Hope
It's been a long time since I felt like this. I used to have this habit of hope. It was a big habit. It took up a lot of my life. It was a longing for potential, and a sense of absolutely limitless desire and reality. I dreamed big, about a million different things. I had a sense of who I was, and it was huge. I was a teacher, a gardener, a piano player, a consort, a wealthy lady, a zoologist, a marine scientist. I would save the world, I would save my part of the world, I would save you, I would save me. This hope lasted well beyond my youth. It pushed me out of my family, out of the safety of my tiny little existence, out of the surety of my religion. It pushed me beyond incredibly strong barriers designed to limit my hope to safety, dictated by others. It kept me from falling in love, because I hoped to be able to have a better love than I was capable of some day.
And then, my hope stopped. It hit the boundaries of my own frailty, and it crumbled. I had never realized how very, very weak I was. I had never fully realized how deeply the limitations I'd been bound up in had atrophied my strength. I thought I was invincible, and when I found out I wasn't, I gave up. It happened in a slow heartbeat. I found a physical limitation, and it made me stumble. In the process of stumbling, I fell into all the other little limitations I was composed of, and I just kept on falling. I grasped at handholds regularly, but convinced myself that my hands weren't strong enough to keep hold, and I let go.
This metaphor is disturbingly realistic to me. I can see the past 10 years of my life as a constant fall. A few brief moments of holding on, trying to pull myself up, followed quickly by giving up, giving in.
I knew that this could last for forever. I could keep on falling till I died.
So, I straightened my limbs, and I dropped. I plummeted. I thought about what it would take to hit the limits of my tolerance for weakness, and I flew towards them. For me, those limits don't involve many outside influences. They don't involve drugs or alcohol, though they could be a factor if I chose to let them be. No. For me, they involved letting myself be caged again. I'd been struggling for freedom for so long, and it was such a fundamental part of who I was. I knew that pushing myself down into being contained by circumstances beyond my control would, eventually, push me into either sheer stubborn change, or let me acknowledge my weakness once and for all, accept it.
This knowledge wasn't constant. It's come in flashes over the years. And it's let me do things that really aren't very nice. It's a selfish, selfish thing, this process of falling towards your limits. Because it involves other people in your descent. It involves making other people tools in your search for rock bottom. It's cruel, and it's selfish.
A part of that search has been allowing myself to become someone I have never wanted to be. Letting myself be defined by the extremely unhealthy limits of my relationships with those around me, especially when it comes to sex. My relationship with T has been a huge part of that. I think about what I've allowed us to become, what I've brought out in both of us... and I honestly and truly cringe. I'm ashamed. It's not so much that I blame only myself. But I KNOW. I'm aware. And that awareness includes responsibility. Because I use his need to control me as a lever to control myself, and I use his need to push me down as a tool to dig my way out of my own head. I can't believe I've done that, writing it out. How fucking selfish is that? How fucked up. I could be helping this person become better, helping them try to overcome those parts of themselves that make healthy interactions with other humans so difficult.
But I didn't. I thought I was. I tried, and I failed, as usual. And I used that failure as a cop-out, a way to not feel quite so responsible for what we created together.
Oh. That's a horrible realization to come to about yourself. Realizing that you'd allow your need to help to be so perverted, that you'd allow your sense of empathy and knowledge about others to drive your growth at their expense.
But no more.
It did it's job. I've reached the point where I'm looking for change that will actually help me. I'm hoping again. Granted, I've pinned my hopes on a HUGE, HUGE change. One that makes absolute perfect sense to every part of me that I love. But a hard change. And one that isn't certain yet. I'm dreaming big, and those dreams are still very, very fragile. I worry that if it doesn't work out I'll give up again.
But I don't think I will. I have my internal compass back, that sense of direction that drove me to leave everything behind before, in search of something better. And I have the strength of years of mistakes behind me, the strength of finally knowing just how weak I can be, and what it leads to. When you don't know that, when you don't know your limits, you can be blindsided by them.
