kyburg | Something to think about -

Current Mood: annoyed

Entry tags:

grief,
wtf

Something to think about -

It's been brought to my attention by more than one person that I tend to wear my past on my sleeve.

Uh. Hmm.

If people knew how much I consciously don't talk about the years between 1984 and 1998? The first thing that comes to mind about the above complaint is "pardon me for it being such an inconvenience."

That's snippy. But holy chrome.

One could say I've lived a charmed life, sure - just the wrong kind of charm.

More than one or two of the grand events have had a lot to do with the delays on a number of milestones. No retirement plan, outside of buying a gun and plugging myself if I got a really REALLY bad reason to stop working suddenly. No children. No grand career writing stuff.

Hell if I'm going to just throw my hands up and say that's it - I just did other things. Things I thought were important enough to postpone other things. Things nobody else could - or would - do.

I mention it. Hell, you ask my name and you have to get a bit of history to understand it.

If you know me, you have to know that much history - sorry, but that was my twenties and thirties. Twenty years and change. Even if they were uneventful years, they'd still be history - wouldn't they?

Do I expect anything for it? It's not worth anything to anyone but me.

I wasn't looking to be famous, or successful.

Ghad. Either a saint or a loser. Why can't it just be what it was?

I wasn't lucky. Period.

And even THAT isn't okay?!

Too damn honest again. Crap.

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You can talk to me about it anytime. I hear you. I started over again at 48. It's amazing what tends to get discarded when you're trying to keep someone you love from dying in despair and pain in a gutter.

I did the best I could and it wasn't enough. It will never have been enough. People who never walked down that stretch of dark road don't want to hear about it. It's like whistling past the graveyard. That sort of pain will never touch them so why don't we just shut up? Gah.

Darling, I am happier than I can say that you are wrestling some love and joy out of life now. But anytime you want to talk history with me? The inbox is open.

*hug*

(mutters) some people's children....

I'm being over-sensitive. Someone just implied I was self-abusing because I stayed even when my needs weren't getting met. Just implied, mind.

*counts to ten. Gets to three*

Well, excuuuuuuuse ME. (And someone my age and gender too. RARE on ol' LJ.)

I have some really dark things in my background. So help me, I didn't ask for it. I CAN'T HELP IT. I just did my best, and what I thought was right.

I'd like to have that skill acknowledged. Not second-guessed or put on a pedestal. Just - a skill. I did the work. Period.

You did what you thought was right. Why should you ever have to apologize for that? Ever?

Doing the right thing often has repercussions that are not all positive and awesome.

That's why virtue is rare. Because it's hard.

But it wasn't. It was the most logical thing in the world.

I just can't get my head wrapped around all the trivia and bullshit people want to heap on it.

It has been my opinion that EVERYONE wears their pasts on their sleeves. It is what is DONE in regards to those pasts that either makes one stronger, or totally screws them up.

You? Are a case of the former. I know at least one person (or, at least, I thought I did) who is more the latter.

Yeah, there's plenty of second guessing... I do it all the time. But there is a choice... either let those choices stagnate any further growth due to regrets, or keep plugging away and live life on the new path carved out.

Or maybe I'm just talking too much and should shut up and go to bed.

I don't know.

C.

I should go to bed. I gotta work tomorrow.

Ng. Snerg. Blargh.

Meh.

I'm so careful to say what I would do when I discuss matters. Because I have heard so much of what other people thought I should do - and some times, they got really bent when I didn't agree with them!

What I did. What I would do. Not what To DO.

And holy merde, don't JUDGE what has passed. It is what it is; it was what it was. We can wish things were different, but there is nothing good or bad about what was. It was. Case closed.

I found it to be certain types--some folks had lives harder by far than mine, who just shrug about it when you ask, and some who are almost crippled by a past full of not much but (comparative) luxury.

Some of us are just wired to carry scars and some aren't. It doesn't make either right or wrong, it just is.

And yeah, some of us just have rotten luck. I knwo lots of folks starting over again at later ages. My mom is back in school, and even if she works well past retirement age, she may only get a decade out of her new career. BUt I asked her when she was hesitant--if you were to kick over tomorrow, what would you rather be doing? On the road to your dreams coming true. or trudging along toward nothing?

Keep fighting.

I refuse to blame other people for my bad mood - I guess trying to apply that refusal to others might be at fault.

But dammit, I refuse to think people suck and that's that.

I don't think people suck exactly, they just only work from their own experiences ans weaknesses--they don't piss you off or ride you to be evil or crappy, they just start talking and out it comes.

Most the time they think they're helping.

The utter look of surprise on their faces when you finally belt them is proof enough of this, I think.

You'll get no such grief from me...I'm starting all over again AGAIN at 57- four years into a new career and thinking of making a lateral shift into a related one, otherwise my fate is to fall over dead in a classroom somewhere, because I'll most likely never be able to retire - looking for love again, hoping this time it won't be in all the wrong places - and that's just about the last 20 years. Start toting up my entire life, and it's a damned soap opera. But it's my life, and I have managed to live it mostly on my terms, and if people don't want to hear about it, they shouldn't ask. Should I feel sorry about it? Why? No such thing as too honest, not in my book.

