Category Archives: Self Reflections

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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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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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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