When is it best to cut ties? Um...I'm guessing: when it's time to heal, time to move on, time to get some space or when regardless of your best intentions you hurt more than help (and vice versa).
Sometimes I really get the metaphor of life as a great big play with me just a hired actor reading my lines. I can try to divert the course of the production with incongruent actions or misplaced lines but the other actors remain consistent and I am left alone with my wanting.
As an adolescent, my biggest trials struggling with depression were:
1) not knowing what was wrong with myself/why I was hurting myself so then I couldn't really ask for help
2) being furious with adults telling me how to live my life when it was clear they were neither happy or at peace or even enjoyed being an adult.
3) the only thing I've ever wanted was to be happy, to seek out joy and to keep on learning and growing. Sadly, there were no such classes offered at the University of Illinois in 1999.
Now after nearly two decades of suffering and learning, I know how to make myself consistently happy 90% of the time and how to equally be at peace 90% of the time. And while this is quite an incredible feat for someone of my depressed and lethargic generation, I am a little chagrined that trials/challenges don't stop. At times I am surprised to see that my words or actions could trigger someone to such heights of rage that they would call me "malevolent" or "warped". And it's those times where I need to look very openly at my actions, taking responsibility for what is my shit and to steer clearly away from what is their shit.
I hate all of it: hate having been triggered to anger, hate triggering someone else. I feel so helpless and sad. Mostly because I know there is nothing I can do to help, thus I need to go away for a while. When what I want (to MAKE/FORCE/CONTROL things to work) is not what actually needs to happen (give everyone their space, reflective time), I fall back into the space of my own presence or some sort of vital cellular energy. I come home to what I truly am after the hard day's work out in the chaotic and insecure world, to the one consistent source of happiness I have: myself.
Wow, I have to say, "malevolent" is not exactly the word I'd choose to describe you...
ReplyDeleteAnyway, hi friend. I'm over here in Bangkok, writing up a storm, but I still enjoy reading all of your posts. I am woefully behind on your life and would relish a catch-up session over some tea when we get back home, after all the dust settles.
I miss you and I love you, sister.
I miss you and love you too, sister.
ReplyDeleteIt's amazing to think that I could do something unconsciously that would make someone I care about think of me as malevolent. In retrospect, I think my actions were out of my own desires for controlling the interaction and less out of my care for this person.
If I really cared I'd let him be who is and let him live his life, not try and change it.
Tea sounds divine. Beaucoup d'amour pour ma soeur cherie!