Lost in Identity

July 16, 2010

So, I was going to write something about how frustrating it is to see every fucking commercial targeting women are about how to make the house/laundry clean, or how to be more of a woman by making oneself more attractive to a guy. I mean, in a perfect world at least one of these commercials should have some sexual innuendo of the homosexual kind… But then I actually looked at one of those which have pissed me off the most, and I found it! Well, perhaps it was an unwilling suggestive message, but I can live with that. :-)

See, the thing is, I’ve become lost in identity. That’s why everything except “L Word” frustrates me, it’s a heterosexual world, and not even the Bible takes lesbians seriously. Still beats being a teenager though, nobody takes them seriously either. Although it frustrates me, it gives me little excuse for not doing anything about it. 

Deep down I am not a supporter of identity as a phenomenon. I believe in the sense of self, and I believe we do need to express ourselves properly through clothing and behavior, as we are being “pre judged” based on appearance. We must take a conscious effort of expressing our ‘being’ with intend.

We must take control of our appearance, but we must not let the appearance take control of the self, and I believe this is exactly why I am lost right now. I feel like I’m caught up between two stereotype worlds, and I don’t really belong in either. I am a woman, but I don’t feel the need to make myself delicious to any guy anymore. I don’t feel the need for making my laundry whiter either. On the other hand, I don’t want to dress up as a caricature lesbian either. 

I know that these stereotypes are (mostly) in my head. I know that my sense of self should not depend on identity. I know that I shouldn’t give a rat’s ass about the masculine/feminine roles of society, and I know why commercials are playing on these issues. Still, it is slowly catching up on me. The reason these commercials work is that deep down we all want to belong somewhere, and any suggestion as to how we go about belonging better are received, subconsciously at least.

I guess the reason I am so frustrated is that they don’t give me any suggestions. I may simply be frustrated by the fact that I have not been manipulated, that nobody gives me a stereotypical version of me to cling on to. Not a positive one anyway, not one that will bring me closer to belonging to society. 

Well… Screw the stereotypes! Screw the identity issues! 

Perhaps I don’t belong anywhere – perhaps I actually belong everywhere! Perhaps it really is all in my head! I don’t think I’ve ever met a woman like the once in the commercials anyway.

I am trying… It doesn’t work. I should see this as a ticket to freedom, but right now I can’t even make sense of my own writing. I should think some more, I think.

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Dear Mum,

April 21, 2010

Got a message from my brother today, asking me if our mother could have my ‘new’ address so that she could send me an invite for my stepfather’s birthday. After having spend most of my day with a great passion for isolation I finally find myself in need for someone to talk to or a shoulder to cry on… Damn I feel lonely! The second best thing is to put SOAD on repeat and blog.

Fuck you, mum! 

If you had taken the effort of calling me on MY birthday two weeks ago, I might have been persuaded into giving you my address. If you really want it, you can find it on the web, but please don’t restrain yourself! 

I can give you nothing! These past ten years of distance between us has made me sane and I have no intention of destroying that. There is a social norm saying you have to love your mother, and you have had your benefits from me believing that to be true. And the only reason I don’t fall frontal first puking my guts out to the saying: “a mothers love for her children”, is because of my own love for mine.

You are not the one who makes me sad tonight. Remember that! You make me angry. The sadness comes from the realization that I never really did feel I had a mother.

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A Breakthrough…

November 11, 2009

I am SO in the middle of screwing up my midterm evaluation right now. Partially because I have to get up in 5 hours, and partially because I’ve just opened a can of beer. And I am blogging!

I had a breakthrough. Just now, actually, and if I knew anyone who wouldn’t be offended of having me call them at 1 am, I would have done so instead. But this is fine for now, I think. I can’t really grasp the greater picture of it right now, but I am so relieved I could puke, so that must be a sign, right?

I’ve previously described how I do not feel fear. That the fear is there – I just don’t allow myself to feel it. And I had a grave suspicion, that my lack of consciously feeling this could also be the reason, I have not let go of what happened 12 years ago.

So, less than an hour ago, I decided to search for the fear. 

My grandfather could have raped me. If we had been alone, when it happened, or if I had gone to visit him some other time, where he then would be alone, he could have raped me. That is a genuine fear and, at that moment, a very clear and present danger.

When he was done, he told me, we would sleep together one day, when we were alone. We weren’t at that moment, because my brother was in the other room. He told me. He didn’t ask or suggest “if I wanted to”, no, he just stated it as a fact. At that particular moment, I was not his granddaughter that he had seen grow up. I was not the girl, he spend three years teaching how to ride a horse. I was nothing but a fraction of his fucked up fantasy.

He did not see ME, he did not see my paralyzation, he didn’t notice shit! All he saw was the play taking place inside is mind. He could have raped me!

NOW I feel the fear! Right this minute. This is not an overreaction, this is very real!

My mother didn’t see this as something to fear. She wasn’t in my position at the time, she did not think about “what could have happened”, she barely reflected upon what actually did happen. I never was special to her, not even close, but I might not have been completely worthless either.

He could have raped me, but he didn’t. Because I did stop it. I did not spend another moment alone with him. My sister didn’t either, after I had told my mother about it. Although I was still forced to see him, I never placed myself alone with him.

He cannot hurt me anymore, he died 6 years ago. The fear I feel right now belongs in the past. And I will allow it to stay there. I can, now.

He could have, but he didn’t, because I stopped it!

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Twelve Years Ago…

November 10, 2009

Here goes nothing… (and I am sitting at school writing this, simply because it will distance me from being overly emotional about this.)

As a child I grew up with my grandparents, and it wasn’t until I turned about 12, that my mothers boyfriend told my mother (!) that it was about time we came living at home. When I was 15, my grandmother and my uncle died within 3 months of each other. My grandfather didn’t seem to be going through a hard time because of this. He might have, though, I won’t be the judge of that, but he certainly was going through moral decay with drinking and gambling, even gambling my grandmothers jewelry away… (what a cliché, really)

When I was 16, my grandfather displayed “inappropriate sexual contact” towards my sister and me. I won’t go into details with what it was, I don’t see the need for it, but I can tell you how I felt at the time.

I felt nothing. Absolutely nothing, I was completely detached. I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t breath. My mind tried to send signals to the rest of me, pleading to do just something, but the transmission got disconnected somehow.

When he let go of me, I just walked out of the house. I was at the end of the small road, when he called me from behind. And I stopped. I actually stopped and waited for him to come over, I felt like I should, for some reason. He pushed 40,- kr into my hand and said: “And then we won’t talk anymore about that…”

I walked away, with the two coins in my hand, and it wasn’t until I was about 100 meters around the corner that I came to my senses again. I threw the coins on the road, thinking that if anybody would want to get a hold on these filthy money, they should at least risk being run over by a car to get them.

I decided it wasn’t my fault. Of course it wasn’t! I had been sexually active for about 3 months, but he didn’t know that, and even if he did, it should not in any way excuse his actions. So, I was pretty clear about that.

I had a long and hard struggle with myself about whether or not I should tell my mother. As you may imagine, we didn’t exactly have a close relationship, and she isn’t the most empathetic person on the planet. I finally decided to tell her the same evening, for two reasons. I didn’t want my sister to experience the same as I (which turned out to be too late, I found out the same night), and also because I didn’t want to see him again, so I figured I had to explain why.

I told her, what had happened and that I never wanted to see him again, and she believed me. Well, she also said something equivalent to: “Was that it?” but at least she believed me.

Then came christmas. And my mother and her boyfriend decided, that my sister and I should come to christmas dinner with my grandfather. Of course we objected towards it, but it was just as worthless as we were. We had to go.

Then, my mothers birthday came up in january, and of course she invited him home. No problem, we could just go to some friends house, right? Wrong. So very, very wrong. I was forced to eat “scrimp” cocktails with him sitting there right in front of me. In my face!

My mothers boyfriend started using it as a very effective element of pressure, whenever we didn’t do as he pleased. “If you don’t behave, you can always spend the holiday at grandpa’s!” With a disgusting smile on his face.

Here’s the thing… When I look at it in writing I can see the absurdity. I really can. But inside my head there are some seriously screwed up discussions going on between me and myself.

I don’t blame myself for not having reacted during the occurrence. But I’d really wish I had reacted somehow, especially when I realized that my last chance of “saying no” was taken away from me by my mother. 

The reason I blog about it today is that this memory keeps popping up every time I feel fine. As if my mind decides to say: “Hey, you seem happy! Maybe, just maybe, you would have the surplus to look over *this* youth memory, that you haven’t dealt with completely just yet…?”

So, this weekend I have been going through it all over and over again, and I still haven’t come much further than the last time I went through it. It seems as if there is no relief to this.

I am facing two possible conclusions as to why my mother would force me to see him again after explicitly having told her, I did not want to. One is, that I was overreacting. That it really was just a small bump on the road, nothing to get all moody and depressed about. After all, no direct physical harm was done… 

Or, to my mother, I was worthless. 

I am not sure, which conclusion I would most prefer to make. But until I choose one of the above perspectives, this memory will haunt me down and ask me to replay it over and over and over again, and I can’t deal with that either.

So, please tell me, what the hell am I supposed to do?!

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What do I mean by “Darkness”?

October 25, 2009

My darkness is not about ‘forbidden feelings and desires’, because there are no feelings I would not allow myself to have. I might not express them in public, for obvious reasons, but I do acknowledge them, when I know I have them. No, my darkness is about the depth of all of my feelings, and exploring it is about following an emotion to its root, to the point where it becomes all consuming for a limited period of time.

Children have it easy this way. When they are mad, they put absolutely no restraints upon themselves. It is expressed freely and intensely. Joy is overwhelming, sadness is unbearable. Fear is present. They have a very direct approach to the root of their emotions, and they are spiritually free. Then they learn the rules of society…

There are some feelings I find easy to follow. I have re-taught myself how to feel the depth of joy. I have cried so hard and long, that I the next morning had the face of a beaten woman, all red and swollen. Anger is more difficult, but I have felt it to the point where I felt intimidated by my own mirror image. It is accessible.

But fear… I have yet to get in contact with my fear. I need to feel this overpowering to-the-bone fear others describe. It is not because I have been blessed with a fearless life, I have just chosen to deal with it through other channels, or numbed myself. Although I do hate horror movies, so on some level I am avoiding it. I am afraid of my fear.

Illustration by Matt Mahurin for Newsweek

It may seem strange to want to get in contact with this feeling, but it is important. I do feel fear, of course, I just don’t feel it as deep as it runs. I don’t understand my fear as well as I understand my anger or joy, which also means there is an area of my darkness that I am unfamiliar with. Just because I don’t feel it, doesn’t mean it isn’t there underneath the surface. It just means that somehow I am blocking the path between the feeling and it’s root.

The more I understand about myself, the stronger I become. I explorer the depth (and the lack) of my feelings, because that is the way of exploring myself. That is how I can come to know my darkness and gain knowledge about myself as well as others.

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Who can describe a Demon from the Outside?

October 11, 2009

The various myths of Lilith fascinates me on so many levels, I should have dedicated an entire blog post to her. But I won’t, at least not today. In stead I want to write a little about my yet-to-finish view upon ‘darkness’, my own darkness that is.

When I look upon the myths of Lilith, I can’t help but wondering how they would sound from the perspective of the demons themselves. Don’t get me wrong here, I would hold on to the… ehm… unethical activities they were attributed, but I’d like to gain knowledge about the driving force, so to speak.

I do not believe in evil as phenomenon. There are actions with cruel consequences, and there are actions deliberately taken to inflict pain and misery upon others. (Hey, most children who’ve seen their parents go through a bad divorce will recognize this.) I just do not believe it to be an act of evil. It is a fear of loosing control, or a compensation, or a loss of direction… This kind of madness happens, when we lack mental, emotional or physical balance.

