For those who still read my blog, you may have noticed a settling – a change – of my attitude recently. I’ve noticed it in myself. I think I’m getting to the stage of grief called acceptance where I am finally able to start seeing past all the emotional baggage and to catch a glimpse of full relief. I’m seeing things in a different light. I’m not pushing myself so hard any more to be perfect.
And I’m not the only one to notice. A friend I met with this weekend who knew me last year said she still knew I was pretty fucked up but I was showing signs of improvement. Emotionally I feel more stable. I’m starting to feel genuine love for myself again.
I’ve been spending a lot of time getting to know the girl next door. She’s a bundle of crazy but underneath it all she is so sweet. We slept together last night – no sex – and about 4am in the morning we had a talk. She talks all the time about her family and how they all get together and her parents call her almost every day and her sister checks in all the time to see how she is doing even though she lives a country away. It made me sad and I told her. She just listened, and somehow I knew she cared.
And the thing is, I’m starting to feel normal again. I felt loved. And that makes me sad that I haven’t felt loved by my parents or close family in a long time (with the exception of Jonathan perhaps). The love they have is purely conditional or with an agenda. But this girl, in a few moments, showed unconditional love. She has no agenda. She doesn’t care if I’m an atheist or have a crazy family. She just listened and doesn’t ask for anything.
There are a few people who have shown me this type of love this last year. Steve and Deb Friesen being at the top. I think I give Steve and Deb the highest props because I know they disagree strongly with me on my views, yet they have the courage to care anyway. Katy has done so. Wa-jiw. Kelly. Brandt. Mark. Among others.
But last night it got me to thinking about love and I realized that for years and years I have known what love is. Love to my father is submission and obedience. It reminds me of the verse “if you love me, you will do what I command you.” This is the modus operandi of my immediate family. Heirarchy, commands, and obedience. That isn’t love, damnit, and it never has been.
If you have to submit or agree in order to receive love, then that love is not unconditional. That is manipulation and emotional abuse. The “silent treatment” – another technique practiced at the lovely Beth-Eden Baptist church (now Cornerstone in Wichita) is just awful. Who does this? That is not love and never has been. Cutting off contact with people and making others do the same to somehow get them to feel under judgment and guilt so that they’ll come back? This is probably one of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen. And it doesn’t work.
Love sees past the differences and listens. Love believes all things. My father called me a liar and did not believe me. That isn’t love. Love hopes all things. I think, in my heart, I still haven’t given up hope on my family – even though I have been minutiae away from disowning them. I think that means I still love them.
This last year I’ve pushed so many people away, and I think it was because I expected hatred. I expected judgment for the smallest mistakes. I expected that whenever I opened up about what I was feeling I was going to get lambasted for even having my own genuine feelings at all. So I would, literally, do something and then imagine that it might be offensive and just assume the person was going to cut me off – like I’ve seen done. So then I, to avoid getting chewed out, would push them away or distance myself emotionally.
Growing up my parents would tell me over and over and over that you “can’t trust your feelings.” What a god-awful horrible way to live. I do trust my feelings. They have rarely steered me wrong.
But anyway, enough rambling.
Love. I’m feeling it again. Genuine, unconditional love. The love that says “you be the person you are now”. And that’s it. No “but you must change in the future”. No “I don’t believe you when you tell me you are insert belief here.” No conditions that I submit or obey or change who I am to conform. Just acceptance. And not just acceptance of others, but acceptance of myself, of my every genuine feeling and emotion. I’m no longer trying to suppress what I’m feeling but just accepting it.
All of this is perfectly captured by a half-waking dream I had recently. In the dream, I was under water struggling to reach the surface – and the waves were crashing and I was coming up from a dark abyss. And for a few moments I could see above the waves and there was the sun and the shore. It gave me hope because that dream perfectly captured my feelings right now. I do feel like I’m coming above the waves and will someday soon feel emotionally free enough to be on that shore.
- Josh
You’re not far from truth, but I don’t think you’re quite right either: love doesn’t say “do these things so that I may love you” (that is indeed true), but since love loves you, it also wants your good, and suffers with you and for you if it sees you harming yourself, in various manners. It will never cease loving you, but it can be either co-suffering love, or relieved love. In both cases, it’s centered around the person it loves and his or her wellbeing, not around itself. Hope this makes some sense.
I am always impressed with how well you see life. Your perspective and understanding way exceed your years. I am honored to have had opportunity to demonstrate what love is. That IS my goal and what my life is for.
I can so relate to every word in this post. Even the dream/illustration resonates with me. I left a cult-like religious group almost a year ago, although I’d built up intellectual arguments through independent study to defend myself for over 5 years.
My problem is I’m still somewhat weary of expressing emotions because so many people in my past took advantage of being a genuine human. People from that social construct that I left still try to take advantage any “softness” they may perceive in me. It’s hard to not keep the wall up because you don’t want it manipulated anymore…