My mom and I were talking about my new truck, which I could never have with out my Dad and his belief in me that I can pay for the dang thing!! Any way, I was heading to Walmart to buy some more plastic containers for my books and I went to look for my keys. And said " well I suppose I'll never know where these keys are for the next two months or so.... refering to my dad's habit of taking my keys from where ever I leave them to where ever he ends up with them next. And mom retorted to me "don't be so negative.... with out your dad you wouldn't be looking for the keys to that truck." Now ignoring any other issue someone might think of from that comment; I am focusing on one thing. I like it that my dad always moves my keys. I don't even mind it. In fact it is a quirk of his that I have come to find cute, something I am sure when he is gone from this earth (he's 75 years old) I will miss and perhaps one day It will be so easy knowing just where I left my keys and I will cry thinking about it.
That made me think about how to put into words the very issue that many people apparently don't get about me. Well, not just me about each other......... But, maybe this is one of those things that people take for granted that I don't,..... so I have been a little blind to it.
You're fat, you're silly, You'll end up sticking that screwdriver in your eye before you'll ever get that fixed! why do you spend so damn much money? It's amazing that you can't save on a salary that big? you're a worry wart. You can't remember what you ate for breakfast 2 hrs ago. You complicate things in ways that would take more creativity than an inventor if applied to making a new device we could sell and make money on! Your voice sounds like you have little sacks of rocks in your throat,
Now look at all those things in heavy type. They all sound in most cases negative.... right? Now suppose you are around someone who tells you stuff like this,... maybe different things depending on the person...But those are not the only things they tell you. They also tell you they love you. that "there is nothing you could ever do that would be so bad that I could ever not love you". I think you need some hugs today, I sure do. Thanks for the surprise dinner! It was so good. Your hair looks better sense you started going to that new beautician. You look really nice today in that outfit. Where did you hear that? I have never heard anything like that in all my life!
OK now the last sentence in the last paragragh seems (purposefully) ambiguous. Why is that? Well we can't be sure if the person is going to make positive experience for themselves out of the thing said, or a some other kind wierd or bad or... What determines what they will make of it??..... and here is the error that many of us make unconciously. Even I make the same error unless I purposely remind myself.
If we love someone and they know it, and we know it, and other people know it,...! Whatever we say may or may not be negative. I might like your gravelly voice full of rocks. In this world being fat is always bad. And the assumption is, that it can NOT be otherwise. Yet, there are people I know that I like them to be fat. I wouldn't want them to change. And if someone asks me " Is so and so fat?" I'll say yeah, wide as a barn! but if they happen to follow with "isn't that disgusting? how do people let themselves get like that?" , they will wish they had never said that. I have had friends that were terribly mad at me because a person told them I said they were fat ...And they were fat and I love them anyway but they think I should ( I guess I don't ask them to analyze it) say they are not fat. Why can't people love flaws in others as much as they love the more commonly noticed beautiful things.
The thing is they do! We all do in some situations. I am not suggesting I have qualities of forgiveness superior to the rest of the human race. I just think that not only can you love flaws and,..... well, just characteristics that don't have to be good,... or bad, or anything.... but just what they are!..... You can disagree about things, and you can think what someone is doing is strange to you. But that doesn't mean you don't love them! Even more than the objectivity or just the plain trust that goes with love .... how ever you want to see it. Honesty is also important. Sometimes we happen to be in relationships with people that we know play games.... we even know that they are dishonest with us.... but our love outlasts those things and our honesty can't let us lie to those we love. So what happens? fights, needless misunderstandings. I had a wonderful person in my life for many years that I thought understood those things. I loved him so much it hurt. It still hurts. He expected a kind of honesty in our relationship that I didn't understand. I expected a kind he didn't understand. And because of it we will probably never see one another again. ( starting to cry right now) We didn't understand one another. And the crazy thing is, we thought we did. We thought, both of us, that we knew one another like the back of our hands. We thought we knew how the other thought,.... SO WELL....so perfectly and precisely.... that we never stopped to even "consider" the question. It was what we both knew as ( and we both used and understood this phrase among ourselves in a way we both understood as just understood ( It's just a given) It is just a given! IT WAS JUST A GIVEN.......but, apparently not. I missed something