Paradigm: This is the Life I Envision

 

The thing I am realizing is this, if I am the person who has constructed my life the way it is right now, then I am the one who can change how I see things.

 

I am FREE to change the way I see things, I am free to interpret my life the way that I want.

 

This is something I have been fighting against for years. I have been too afraid to map my own life, too afraid of being “cast out” from the rest of the world…

 

For most of my life I have felt adrift, cast out and cast away from other people. Consequently I have had a hard time connecting with people and trusting myself to know what is “right”. 

 

How did it happen, though?

 

I can point to many many examples of being told that life was out of my control, right from the very beginning.

 

And many other examples can be gleaned from reading the stories in my life book…

 

But there are stories, wonderful stories, of me standing up and telling people to “shove it” too…

 

So, obviously, there is only so much control that fear has over my life. Every once in a while I get fed up with things and I overthrow the rule of fear and make a change.

 

 

The only thing is this:

(I have never been really good at MAKING solid, lasting connections with other people)

 

It scares me, to let people in. I have never really had relationships, whether they were familial, friendship or romantic, that lasted, and I’m kinda worried that I just don’t know HOW to make connections and keep people in my life. Hell, even the THERAPISTS I have hired to help me (and my kids) through the trials of divorce have flaked on me…

 

I have lived with the belief that there is something so completely and fundamentally WRONG with me (and my children) that no one can possibly stand to continue to be part of our lives. From my mother on down through my life, this belief has played out its themes on me — failure to become “part of” the group, not being accepted because I have a different personality type or don’t react the way I am “supposed to”, feeling like I’m chasing after people who aren’t “that into” me, and finally abandoning or being abandoned by people I was close to because I am just differently social.

 

 

I have to accept the fact that my mother will always wish I was someone else, that i have never lived up to what she wanted or envisioned her daughter would be. We have different visions of a relationship, and different personalities. My mother really wanted someone like HER — a social butterfly, flitting about the world, bubbly and outgoing. What she got was ME — a quiet introvert who prefers small group settings, intimate engagements, prefers home and familiar environments, chooses friends more for shared interests and quality of conversation than sheer availability or number, and is more studious and serious and less gregarious than most of the people around her.

 

Neither of us is wrong. The only problem is that the fact that I lacked qualities that my mother felt were necessary for a great mother-daughter relationship, and that effectively made it impossible for my mother to relate to me because as she has always put it, I am “difficult to get along with”.

 

Perhaps the fact that I am not as overly social, that I tend to feel deeply but not express it as openly, the fact that I have never been one to gush excitedly or dance around in glee the way she has. The fact that when I found out I was expecting each of my children my reaction was more of terror and horror and fear of what my husband would say rather than the glowing, sparkling happiness that she envisioned…

 

My mother has always been what she calls an optimist (I’m not entirely sure that’s the CORRECT term) while I have always tended to be more of the pragmatist type. She has seen me as someone who can’t enjoy life, because I’m always considering the implications of my actions or reactions on not only my life by the lives of those around me, and focused on how I will get through things that are presented to me. The difference is that because I plan for the unexpected (the GOOD unexpected as well as the UNGOOD unexpected) I usually have the wherewith all to weather the storms in my way, while she tends to ignore things until they get overwhelming.

 

I have, at long last, stopped expecting my mother to accept me the way I am. I have stopped feeling sorry that I have never had the mother/daughter bond with my mother that so many other women have. I have stopped feeling sorry for myself for the way she treats me. And I have stopped thinking that there is naturally something wrong with ME because I can’t be what she wants me to be.

 

I have shifted perspective of the situation: the issue is not that there is something about me that makes me unlovable or difficult to care for/about, but that I am genuinely who I am and if someone misses out on seeing the beauty in who I am (even if it is the person who should love me for me) because I am not what THEY want, then the person missing out is not ME, but THEM.

 

While I still crave acceptance and validation, while I still want to be loved and cared for, and I will likely still seek to be “perfect” I am slowly coming to terms with who I really am. I can’t be what other people want me to be, because that will disconnect me from myself, a place I am very familiar with.

 

I am NOT perfect. I hate the “you are perfect the way you are” stuff, because I know very well that there is a LOT more for me to do and a hell of a lot of things for me to work on — being a better mother, learning to connect to other people, getting out and not being afraid all the time, finding a place in my life, and even getting to a point where my daily life is full of loving, comfortable, and beautiful connections with other people. If I truly thought that I was perfect there would be no further need to work on uncovering the best I can be…