It is as it is.
I am who I am.
I have such anger and contempt for myself! And it gets in the way, feeding on itself, blocking my actions then raging at my inaction. Where do I go from here, how can I pull myself up from this? How have I got here? I should not be like this!
Acceptance might be good.
It is as it is.
I am who I am.
Or, could I turn the anger outward? Step 9 of the twelve steps is, Made direct amends to [all people we had harmed] wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. Could I turn that around, and confront people who had harmed me? I thought on a blog post open letter- Dear Z[—] G[—]…
Would that help acceptance?
Emma quoted Randy Newman’s song. I had not heard it before:
things don’t always, things don’t always go the way we plan
But there’s one thing, one thing we all have in common
And it’s something everyone can understand
All over the world sing along
I just want you to hurt like I do
I just want you to hurt like I do
I just want you to hurt like I do
Honest I do, honest I do, honest I do
I think of Numbers 14:18, God in his gaslighting, controlling bastard mood: The LORD is longsuffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. That’s what he thinks is longsuffering mercy? The standard apologetics is, this is descriptive not prescriptive, how the world works not what God chooses. Ha!
Or, it encompasses the confusion of the world by ascribing to God contradictory inexplicable actions- “forgiving iniquity” and “visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children”. Not the same people, obviously. The good end happily, the bad unhappily, only reliably in fiction.
Miles Davis said, If you understood everything I said, you’d be me.
My immediate response to the song was, Yuck. I commented, I am not the most effectual person in the world, but I know I want people not to hurt. I am very badly hurt, and I want people to feel better, to feel valued, to feel worthwhile. It feels as if the sins of the fathers are visited on the children to the tenth generation, and I am expiating them. Yes some do, want revenge on the world, and some of us know that would only make things worse, for ourselves as well as everyone else. Emma says, These words he wants us to sing along would never pass my mouth. Yet his point is that we (not all, so not everybody, but most) do this damage to others as it was done to us, and we do it unthinkingly and “honestly” — without reflection and with plenty of “reasons” justifying such behavior. And if we were to put words to those motives, they would indeed sound like this song.
What if? There was that passive-aggressive act which I remain proud of, and there may be others which my need to see myself as a good person stops me seeing clearly. I might still deserve my own love if I were really flawed and human rather than Good. I am still trying to see behind my blind spots. I deny bits of myself because I cannot face them. We are all too complex and strange for anyone to understand.
Or, I am projecting: I want you to suffer, I think, and that is what I want for myself, I want to acknowledge and feel my own suffering…
It is as it is.
I am who I am.
Clare Flourish 
Acceptance may come and go, I think. I’ve been trying lately to watch the emotions. It runs the risk of becoming dissociation, but maybe if I don’t lose the emotion but watch it without trying to control it, maybe I can watch it as coming from me but not determining me. But never trying to get rid of it. Maybe. Mindfulness. What do you think?
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Nadine, thank you for your wisdom.
People feel- fear, anger, sadness, happiness, disgust, surprise… These things are from me, but not all of me, and I cannot perceive all of me at one time. Trying to get rid of a feeling fights it and makes it disproportionately important.
Let us keep practising this stuff!
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I would beat myself up constantly and feel that I had no right to indulge in my feminine feelings which led to constant low hum of depression. We are human and flawed and accepting that we survive on bio rhythms climbing and then plunging helps me. I despair far less and find more comfort in my imperfection than ever. Simply doing your best every day to improve yourself is a good thing….
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Totally agree with Joanna.
You may carry rage and contempt, but please don’t entrench these states. I notice – and begin to accept – that I have real down periods, when I feel bleak, empty and as if nothing I do is worthwhile. Not a coincidence that at these times, I also feel as weak as a kitten. But if that is just part of a circuit, I’ll come up again; and if we are the same, so will you.
Far better, then, to just be with these states instead of worrying them to death, as you say. It is as it is. ((xxx))
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I am wrestling with all of this. Acceptance and denial, feeling the emotion, letting it wash over me, letting it pass; the sense of entitlement which rationally I see I have no entitlement, but emotionally I find that difficult; the need for constructive, worthwhile action… seeking to see and respond to my situation, trying to find good…
I have just read, it is our job to heal the world through the healing of ourselves.
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I suspect the hardest part of anything is to accept that we cannot do, be or have perfect(ion) all the time. But, in one of those weird twists for which Life is so famous, learning to accept that, is the heart of achieving peace and as near to perfection as we can manage.
To simply release the struggle. To silence our internal critics, because, what do they know, anyway?
In many ways, beauty simply is, and waits to be noticed. Embraced. ((xxx))
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Yeah. Internalised transphobia. Internalised self-phobia… Comfort in imperfection is brilliant!
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