new territory

I think I only recently crossed over into new territory where I actually understand, in my gut, that it's ok to have another point of view.

I grew up with a mother whose felt view of the world was "my way or the highway". The irony of this is that these are the exact words she used to describe how her father treated her.

Same as it ever was, visited unto the daughters, yea and unto the untoldth, empteenth generation...fucked up, is what it is.

Anyway.

So what I'm getting at is that I finally really get what a friend said to me, years ago: Grasshopper, I don't need you to be like me.

At the time I experienced it as a 'validation', a blessing, a beneficience, a permission to be who I was. And yet, I didn't really understand it, because it went totally against my lived experience up to that point.

I mean, a few folks had mockingly tried to point out how I self-undermined all the time, but you know what? All I was left with was the feeling of being mocked, yet again. I never got the 'message' that they were trying to tell me, in their fucked-up and ineffective way, that I was ok the way I was. Another boyfriend seemed to puzzle over this too, once telling me that, You are a good person, grasshopper. As if realizing that I actually needed to be told this, to hear it out loud from someone who liked and cared about me. Fuck, was I ever messed up in the head! And LOTS of TLC. Never enough of that, should I live to be a hundred...

So when this guy said to me, I don't need you to be like me, I didn't really hear it - it was sort of vaguely like hearing it said about some other person, third person, at a great distance, not really about me at all. Like overhearing it said about another person in another room.

But now, finally, I'm beginning to get it, a little bit - through the lived experience of having someone actually help me, physically, tangibly, generously.

And now I'm afraid to rock the boat - afraid to ask for more, afraid it'll turn into something 'weird', afraid. Just afraid. So I hid out in my little house all day yesterday, trying so hard to 'get it right', not knowing the rules, not knowing how to find out. Doesn't feel safe to simply ask, most people treat you like you're crazy for even talking about this stuff. You're just supposed to know, somehow, magically, just like when I was a kid.

Sigh. Well, maybe I'll work up the nerve to talk to him about it. Maybe it will come out ok. Or maybe I'll figure out a way to fake being a 'grownup' well enough to find out without actually 'talking' about it. Dunno.