Rollercoaster Ends Now
Aug. 13th, 2010 04:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormI've been riding this thing for too long and now enjoying it.
Here's the thing. Rilke in his letters to Kappus said: "You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any agitation, any pain, any melancholy, since you really do not know what these states are working upon you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question whence all this may be coming and whither it is bound? Since you know that you are in the midst of transitions and wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything morbid in your processes, just remember that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself of foreign matter; so one must just help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and break out with it, for that is its progress...
...Do not observe yourself too much. Do not draw too hasty conclusions from what happens to you; let it simply happen to you."
He said a great deal more, and right now everything he said is ringing like bells everywhere in my head. Still, here, this is the point I need from him. I've been packing away a lot of myself because it's uncomfortable and inconvenient for people; I am uncomfortable and inconvenient for people, undeniably. I've been upset at those bits of myself. I've been keeping them back until the pressure breaks and they fountain out into despised chaos and then I stuff them back in again. That's the swing of this particular rollercoaster, I think.
I'll get off it now. It may start out with not giving a fuck about anyone, but that never lasts long, and never works well; I do love people, I love them like crazy and all the time. So we'll find the place where I can love people but I can be angry too, and melancholy, and stormy and loud and boisterous and silent.
When it comes right down to it, I'm my own person. I'm the only person I have control over; the only person I can trust to support my choices, or to be there for me absolutely no matter what, now or in ten years from now or in fifty. Everyone else is too busy being themselves, too tangled up in their own life choices and their own paths, to be the absolute rock-solid sort of consistent I've always looked for in someone else, and I am too busy being myself to be there like that for anyone else. Right now I'm thinking of relationships like windchimes, each person floating and jangling in their own little orbit, intersecting with each other in a brief and beautiful chime and then swinging on. Courses are changed by that collision, music is made, but nothing stays. Everything moves on.
And so if I'm not there for myself then I can never be sure anyone will be. Maybe, sure. Given the number of kind and loving people in my life right now there'll even probably be someone. I just can't be sure. There's no other way to be sure.
And here's the problem, and I need your help on this: I see my relationships-like-windchimes analogy. I know I need to advocate for myself regardless of relationship status, need to be genuine with myself, etc-- but I do tend to lose it and get bowled over and try to please, especially, the people I'm sleeping with, the people I'm in relationships with, whatever. All of them. All the time. And then I fail, and flail around and blindly cause damage, and the world sucks. How do you guys reconcile this stuff? I know I've written, in the past, about how much I hate hurting someone I'm with, even though hurt is a natural thing that seems to come up between human beings from time to time. What I'm asking now is, how do you make decisions to support yourself, to self-advocate, to keep your self strong within a relationship? How do you reconcile that with negotiating for another person's comfort and selfness?
I'm twenty-nine years old as I write this. I feel like I should have some glimmer of an answer right now, but I've never figured it out. I'm tired. I'm discouraged. I'm not going to harvest any of my own tomatoes this year. People love me and it doesn't fix anything, it's no solution, not even a band-aid.
Nothing more to say right now. Hang in there.
Here's the thing. Rilke in his letters to Kappus said: "You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any agitation, any pain, any melancholy, since you really do not know what these states are working upon you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question whence all this may be coming and whither it is bound? Since you know that you are in the midst of transitions and wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything morbid in your processes, just remember that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself of foreign matter; so one must just help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and break out with it, for that is its progress...
...Do not observe yourself too much. Do not draw too hasty conclusions from what happens to you; let it simply happen to you."
He said a great deal more, and right now everything he said is ringing like bells everywhere in my head. Still, here, this is the point I need from him. I've been packing away a lot of myself because it's uncomfortable and inconvenient for people; I am uncomfortable and inconvenient for people, undeniably. I've been upset at those bits of myself. I've been keeping them back until the pressure breaks and they fountain out into despised chaos and then I stuff them back in again. That's the swing of this particular rollercoaster, I think.
I'll get off it now. It may start out with not giving a fuck about anyone, but that never lasts long, and never works well; I do love people, I love them like crazy and all the time. So we'll find the place where I can love people but I can be angry too, and melancholy, and stormy and loud and boisterous and silent.
When it comes right down to it, I'm my own person. I'm the only person I have control over; the only person I can trust to support my choices, or to be there for me absolutely no matter what, now or in ten years from now or in fifty. Everyone else is too busy being themselves, too tangled up in their own life choices and their own paths, to be the absolute rock-solid sort of consistent I've always looked for in someone else, and I am too busy being myself to be there like that for anyone else. Right now I'm thinking of relationships like windchimes, each person floating and jangling in their own little orbit, intersecting with each other in a brief and beautiful chime and then swinging on. Courses are changed by that collision, music is made, but nothing stays. Everything moves on.
And so if I'm not there for myself then I can never be sure anyone will be. Maybe, sure. Given the number of kind and loving people in my life right now there'll even probably be someone. I just can't be sure. There's no other way to be sure.
And here's the problem, and I need your help on this: I see my relationships-like-windchimes analogy. I know I need to advocate for myself regardless of relationship status, need to be genuine with myself, etc-- but I do tend to lose it and get bowled over and try to please, especially, the people I'm sleeping with, the people I'm in relationships with, whatever. All of them. All the time. And then I fail, and flail around and blindly cause damage, and the world sucks. How do you guys reconcile this stuff? I know I've written, in the past, about how much I hate hurting someone I'm with, even though hurt is a natural thing that seems to come up between human beings from time to time. What I'm asking now is, how do you make decisions to support yourself, to self-advocate, to keep your self strong within a relationship? How do you reconcile that with negotiating for another person's comfort and selfness?
I'm twenty-nine years old as I write this. I feel like I should have some glimmer of an answer right now, but I've never figured it out. I'm tired. I'm discouraged. I'm not going to harvest any of my own tomatoes this year. People love me and it doesn't fix anything, it's no solution, not even a band-aid.
Nothing more to say right now. Hang in there.
