10:06 a.m. - 2004-11-10
Maybe it is just sleep deprivation
Spouse's procedure went well. Thank you %mom-on-roof% and %Sasori-gal% for your notes and encouragement. Sitting in the hospital with magazines from the 80s made me think.
I have been creating this casserole of anger and frustration for several months now - studying the recipe, baking it slowly, adding a few ingredients that I hadn't even thought of before. It is making me bananas. It is making me hate myself. I think about it and I know my face must look like I've smelled something unpleasant.
I've been thinking about this alot - how I've become less forgiving, more quick to put up barriers. But I justify it by saying that in some arenas, just defending myself is considered a hostile act.
At work, I am asked to fix the systems - create logical streams for work, and because no one has done this for nearly a decade, behaviors are pretty entrenched. People do not like change much. I know this because I do not like change much myself until I make it my routine. Is this where it is coming from? Frustration at people who would rather just do it the way they do it, rather than doing it efficiently, or better, or on deadline, or without pissing off alot of people? It is just one small seasoning.
The big ingredient is that I am simmering at my family - parents, siblings, - but they behave no differently than they have all my life - indifferent, forgetful, selfish; loving, supportive, funny. Is their behavior determined by my mood? Or is my mood how I judge their behavior? In a family circle where most now put their own needs first, why do I edit myself and not put myself first? I'm not so selfless - I'm just a wimp about the imagined or real repercussions.
They choose their weapons with precision because I have told them what hurts most - silence, indifference, being told I am unworthy. I read the articles - I know I am a good mother, wife, sister, friend, daughter. I know I am fabulous at these things because I want to be and I work at it. But I choose to carry their slights and arguments in a little poison pocket that I never leave home without. What the hell is the matter with me? I want to lose that in a nanosecond, but some part of me must want to keep it more.
I'm so afraid that I will, by example, make Andy this way so I have to figure out a way to do this or undo this - is it Alanon? Is it St. Francis? Is it more therapy? Is it just growing up and getting over myself?
I know what makes me angry and sad - I have a detailed list in my head of everyone's faults against me or mine that I refurbish periodically. It is my most hateful posession. %Nance% unwittingly slapped me with it when she talked about scorekeeping.
I know that in a crisis that my family would rally around me - that they have in the past. I just don't want there to have to be a crisis. I want my company to be chosen. Doesn't that sound like a freakin' beauty contest? I want to give up the wallow. I want to sacrifice the doubt. I want it not to matter so much because frankly, at this stage of my life, it probably shouldn't.
Maybe it is a control thing. Do I do the things I'm supposed to do because I'm afraid of the consequences? or do I do them because it is the right thing to do. I wasn't always like this - I was never a free spirit, but I was never this rigid - wanting to mete out rewards of consequences.
I imagine all these little exercizes that I would do - like listing all the things I'm angry and hurt about, or the unresolved fights, and then burning them and releasing them. Would that work? Or do I need the thrill and danger of confrontation, knowing that no one in my family except for St. me, apologizes. Ever.
Or do I just think about the good things? Don't expect anything and I won't be disappointed. How do I do that?
Today's exercize: practice on being grateful for what there is in these relationships rather than what isn't in them.
|