That's just it - I only tell when I'm asked. Really. Consciously, even more so now than ever.

That stuff is toxic and can ruin a perfectly good day for some folks - trust me, I'm hip.

*blinks* Is THAT too much information?

it's my life, and I have managed to live it mostly on my terms,

This is just ... so excellent.

and if people don't want to hear about it, they shouldn't ask. Should I feel sorry about it? Why? No such thing as too honest, not in my book.

Exactly. Amen, sistah!

I started all over again, twelve years ago... Reeling from a spate of life-altering changes I neither sought nor controlled, I quit a job where I was stagnating and spent two years at a state university, immersing myself in studying music and psychology. That two-year period is one of the best things I've done for myself, ever in my life so far.

I'm in another period of transition now. Such roads are hard and uncertain while you're on them, but *my* life experience so far says that the outcomes are so very worth it.

*hugs*

I would not accuse you of wearing your past on your sleeve. As a matter of fact, you seem to be one of the more forward looking people I know. Your posts have been inspirational to me.

You're definitely not a loser.

No m'am, I'm not. I flatly refuse to buy into that crap. I think I get a little irked when other people just whitewash the whole experience and reduce it to "you suck, boo-hoo loser."

I got called a lot of things - just because I wouldn't leave my husband. Just because.

I defied my mother to marry him, I spent a LOT of time working with him in therapy to keep him - so help me, anyone who wants to reduce that to "what an idiot I was to do it" earns my ire. They didn't know him - and what a treasure he could be. They only see the amount of work and gee, run screaming. I don't get it.

I spent a LOT of time working with him in therapy to keep him - so help me, anyone who wants to reduce that to "what an idiot I was to do it" earns my ire.

While I don't know the full story, I can say this: if they're chastising you for staying because he was ill, then they are very sad people. Furthermore, these people don't know the full story either. Let their opinions be just that- opinions. My opinion is that you are a very strong woman, and a very compassionate one too. Those are very good qualities, which are a result of how you've lived and how you've loved.

I'm babbling, sorry.

I want that tea and more babbling, please.

I have to agree with Lollee--a lot of people just can't take it, for whatever reason. A lot of people look at the nitties and the gritties and just run screaming in the opposite direction.

And then take that aspect of themselves, and the shame they feel at being too "weak" to cope with it, and blame it on you.

And you know, I get it when you say that it just is what it is, and was what it was. I know that, at this point, in my own mind and in my own heart, it isn't moaning anymore--for the most part, I've wrapped my head around the idea that things unfolded as they did and that's what's supposed to have happened, to turn me into me. So no, it isn't a heart-rending confessional at this point. At least, it isn't supposed to be.

But things happened--LOTS of things happened. And I talk about it.

So sue me.

Are we supposed to talk like all of life has been a skip down the flowery path? What a load that would be...

What a lie that would be.

And you know what's REALLY funny?

I'll bet that the same people who make such remarks really see the extraordinary person that you are and don't make the connection that your past is part of how you got that way.

I'll bet that the same people who make such remarks really see the extraordinary person that you are and don't make the connection that your past is part of how you got that way.

WORD.

Second that.
Sounds to me like some folks have been acting *rude* at you, honestly.
That's not part of a civilized person's normal behavior either.
At a guess, it sounds remarkably like teenagers, or retrograde for an adult.
Makes me wonder what got *their* knickers in such a twist.

There are days I just have to remember that often, it's just smoke from other fires. And leave it at that.

But it doesn't help it when I get called names for it. Honestly. Bad enough that it was as bad as it was - do I have to go through the rest of my life justifying it?! Jeez.

I will agree with everything said here. As well, I agree with another commenter because you are one of the more forward thinking people I know.

I think it has to do less with the time period or the event and more with what makes them (the person criticizing you) uncomfortable, whether it's the past, the present situation, worries about the future, or a state of being such as money or disability.. If it makes the other party feel uncomfortable, they will claim you talk too much about it.

That's not to say that some people don't need to move on and live for the present rather than further victimizing themselves by rehashing that particular trauma over and over again, but you are not one of those people, Donna.

There is definite value in remembering your past and honoring that, good or bad, though, and you are one of those rare people who does that. I see so many people who, once they are living the good life, forget what it's like to be struggling even if they were once there themselves. Not that their memory faded, but they have lost the feeling for what it was like to be that way, and as such much of their compassion and understanding.

I hope this makes sense.

Thank you, Donna, for being the person you are.

I blame my Danish temper. I just figured it out. They were calling Cliff a waste of time.

How fucking dare they. *snarls* I guess I'm still a bit protective of him.

Oh no.

Oh no they didn't.

No wonder...

I'm so sorry.

*sees icon*

*DIES LAUGHING*

*steals*

Uh yeah. They did. They do. They likely always will - just the faces of who "they" are will change.

*sighs* They know not what they're fucking talking about. HAVE to stop taking this so personally.

