A Woman Scorned

Well I'm drunk on self pity,
scorned all that's been given me
I would drink from a bottle labelled Sure Defeat

Over the Rhine - Poughkeepsie

I don't go in much for self pity. Out of all the bad emotional habits, there are others I much more prefer, like underhanded self sabotage. The unstinting victim focus required for self pity becomes dull to me after about 15 minutes.

I can go for months without having any sorts of menstrual problems and then whack, down flows the black cloud and suddenly it's like a different world where all the colour's leached out and all the hope's done taken some trip on some downbound train spouting Bon Jovi lyrics.

It's just descended on me over the past few days this little black cloud and I feel like all my get up and go has got up and buggered right off. So hard it all feels, so hard. Such a struggle just to stand still. And I have a bloody headache.

Once I would try and fight through this and now I embrace myself, I walk into my house on Friday night and sigh and feel the house enfold me. I look to the Cirque de Soleil DVD I have to watch. It is surely time to go searching for some David Attenborough to top it off, to watch the wonder of the natural world and be soothed by it, somehow, even when the animals of the natural world have this awful propensity to keep eating each other. Time to immerse myself in some clay, to batten down the hatches and look after myself.

This morning it was too hard to swim myself up out of the mood. I do admit, when I walked up the ramp into the train station to go to work I probably exuded a bit of "Get out of my bloody way you bastards" sort of an air even though it was somewhat closer in mood to "Ahh, what's the point of all this again? Tell me, I doth forget." It is an unfortunate occurrence of human facial features that depression and arrogance often look the same out of one face and the time you most need someone to smile at you is the time they will most likely glare.

The young man and I, for all I can see from my single perspective, were most likely just as much to blame as each other really. In hindsight my bag was pretty overladen with stuff and obviously I bumped into him more than I realised at the time. But he was carrying a backpack slung over one shoulder and he bumped into me too. Oh, the single eyed focus of the self-righteous, more one-eyed than any Collingwood supporter.

Now, I've heard it said that when we recount incidences containing ourselves more than a few times we begin starring ourselves in a rather shinier role, and I am mindful of that. Perhaps I did bump into him more than he did into me. Perhaps if we were able to instant replay it could be found that my bumping was 23% more than his happened to be, and yet it is not how it felt to me.

"How about saying sorry you rude fucking bitch."

I had walked past him and was on my way to the ticket machine. I stopped when I heard this and turned around.

"Yeah, you," he sneered. "How about saying sorry for banging into me. Pretty fucking rude."

"Likewise," I retorted. Quick tempered young man, I saw the steam begin pummelling itself out of his ears. There were many people around us and they began staring at both of us. Time slowed down as it does in such confrontations, when it feels like everything is heightened and at the same time everything is muffled and I do not know how much I remember correctly.

I do remember, however his next words. He spat them out of his mouth.

"You fat fucking bitch," he said.

"You ugly prick," I said. It was pretty deadpan. Timing is everything in comedy you know. He wasn't really. Ugly, that is. He was quite an average, pleasant looking young bloke but you know, you take what your mind dishes up for you at the time. He started spluttering.

Whereas I should play poker. I have had so many years of teenage arguments with my father that I can stay stone cold and deadpan on the outside while inside I am seething, boiling, white hot, red hot. Of course it has a time limit on it. All that anger ends up seeping itself out and if I play my hand too long I give myself away, my voice quavering with the white and the red, my fingers shaking involuntarily. But right now it was coming out as ice, which INFURIATES young men with anger management problems.

The whole thing probably took 10 seconds. I walked towards the ticket machine and put my ticket in. See, there they were beginning already, the slightly shaking hands. The deep deep shame. You fat bitch. Obviously a few hundred more yoga sessions are in order.

The young bloke continued saying things I do not now remember.

"Why don't you fuck off and go and sit on someone's face, you fucking bitch," he said. Which sounded slightly less stupid when he said it than it does here but nevertheless still didn't make me think he was off to a Mensa meeting. He elaborated a little more on his strangely phrased thoughts, which contained the word "fuck" quite a bit.