and so did he, and it all ended in one horrible, screaming, manical, insane tirade ........5 hrs of slow torturous collapse of years of love! In the same vein and steming from the same event I had a newer freind.... The wife of my Stepson Kevin. Her name is ( well she's a private person so I won't say) but I hurt her too and I didn't even know it. We didn't talk for over a year ..... almost two years .... well... 18 months I think is the most exact number. I missed seeing their children for almost a whole year of their lives. ( they have 7 children ) a set of adorable 4 year old twins....... But now I digress. I failed to even realize that she had been victimized by others who saw the fight in the family as her fault somehow. ( this was about about 6 months before the other more horrible fight that happened later just between me and the above mentioned person. So when I had that fight with him. The split between she and I remained, and was just was all the more painful. I had NOone to talk to. She and I had become very fast friends early on. About 6 months before the original fight that cause the subsequent fights.... I didn't even know she was being labled as the ring leader and the trouble maker. She was just a listener who opened my eyes to something that lead to my realizing some truth in some matters that shortened the pain I would have had to endure later on a greater scale. IN simple words she helped me out. And without her eyeopening advice I wouldn't have figured out my gullability in a life threatening ......and financially damaging conspiracy of trickery that was being played out in the face of an emotionally sensitive and the most deep level love blinded area that I was NOT seeing. Or rather I was seeing but she just confirmed the truth of the matter. IN the end she was perfectly correct in her more outside, objective accessment of the situation. What I didn't want to believe but suggesting I did already know on a level I was repressing..... she brought full surface. In doing so,....Yes, she set in motion a chain of horrible events that................I AM EVER SO GREATFUL FOR!!! because through all I had to endure I learned!! I found the truth or at least a more realistic version of it. (I know this is written rather cryptically, but, other wise it would take for ever to explain clearly.) I got slapped around testing new information and found out where I really stood. And I never would have come there and learned it with out all the crap that came before. So In some ways of viewing the whole issue ... She and I are closer and I am just the right distance I should be from that other person I whined over for 8 months. By the way actually it is now almost a full year coming this Jan, 2 And I am actually writing this particular addendum These last 25 or 30 lines are a reinterpreted addition written Dec.14 and not the date in which is shown above so call it a revision of an entry I will post it again ahead on the date it will appear. yep new and old together again.!! see ya!! hope this story lead to greater understanding for everyone around the world if even close to 2 people even read it !!!! Ha HA Ha Merry Christmas YOU OLD BUILDING AND LOAN!!! MERRY CHRISTMAS BANK EXAMINER AND FEDERAL OFFICER ..... I KNOW I KNOW .. I'M GOING TO JAIL "ISN'T IT WONDERFUL" MERRY CHISTMAS OLD DRAFTY HOUSE!!
quote from "It's a wonderful life" Jimmy Stewart after the angel shows him how the world would be if he had never been born........how one life can touch so many others....
h denial, rage, blame, rationalizing, and only now after all this time am I beginning to accept it. So if any body ever asks have you ever had anyone close to you die?... I can say OH yes isn't it so difficult to deal with the loss ? I will understand.
So I will be more careful with my words but I also want others to know........ you can love people you don't agree with. You can love fat people; you can love dumb people because we are all ignorant about something. I just want people to know....... Insults are there for (your) acceptance (if you want to make them into that!) Likewise,.... praise and approval are there too..........Let us all learn that nothing is what it seems. Many people would say that this is called making assumptions. Yes thats what it is too. We make huge stories around things people say that we don't fully understand, and then those ideas inventions take on a life of there own triggering emotions in us that say "I'M NOT LOVED, I AM DISGUSTING TO SOMEONE WHO I CARE ABOUT." Instead have the courage to ask if you wonder what someone means, or you think they mean something other than what they are saying on it's face. You may actually be loved for what you see as a fault in yourself. Someone may love your "querk". So, love like you know you are loved ,,....you can take the loss .... IT strengthens you!! And remember words are clumsy. This is one of the very reasons I want to be a writer! I want to develope the art of communication in such a way that people can hear the truth from me but not be hurt. So people can believe I love them when I do. And just as importantly..... know when I don't! Know that I am really honest ... and know that I have faults too .....I'd give anything to have learned this the easy way...... but....WHAT EASYWAY????? LOL ha ha. love your neighbor as you love yourself.....speak as you would be spoken to...... ya ya ya ya ya..... Live it; Learn it.
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