To Everything There Is A Season
Aug. 18th, 2003 08:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormTo everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
I think this is my favourite biblical passage ever. I remember, once, borrowing a bible from my friend to look it up. It was a 'modern' teen's bible, or something, and the whole passage had been condensed from its King James beauty into the sparse there's a time for everything. It had no impact, and no beauty. There's some sort of crime in changing a poem into a fortune cookie, although I'm sure someone somewhere was able to read their 'bible' better for it and so it isn't a wholly bad thing.
There's a time for everything, though, truly. This is my time to refrain from embracing the Exotic. I went ahead and did the inevitable; I broke it off completely and without expectation of any future stuff. He'll go home as soon as he can get the tickets changed.
It was a wonderful time, and it definitely needed to end. It's interesting to me how hard it was for me to accept that, how much the feminine social conditioning told me I was a failure for not giving in to what he wanted and rolling over and just doing it. It's interesting how much I associate any nonconsensual end to a relationship with my parents' divorces. It's interesting how much my feminine 'don't hurt people' social conditioning struggled.
It's interesting that I did it all the same. I had reasons not to, but they were not excuses. They were simply bad reasons, and I overcame them as a strong, reasonable person. It frightens me, a little, when I don't give in to my own excuses and do the wrong thing. It sets a precedent for myself that I need to follow; never having done something in the first place is one thing, but proving that you can do it and backsliding is a different thing completely.
So I'm perched a little precariously on a bunch of turning points for myself. Altogether I've shed, not only a relationship, but an image of myself as owned by another, an image of myself as being given excuses for my behaviour by outside sources. I'm becoming one person, standing on my own, close to others but not subservient to them. I'm an equal.
I've spoken about these images a little bit before, I think, but this is the point which marks them actually there, actually a part of me and not a wishful thing or something to be discarded to pursue other values.
Life is the process of defining myself, even as I keep changing. There are an infinite number of paths, so the only thing which changes is the ever-increasing number of discarded ones. That number is getting pretty big and solid for me: I can't say what I will be, but I can say tha there are some things I won't be, and be confident in that.
The other day I thought of defining the Juggler as the Rock at the Center of the Universe. He's that kind of person. But here's the thing: I have my own rock at my own center, and it's me. I don't need him to be it for me, nor do I really want him to. He has a stabilising influence sometimes just because he isn't jumping around and pulling me into wobbles, but ultimately it's myself that's being stable.
I owe a whole lot to him, to the SO, and to TOW through all this. He has an instinctive knack for being a calm place; the SO and I have figured out somewhere along the line to feel as if we're there for each other. It's so nice to know that he cares about me. And then there's TOW, who somehow in the last few days has once again displayed this potential she has to be so very close, because she and I look at the world in substantially the same way in many cases. I really do think her and I understand each other better than my other relationships do, or at least understand the dark parts where madness lies better. It's dangerous and scary, that relationship, because of it -- but it's valuable, and I need to keep that in mind.
I've grown too big to run from scary things for long now.
So, with things more-or-less resolved I plan on pulling my head out of my navel and being friends with my friends again. There is one huge scary issue left in my life that I may resolve (oh, it's scary, but it's inevitable that I'll resolve it. It's larger looming on the horizon than it is working through it. So... I should) sooner or later, but maybe even sooner. I owe it to the people who stuck with me through this to resolve it...
...but I can resolve it slowly, without turning too far inwards, if I keep my environment clean and healthy. And I will try to do this.
It's very interesting to me how things are working here. The breakup with the Exotic comes at the same time as this closer feeling with TOW (feeling of acceptance by TOW?) and at the same time, too, as a little bit of friction in my stuff with the Juggler. These last are changes that haven't been discussed out yet, and honestly I don't know if I have the discussion in me right now; maybe a couple of nights with nine hours of sleep will straighten me out.
But, yes. Change, change, and more change. Maybe I'll get a smooth vacation after a little bit, even just for a couple of weeks?
Nah. Never happens. But this is my life, being busy and keeping that way. I've invested too much in myself not to do it this way, right now. And that investment really is stabilising me. You can't imagine the wonder at being my own Rock. I used to see it in other people and marvel...
Yes, things are still hard sometimes, but my stuff is mine.
Well, enough rambling here at the broken edge between the past and the future. Things will begin to solidify at least a little when the Exotic's gone and I can see what my life looks like in routine. Things will solidify even before he goes as this me talks to the people I know and establishes this selfness with them. I can wait for that, and surf the edges until then, and look at all the new bits with clear eyes that have never seen them before.
It gets repetitive to hook that up to livejournal, though. Take care, and I'll distill it out as it comes. This is enough repeating redundantly in a repetitive fashion for now.
Be well, and find peace.
