Undoing the negative messages from the past.

With slow, steady work, nibbling away, with now and again a little help from some key friends (thanks, ♥ and my far-away friend :-), I’m gradually getting to where I can do this without quite so much emotional (mental?) grunting and straining.

Look ma, no hands!

Well, not quite. Yet.

But I’m getting there! Yay, grasshopper!!!!!!!!

:-)

One thing is, I’m realizing that people actually *like* me. They invite me places; they seek my company.

The hard part has been, when I’ve needed to *talk* about something difficult, something stressful in my life, I’ve found myself reverting to the whining, nagging, clinging ways of my mother.

I *think* I’ve gotten better at this - *not* doing it, I mean.

I try to just come straight out and *say* what I want, or need, or am thinking or feeling.

Not in the crude, tactless, lecture-y way of my father,

nor in the denying, Pollyanna-istic way of my mothe.

(And yes, I *do* realize that they are [and were, in my father’s case] both products of their culture, upbringing, time period in which they were born and raised, etc. So, yeah. But? I can still question, still challenge, still lay to rest outmoded ways of ‘coping’. Yes.)

***
I am still more at ease alone, in the company of my books and plants, quietly enjoying life; or, sometimes, bursting out in a riot of music and dance that frees me from the emotional cage I learned to feel safe in (“every form of refuge is a prison” - ? – a line a friend once quoted, didn’t know if he was talking about me, or him? or just generally being philosophical. Anyway, I think I now know what he means.)

But I’m gradually coming out of my shell, having crashed and burned repeatedly in the past – the sink or swim, ‘throw her in the deep end’ approach of my father, and the neglectful, clueless and unaware approach of my mother, left me feeling like a small child alternately allowed and even *encourage* (in my father’s case) to go play on the freeway. As some self help piece said somewhere, paraphrasing roughly, “like letting a little kid play on an eight-lane freeway.”

So.

I am unfurling, slowly, like the first new leaves of the fern in spring – testing the air, the soil, gradually spreading my roots if the conditions seem propitious.

And if not?

Pulling back in. Waiting. Biding my time; using my energy in other ways til such time as the ‘moment is right’, or the next big wave comes along and I can surf a little furthe along my journey.