Thursday 14 January 2010

Post counselling unedited, angry rant

I think I just feel stupid again.

Stupid that I don't know how to do this stuff. I don't know how to connect with it.

I'm not going to allow myself to feel stupid for choosing to care care for my parents and for being here. I felt like I was being pushed to reject all of that, reject my family and my part in that, and I won't. I did what I felt was right and that made circumstances better. Yes, I'm suffering for it now. I do not regret it.

I don't want to have another conversation about the idea of not speaking to my mother, because it's not something I will consider. She is part of my life and my family, and if I want to spend what little time I have left with Dad with him, then she's part of that equation. Going down a line of suggesting that option just makes me angry. Other people can choose to do whatever they like, I don't care. I am doing this. I don't want to feel stupid for that.

It is, however, likely that I will leave here when Dad dies.

I need to find solutions in the here and now. I need to work with the resources I have available, going out and creating new ones will be an ongoing project, and I can't rely on what may or may not come good in the future. I have to do the best I can today.

My friends may not be ideal, but they're all I've got and I won't allow myself to feel stupid for having those people in my life either. Defensive? Yes, I'm sure I am.

The majority of the people that I see face to face on a regular basis or can share with beyond hearing about new teeth or the horrors of breast feeding, are people like me. Maybe we are all flawed and bad at this stuff as we're the ones who've ended up as solitary creatures. We've failed to make that step into partnership, or have destroyed or lost the ones we had.

The married, pregnant, kids, wedding planning friends take less of an interest because their priorities change – rightly so. Their friends are no longer the most important people in their lives, and they forget that, for people like me, friends become your family. They no longer understand my life.

We cling together like those on a sinking ship. Not necessarily what I would have chosen, but it's what my life is and what I have available.

So, if flawed and dysfunctional is what's on offer it's better than solitude and all I have to work with. I don't want to have to defend the choice of people in my life. Half of the people I see regularly here have known me for twenty years. They've stood by me and vice versa, and I'm not giving up on them.

Yes, I have people elsewhere that I am closer to, but life and geography get in the way. I don't have someone to come home to and tell about my day, not am I going to unburden myself on someone else who's come home to a cold empty house and is probably feeling much the way I do. Instead, I work hard to make to make the best of what I have and create new, and I keep my relatively insignificant whinges to myself.

So, if I'm going to sort through the stuff I need to, then it has to be with what's available, otherwise it's all fantasy. Today I was defensive, and upset because comments and questions made me feel stupid.

I can acknowledge that anger is not an inherently bad thing. At work I know what to do with it. It drives me forward to fix things and make the world a better place. Anger personally is another thing entirely because I don't know how to drive it to do anything, mostly because the problem is me. I have no idea how to make it constructive.

Telling someone every time I'm pissed off? No-one's listening. Reality, MY reality, today, now and for the foreseeable future.

I will continue to seek out new people and things and create opportunities, but I need to deal with now, or I will never get to the tomorrow I want.

2 comments:

  1. You're doing what you believe to be right, from where you are, under the circumstances, background and history that only you have come through.

    Other people can suggest what they think is right, or what they might do in your situation, but they are not you.

    You can listen, you can take advice, but the decisions of your life are yours.

    Of course you have doubts and of course there are times when you feel like absolute shit, but you are doing what you think is right.

    And that's the most important thing.

    No one can take that away from you, and no one should try to.

    What you need is support for the path you choose, not criticism.

    From what little I know of you, it's clear you are genuine and sincere.

    So for what it's worth, please accept my validation and respect, even if you don't feel you're getting it elsewhere.

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  2. Thank you. I appreciate it. Counselling is rotten sometimes. Fingers get poked in places that I've tried to hide forever, and sometimes there's no escape. I know it'll be worth it. I know I am being challenged for a reason. But sometimes I am just angry and exhausted by it.

    Glad your Woodly Allen self is out play, i'll be back to join the game of fixing the world and being wonderful in due curse .

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