Maya

Surrounded.

The stuff pushes in, new stuff; Christmas stuff and clutter. I have a tendency to be overwhelmed even by too many groceries after a trip to the store, the consumerism of Christmas always freaks me out a little. I don’t know how to catalogue things, except books. I have just gotten done giving things away, things with emotional weight; I never keep such things. They stay new and perfect if they are full up with expectations that never realized fruition, or a disappointment that hangs over my heart. It’s so much easier to gift wrap my emotional bounty and give it away in parcels,

But there is always the incoming. The influx.

I don’t pretend to be well, but tomorrow and the next are also parcelled into organization bits. This year I will synthesize a little bit more of the love offered. I’m frowning over a sum, bent over the computer. The stuff has a presence of its own, looming and omnipresent as rock formations in my mind.

What she does, the kitten, is she leaps into the middle of everything that seems so serious and so much. She’s a little girl cat, and she’s one of *those* girls, you know: The kind that prove boys aren’t _quite_ the most lovable things on Earth. She’s all round tumminess and slightly slanted green eyes, and she can take the distance from the couch to the arm chair in one leap, no sweat. She lands in the pile of my terrible stuff, and I’m laughing, suddenly, because there’s a ribbon caught on her whisker, and she’s a rakish pirate cat. I push it all aside, very matter of factly, and retrieve my wayward cat.

Strange magic, Maya. You turn my sink and soar into a comical flounder. I want to write, to respond to people far enough away that I can get close to them. And of course push away those who have gotten too close, find some way to word my regard and still carefully post my ‘Keep Out’ borders, but you won’t stay on the floor, will you?

She jumps into my lap with the stubborn, single-mindedness of a girl cat. Gracie was the same way, but Gracie didn’t leave four tiny holes in the skin of my thigh, rousing me to holler from the pain of her stubborn climb.

You’d laugh too, to see her looking wild and alarmed, rushing away from the shout, to hide behind a pile of ‘Shall i keep them?’ books. She knocks things down. She doesn’t listen. She hops into my lap over and over while I’m sitting at the keyboard, thinking I will write the twisted etchings of my mind.

I have to take my hands off the keyboard, and wrap them around this little, purring body. She doesn’t understand anything. She doesn’t know I’m a failure, that I make some sort of living off of introspection, that I hate myself, and the holiday, and love my family and hate their presence and hate  hate hate the STUFF; she’s a fool.

And she’s real. And soft. And alive.

And I’m in love. 

Heartfelt confessions of a shame-faced nature

1. Honesty is a big deal to me, but it’s also convenient. When I acknowledge my weaknesses and short-comings with honesty, I feel a lot less obligated to spend emotional energy feeling badly about them.

2. A sick little part of me seems to gleefully anticipate world disaster. There’s this perverse undercurrent in my mind that’s almost disappointed when the swine flu turns out not to be fearsomely deadly. That same component inwardly cheers at scenarios of chaos and anarchy, like, when following news stories of Paris slum riots or inexplicable storm patterns. I feel more alive the more a situation elevates.

3. I am too lazy or too something to have any interest in professional self-promotion, but I like attention a lot, especially when it doesn’t require very much work. I actually wish I were twenty-two again and sinfully pretty, cus that kind of attention was probably the least merited and most fun to have. Why not enjoy other people’s senseless worship of your glorious youth while you’ve still got it?

4. I like Hentai and anime porn. Other kinds of porn are too difficult, cus they’re either so poorly written and ludicrous that I can’t ignore it, or the debasement of human intimacy for profit and my participation in that dynamic makes me feel sick, so the erotic impulse is accompanied by a guilty, unsettled, acidic feeling. For some reason, none of these hang-ups transfer over when I’m watching a spankin’ hot cartoon.

5. If I did it all again, I would not have a child. Which means I’d be a lot less human then I am now. But the sensitivity that comes with a person’s existence whom you care about more than yourself, is also what lends insight to the fact that I am essentially powerless to prevent fear, pain or loneliness from claiming her, so the act of creation was both irrevocable and irresponsible. I know other people feel differently, and are even offended by that opinion, but I derive that conclusion from my experience of the world. I would no longer voluntarily impose it on anyone.

I wonder if God ever feels that way.

6. I tend to be most repulsed in others by what I hate about myself.

7. I have difficulty retaining the feeling of being loved. It slips away after a day or two, and some other calm, but basically individual outlook toward the world is what forms my impressions. It creates some difficult situations, especially in relationships cus I don’t really feel like one of two, I feel more like someone who sometimes chooses to love even though I don’t have an ongoing impression of being loved in return. It makes it easy to discount or distrust other people’s emotional constancy. It also means that without pretty frequent expressions of affection from the other, I just assume someone’s feelings have changed toward me, so we remain as fragile and impermanent as a brand new connection.

Sometimes I try to build the impression and understanding of being loved from a partner’s loving, outward expressions or thoughtful decisions. But it’s something that I guess has to come from inside to last, and in me, that place seems to be a sinkhole.

I’m not sure why that is.

Housing a growlybear

I’ve been reading a lot today, and yesterday. I sound so redundant, but there is so much added to my  perspective when I read some of you, some of your words. It’s always worth the time spent.

That’s not what this post is about, but the idea to write down these observations was inspired by some of my reading this morning, and a conversation I got into last night.

Last night I was talking to my S.O. about global warming or climate change. The Obama administration is trying to alter the verbiage to global climate change, because that’s just more accurate based on our level of knowledge at this point. 

