Deeply Honest: Truths I Have Learned in October

I had enough this week.  Enough of so many things that I literally shook with emotion: anger, hurt, fear and more.  But I also searched my heart and soul and considered much. 

Blood family issues occurred. (Oddly, I seldom use that designation for my children.  For them, I simply say 'family'.  Blood family designates my last two birth family members.)  Dynamics between all three of us got ugly.  I played my part in it too so don't for one moment think I'm a mere victim here as much as I'd love to paint myself in the better light.  

Grief, anger, fear, worry, anxiety at having to deal with one another, a difficult situation, and all of those emotions at once were on display.  I will say that I thought I observed the same in others but I'm trying to be careful here and assess only me, myself, and I.  I cannot assign emotions or thoughts to anyone else, nor should I.  One of the biggest barriers to communication during this time and which ramped up emotional responses and tensions was the assignment of thoughts and emotions to others that were considered judgmental.  Misunderstandings occurred and could not be righted.  Communication ceased.  Ultimately decisions were left to the one individual who was the loudest and most bullying and I simply let it be.  Nothing egregious was being done.  It was a situation with too many decisions to be made, none of them easy and why should I complain or share an opposite opinion?

When that side of my life gets nasty, my usual response is to shut down, extricate myself, overthink, blame, look for witnesses to validate what I think/feel/said/did.   And when no witness was available to hear my side of things, I would play the day over and over and over and over in my own mind until I was sick to death of myself, my emotions, and everyone else.  And then I plunged into the deep blue depths to sulk, mull and lose all sense of good self-esteem.

This is me, age 67, not far from turning 68, still replaying scenes from child- and adulthood that hurt, wounded, scarred. When will I stop allowing them to control my thinking and feeling and reactions?

So, I whined to a friend.  And I was appalled at the whining, and whimpering I did.  I was embarrassed that I sounded like, and am, a hurt child.  That after all this time of self-examination and working hard to better myself, I fall so rapidly backwards into the spaces I occupied long ago is discouraging to say the least.  Where's the progress?  What have I been doing all of this time?  Where's the proof I've gotten better and not bitter?  Not a bit of it in view!

After that phone call, I really looked hard at myself.  And it wasn't all that pretty.

I had to own some things that were not flattering or good about myself.  I took into account ALL of my emotions, good and bad, my grief process, and looked at them as truthfully as I could.  I owned that stress and inadequate rest and nutrition, being completely out of routine, along with physical weariness added in to the negative pattern of thinking.  It did not excuse me of some of the things I've denied about myself.

Truth hurts, but it doesn't make it less true.  And unless I own truth, I can never ever climb from the abyss of self-abuse and fear, nor rightly stand in the face of wrong judgement.

Truth:   There's a phrase that if you're pointing your finger at someone there are three more fingers pointing back at yourself.  I pointed this week...If not physically, I was mentally pointing my finger at another.  

Those three fingers represent something.  That's not saying that you are to blame for another's failings.  It says that we must look at who we are carefully: (#1) guarding against being the repeater of a pattern that is hurtful, (#2) being honest about where our own faults lie, and (#3) acknowledging our personal obligation to accurately assess our own feelings even when they are not pretty or nice.  

Truth:  That bitter gall in my throat at times when I believe another is being treated in a more favorable way?  It's called jealousy.  I don't want to own that admission but there we are.  It's true.  I am jealous. I have been jealous for years.  It's a horrible base emotion that deserves no place in my life and it is damaging even if I think it's well hidden.  It's petty and horrible.  And I feel it.  It's high time I admitted that it is what it is and then set my guard against allowing those emotions to direct my thinking.

Truth:  Those repeated repetitions of the lists of wrongs I've accumulated and which I will happily roll out and read aloud to anyone who cares to listen, speak of some level of unforgiveness, no matter how much I say I have forgiven others.  

Truth:  I want to forgive.  I want to let go of those things that still cut.  I want to be free of the things that torture my mind.  I am not there yet.  I will continue working on it.