Yeah, well I know it's easy to THINK that. And I know it's easy to intellectually recognize the fact that it's more about them than it is about you--that it's the whole universal wrestling with the fear of mortality and the discomfort in the face of inconvenient truth jazz.

But I know it hurts. And it seems a shame that the person who hurts is the person who ends up carrying the burden of other people's ignorance.

But you know, I don't comment much here, but I'm here. And for whatever it's worth, I get it. I can't understand the nuances, of course--those are totally yours. But I get it, and I know that there are other people who get it, too.

Just the way YOU got it for ME.

The bad news is that we can't fix 'em all.

The good news is that they really aren't the majority, no matter how loud they are.

(Glad you stole the icon--it's the least I could do! ;-))

It's the old adage about how no one knows where you've really been but you. (Except that that's not always true, depending on who you trust, how much you've entrusted to them, and that, too is perfectly your business.)

The problem with being a bard is that you're entrusted with ten times as many stories as you are actually allowed to tell. Lord knows how many of other people's secrets I choose to keep on top of my own. Fortunate for me, then, that my life has been comparatively easy and simple, but I know of many who have had to start over, at 23, at 35, at 47, at 60. Someday, I may be able to tell those too, albeit in fictionalized form that glosses over the details of who, precisely, they are (because that's the only way I could ever get away with it).

We talk a lot, yes, but make no mistake: we are listening and we will learn because we'll get there too.

There's no point in judging one's past -- the idea is to learn from it, appreciate it as much as possible, regret it as little as you can for your own sake and sanity. Wear it on your sleeve or hide it as you see fit. It is part of you, too, then, now, and forever. It doesn't mean you'll act the same way you did in 1983. But that's not something that can (or should) be forgotten lightly.

That goes double for folks whose pasts were imposed on them by others.

I hope you can make any sense of these 4:30am ramblings ... I've uncharacteristically woken up philosophical in the early morning. :)

No education's wasted - I think the fact so many people consider hard work "a waste" when it doesn't directly benefit them is just sad.

Sooner or later, we're all hard work. At least I realize that.

<3

Anyway ... I'm certainly not going to give you any business over being too honest. That's still a virtue in my book. :)

People who don't know you well don't deserve to know a painful history and people who respect you know better than to pick at the sores. Screw them.

OTOH, if you did talk about it all the time, the very same people would say you are unstable and trying to get attention.

Ya can't please everyone, so you might as well please yourself. You bet.

There's a line in the beginning of Dante's Inferno about 'midway in my life, I got lost in a dark wood' and you can take that whichever way you want...I had a similar reset in 1991, a really hard one. Turned out after some review from the future that the path I had taken from 1983-1990 was a Big Mistake, and that the reset was inevitable, considering the circumstances.

At the time of the reset I was angry at the circumstances; now, I'm more angry at myself that I got diverted like that. Shoulda had more sense, etc. When you get into a mess like that, who do you blame - yourself for being dumb enough to buy the Brooklyn Bridge, or the people who sold it to you? Sure, they were heartless thugs, but you're the dummy who fell for the sales pitch.

Now, I look back at the situation, and see that what I was supposed to do was to end up with Da Kid, and gloriosky me, I have to figure out what to do with her. When I review non-Kid situations, they all pall, and I feel honored to have Da Kid dropped on me as a Big Present To Take Care Of, but jeeze, that's a big responsibility to live up to.

Nothing wrong about being honest with yourself. Most of the problems I've seen with myself or others have been when they divert into fantasyland and don't pay any attention to realities.

I'm going to be 50 next month, and it goads me into getting off my fat tushie and taking charge and making some of the better things come true for myself. They require some application of work and effort to get to, but I know that I'll be a LOT happier with these things in gear.

I don't do new year's resolutions as such; my feeling always has been that you need to apply yourself to A Change irregardless of time phase, and not trumpet it to the skies. Well, except to say to a SO that 'this is what I seriously want to do, and this is the path that I'd like to take to it, and I'd like your feedback on it to look for glitches, and to ask for your support to get there. It's not *your* project, so I'm not asking you to kill yourself for it, but I'll appreciate your help as needed.'

Part of my reluctance to trumpet such things is that it's showoffy, immodest. Do or not do, there is no empty 'try' that becomes a joke.

I think it's the words "wasted" and "mistake" that goad me the worst.

No time was wasted. He was no mistake - and I have as many or more good memories as bad ones. I gained so much from my relationship with that little shit - no, I won't let anyone call him a wasted effort.

Just my buttons being pushed - at least I know they're there.

*grumble*

Oh, feh on them. This is *your* space. Talk about what you need/want to, and don't let anyone tell you any differently. Even me. *smile*

You'll get no static from this quarter, as I am having to start all over again, again. I've had to do it before. I have to do it now. You know my history, or a great deal of it, from reading my locked LJ posts.

So no static here.

We''ll wear our pasts together, over in this corner with the chocolate and sushi and green tea.

So theres.

Chug-a-lug!

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Something to think about -

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When the going gets tough....

Re: When the going gets tough....

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