unedited

This weekend was exquisitely painful. I came face to face with some demons I'd been avoiding for a long time. I'm a little like an alcoholic in that I keep engaging in certain behaviors that only hurt me, yet I seem powerless to stop. (I just realized that I described the human condition.) Knowing why I do these things doesn't seem to help me stop. My attachment to this behavior is the most powerful thing I've ever known. I simply can't even conceive of being free of it, because who would I be without it? It's rather incredible that a destructive behavior can define my identity to this degree.

It's affecting those around me and my relationship with them, and this is the part that makes me want to just move to a deserted island and not subject anyone else to this. I think this is why I sometimes fantasize about being single. It's not so much thinking "he would be better off without me" as "I wouldn't have this pain if no one else was around." Unfortunately, I'm such a social person that a life of solitude would be equally, if not more unbearable.

It's just astonishing how the confluence of long-ago events can continue to shape who I am today. I suppose as soon as I think I am locked into a way of being, I am in fact bound by it. I feel like I was shoved naked into the world this weekend. My reaction to vulnerability is to get angry at whomever made me feel so raw, and that's exactly what happened. I really don't want to hear the truth sometimes. I want to blame this all on someone else, I want to believe that I'm really the reasonable one.

During an argument a long time ago, my mother said that I just wanted everything handed to me on a silver platter, implying that I don't want to have to work for anything and that I feel a sense of entitlement. That stung - it still stings - because it's true. I don't have any idea why it's true - my best guess is that I feel like I've been through enough in this lifetime, or that if people really loved me, they'd just give me (or do) what I wanted. I am totally unskilled at asking for what I need but then letting people do their own thing. It feels extremely unnatural. I'm almost always at either end of the continuum - trying to control the situation, or just completely giving up.

Why is it that the right choice usually feels unnatural? Ever notice that? The wrong choice is almost invariably seductive. I can understand where all the stories about the devil came from. They don't tell you in Sunday School that the path to heaven is going to be even more difficult.

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