Truth:  That anger I refuse to acknowledge, doesn't mean that it's not there.  It is and it's doing its own damage.  Sometimes it comes out couched as humor, but it's still mean and nasty and while it might well be valid, it's being misused and not dealt with as it ought to be.  

Truth:  Long ago, a friend shared that the acronym FEAR stood for False Evidence Appearing Real.  Here's a fact: there are two truths about fear.  Sometimes what we fear is real, very real.  True fear can be a warning, a caution, intuition about a situation

FEAR has a habit of spawning a lot of falsehoods.  It alters our vision.  You cannot see clearly through a pane of fear.

I've had to learn to discern FEAR from fear this month and it is worth paying attention to. False or manufactured fear should be shattered and swept aside.  I've learned that any time I hear my mental dialogue begin a sentence, "If he says..., then I'm going to say..."  "If x happens then I'll X..."  and that the beginning word 'if' of my thought can easily be replaced with "I fear" it's false FEAR.  It's my own thought projection.  It is not a warning, or intuition.  

Truth:  I cannot control how someone else sees me.   Their vision is theirs based on a myriad of things that may or may not be true.  For them it appears to be the truth.  Nothing I do will ever, ever change what they believe.  Only they can create that change within them.

If I behave well, then I am putting on a show.  If I behave poorly, and at some point, we're all going to behave in a less-than-ideal way, then I have only deepened their conviction that I am not worth their good opinion.

Truth:  I cannot make anyone else forgive me.  I can forgive them.  I can ask God to forgive me.  I can work on forgiving myself. 

Truth:  On this earth, my assignment is to try and fix myself.  No one else.  

Of course, I owe others kindness and grace and mercy. I owe them love, though I shall admit readily that it's a hard feeling to delve deep enough to find in some instances.  I can do my very best to cause no person harm, however.  And if the only way I can possibly do that is to walk away, then I owe it to them and to me to do just that.

Truth:  I cannot fix another soul.  I cannot heal another person's hurts.  I cannot restore their heart or heal their mind.  

Truth:  I cannot make another person happy.  I can try but I cannot force anyone to feel happy.  I can make another miserable.  I can make their life hell.  That's not who I want to be.  

Truth: My people pleasing habit has done more harm than good.  To myself.  To others.  My inability to say "No, I can't" or to add in extra things they never asked me to do for them has cost me dearly.  It turns my 'good will' which was false to begin with, because I was only doing it to show how terrific I am, into resentment, which smolders under the surface and becomes an angry outburst that leaves those whom I have been helping look baffled and feel hurt that I turned on them.  

It's made me loathe myself.  Because whatever good I might have done, I've been a jerk about it and that takes away from the blessing I might have been.

I know why I'm angry and I'm seldom angry at them.  I'm angry at me for running myself down, for giving too much, for fearing I am unappreciated.

Truth:  I can't expect anyone to know my boundaries without knowing and setting them myself.

Truth:  Words and writing aside, I have sometimes used my platform to seek validation from others.  

If one faction insists I am bad, wrong, unkind, selfish, lazy, then I want to prove myself to EVERYONE.  I especially want the approval of those who disapprove.  But since that isn't forthcoming, I seek out others to validate me.

I don't need to ask Jane and Jill and Jennifer and Jessica to listen and tell me I'm right and others in my life are wrong.  Those people's opinions are not going to make me a better person, either.

I don't need to convince anyone else that I have been hurt, that I bear wounds, that I lacked something essential in my relationships with blood family, that I have sought to forgive, that I am a good person with work to still do.  If I stumble and fall, it doesn't make me a 'bad' person.  It makes me human.  Fallible.  

If I'm going to use my writing as a tool, to teach me and hopefully help someone else stop and think and learn, too, that's one thing.  But to use it as a platform to try and manipulate others into choosing my side, into stoking my ego, then I'm not using my writing for the right purposes.

All of that said, some of these truths are admittedly repeats from the past, but we all know lessons we failed to learn will often repeat over and over until we get them.

I am still under construction. Unfinished. A work in progress.  And I do pray that I've learned something this go round!  I can do the necessary work with God's help. 

And that's where I landed at the end of this week...