Okay 2017, I Concede. Let’s Wait It Out.

I want to write something simply because the topmost post on this blog for too long now, has been a painful memory that victimised me. I am not actually dwelling in the past. The present has had me too caught up to even think about the future, let alone the past. One major thing about the present is the books I’m reading and ‘When I Hit You’ was a part of that. Sometimes we can look back at our lives and see them in other ways, like examining old information in fresh light. Even the insights we gain may not be exactly new but the relooking allows us to establish it again, more strongly. And how can we hope to live in peace, unless our beliefs are strong?

I don’t really have much news to report. Or perhaps there is too much to say. As always, I’m a bit rusty when I start writing/sharing again after a long time. Half this year has gone and I’m coming to accept that 2017 is as difficult and brutal as 2012 was. I lost my idea of a great person. I lost a performing space and community that felt like home. In the past month I’ve lost two of my top five people. Yes, I have those or rather, had those. And perhaps, finally goaded on by what I think life was trying to tell me, I have let go of someone else I really wanted to be close to.

I do not believe men will treat me with respect and consideration for very long. I do not believe friends will want to stay true permanently, especially when they have easier or more benefit-giving relationships in their lives. I’m just not a great investment for people’s emotions and I can see that with some kind of detached clarity.

I do not want to be treated with adulation but with warmth. Yet, that is a role that falls on me. What people call ‘respect’ is putting me up on a pedestal but I cannot make them see that. And thus we come to a stalemate unless I accept that this is the way other human beings always will be.

This lesson keeps coming right back at me. You cannot make someone love you, no matter how loveable you make yourself. You cannot make a person treat you well, no matter how well you treat them. You cannot teach a person to treat themselves well, no matter how hard you wish it. And finally, you have no control over a single thing that life has or does or is. All one can do is, is try and stay grateful for the chance encounters that have brought some joy.

I’ve been tempted now and then to fall into bitter, pitch-black resentful rage. But it feels like such a dark, unwelcome place to go to, especially after the year-and-half I spent wondering if I was going mad. This also reminds me of how I got through that time – with some of these very same people who are tempting me to fall back into that place. Never mind justice, never mind what’s logical. I must not go back there for myself alone.

I’m not exactly sad because I think I’m still in some kind of numb shock. Or perhaps it’s resignation. Everything is slipping away. Everyone is hurting. Everybody is a monster, without being able to help themselves. All I can do is take one breath at a time. And wait for 2017 to be over. You be well too.