Not ready to give up solitude
4/17/07 1224
OK, I learned something. I was feeling expansive last week and felt I’d be up to social things, reaching out to people. I called Monica and suggested getting together Wed; Kathy and I are going to be walking Monday afternoons together. My friend Eileen is coming for lunch Fri. Now I realize that I have a feeling of deprivation and depletion; so perhaps that tells me I’m not ready to give up solitude.
Not quite ready to be much of a community-contributor-to yet. (and always the unease—will this feeling of not being ready go on forever? I guess that may play to a belief of “not deserving”—the feeling that I don’t deserve to be carried by the community—someone else doing volunteer jobs because I’m not participating. A part of me says that when I am fully replenished I’ll be a more effective contributor; another part fears that I’ll never feel replenished. That I’ll always be relying on other people to take up the slack for me…and how very wrong it would be for me to expect that. Why should I expect that someone carry the slack for me? Who do I think I am to deserve that.
So there’s something about a feeling of not deserving I think that’s still a piece to work with Sharon. I’m also eager to know what it was that she said was a powerful insight at the end of our last meeting.
Dreams:
1) I’m with people and there’s something about G.W. Pres
There is me remonstrating against him, it’s like for some reason I have a chance to say this stuff to his face. I go over several times telling him that he’s responsible for the deaths of all these people. I want to say Fuck you and I’m wondering if there are laws on the books against that. Now there’s something about a car and rat poison being inside—or maybe just rats. They aren’t repulsive; I see diagrams of their teeth, but its as if it’s snake teeth I’m looking at—a diagram. (like the hinged jaws completely open, looking down on them)
Something about returning.
Later:
I’m at work at VNA. I’m in the atrium. I’m asked if I will go see a pt & maybe take him into my house to kind of foster him. However, there’s some sort of issue about his behavior.
At work they have a party for me. I have lots of gifts. There are two men, one after the other, that as part of the party offer themselves to me sexually. Not at the same time. Each one I kiss, openly & feel very sexual. I have a pt. To see, & so I’m trying to gather up my gifts so I don’t have to make too many trips to the car. I decide to drive the car closer to the building—its late & there are more parking spaces closer in. I see out a window one of the men. Even though I KNOW it was just for my party that we were close I feel a pang as I see him kiss a woman.
I’ve been asked if I would agree to take a pt. To live in my home—a young man with brain and spinal injuries. I agree to it, thinking only of the extra $$. There is some hint that this guy has some major behavior problems. I drive a long way to the facility he’s kept in, and SNF with some rehab.
A woman & man nurse introduces me to him. He’s one of the men I kissed at my party. That’s when I start getting it that I may have agreed to something I can’t really do—care for this man in my home. I evaluate him in the w/c with a woman Dr & a male RN with me. He has some mov’t but very little strength. During the eval I’m realizing I’m going to go back on my saying I’ll take him home to live with us. I start to see the details of what it would mean to have him in our home with 2 small kids—while I’m working–& how he would consume our family time & my alone time. I’m alone with him & settle him for bed, but then he gets up & goes over to the door & locks me in with him. (So he can walk, but looks as if he may fall any moment.)
I yell for help & another nurse opens the door. I tell her to please get the nurse & Dr: we settle the guy back to bed & I explain to them that I’m someone who hears & idea & it sounds possible & its only later the details of what such a commitment means comes to me—this was the case. I realized this guy’s care would consume more family time & my alone time than I was willing to give. So I wasn’t going to do it. For a while they asked if there were ways I could MAKE it work. I said no. They asked where he should go. I said to a SNF with rehav, probably eventually to long term care.
I feel their disappointment. I’d been about to give them relief from a problem in taking him. I go out to the nursing station to write up my evaluation & wash my hands there. There are 2 faucets to choose from in the same sink—and it’s awkward because the one closest to me doesn’t have the soap close the one farthest one has the soap but there’s something else wrong with it that would make it more appropriate to use the closer one.
Something I just found in my June 1978 diary:
“1) Afraid of finding I’ve been living a lie with Janet—just bullshitting when talking about closeness and love. I’m afraid of finding I don’t love her, because she’s so lovable its like I’m a villain and bad person not to. (but, that’s also just fear of appearances—how I appear to other people) I fear being accused of “having lied all this time” (I’m hearing it the way she’d be telling it to other people. I fear the person I’d become to other people when she’d tell them that. Is that because MY reality of myself and the reality others have of me is so undistinguished—another form of Piagetian ego-centrism. So I really think I AM what others think of me?”
This is interesting. I suppose this was in a time where I’d look to others to define who I was, in a sense, or how to be a young adult in the late 1970’s. Get a paradigm of what’s expected. Of me. I looked at others to mirror me back to me, I think. And I was afraid sometimes of what I’d see. And I guess that’s because of a confusion—or CAUSED the confusion: my own identity as distinguished from what others THINK my identity is. So if someone said something about me, as I feared Jan might, to others, I feared I’d see that liar and pitiful jealous person looking back at me and I’d be stuck with that identity, because if I protest, then that’s PROVING I’m that identity, but I can’t live with it silently either.
It is interesting though that there’s sort of a similarity with the feelings I had toward Darlene—the fear of what they meant I was, and the fear that my identity in other people’s minds would become MY identity.
Maybe because I’m projecting the feelings of myself out on other people. Or maybe because I think that they’ll think is actually similar to the reality I see myself as. I have this image of myself as a miserable whimpering child, and I’m afraid others will see an image similar to that, and it’ll confirm my being that reality because when I look I’ll see it in their faces, mirrored back at me. And I’ll believe that feedback image.
I see that part of me was assuming that those qualities in me were loathsome in some way—or I had an image of what every one else would judge as loathsome. So in a way, there was a part of me that agreed that something was loathsome and worthy of being judged loathsome. Plus I assumed how other people would judge, period.
It makes me wonder why I’d start from the premise that I was coming from the place that was worthy of harsh judgment; I suppose another version of “undeserving” If I have an underlying belief that I’m undeserving, I suppose questioning my every motive and feeling would come natural, as would accusing myself of things I’d thought were “bad”. It’s good to read it in my old diary because I can see where this issue of how I view myself with how I believe people view me, and where that boundary is. As I’ve grown older I’ve left many definitions that I’d imagined people had had of me behind.
“And now I keep fearing having these “comeuppances” where I’ll find out all these horrible things about myself and won’t be able to defend myself because they’re true. Just like the people in those books. The idea of someone’s image of me coinciding with my image of me creates a shock-like pain inside me. And I fear the shock.)”
It seems it would be good to share this with Sharon.
Maybe that’s what’s happening, is that I’m dealing with my feeling undeserving of living from this Place. And that the whole undeserving issue has been a source of loss in relationships. Perhaps it surfaces in response to the prospect of being able to live my life from This Place.
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