I’m not sure how to begin the year for my journal. I have a lot on my mind, and I’m busy [I usually am at the beginning of the year], so I should have lots to journal. But I don’t seem to be able to form a cogent thought. That drives me crazy. I like to write in a sort of essay format. I begin with some thing, I work it out in the middle and I reach a conclusion. It’s better reading for the observers. Yet, I don’t seem to be able to do that so far this year.
Had a great sushi lunch with L on Saturday, then scooted back home to finish a lot of work. That was nice. L is good and healthy. Happy as the fat old cat he is. There are times I wish I’d married him, but that choice was offered a long time ago and rejected by me, and too much of life has occurred since to make it even a reasonable daydream any longer. Still, it is a fleeting thought every now and then.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about parts of me that really don’t make any sense when viewed from a certain POV. I mean, well, I think I’m really messed up in some pretty substantial ways. I’m not normal at all. That can sound all cool and ‘aren’t I the girl child marching to a different drummer’, but the truth is, I don’t like being so different. Not only don’t people understand me, but I don’t understand myself much of the time.
In fact, I’m now questioning my survival skills because one of the attributes I have isn’t so pro-survival. It’s not natural to be so passive about things I need and want. And I mean I am passive. I can’t ask for help. It is actually physically, mentally and emotionally painful to ask for help. And that is stupid. I don’t consider it smart at all. I don’t consider it all independent and self-sufficient like the modern American survivalist rhetoric would have us all accept. It is in fact downright counter-survival not to be able to ask for help when you actually need it.
I was once in some real distress [from what turned out to be a kidney stone] and I actually drove myself to the emergency room. I had a roommate, my mother was 2 miles away, and I had a good friend who lived on the property, and I still would not wake anyone up to drive me. That sounds independent and self-sufficient, but I was a danger on the road because I was in so much pain. I wasn’t paying attention to the road nor would I have been able to react properly if some other driver had been a menace on the road.
There is a point where independence turns into being your own worst enemy, yet we’re all human and supposed to have this wonderful survival instinct. Yet mine is draped in some kind of “Never ask for help” tapestry of absurdity. Because of it, I make my life worse. Then I can’t ask for any help because I created the problem by not asking sooner. It’s a nightmare sometimes.
Then there’s all the denial. The denial that I’m somehow less in the eyes of family and friends. I take the truth of others, and I embrace it somehow and put the pain in some safe corner. “It’s the way it is” I say to myself, but I wonder just how much agreement I have with their truth. I wonder how much I agree that I actually am second best, instead of just trying to understand that everyone is entitled to their opinion. But, I secretly know I am worth more. Do I? Do I really? Or did I accept a long time ago that I would always be second best and just deal with a life of being less than? Did I accept that others have an opinion, an opinion I don’t have to agree with? Or did I accept the opinions as truth, and form the same opinion about myself?
Truth is, in all this new year soul searching, my conclusion is.. No, I don’t think I am worth much at all. Oh, I have a good opinion of myself. I truly do, but I don’t think I am worth much “compared” to anyone else. And let’s face it, that’s how we all find value and attach worth. Parents have a favorite child, everyone has a best friend, lovers have the “one true love” and everyone else falls into the ‘seconds category’. I’m a second.
I’ve made the best of that status. Like a house servant who is promoted to Butler, but will never be part of the family. That’s me. I’m proud of what I do and have accomplished, and I feel good about my life. But my life is as a second.
I’ve spent a lot of time in my life accepting the opinions and choices of others. That is the freedom and respect one gives to another. But in the process, I fell into a kind of denial. The denial of the fact that in my acceptance, I accepted that I was not enough and never would be.
There are tears that want to be cried. I can feel them deep inside of me. Tears that would open a flood gate of pain and of being ‘second best’. As I choke back the pain and tears, I find myself begging to find whatever switch operates the denial. Please let me find it, so I can go back to my comfort. So I can find my place, even if it is as a ‘second best’. It is my place, and this morning I find I need the safety of knowing my place.