I think this is my favourite biblical passage ever. I remember, once, borrowing a bible from my friend to look it up. It was a 'modern' teen's bible, or something, and the whole passage had been condensed from its King James beauty into the sparse there's a time for everything. It had no impact, and no beauty. There's some sort of crime in changing a poem into a fortune cookie, although I'm sure someone somewhere was able to read their 'bible' better for it and so it isn't a wholly bad thing.
There's a time for everything, though, truly. This is my time to refrain from embracing the Exotic. I went ahead and did the inevitable; I broke it off completely and without expectation of any future stuff. He'll go home as soon as he can get the tickets changed.
It was a wonderful time, and it definitely needed to end. It's interesting to me how hard it was for me to accept that, how much the feminine social conditioning told me I was a failure for not giving in to what he wanted and rolling over and just doing it. It's interesting how much I associate any nonconsensual end to a relationship with my parents' divorces. It's interesting how much my feminine 'don't hurt people' social conditioning struggled.
It's interesting that I did it all the same. I had reasons not to, but they were not excuses. They were simply bad reasons, and I overcame them as a strong, reasonable person. It frightens me, a little, when I don't give in to my own excuses and do the wrong thing. It sets a precedent for myself that I need to follow; never having done something in the first place is one thing, but proving that you can do it and backsliding is a different thing completely.
So I'm perched a little precariously on a bunch of turning points for myself. Altogether I've shed, not only a relationship, but an image of myself as owned by another, an image of myself as being given excuses for my behaviour by outside sources. I'm becoming one person, standing on my own, close to others but not subservient to them. I'm an equal.
I've spoken about these images a little bit before, I think, but this is the point which marks them actually there, actually a part of me and not a wishful thing or something to be discarded to pursue other values.
Life is the process of defining myself, even as I keep changing. There are an infinite number of paths, so the only thing which changes is the ever-increasing number of discarded ones. That number is getting pretty big and solid for me: I can't say what I will be, but I can say tha there are some things I won't be, and be confident in that.
The other day I thought of defining the Juggler as the Rock at the Center of the Universe. He's that kind of person. But here's the thing: I have my own rock at my own center, and it's me. I don't need him to be it for me, nor do I really want him to. He has a stabilising influence sometimes just because he isn't jumping around and pulling me into wobbles, but ultimately it's myself that's being stable.
I owe a whole lot to him, to the SO, and to TOW through all this. He has an instinctive knack for being a calm place; the SO and I have figured out somewhere along the line to feel as if we're there for each other. It's so nice to know that he cares about me. And then there's TOW, who somehow in the last few days has once again displayed this potential she has to be so very close, because she and I look at the world in substantially the same way in many cases. I really do think her and I understand each other better than my other relationships do, or at least understand the dark parts where madness lies better. It's dangerous and scary, that relationship, because of it -- but it's valuable, and I need to keep that in mind.
I've grown too big to run from scary things for long now.
So, with things more-or-less resolved I plan on pulling my head out of my navel and being friends with my friends again. There is one huge scary issue left in my life that I may resolve (oh, it's scary, but it's inevitable that I'll resolve it. It's larger looming on the horizon than it is working through it. So... I should) sooner or later, but maybe even sooner. I owe it to the people who stuck with me through this to resolve it...
...but I can resolve it slowly, without turning too far inwards, if I keep my environment clean and healthy. And I will try to do this.
It's very interesting to me how things are working here. The breakup with the Exotic comes at the same time as this closer feeling with TOW (feeling of acceptance by TOW?) and at the same time, too, as a little bit of friction in my stuff with the Juggler. These last are changes that haven't been discussed out yet, and honestly I don't know if I have the discussion in me right now; maybe a couple of nights with nine hours of sleep will straighten me out.
But, yes. Change, change, and more change. Maybe I'll get a smooth vacation after a little bit, even just for a couple of weeks?
Nah. Never happens. But this is my life, being busy and keeping that way. I've invested too much in myself not to do it this way, right now. And that investment really is stabilising me. You can't imagine the wonder at being my own Rock. I used to see it in other people and marvel...
Yes, things are still hard sometimes, but my stuff is mine.
Well, enough rambling here at the broken edge between the past and the future. Things will begin to solidify at least a little when the Exotic's gone and I can see what my life looks like in routine. Things will solidify even before he goes as this me talks to the people I know and establishes this selfness with them. I can wait for that, and surf the edges until then, and look at all the new bits with clear eyes that have never seen them before.
It gets repetitive to hook that up to livejournal, though. Take care, and I'll distill it out as it comes. This is enough repeating redundantly in a repetitive fashion for now.
Be well, and find peace.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
It's an exciting thing, this Journey.
Date: 2003-08-19 06:22 am (UTC)More to say, but... later :-)
Mouse,
wont, as usual, to Pretentiously capitalize significant Words.