The fact is, the results of excessive pollution in our atmosphere are complex and not well understood. There are so many changes taking place since the advent of human progress, and the earth’s systems are so intertwined- ocean currents affect storm-fronts in the mid-west- radiation melts the ice-caps which tend to reflect the sun, and when it gets hot, other natural systems kick into gear to compensate- the threads and inter-connectedness are endless. We don’t really *know* what will happen, and when. What we do know is that stuff is happening faster than we expected.

It’s possible that the opposite extreme could result- a global ice-age instead of global warming. We will probably end up first observing an exaggerated effect of what has already started- hotter temperatures in warm places, colder temperatures in cool places, and storms that are more violent and more frequent than human history prepares us for.

But this isn’t a two plus two equals four scenario. Two plus two might equal four hundred, or even a negative number. 

And that whole thing- the acknowledgement that unforeseen results can appear in complex systems- that’s what is kind of bending my mind today. That possibility sort of sets human nature on edge, because no matter how flexible you think you are, there’s like this inner need for people to feel in control. 

That’s why we live in climate controlled boxes, and why we freak out when things happen that we don’t understand. That’s why a person might pray for mercy if they plant a field of corn and end up with hybrid tomatoes. It’s kind of disturbing when two plus two equals -312.

I’m going to condense this down to a personal level. Lately I have been bending over backwards to be present and responsive to my daughter. I am interested. We make lots of effort to do things she wants to do, to go that extra mile. I’ve tried to give generous attention, and not have her be in the position of asking for it and not expecting to receive it. 

And she’s a really good kid, mind you. She has always been patient and understanding, especially considering what a small sliver of me has been emotionally available at times.

So what do you suppose my efforts have resulted in?

*grins*  I think this is a line from a movie… No, no! It’s from the West-Wing: Josh’s therapist goes, “I know you think I’m telling you that two plus two equals potatoes, but… ”

My daughter is mad at me.

Uh huh. She’s mad, and dismissive, and frustrated. She turns half our outings into exercises in patience, if not out and out tests to see if I will, in fact, sell her to the gypsies if she pushes me too far.

To go  by a few hours from the past week, she sometimes doesn’t appear to like me.

That’s such a weird thing, isn’t it? She’s absolutely wonderful when her parent is sort of a crap parent, but when I’m going the extra mile, she’s making me feel like a repugnant nazi.

I was pretty discouraged when that trend started surfacing, but now— I hafta view it as hopeful. I really thought about it, and the fact is… she’s starting to trust me. The tragic part is that she actually didn’t feel she could act out around me before, because she feared losing whatever portion of mom she had. Now I’m really trying to be all here, and it actually makes sense in a way that first she’d test it out. Try and find out just how solid and reliable this version of mom can be.  

Secondly: She didn’t really ask for a change in our dynamic, it was simply delivered. I don’t know about you, but I get somewhat pissed off when my expectations get turned on their head. Even if they aren’t good expectations, or even if they’re replaced in a positive way, it leaves you in a position of kind of reacting rather than acting. And that’s just not comfortable.

So this all makes sense, if I think about it. And it comes as little surprise that there are parallels between my relationship with my daughter, and my new romantic relationship. I have been getting the idea for some time that my ability to connect with her in a healthy and positive way will precede any lasting meaningful connection with anyone else.

I mean, good or bad, at the most basic, animal level, I’m a mother. I cannot go forward and leave my daughter behind.

So there’s this guy… 

And it’s weird. It’s always weird for me to be in love. Being loved back is weirder still. To be accepted and to feel secure, to feel that someone *likes* you, even when fear has turned you cold and sarcastic- to have that affirmation that someone still delights in that form of you, is…

wow. I’m aware that there are people with healthy relationships who have never known anything else, so it might sound goofy to be constantly surprised that love can be such an amazing experience.

I’ve done things that might have screwed it up in the past months. But when that verbal ambush forms, he firmly takes it and turns it around, and I’ve learned the trick for when it’s just me: Simply turn it around. I want this. I don’t hafta screw it up. It’s okay to acknowledge that this is important to me.

So the feeling grows that this is both solid and flexible enough to survive.

So what do you think happens? Now that something good and strong is added to my life? Do you think I wake happy and invite the world in?

lol

Nope. I’m housing a growly bear. Not toward him or my daughter, but toward the rest of the world. I feel critical. Closed.  There’s sort of an ungiving nature under my nature.

Weird. 

Jung would say this is my human nature trying to be in balance- negative trying to balance out the positive. That would happen in dreams if I could ever sleep.

Don’t really buy that, though.

Today, I couldn’t believe someone intelligent and expressive liked American Idol. I couldn’t believe another person took themselves so seriously. I sat there and scowled over the predictability of my ex. These are little growls, and they’re really uncharacteristic. I went to church, and I sat there drawing in from the people, the infirmity and general dowdiness of the crowd. I felt a sort of distaste, a desire to be around people I relate to more fully. (I never go to church) It took the remarkable intelligence and compassion of a palm Sunday sermon (which is worth a blog itself) to kind of crack me open and not sit there in my growlybear ugliness looking askance at everybody.

Why is this? Why is it when I feel loved, accepted, secure… when I have this source of joy, why am I being so miserly in spirit? 

Possibly this isn’t new, but just a result of spending so much time concerned with whether others liked me, that I didn’t have a chance to figure out if I liked others.

I don’t think I’m superior. Wait a sec, Yes I do! Me and my brain… it takes a hell of a lot of intelligence, compassion, or some form of talent/understanding for me to admire you. I just haven’t had the emotional leisure to acknowledge the arrogance of my standards.

I still hafta figure out who I am in the context of others, and if she’s a decent person. I suspect there’s  room for improvement.

This sure isn’t what I thought would happen, internally, upon meeting the love of my life. But there you have it: Unexpected results from complex systems.

(Oh, you can go ahead and feed my inner growly bear, but mind your fingers. She bites.)