The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. - Marcel Proust
Do you know the definition of a "sea change"? It's a sudden and precipitous change, overwhelming and instantaneous, that's my take on it. And epiphany? A sudden insight. I don't know. I could be wrong. I think I'm facing a sea change, and it's because I've decided on it. I did something recently at some cost to myself for someone else. Now it's all about me. And it's all about you.
I've been wrong for most of my life.
Just something that's a fact. I'm not groveling about it. But I've been wrong about most premises I was raised with and told as truth even, or especially, by therapists and pastors. It's not weakness to need somebody. It's not weak to ask for help. The weak should not be despised and trodden upon. We should be allowed to fail. We learn from our mistakes. The most successful people make the most mistakes. Our parents were mistaken and may have abused us. It's good to compromise. Sometimes it IS all about me. Sometimes it's not. I don't have to entertain my friends and family with elocution. I can be silent and still accepted. God doesn't hate homosexuals. God doesn't hate sinners. We're not ugly and evil. We're not going to hell if we don't believe in Jesus. Hell doesn't last forever. We'll never know everything. We won't even know most things. Nobody understands God or his ways. Post modern fundamentalists or evangelists are the post modern Pharisees and if anybody is going to hell in a handbucket it's them. It's silly for homosexuals to marry other than to obtain legal rights under the law.
I've been wrong about friends and family. I won't avoid people I don't like. I'll let them be themselves and maybe I'll even grow to like them as different than I but equal.
Nobody on earth is my savior. I won't set anybody up for failure. My best friends are fallible. I make more mistakes than anyone I know. To sin is to err or "miss the mark".
It's been all about me, what takes place in my little brain, the delusions, the obsessions, the beliefs, the attitudes, the behaviors. I'm okay. I'm the Wild Rover but the Wild Rover doesn't hurt anybody anymore nor does she "spend all her money on whiskey and beer". I haven't had a drink since 1993, coming up 18 years, and I quit smoking in 1985. I'm not promiscuous. I like to have fun. I'm okay but I in my 66th year must change because God created me to be more than a little person in a little box without love or insight for my fellow human beings. He gave me life. My parents gave me life, like Liza Doolittle's father said, "I gave her life." I have been given talents and I won't bury them in the ground but I need help and I'm not strong to continue without support. Perhaps it's best the mainstream papers haven't accepted my articles on mental illness yet. Perhaps it's too soon to completely come out in the open.
Everything happens for a reason and if I've done all I can reasonably do I might examine the facts, and the consequences, and the ramifications. I teeter on the brink of a sea change.
I have a therapist and I have the opportunity to consult with others who can help. I'm going to ask them for help and I'm going to change. It's about me and it's about you. I learn to let go slowly but I'm going to let go. And those who are control freaks are to be pitied because I was there once. It's a confining and scary place to be, to control and to attempt to change others. Now I'm going to control myself. I'm going to change myself.
And I'll have a blast doing it! Watch out world, this is but one more adventure in a series of adventures, and you, good friends, help more than you know.
I need the help. But ultimately I'm responsible for myself.
I was never coerced nor manipulated into this illness. It was precipitated by love. I was born with the genes and before I die there may be a cure. It was the best thing that ever happened to me because:
I am a human being!
I'm not sure what's been going on these past few days, but you are clearly excited (not necessarily happily) about something.
ReplyDeleteMaking mistakes, making change, opening yourself up...sounds like the Kenna I know, but spinning WAY faster right now.
One of the differences between us is that mental illness was not understood as being treatable in a positive and meaningful way when you were in your formative years.
I watched my mother struggle with what I know now was clinical depression and alcoholism. No one would talk about it in realistic terms. There was much euphemism.
I have been able to live my life wide open, in so far as not needing to keep the fact that I live with a fairly serious mood disorder a big secret. It wasn't recognized as such until I was a grown woman, but I was able to seek help and find it when I was ready.
Whatever relationship has been affected adversely recently, I hope things shake out in the best way for all concerned.
Yes, it isn't all about you (or me), but we're here, aren't we? Some of it is about it us. It's a good thing to learn to look out across the footlights and realize that just because you act on the stage doesn't mean it's the whole, big, real world.
Thanks, Sue. It was a court appearance. I'm happy now. It's something that was started long ago.
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