I don’t like her

The Pink Agendist, EB de Mas, seems a decent enough bloke. I like what he writes. He is one of the Rich, and my envy is held within bounds, I think- until he said that he did not have to associate with anyone he did not like, and commented on the social dishonesty we express in seeking and tolerating company- over several posts last month, including this one. Now my envy rises.

He describes a woman who holds weekly dinner parties and does not even like the guests. Why would one do that? To play games with them, poke them with a stick and watch them jump? Perhaps to joust with them, honing battle skills. Or to suck up. Or she does like the people, but also likes gossiping about them and dissing them so appears not to. Or she enjoys the effort of creating the dinner parties. You would have to ask her. Perhaps she would not know, perhaps she has a rationalisation she could trot out.

I cannot go off and be an anchorite, and sometime I will have to get an income. So I will have to spend time in places and with people I don’t like. I do this by shutting down certain emotional responses, with telly, messing about on the blog and Solitaire. Previously I have used alcohol, though I have always been a careful drinker.

In The Chicago Code, now being broadcast in the UK, Detective Wysocki is a hero, of exceptional toughness, intelligence and integrity. “Someone has to stand up to them,” he says. “You just did” says his Superintendent, and his shoulders slump. I have been that driven, only valuing myself so far as I could be clear others valued me, anything I achieved was only to be expected but anything that did not go my way was My Fault.

So here I am, hiding. I can no longer shut down the emotional responses- anger, fear, resentment, frustration, hurt- except by withdrawing. Some shut the responses down by throwing themselves into their work, but work, for me, produces the responses I flee.

I am “very sensitive”, and at the moment it feels that means only, “easily hurt”. Possibly, just possibly, it could mean sensitive to the feelings of others if I could get over the hurt.

Do you know that most people don’t know how feelings work? The truth is,if you don’t understand how your feelings work, you really don’t understand the world around you. The truth is, the way you see the world is in large part distorted by the feelings that you have not expressed.

-David Viscott

At the moment, my own feelings make me avoid. So I am celebrating the avoidance, the rejection of feelings, the refusal to bring things into consciousness. They are good, they protect me from what I cannot bear. I do not like myself, much, and I am the person I have to live with. So. Stop judging that. Then, the feelings underneath which are too painful to contemplate, eventually I let a little of that surface. Again, I want to celebrate it not fight it, as fighting it has got me here. And even celebrate the fighting and judging, the best ways I have known to protect myself.

I need to Accept.

That is what I am doing. We can live in these huge, advanced, atomised societies rather than in tiny, warring tribes, but only by shutting down feelings, and the shutting down no longer works for me. I need to love myself, welcome all of me, cherish myself.
And- I have my beautiful fonts back! It was just the wrong type of quotation mark!