this is not about you
A friend made me cry on Monday night.
She hadn’t seen me for a couple of months. When we met on Friday last week, she wasn’t prepared to see how much I have changed, particularly in my behaviour. She refrained from commenting on Friday, but when we spoke on the telephone on Monday, she couldn’t help bringing up the subject.
She said she hated seeing me “like this”. She said it made her “sad” and “angry”. She asked me not to “do this to yourself” and that I shouldn’t let it affect me so badly. She said many other things, all of which reminded me of the what had happened, is happening, and it made me cry. It tipped over the unstable equilibrium on which I had been balancing over the previous few days, and I lost it.
But it also made me angry.
I got upset because she wanted me to stop “doing this to myself” not because of how how the situation was affecting me, but because of how my reacting to it was affecting her. She wanted me to stop feeling bad so that she could stop feeling bad when she saw me. It made me angry. I felt she was being selfish. On the surface it sounded as if she was concerned about me, but in reality, I felt she was only concerned about herself and how I am is affecting how she is.
Unfortunately, she’s not the only one to have behaved like this. She may be the only one to have openly, albeit inadvertently, voiced her underlying motivations, but others have acted similarly around me.
Everyone means well.
Everyone wants to help.
Everyone tries to help.
But really, at this stage, no one can.
It’s too late.
If you wanted to help, you should have helped before everything went in flames. You should have helped when you were able to intercede and stamp out the matchstick before the fire grew and engulfed everything.
Now, it’s too late.
No one can help.
Only I can help myself now.
But I’m not ready. I’m not “there” yet.
Until I get “there”, this is how I am, and how I will be, and you’ll just have to accept that reality and not get on my case for something that I am not doing - not to myself and certainly not intentionally to you.
I resent your expectation that I behave in a certain way, or react in a certain manner to what is happening. I am not you. Or anyone else. If you think you can handle “this” better than I can, you can very well be my guest. I’d most certainly rather this happen to you, than to me. I didn’t ask for this and I’d much rather not go through this experience. But given that it is happening to me, I am dealing with it the best I can under the circumstances, constraints and varying considerations.
As someone else who’s going through a similar experience recently wrote to me, we can only hope that:
one day the world will seem different. The building will be burnt out but the shell will still be standing. And then parts of your life will become coherent and build.
I long for that day.
Waking up the morning after the telephone call, I knew I should have shut the alarm and just gone back to sleep. Instead, I went to work, feeling shite and sobbing every hour until I called a friend and broke down in uncontrollable tears. I was much better the rest of the day.
That is how I am at the moment. I not only have good days and bad days, but also good hours and bad hours. I’m sorry if seeing me makes you feel bad. I’m sorry if you feel helpless in my presence and that makes you feel bad. I’m sorry if my not behaving the way you would want me to makes you feel bad.
If you want to talk about your pain, go ahead.
But please, don’t demand that I cope with this the way you think I should cope with it. You don’t have to help. You don’t have to give me advice. All I ask is that you listen. And perhaps, understand. And that is all you have to do.
Posted on November 25th, 2004 by jl
Filed under: Notable: Personal
Please do not apologise for your behaviour.
It’s traumatic. The end of long term relationships. You’ve lost alot. Nobody in the world will understand how you truly feel.
You may hope the happy pills help. But deep down inside, you know it won’t. You wished it would tho’. But why would you want to numb yourself from this pain? This is human. Pain.
Please do not apologise to anyone. If they have asked you to stop behaving like this…. please thank them for their concern and ask them to move on…they are like voyeurs scantily peeping into your life.
You will regain your strength in your own time. How? Who knows? Like you said, only you will know. And when you do, you will thank Life for giving you such feelings .. because it is better than being battery dead.
One step at a time…one step at a time.
Oh dear.
You’re right. Too often we feel bad not for the person, but for ourselves. I’m sorry you had to go through that -
and in the meantime the only thing I can say is what I’ve been doing all this while:
Breathe. It doesn’t make things better, but it’s got its uses.
I know of a few people who are guilty of the above - telling you what to do, how to behave and how disappointed they are. It is like with every word they utter, they make you feel worse and they don’t even know it.
They excuse it to “I’m just trying to help” without realizing that they aren’t. They excuse it to being the way they are without realizing that they are inconsiderate of your current state. They make justifications to it without realizing that all you want is someone to listen to you and not saying anything.
That you just want understanding and not solutions. In times of grief, pain and anguish, not everyone wants the answers to the future. Sometimes we just want to dwell in the pains of the past and take our own sweet time.
All we ask is for some moral support.
*hugz*
take care
this is the quote of the week for me from a client to a very unprofessional boss i’m working with; “Do not subject yourself to criticism” -
never - you are you, clean plain simple - if the other person cannot take you ‘like this’; its simply not your problem, baby- because it is her who is judgemental - and to her you shoulda quoted the bible, reinvented in jonathan larson’s RENT –>> “let he amongst us without sin be the first to condemn…”
In your period of sorrow and reflection, do not place the words of gurus, ministers, priest, doctors, psychiatrists, scientists or even FRIENDS higher than the feelings of your own being for self-understanding and growth and answers to overall life situations.
Your own consciousness is embarked on a reality that basically can be experienced by no other; that is unique and untranslatable.
The most hampering belief of all is the idea that the clues to current problems are buried and inaccessible. The answers are always there in your conscious mind.
Look within, trust yourself more often, otherwise you will forever be looking to others to prove your own merit to you and asking others what to do.
Trust in the spontaneity of your own being and the life that is your own
Good post, J. Sometimes people don’t really realise their own motives.
There’s so much truth in your post J. There are times that only you and time itself can heal whatever pains that you yourself are going through. Granted, some well meaning person might try to help or comforts you. But sometimes they don’t realised that they are actually imposing themselves to you, becoming a nuisance than a comforting presence. Just hang it there mate.