"Perhaps an extended vocabulary might come in handy," I commented as the machine vomited my ticket back out at me and I stalked off onto the platform. He stormed off down the ramp out to the street. I could hear him for much longer than I could understand his words.

My hands fluttered over my page as the train came. I read the same paragraph over and over, all the way to Flagstaff. 'Do not cry,' I ordered myself crossly, like a child.

Can't let them see you cry. Don't let them see you cry. It feels to you as if your whole world would collapse and your soul would dissolve if anyone was to see you cry, if anyone was to know that the words of a stranger - you fat bitch - hurt you enough on the inside to make you cry. You read the same paragraph over and over, and you make it to work, and you tell a workmate what happened, and then you manage to get a bit of work done but it's the kind pity in another workmate's eyes who has heard why you are upset, and that is what does it, and you escape to the ladies room.

The ladies toilets, two toilets for about 50 women, that are always, always full so that you can never get a quiet poo in in peace, and now they are mercifully empty and the tears escape down your cheeks before you can hold the toilet paper up to your eyes.

You wonder where you have learnt this rule, the rule that says that no one must see you cry. You know where you have learnt it. It is a tight, tight, tight steel wad of pride that is lodged somewhere up under your chest cavity and no one, no one, is going to dislodge it except for Love.

Turn the other cheek, someone once said, but you didn't. Not today. Really, would it have been so much skin off your own nose to have stopped and said to the linguically challenged young man, "Sorry"? Really, now, girl, would it have? If you had, then you wouldn't have had to box him up into something mean and negative, would ya?

Naw, I don't be thinking it would have taken any skin off at all.

Sigh.

Guernica

Gestapo Officer [gesturing toward Guernica]:
Did you do this?

Picasso:
No, you did.

When we finally allow life to take us through the Paschal Mystery of passion, death, and resurrection, we will be transformed. At this stage we’ll have found the capacity to hold the pain, to enter into solidarity with it, not to fear it or hate it or project it onto other people.

Actually, it’s really God holding the pain in us, because the little self can’t do it. But the Big Self, God in us, can absorb it, can forgive it, can resolve it. We know it’s grace when we no longer need to hate or punish others, even in our mind. We know someone else is working through us, in us, in spite of us, and for us.

Our life is not our own henceforward. Now we draw from the Christ mystery, the Christ nature, the Christ source. Oh, we’ll regress; but when we’ve experienced our true self, who we are in Christ, we’ll know what’s really real.

Richard Rohr, from The Cosmic Christ

I am developing a fondness for colder weather, Picasso, and a willingness to hold my own evil. It sits alongside all of my good. I can admit to both.

I am maturing. It's miricoil :)

Offspring of Satan

I was accused, along with the heretical Kent, of being an offspring of Satan on a forum a few days ago :)

So beware, any who read here. I will try to lure you away to the dark side, from where God shall have no option or creative licence but to send you all to hell, forever and ever.

What seems funny to me these days is how irritated and upset I used to get at such comments previously. Maybe because I wasn't sure if they weren't right? Because whenever people would flame-throw me, in God-related areas, it would so easily throw me into the giant vat of shame that lived inside me. If someone made accusations about my character and using God to proof-text that, I would crumble and fall because hey, they were right, right?

Well, I suppose they were in one way. But they can't touch me that way anymore. That's the miracle.

I guess the problem is that most often the sort of person who flame throws in this way has hundreds of scriptures to back themselves up, and their righteous, wall-watching anger, their holy desire to purge from the ranks of Christianity the defiling agents to fuel them along. And while I can understand how they can see that in scripture, I just don't identify that way of looking at things any more with God I have come to experience in my own mind and heart and body. There are many other ditches for me to fall in, but the "turn yourself into a hate-filled hypocritical moron in the process of upholding God's integrity" is not one that lures me in any more.

