Tom Waits: Poor Edward
There are certain things I can't accept. I can't accept that this illness makes me stronger. I can't accept that this illness makes me wiser. I can't accept that it is the root of my creativity, or that somehow mental illnes is allied with anyone being the sort of person who is good at making things. This illness is hard and dirty and cruel; it makes me feel unmeasured dread and it fills me with fear and sadness and exultation for no reason at all. It leaves me unmanned. It hurts.
Most of alll I can't deal with the oft mooted idea that my scars make me interesting. Or kooky. Or different. It's true that unlike many I don't hate them, and I don't, with certain exceptions, try to hide them. But that doesn't mean that I like them or am proud of them. They are a part of me, and that is that. I am scarred. That's a fact, and a fact is just a fact. Mostly, I don't mind people giving me odd glances and asking me strange questions. I don't mind the people who are rude and I don't mind the people who treat me like a freak, but I can't deal with the people who thinks it gives them a right to know me or, worse, to like me.
That doesn't mean that I can't.... learn. There is an accepted model of BPD which says that as well as the biological factors there are the social. For whatever particular reasons you don't learn the sort of thing that other people do as you grow up. While your intellect might bound ahead your emotions are stunted. You may not learn how to show emotion, or you may not learn how not to show emotion. You don't learn how to socialise. You don't learn how to be safe. You don'tt learn how to ask for things; you don't learn how to ask for help. You don't even learn how to say that you need it, or that it is not a sin to do so. You don't learn that life goes on; you fail to learn stability, or continuity, or who you are. Treatment, according to this model, consists in learning those things. I am beginning to do that: to not be afraid. Most of all, for me, I am learning to tell the difference between what is true and what I think is true. Just because I think someone hates me or sees me as weak doesn't mean they do, and if they do- well, then they do. The world doesn't end. I might think it will; I might even think it has, but actually it hasn't. This is true. I've tried it on several occasions.
It is just because I come to this late and mangled that I get the consciousness of this learning process. Other people learn before they reach self-awareness. Or they learn it at an early stage of consciousness, and then they forget it. They know who they are but not how they got there, and there is grace in that as there is grace in everything. For those of us that didn't do that, though, we get all the shit, and then we get awareness of growth. I had to do it once, badly, and then I had to do it again, with feeling. I am take every painful, humiliating step in the light of my own self awareness; which is particularly nasty because I keep fucking up in an embarassing manner. I watch myself. I sit in a classroom on monday mornings and learn the difference between shame and sadness, and recite my homework, and rethink my judgements. I do what pretty much every other fucking person on the planet did when they were three, but I do it as an adult, which means I get bored and humiliated but which also mean I get to choose. I don't just discover who I am; I get to think, who do I want to be? And then I get to fuck it up.
Most people grow up naturally. Through abuse, neglect, and the general dicking about of justice I wasn't allowed natural. Instead, I get aware. I don't know if it's recompense: how can you judge what you've never experienced? I don't think it makes me wise or strong or deep. I don't think it's a gift. No gift hurts as much as this hurts, and nothing free should be paid for in your own blood. I think it is what it is, and this is how my life is.
Most of alll I can't deal with the oft mooted idea that my scars make me interesting. Or kooky. Or different. It's true that unlike many I don't hate them, and I don't, with certain exceptions, try to hide them. But that doesn't mean that I like them or am proud of them. They are a part of me, and that is that. I am scarred. That's a fact, and a fact is just a fact. Mostly, I don't mind people giving me odd glances and asking me strange questions. I don't mind the people who are rude and I don't mind the people who treat me like a freak, but I can't deal with the people who thinks it gives them a right to know me or, worse, to like me.
That doesn't mean that I can't.... learn. There is an accepted model of BPD which says that as well as the biological factors there are the social. For whatever particular reasons you don't learn the sort of thing that other people do as you grow up. While your intellect might bound ahead your emotions are stunted. You may not learn how to show emotion, or you may not learn how not to show emotion. You don't learn how to socialise. You don't learn how to be safe. You don'tt learn how to ask for things; you don't learn how to ask for help. You don't even learn how to say that you need it, or that it is not a sin to do so. You don't learn that life goes on; you fail to learn stability, or continuity, or who you are. Treatment, according to this model, consists in learning those things. I am beginning to do that: to not be afraid. Most of all, for me, I am learning to tell the difference between what is true and what I think is true. Just because I think someone hates me or sees me as weak doesn't mean they do, and if they do- well, then they do. The world doesn't end. I might think it will; I might even think it has, but actually it hasn't. This is true. I've tried it on several occasions.
It is just because I come to this late and mangled that I get the consciousness of this learning process. Other people learn before they reach self-awareness. Or they learn it at an early stage of consciousness, and then they forget it. They know who they are but not how they got there, and there is grace in that as there is grace in everything. For those of us that didn't do that, though, we get all the shit, and then we get awareness of growth. I had to do it once, badly, and then I had to do it again, with feeling. I am take every painful, humiliating step in the light of my own self awareness; which is particularly nasty because I keep fucking up in an embarassing manner. I watch myself. I sit in a classroom on monday mornings and learn the difference between shame and sadness, and recite my homework, and rethink my judgements. I do what pretty much every other fucking person on the planet did when they were three, but I do it as an adult, which means I get bored and humiliated but which also mean I get to choose. I don't just discover who I am; I get to think, who do I want to be? And then I get to fuck it up.
Most people grow up naturally. Through abuse, neglect, and the general dicking about of justice I wasn't allowed natural. