The exchange I had yesterday with Foxy got me thinking about the conflicting advice/attitudes/comments I have received on my predicament over the years I’ve been discussing it relatively openly. I think of the view which has always prevailed as the conventional one, the one I grew up believing in, that one’s own feelings should always be the last to be considered, that ‘good’ people always put others first and suppress their own wants. I am slipping into the language of ‘should’ and ‘good’ again, because I don’t know how else to express this. Then there’s the approach that one should do what one can to protect one’s own feelings . It’s hard for me to find ways to describe this because it seems to me so obviously bad and wrong, and yet many kind and thoughtful people have said this to me, maybe not in so many words. And it becomes another kind of pressure and expectation, that they think I should act in certain ways, that I should be this kind of person, and then I start to feel bad about myself because I can’t live up to their expectations for me, that my hesitancy is something to be ashamed of, that I’m a fool. So however I feel it seems that in some people’s eyes I am wrong and stupid, and I feel guilty and ashamed of myself and my feelings.
This is all full of judgemental language, and I also know that being judgemental is wrong, that ‘should’ Is wrong, I have been told off many times for using it. This is such a paradox, and I can’t see a way out of it. I try not to be judgemental when it comes to other people and their behaviour, I try to be accepting of them and see their point of view, and I think I’m quite successful at that. There’s a little voice somewhere in me that tells me I’m a ‘good’ person for doing that, though I know that immediately I start thinking that instantly it is devalued, because ‘good’ people never think of themselves as good.
So, how am I supposed to live my life? However hard I try, I still can’t get away from that language. If I don’t put other people ahead of me I feel ashamed because I am being selfish. If I do put other people ahead of me I feel ashamed because I am being stupid and letting myself down and not living up to my potential. Whatever I do, I feel bad about it.
I feel I have picked away at this relationship until I have wrung every little bit of joy out of it, so that what is left is an empty husk, yet I should persist with it because that is what I should do, because to do anything else would be to let everybody down, except of course, for those people on the sidelines urging me to follow my heart and start again. And then I look at the sheer complexity and difficulty of doing that and I know I am just a coward because I can’t bear to think of how hard it is going to be, so I hide behind that, and then I despise myself for having these feelings and not being prepared to follow them through.
And is all of this just self-serving, manipulative crap, trying to get sympathy? Probably.