on conflict and compassion
i feel violated by your pessimism.
but i don’t even know if i can tell you that. where to even begin. because it begins right deep in my core. which is maybe why i feel so violated. like the anger in your words penetrates right there. in my center. right where we diverge so sharply. in practice. having thought ourselves aligned in so many ways. it is painful to see where i cannot walk beside you.
at the center is exactly what is most inaccessible for articulation. but i have been trying. to give you something. feeling silly with the words that cannot even begin to touch what is there. so much that i have learned from so many people. so much compassion i have felt from others. and the great pain that i may never be able to return that to anyone. that my own fears and insecurities and ego and just plain inability will never allow me to allow that to another person.
the definitions of strength and weakness as malleable as good bad evil. all judgments and redefinitions of what to emphasize. conversations held with words grappling, again rarely touching. so many times i can’t see it happening. all the talking around and around and around missing the point entire. which is then where writing comes in, where silence comes in. it isn’t a question of strength vs. weakness. whether we are strong or weak. all relative definitions. the question to me is whether we can be vulnerable. whether we can be vulnerable and allow our vulnerable to touch another’s. to let our guard down enough to just let someone else in. whether we can show them the love and compassion we so much yearn for. the patience only really earned in showing patience to others.
to slow down long enough to hear what someone else has been struggling for so long just to say. to see what is in their eyes. what they have experienced. to feel them slow down for you. to walk together even for a moment at the same speed. the rarity of such occurrences (‘…it is by speed and slowness one slips…’)
how we’re just silly creatures full of desire, desire by definition never met. how much we so often live in fear of what we want.
i’ve been forever chasing the question of why we are here. and of course i don’t know. there may be no reason. there may be. it doesn’t matter. we can’t ever know. which is slippery. because this is where i think the feelings of optimism and pessimism come in. what do we rest our future-bound outlook on? in recent months i’ve come to feel it is neither. it just is. and the importance of attending to the present tense. examining ourselves. noticing ourselves. alone and in relation to others. slowing down and listening. paying close attention to the quality of each moment. which often means our relationships with other people. because hardly any moments go by where others are not in some way involved. either in actual interaction or in memory or influence. and g wrote something to me that i’ve been trying to write to for the past two weeks. and it is coming. and this is a part of it. but amongst many things that the impossibility of this life is reality. which echoes so loudly in the center of me where it comes to compassion for self and others. because we can never really know what anyone else has experienced, what goes into their words and actions. what they have seen.
i am thinking so much of my mom in all of this. how much this woman has had to put up with in her life. how much pain there has been in our family. how much pain there is in our relationship. how much i feel incapable of giving her. how much that hurts. she has just started looking into early retirement and i’ve been looking into it. and i am so afraid for her because it doesn’t look good. dammit. dammit. dammit. the woman just wants a fucking break. from so much. from her $9 an hour piece of shit no benefits housekeeping job. but it doesn’t look good what social security will give her at 62. in general. but especially at 62 vs 66.
and the crazy thing about my mom is that you may just never know what she has seen, what she has experienced, what pains her. because she doesn’t talk about it much. you have to draw it out of her. and it is so mixed up and out of order that the stories are hard to follow. and she is so unaccustomed to talking to others. she has no friends really. she is shy and scared. and for us there is so much in the way of our relationship. all of this combined makes it hard to talk with her, to relate. we have our breakthroughs. and what helps is how compassionate my mom is. how she has really come to not judge so much of what i have done. it is pretty incredible. but i feel uncomfortable sometimes with her. when the conversation runs low i ask her to tell me about west virginia. and all the crazy stories. about my grandparents. etc. etc. what i’m struggling with is that i don’t want to turn it all into this past-looking relationship. but then again, no one else is asking. and it is something she feels confident in talking about. i don’t know. it’s just complicated. patience. compassion. love. care. these are fucking hard things.
especially with family i think. so much pain. so much hurting one another. so many expectations placed on children. the dynamic so often. where parents are the caretakers. the dependency of childhood. parents hoping to have what they expect in life met through children they don’t even know yet. and children being too young and deserving of being nurtured and cared for. and supported and loved. all that so often sabotaged far before the children are born. and by the time you are grown so many wounds, so much pain that you then have to sift through and find your way in the world. never sure you can come out from under it. and we’re just grappling with finding the love and attention we may not have had from the parents we expected it from. so many of us. i might even venture to say we are all grappling with this. maybe not consciously.
eight years ago or so, i was very involved in educational work on sexual assault. it was more than just education, there was some confrontation, some support work, some political organizing. it was out of all of that that i eventually withdrew from political work. sexual assault happened within our ‘community,’ divisions around these events, inability to support the survivor, inability to deal with perpetrators. i learned a lot around that time about things in my family. all related. all interconnected. i began to feel increasingly uncomfortable with the work i was doing. as i was finally informed of many of the secrets of my family, as i began to unravel it all, as i began to understand why things were as they were, as i saw my sister, my mom, my cousins, myself, and every member of my family affected directly or indirectly by things that had happened. i didn’t know how to bring the work i was doing home. in the places that needed it most. i felt so paralyzed. and hypocritical. who was i responsible to? who should i be responsive to? what did i need in all of this?
and i still don’t really know. and i’m still grappling with it. over and over and over and over and over again. my sister. i can’t even bring myself to talk to her right now. i don’t even know how to open my mouth. to tell her how much i love her. and how much i think of her everyday and worry about her. how much compassion i feel for her. but how much she will not feel it. how little compassion she has for herself. how much she hasn’t dealt with. how much it is dealt out to others- all the backlash, the hate, the anger. i don’t even know what to do with that. so i don’t. and it feels like cowardice. and i feel so much shame that i can’t do anything. that i have so much of my own anger and i can’t express it in those moments when i feel it. because i am afraid of causing pain. that i don’t and i retreat. float away, float away, just float far far far away.
and i know that there is a lot hidden there beneath the anger and hate. behind ego and ridicule. but how to get there. what work are we each willing to do to get there? how much of my silence is about avoiding that work? about the fear of rupture, conflict, confrontation?
(yep. and this is often where i end up. where i end. with this question.)
to be continued…
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