I have to tell myself that if this thing that I so desperately want doesn't pan out, I WILL find something else. I'm lazy, no doubt about it. But I'm driven, too. I know what I need, and I will find it. If I can be so selfish in my quest for unhealthiness, I can be just as selfish in my quest for happiness.
And then, my hope stopped. It hit the boundaries of my own frailty, and it crumbled. I had never realized how very, very weak I was. I had never fully realized how deeply the limitations I'd been bound up in had atrophied my strength. I thought I was invincible, and when I found out I wasn't, I gave up. It happened in a slow heartbeat. I found a physical limitation, and it made me stumble. In the process of stumbling, I fell into all the other little limitations I was composed of, and I just kept on falling. I grasped at handholds regularly, but convinced myself that my hands weren't strong enough to keep hold, and I let go.
This metaphor is disturbingly realistic to me. I can see the past 10 years of my life as a constant fall. A few brief moments of holding on, trying to pull myself up, followed quickly by giving up, giving in.
I knew that this could last for forever. I could keep on falling till I died.
So, I straightened my limbs, and I dropped. I plummeted. I thought about what it would take to hit the limits of my tolerance for weakness, and I flew towards them. For me, those limits don't involve many outside influences. They don't involve drugs or alcohol, though they could be a factor if I chose to let them be. No. For me, they involved letting myself be caged again. I'd been struggling for freedom for so long, and it was such a fundamental part of who I was. I knew that pushing myself down into being contained by circumstances beyond my control would, eventually, push me into either sheer stubborn change, or let me acknowledge my weakness once and for all, accept it.
This knowledge wasn't constant. It's come in flashes over the years. And it's let me do things that really aren't very nice. It's a selfish, selfish thing, this process of falling towards your limits. Because it involves other people in your descent. It involves making other people tools in your search for rock bottom. It's cruel, and it's selfish.
A part of that search has been allowing myself to become someone I have never wanted to be. Letting myself be defined by the extremely unhealthy limits of my relationships with those around me, especially when it comes to sex. My relationship with T has been a huge part of that. I think about what I've allowed us to become, what I've brought out in both of us... and I honestly and truly cringe. I'm ashamed. It's not so much that I blame only myself. But I KNOW. I'm aware. And that awareness includes responsibility. Because I use his need to control me as a lever to control myself, and I use his need to push me down as a tool to dig my way out of my own head. I can't believe I've done that, writing it out. How fucking selfish is that? How fucked up. I could be helping this person become better, helping them try to overcome those parts of themselves that make healthy interactions with other humans so difficult.
But I didn't. I thought I was. I tried, and I failed, as usual. And I used that failure as a cop-out, a way to not feel quite so responsible for what we created together.
Oh. That's a horrible realization to come to about yourself. Realizing that you'd allow your need to help to be so perverted, that you'd allow your sense of empathy and knowledge about others to drive your growth at their expense.
But no more.
It did it's job. I've reached the point where I'm looking for change that will actually help me. I'm hoping again. Granted, I've pinned my hopes on a HUGE, HUGE change. One that makes absolute perfect sense to every part of me that I love. But a hard change. And one that isn't certain yet. I'm dreaming big, and those dreams are still very, very fragile. I worry that if it doesn't work out I'll give up again.
But I don't think I will. I have my internal compass back, that sense of direction that drove me to leave everything behind before, in search of something better. And I have the strength of years of mistakes behind me, the strength of finally knowing just how weak I can be, and what it leads to. When you don't know that, when you don't know your limits, you can be blindsided by them.
I have to tell myself that if this thing that I so desperately want doesn't pan out, I WILL find something else. I'm lazy, no doubt about it. But I'm driven, too. I know what I need, and I will find it. If I can be so selfish in my quest for unhealthiness, I can be just as selfish in my quest for happiness.
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