Greetings @CherryBomb
I appreciate your hearing me, I genuinely do. I hope the reference to boundaries doesn't mean I'm being put into cotton wool, as someone you have to dance around. I would have thought not wanting to be told what's so about oneself, without recognition of the fact that it's subjective and transferrent, would be something everyone would want. Am I wrong about that?
I don't want to rehash things, but I'd taken a break from the forum because ... well, frankly, it bothers me that such an approach is prominent in people's approach to support here; I personally find it extremely concerning. My own perception of many of the posts here is that the people behind them are a bit exhausted from other "normal" people trying to impose their realities onto our community; I see and hear the subtle inducements in the "real" world, the creeping invalidations of people that say, "You're only okay if you behave like me." So to venture back to the forums and get a dose of the same thing was very difficult to take. Surely these forums can be a shelter where that doesn't happen? Perhaps I'm very very wrong, and no-one will agree with me, and then I'll know that this isn't the place for me. It feels very, very important to me, and I was genuine in saying thank you for hearing me, but I feel very anxious about feeling that I'm being "tolerated".
My avatar is a still shot from one of my all-time favourite films, Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. That film changed my life in so many ways -- not least, sadly, making me realise that my family and I didn't see eye-to-eye on pretty much anything at all. I still remember that dawning realisation on the drive home from the drive-in where I saw it as a kid, and listening to the rest of my family saying the most inane, rubbishing things pretty much solely because they didn't understand the film. (Yes, it's a hard film to come to grips with, but it was uch simpler than that: they didn't understand it, so they tore it down. And guess what happened to me?) It wasn't the start of my estrangement and disenfranchisement from my family's politic, but it was very clear to me that I didn't feel safe with them from that moment on.
Anyhow. That's not the primary reason I chose it. Most importantly, the film fired me with ideas. On a Myers-Briggs scale I'm an extreme introvert, so it's ideas that energise me, and frankly make me feel so inadequate to the task. The image in my avatar is the moment where the proto-human ape first learns how to use tools, and the entire universe is suddenly, incredibly open to him. I crave those moments -- and I've had a fair few of them, I'm fortunate to say -- where something clicks into place, and the world suddenly looks new and different and exciting again, and so that image represents that aspect of me.
And it's also a reminder that I don't know everything, that there's always more to unfold. I've always been someone who's more comfortable knowing the question than knowing the answer, because answers shut off other possibilities.
But you're right to pick up on the social aspect of my metaphors. For me, the overwhelming tone of my life is loneliness. And it's humiliating. I'm sorry I let the bitterness out on the forum, but it felt for me that the only alternative to that was to give in to the compliance I've always sunk into before, which has made me realise that many (most?) people just want to be "right", and don't care about the aftermath. There's a reason I named this thread the way I did.
Venturing out of my cave is getting to be very hard. I don't feel part of this world, and it immobilises me. I'm reading a couple of books at the moment that are at least bolstering me: Elaine Aron's "The Highly Sensitive Person", which at least offers validation and strategies, even if it hasn't yet helped to lift me out of the "I-don't-wanna"; and Barbara Ehrenreich's "Bright-Sided", which shines some light on our growing obsession with looking no matter what like we're "in charge" with our lives and the increasing social sanctions against admitting any missteps or inabilities. (It was written for the Americans, but it's increasingly pertinent to Australia as well.) Those two books are giving me a sense, at least, that I'm not alone with this, something my own "real world" doesn't do.
Hmmm. One day, maybe, I'll write a three-line reply, do you think? (No, I don't see it happening either.)
Genuine regards to you, @CherryBomb, and to all the forumites.
A.
