legitimate or not. Hurt was a wussy emotion that one did not admit to, and got teased if one did. After much therapy, I can actually identify hurt and sad as well as angry. Which has hugely lessened the angry. But I still would have acted on it.
However, I didn't. I also did not sit there thinking "Oh, that part of me is unlovable, no one likes it, the part that writing came from." I've learned to self comfort. I think I AM lovable. However, the Beau is not required to respond the way I want him to and it's unreasonable of me to push for it. "You said you'd ......." Dumb. I'm not going there. It's just fine for me to want things, as silly and ambitious as I can imagine, but there is not one person on earth that I can require to give them to me. They are my wants. I have to handle them. And I don't need outside validation that it is ok for me to want or that I am lovable or that the person is not being mean by not giving me what I want.
I looked for a nodeshell in the Dread Chamber to write about today and came to "She doesn't need me anymore." The title makes me think of either a breakup or someone writing about a maturing daughter. I'm tired of breakup write ups. I'm using this title because it could also be about grown up intimacy. I have been thinking about our culture and that I can't think of any examples of adult intimacy, mature love, that our cultures recognizes and celebrates. Maybe 50th wedding anniversaries, but not on television, not in magazines, not in books or movies.
It's a letting go of enmeshment. Unmeshed. It's the opposite of enmeshment, to love other people and yet not require behaviors of them. Require proof of love and that they feel a certain way. We're still piddling around in romantic love, where we "need" the other person, project our best aspects on them and then get upset when they don't act out our ideal partner. We think we've met "The One" who understands us and fulfill all of our romantic fantasies. Our anima or animus. We get upset and disappointed and "fall out of love" when we realize that we are in a relationship with an actual human being who does not exactly meet our ideal.
I don't need specific things from other people. I want them, but that is my problem. And I still want to be with the people that I love.
for THE DREAD CHAMBER
This is a log. It's an essay. An essay log. Fuck it, I don't care.