Darkness could be seen differently. 

I cannot know what it contains, because I have never entered it. I am still standing at the border of enlightened path, tripping to get closer but unwilling to surrender to the unknown. I am tripping! Because, I cannot claim to know my darkness, when I have only experienced it to be an apparent lack of light. I wonder, if it looks differently, if it is sensed differently, logically and ethically correct, when it is observed from its own core?

My core, to be exact. Sometimes I do take the myths as they might have been intended. Informing about an unknown drive, which can only be explained by its differentiated values from the god created mankind. I could be a descendant from a demon, who knows? It is an exciting and challenging thought to play with.

When I look upon my own inner worlds, there is an area I have yet to explore. There are many, I am sure, but this darkness needs understanding. I think, I am much more cynical than I let myself believe. I think, I am stronger than I let other people believe. I think I need to understand.

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These Shadows…

September 17, 2009

Perhaps, for this post, I should call them clouds instead. Big, dark, thick clouds hanging over my head, following my every move. Yeah, the clouds of my life, those are the ones I would like to blog about today. These masses of conflicting thoughts and emotions just waiting to be dealt with, and the greater the cloud, the more I want to run away from it. 

Actually, I don’t want to blog about my own clouds, rather I would like to try and explain why I am so obsessed with getting rid of them. A cloud is an area of my life, that I have a hard time dealing with. It is denial or an unwillingness to surrender to a responsibility or position I am expected to take on. I can be in an area of my life without really being there, because I have this inner resistance, that won’t allow me to feel present and focused. Like drifting away day-dreamingly, while the house is falling apart. 

The problem is, I don’t know that the cloud is there, I don’t know what it contains of, until I’ve decided to take an in-depth look at it. I cannot determine its presence by the lack of sunshine, because after a short while I get so used to not looking up, and my eyes adjust to the darkness. It is like wearing sunglasses for the entire day, actually forgetting I had them on. The human mind is amazing.

However, I have found ways of spotting these clouds anyway. Not by looking at the surroundings, but by looking at my own actions and attention. The more desperately I seek inspiration from the outside world, the greater is the cloud I should be paying attention to. The faster I run, the more I want to get away from something. And I can spend a lot of energy just from avoiding what I need to see. Sometimes I can get so caught up by the running, that I continue doing it, even if the cloud somehow has transformed into something less dramatic. 

But there is a point in refraining from escaping reality. First of all, I can think of nothing more tormenting and miserable than to be running away from my life. Whatever it might contain, it is my life! When I try to escape, I can be dead sure, that I am not able to change what had me started running in the first place. Things don’t mysteriously get better all by themselves. And the funny thing about the perception, is that I see the cloud as to be the cause of my misery, when in fact it is denial, the running that makes me feel this way. I don’t feel the content of the cloud, naturally, because I am running away from it.

I also know, than ‘nothing is as bad as it seems’ is a horrible cliché! Sometimes things are actually much, MUCH worse than they seem. But still, they won’t get better from not being looked at. If I think, I have debt to the bank for 10.000,- and it actually shows, that the real amount is 25.000,- then that really sucks! But thinking that it is only 10.000,- or not thinking about it at all, that actually sucks even more. I can feel it, even if I’m not consciously aware of it. The cloud is still there.

So let’s say I decided to take a deep breath and enter the cloud. That is a painful revelation! I find out, it was worse than I thought, but in reality it only confirmed what I feared. So first of all, I can at least let go of the fear. New feeling will then arise, and they all need to be dealt with. Maybe I need to cut down on the luxury, maybe I need to make a new agreement with the bank, maybe I just need to accept ‘what is’ and surrender to the fact that I’m more in debt than I thought I was.