I still get irritated at people in those situations. 'Cause really, some of the ugliest people in the world are Christians who are convinced they are right, who are convinced that they are God's elect, on God's holy road, being the mouthpiece of God's righteous requirements, the grace-filled beauties through which he shall impart to wayward believers the way back onto the narrow path.

That sort of person still irritates me, sure. But somehow, along the way, this big wall of anger and defensiveness is being dismantled brick by brick. It's a scary sort of dismantling, the walls you've built up. Each brick that comes down, you begin seeing in yourself horrendities that you really would prefer weren't there but which you have known have been there, simmering away inside. And you also recognise (somehow, at some point, without disintegrating under the slamming ball of shame) that inside of you is the very same propensity towards self-righteousness. So where do you end up standing in your irritation at that person? Looking at yourself in the mirror :) There is nowhere left to stand. The cross takes away that option for you. Another irritation :)

"It burns, it burns!" scream the wicked witches of your soul, melting into the ground :)

Cindi wrote yesterday about the protein molecules found in our bodies which are literally what is holding them together. This molecule basically glues our bodies together. Like Christ, who is before all things, and in him all things hold together. Most interesting is the shape of this lamin substance. Cool, huh? :)

Gee, it's ugly in here, gee it's beautiful in here

I have been indulging in some Buddhist-inspired-but-absolutely-Christ-involved embracing of my stuff. Actually sitting with the emotions when they come up - or as soon as I am able - and embracing them the way a mother embraces her child, finally able to smile at it, whatever negative emotion it is. It's quite amazing, really, and really quite lovely, as this great quest for self-nurturance continues. It's like the anger has been saying, "Finally, finally, you are listening to me." It's very empowering.

Following on the heels of that anger embracement has been these great, giant, massive pools of self hatred. I mean, I knew I had a bit swimming around in there but generally, you know, I thought I had a healthy self esteem. Which I do in some ways. The two opposites can coexist in the same body, definitely. It happens all the time.

But oh, goodness me. These pools. They're so black and dark. It's amazing what we carry around inside our bodies until we are ready to deal with it. It's amazing, the ability of a human to protect itself, to know when the right time is to reveal certain things to itself.

I want to get rid of this self hatred. I want to embrace it. When I embrace the anger, accept it, the love changes the anger to compassion. When I embrace the self-hatred, the love cahnges the self-hatred to self-love.

But oh, in the meantime, the pit feels so deep that I could drown in it. It's so deep that I can barely talk about it to anyone, can only throw it out into the blogosphere, the public confessional without the private requirements for looking into people's eyes while doing so. I don't care what anyone says. This blogging is a wonderful thing, but there is a shadow side to it, the way there is a shadow side to everything. This is not real life. It never will be. This is not the same as face to face communication. On here, I can speak my stuff, and you hear me, and it is wonderful, and we are friends. But until I can say it into your eyes, it doesn't carry the same measure of healing. It doesn't strengthen me until I can say it directly into your eyes. But this seems to be all I can accomplish, at least today. How I wish that were different. How I fear it will never be different again.

I used to be outgoing, friendly, capable. I still am. I will also never, ever be the person who I was. Swimming in these pools, though, everything feels distorted. Especially while they are transforming from one thing into another. I can't even see the shore anymore, to be honest. Is God in all of this? Yes, I'm sure of that. Can I feel him in it? Oh, certainly not. But sometimes that's the best place to be. I look at this past few years and the creative growings have been as great as the deathly dyings. Is that coincidence? Totally absolutely not.

Is it also coincidence that this week I have had two needy friends texting me, wanting to talk, for me to listen to their stuff, and I have been unable to do so, have said no, blatantly, have refused to cater to their requests for help because dammit, it doesn't suit me and I am having enough to deal with, swimming in my own pools of self-hatred? Is that self-love, protecting me, setting my own boundaries, or is it self-hatred, withdrawing myself and punishing myself, removing myself from the care and concern of people who care?

I don't know.