Reading rosyxxx's journal

Wow! Where do I begin? Besides warning anyone attempting to read this that it is very long... so...read it only if you have the time...

The last few days have been busy. With everything that happened Monday and Tuesday, and the utter confusion it generated, I am happy to say, that I still have my head on my shoulders. I think I handled the situation in the best way possible... I hope so, because my suggestion, and subsequently the decision which was based upon it affected several people; yet, anything else would have been unfair. At least this way, everyone took a hit, and no one person was weighed down with the final burden. If it sounds like I am speaking in tongues, it is because I am. That's all I can say.

A few weeks ago, when things were being difficult, I wondered aloud where my 'peace' had gone. I was angry, I felt alone, but only for a day. I cried during my meditation practice. I sobbed. I begged for help. And it came from within me.

I've been a good friend to some new people in my life. I have given my time, my possessions, my counsel (whether it was good or not)... I have spoken up for my friends... I have driven them home when they were drunk. I have stayed up looking at photo albums, and listening to people's troubles. I have been there. I have tried as hard as I could to be there.

And I look at my father, and I think: 'now I understand'. Most of the time you can do nothing but listen. Unless you really, really dig deep. And that's what I believe I want to do. It is my goal.

What hurts now, is watching myself slip a little here and there...and watching others do things that feel all too familiar to me. It hurts to watch them suffer so. It hurts knowing that all you can do is listen. Point in case, several people at work. More to the point, the gentleman I went out with last night.

I watched in shock for more than a half-an-hour as he could find absolutely nothing positive to talk about. He not only berated himself for being 30 minutes late, but he subjected me to it. Every word that came out of his mouth for over 30 min. was to the effect of:

Bad things always happen to good people...I am always late wherever I go, if I leave on time, then I get stuck in a traffic accident, or the phone rings and I take it, not thinking... This sucks, that sucks, it all sucks, life sucks... I am miserable... I just want to be average and mediocre because when I was in school I messed up the bell curve by being exceptional, and everybody hated me...I don't have time to read books, or watch movies, even though I only work three days a week out of seven, because I am busy doing everything for everybody else that calls... I don't work at my old job, but I do work at my old job...

Ouch!

Needless to say, most of it sounded like a jumble of words tumbling out, with no cohesion. He was all over the place with his pain. He was miserable, he was sad, he was ranting. But on the day I met him and asked him out, I was originally blown away by his beautiful eyes and his Snoopy necktie. But after all of that, I was a little disheartened. I tried to steer him not just onto more positive topics, but onto a different track with the same topics. I said that Bad things didn't always happen to good people, and I got lambasted for it. He insisted that they did.

Ditto, every suggestion I made thereafter. I quickly shut up, and just listened. Not that I had said that much anyway. I asked him about himself, but it took him 40 min. to ask about me... and when he did, he quickly turned the conversation back to himself.

Seems oddly familiar. I remember the 'love of my life' saying those things about me. And they were true. That doesn't negate that 'the love of my life' has his own set of problems, and it doesn't absolve him of the responsibility to change his own ways; but it also wasn't as if he was the only one fucking up, and I suspect, if anyone was keeping a running tally... mine was much higher. Not that it really matters now, but just so people reading this can see the perspective that I am coming from...

I remember not being able to 'listen' at all, because the words coming out of my mouth were like some fucked up mantra to keep me from thinking about my misery. When I tried to listen to someone else, I couldn't hear them, literally, so I began, always, to talk again. To drown out the painful thoughts.

But last night, with my date, I just wanted to tell him to shut up, and put his head on my lap and cry; but I thought he'd make fun of me for it if I did. So after trying feebly for a few minutes to try to counter his negativity with positivity, I just stopped. I crossed my arms and legs, and let him rant.

And I thought of Mary Oliver's poem... the one my mother loved... the one the poet David White read on tape:

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
"Mend my life!"
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations--
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already too late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

And I think, the poem is speaking to the idea that the airlines try to get across to mothers traveling with small children. You are of no use to your child, if in scrambling to put the oxygen mask on their faces, you suddenly pass out before you have completed the task, because you didn't take care of yourself. You must have a foundation of strength to come from...

For most people, lately, I have had that. The easy ones just look a little pissed, and I kiss them on the cheek, or smile wide and genuinely. The more I smile, the more I want to smile. I've lost track of the people who have told me that I have the most beautiful smile... people stopped saying that round about 1996. It's been almost ten years. It is a compliment that I have missed, because when people say it, they are grinning as broadly as I am, when they weren't before.

