Fear masquerading as anger and control
4/24/07 Tues 14:24
So I have an hour for writing.
I guess I don‘t feel too badly that I’ve scheduled some things this week that meant no writing today. Definitely not a good day to get thinking done, intimate thinking that is. For the past few hours since meeting Darlene for coffee I got sidetracked by trying to load that external drive for backing up work. I don’t know if I’m getting any closer to getting this thing figured out so I can use it for what it’s intended for, sheltering this vulnerable data. It’s a lot more involved than it would appear; each step presenting several problems. So I don’t even know if I’m somewhere near out of this yet, the time has flown and I devoted too much to it.
So coffee with Darlene is fine. No residual bad feelings, and nothing but a shadow of the old dread about meeting her today.
So, here’s an interesting dream from last night:
We had company for breakfast. I’d planned on prepping & making a special breakfast & I’d wanted to make some pancakes I’d been wanting—had a craving for. I think I’m pregnant in this dream. I’m wanting some reassurance. I feel I’m close to my due date, & I’m not as big as I should be. I’m trying to feel the baby’s heartbeat thru my abdoman—wondering if that’s possible. I feel pulsations and take some comfort in them, but realize it may be my own circulation I’m feeling. That’s one of those questions I can’t ever find in books or on the net. So I want to go to the pg bulletin boards on the IF boards. I reallize I haven’t had movement for awhile and I’m very anxious that something’s wrong. Then I feel movement & I’m relieved, but still worried about being too small for where I should be for the stage of pregnancy I think I’m at.
Gian is our breakfast guest. Gary has sort of preempted what I was planning—got things for a different breakfast than I’d wanted; different standards than mine—food not chopped finely, spices not really balanced.
So I’m feeling really disappointed. This wasn’t as special as I’d planned. And when I talk to Gary there’s an edge to it. He’s now just sitting & reading the paper & I’m feeling unsupported and that his presence is missing. I felt that his presence had been missing when he’d taken over breakfast without asking—that it was more about Control, tho if I complained it would be an offence because hadn’t he ALREADY taken ownership & participated? Gian’s at the table & I’m feeling embarrassed about what feels like a real obvious tension between Gary & me which is evident in our communication. I want to ask Gian for advice about these moments in marriage. It seems so obvious Gary & I aren’t doing well. Then I open the cupboard & find the dishes I’d been looking for to set the table sort of haphazardly scattered among pots & pans. I feel really irritated then, because his doing that made things harder for me & made no sense. I was trying to serve up the food & hadn’t been able to find the plates and Gary had emptied a serving platter I’d arranged food in—had dumped it out on plates & then the serving platter was supposed to be used as a plate. I’m angrier and angrier. There’s also present the signature of a feeling I have when Gary serves people up what HE thinks they should eat. That annoyance and perplexity about why he can’t understand that it’s not appropriate to choose for somebody else what they want, or the demand.
I’ve got another dream but I think I’ll write it down later.
For right now I’m just feeling a little maxed out and the boys will be home in 1/2 hour. Spending this time alone.
Funny that it hadn’t occurred to me immediately to speculate a little about that dream. I guess I had a half-assed idea about saving it for Sharon. Like it’s cheating or something to think about it beforehand but I think that’s just a ‘reason’ to back up a reluctance to look at it.
Although in some ways I have already looked at it. What came to mind was a notion that there is a legitimacy about dealing with some of the feelings that come up around Gary in the way he seems to do things carelessly, in the way that I continually get the brunt of it, even if it’s not painful it’s still uncomfortable and means I have to do more, in feeling a weird power struggle in his taking over breakfast and then doing it oddly; then not helping me…not engaging Gian, or providing his Presence. And I feel wronged even tho I know that if I were to complain he would then be very ‘injured’ and could say that he HAD contributed, and to me it wasn’t enough, or right. So perhaps the dream is telling me that it is within normal reasonability to want some accounting for those behaviors although how that fits into the notion of my just letting him be who he is and choosing to not engage negative feelings about that. There’s just a sense of reassurance that those things were reasonable concerns and are yet to be dealt with.
The pregnancy thing is curious. They are very tied together, the pregnancy and that scene with Gary and Gian. There is something inside of me that is growing, that I’m wanting very much and worrying over; even fearful for its life and health. I fear that it’s died, and I’ve been missing the signs that might have alerted me earlier. I try hard to find a sign of its life, and am aware that in my eagerness I might mistake my own life signs as its own, and feel falsely reassured. I’m anxious about its size, thinking it needs to be bigger for the stage of pregnancy I’m in.
So, maybe that’s about fear that the growing taking place inside of me is not viable? Perhaps fearing it’s not big enough to cope with the kinds of stressors that arise between Gary and me.
I feel a little anxious when I don’t really have much to write about. I guess that’s another side effect if I’m opting out of dramas, because if I’m not experiencing a drama, I don’t really have much to write. I went out with Darlene and we had a friendly conversation, much more in keeping with the ideal of mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relating. So there’s nothing to write about that. So it does leave me oddly at loose ends.
That’s what I meant about being alone earlier. Alone without the drama.
It does seem that another indication about things changing is there is less of the physical need to write. I guess I mean visceral when I say ‘physical’.
It’s as if there is some pure viability glowing within each person, and events in life, including it’s own neurological structure and internal communications cause that vitality to be obscured. Obscured by trips that It had no choice but to accept when immature, Further obscured when some of those trips seem to be confirmed as Truth. Mistaken ideas being compounded, and compounded, the hole deeper and deeper, Truth being more and more obscured, that is, the ability to discern the Consciousness that is experiencing all this. Or witnessing it being experienced.
I don’t know.
Something Joy was talking about put me on to that. Something in the story I’ve been getting over the past several weeks about a break-up she’s been going through. The idea that for them a misunderstanding has been dug deeper and deeper by other misunderstandings born of fear and each person exciting even more the other person’s fear. To me I had an image of a true bond underneath it all, but obscured by all these dug-in-deeper misunderstandings, and fear masquerading as anger and control. That seemed analogous to the light of Life inside; that sometimes the way back is strewn with layers and layers of misunderstandings that have to be unknotted—and most people are so kinked up that the conditions for being able to unravel a knot just aren’t present. There certainly is a lot to convince us that we ARE our dramas.
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