At this point, I am no longer running away from the cloud, I’m actually right in the middle of it. And I don’t need to stay there until I have all things sorted out. I can prioritize, find a healthy perspective and act upon it. Then step out of the cloud and come back later. By that time, it will have changed a bit, and dealing with the rest will be easier.

When I spend my time running, I really can’t do anything else with my life. It stops! Even the inputs I get cannot be completely appreciated and implemented, because it sinks into the very same part of my life, that I resist.

Surrendering to something deeply painful and demanding seems almost inhuman. But it is still much more of a life, than the one I am trying to live while running away from it. Once I get into that cloud, I can begin to sort things out. That makes it less painful, less demanding. The sense of essence becomes clear!

Ultimately that is my motivation for dealing with the clouds. I need to sense the essence, that is when I feel alive and present. That is my life force. When I run away from my clouds, I run away from the essence of being. And sometimes the essence of being is cruel, but I still feel much more alive, than any kind of denial could ever make me experience.

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I Will Manipulate You!

September 14, 2009

Inspired by recent discussions on Empath Community, I’ve decided to blog a little about my perspective on manipulation. The arguments can be divided into two obvious categories, those who are against it and those who see it as a necessary tool, that can be used for good purposes, if the intention is right.

I say, WE ALL DO IT! We do it all of the time, actually. And the problem is not, that some people advocate strongly against manipulation – the problem is that they too manipulate others and their perception restricts them from acknowledging it.

Manipulation is, as defined by my dictionary along with wikipedia, the ability to control or influence a person or situation. We do not control people in the terms of tying them up and forcing them to look in a specific direction. We control people by motivating them to see things from our perspective. We influence them to accept the ‘truths’ we portrait, and the art of manipulation lies in knowing how to do this properly.

If I overdo my attempt of manipulating you, I will fail. Of course it depends on your ability to see through it and look at my intentions, but if I go forwards too strongly, you will discover it. So I use different tools to cover my intentions. Not consciously! It is something that happens on many levels, and mostly it is just an assessment of message and receiver.

What would be the best approach for getting my message understood and validated by this person?

This question is embedded in our ‘language packages’ and it is active from the moment we learn how to speak. A child that wants a cookie will consider the best way of asking for it, and it usually turns out to be something like: “Mooooooomyyyyy?” With a little smile, a spark in the eyes and hands positioned for the ‘most innocent and loving’ look. Because the child knows, that the wrong approach will not result in a cookie.

The mother will usually know what the child is up to, just as she knows that crying is not necessarily because the child is sad. But it may still lead to the wanted result of the child. The mother understands and validates the child’s message because of the approach.

The above is an obvious example, but there are plenty of subtle forms of manipulation. The cloths you wear signals something about you. You decide how you want to be perceived, and people usually understand and validate your expression, even if you did not make it consciously. A woman in pink miniskirt and a tight tank-top manipulates her expression. The clothes she wears is not the whole true picture of who she is. It is a manipulated image of who she wants you to believe, she is.

The same actually applies to the guy who doesn’t seem to care about how he looks at all. He to sends a message that “He doesn’t care!” But he does care – otherwise he would ’sometimes’ care and other times not. But that usually isn’t the case, because if he one day would show that he cares, he would ruin the image, an image he created with a purpose.

I am manipulating you right now as well. (if it works, that is. Otherwise you may see this as an attempt of manipulating you) Even my conscious decision about writing my intent so that you can read it, that too is a form of manipulation. You don’t have to lie to manipulate. You don’t have to deceive people or twist the truth in any way. Sometimes being ‘honest’ is the best approach for getting the message understood and validated. So that too is manipulation.

If what I write leads you to understand my message, then you have been controlled or influenced to see things the way I wanted you to see them. Or at least, I have made my perception understood through the approach I chose.

If it didn’t work, if you are one of those who sees manipulation as the work of Satan, I should have chosen a different approach. The above would not be suited for influencing you to see it my way – I would have used different arguments and expressed myself differently.

We all manipulate, we are all being manipulated, and the only problem with this, is that some people refuse to believe that they do so.

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