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decomissioning
Apr. 28th, 2009 07:19 amI'm (still) in the process of letting go of past hurts and offenses committed against me, whether real or not, intentional or accidental, etc. It's long, slow going. Disappointingly, there isn't much of a sense of freedom or lightness from the process, at least for me. It's taken me a while to figure it out, but a big part of the feeling (the externally oriented part) is exposed.
Carrying past wounds around in the forefront of my mind served as a kind of armor, deflecting or absorbing new incoming pain. As far as that went, it worked pretty OK. Sure, the price was high; took energy, closed me off to things, and as I grew I started pressing against the inside of the armor in increasingly uncomfortable ways. But it did block new pain, at least some of it.
Now, I'm feeling more mobile, sure, and maybe a little faster, maybe with a larger range of motion, but for what end? The things that hurt still hurt, and I'm realizing now, more and more, that it's rarely the intentional fault of others, it's just the fucked up, stunted, abusive world in which we live. You grow up in a fucked up world, you come out fucked up; unsurprisingly, you pass that on, often without even thinking, to others. And then, of course, the normative unconscious policing comes into play; the further afield one is, the greater the fucked up pressure and interactions come into play from others.
I'm running on hope right now, and maybe something in the general neighborhood of faith (though it feels weird to say that). Theoretically, there are good things out there to which I was previously closed off. They'd better be there, because the problem with stripping off the armor, at least for me, is that it can't go back on, and it takes years to grow a new set. In the mean time, I'm raw and exposed, dodging and weaving clumsily where before I'd just sit or plow straight through.
Carrying past wounds around in the forefront of my mind served as a kind of armor, deflecting or absorbing new incoming pain. As far as that went, it worked pretty OK. Sure, the price was high; took energy, closed me off to things, and as I grew I started pressing against the inside of the armor in increasingly uncomfortable ways. But it did block new pain, at least some of it.
Now, I'm feeling more mobile, sure, and maybe a little faster, maybe with a larger range of motion, but for what end? The things that hurt still hurt, and I'm realizing now, more and more, that it's rarely the intentional fault of others, it's just the fucked up, stunted, abusive world in which we live. You grow up in a fucked up world, you come out fucked up; unsurprisingly, you pass that on, often without even thinking, to others. And then, of course, the normative unconscious policing comes into play; the further afield one is, the greater the fucked up pressure and interactions come into play from others.
I'm running on hope right now, and maybe something in the general neighborhood of faith (though it feels weird to say that). Theoretically, there are good things out there to which I was previously closed off. They'd better be there, because the problem with stripping off the armor, at least for me, is that it can't go back on, and it takes years to grow a new set. In the mean time, I'm raw and exposed, dodging and weaving clumsily where before I'd just sit or plow straight through.