People said, before my mother died, before I met the man who is, and has been stalking me here online, that I loved life, that I smiled all the time. And now, I smile again. Genuinely. It feels so real. And it has happened so fast. I'd say the crisis here online and off a few months ago, made me desperate to change, but the credit for the change doesn't go to someone who sets up a site in my name titled: Cleansing... it goes to my father, my sister (in all honesty), to 'the love of my life', to my friends John and Dan, Moon and Stacy, to Sarah, most of all... most of all. What she did for me back in October was nothing short of what a loving mother would do for a child in misery. And I argued with her, the way my date did with me last night. But she stayed with me, she held my hand, she planted all the positive seeds she could find in the dirt of my mind... and her seeds are growing.

She's not perfect. I am not perfect, but we aren't trying to be perfect, we are trying to learn to love. To learn to care. To learn when it is appropriate to defend ourselves, and when it is not. To learn what isn't worth worrying about, and what is...

With things happening this fast, I hope that within a month's time, I can cross paths with last night's date, and share my smile with him, and watch it light up his face, and change his life. It's what Sarah and all of my friends have done for me... I wish it for everyone else. Even for my stalker. Though, I must admit, he makes it very hard. But dwelling on his negativity is a worthless activity. Excuse me if that sounds a bit self-righteous, or if it sounds like I am being to optimistic.

I wish he would just go to the light and stop rooting for all the villains, but I don't have the energy to spend too much time on what seems to me to be a very hopeless case. Maybe someday I'll have that kind of blind strength, but right now, I don't.

When you try, sometimes you fail. The only way not to fail, is to never try. So, rest assured. I'm no saint. I expect to fail repeatedly, to slip and fall... AND to pick myself back up again and again and again...

A few weeks ago, I ripped someone's head off. I ranted about what an inconsiderate asshole they were... I intended to hurt. And I slipped back down the hole a little. I didn't like it much, so I picked myself up and dusted myself off again... like the Aliyah song says...

I'm sure last night, I might have sounded a little self-righteous to my date without meaning to, but I doubt it. I hardly had the chance to say anything. I, instead, sat there thinking: "Wow! This is like 'the love of my life' being on a date with me five years ago, and the other person across from me represents me at that time."

My heart went out to him, because he reminded me of myself. I had compassion for him, because his heart is basically good. That's the easy part. The hard part is developing compassion for the kind of people who would take someone like that and try to destroy them, while simultaneously pretending to build them up... because they think it is fun. And I think all of us here know who I'm talking about.

Trampling all over the weak and the miserable, the unhappy, the lonely, those crying out for someone to hear them and not shut them out is not the path to real happiness. It is a path into darkness. And not the kind of darkness that has any light within its core. Were I to have made fun of him in his misery, I would be traveling into a very dark place.

I by no means, mean to say that I am out of danger of going down that path again. Very few are safe from that danger. I could slip, but NOT as easily as I did before. It is a little easier to just walk away... so please don't misunderstand. There is a great amount of humility in what I am saying. It isn't about perfection though, it is about feeling ALIVE, instead of 'not alive'. Misery does not do much for helping one feel alive. Either experiencing it, or causing it. And I have caused my share while meaning to, and also not meaning to...

As it was, I felt a little tug towards my date's misery because I wanted to help. I tried. But I honestly ran out of steam after 40 min., and sheepishly went to find the waitress to tip her $20 to speed up the evening so that I could leave before he drained the fuck out of me. Maybe I shouldn't have left. Maybe I should have gone with him to his watering hole, but I have the feeling I would have met with criticism and derision for not drinking. I would have become the target for his ills, and those of his friends because I was the sole non-drinker.

Maybe alcohol doesn't do that to everybody, but it makes me depressed. I suspect it does to alot of people. I'll just take my joint, thank you. And an hour on the floor chanting and playing the Tibetan bowls. And I will forgive myself for bailing on him, because I did the best I could at the time.

I think....

ahh, I finally just now realized (you all who know me here, know that I sometimes write to find the answer) that what made it so painful for me, what made me feel like I didn't have the strength to resist him seemingly trying to pull me back into the pot of suffering crabs... was not that that was what he was trying to do... I can't really know for sure. That was a real possibility. Misery looooooves company, as they say....

BUT, what I do know, is that the pain of realizing that he was being my mirror for the evening was excruciating.

And, in fact, he had said:

"You are my mirror for the evening."

The irony of it was like a knife in my thigh. Thank the goddess that it wasn't like a knife in my heart. That, only my true love has the power to do. And thank the goddess that he tries every day not to twist a knife in my heart. He tries. And that's all I can ask of him, of anyone, of myself.

Everyone is human. Everyone slips and falls. The hard work is getting back up again, and not listening to the people who tell you that you are a hypocrite because you didn't maintain your composure 100% of the time. 90% is halfway there, and halfway is better than no way.

I think the way is through the mirror, and down the rabbit hole... a very different hole from a badger's hole. *sniffs*

If mountain goats like living at high elevations, why do none live in high rise apartment buildings?

This post was edited by rosyxxx on May 29, 2005.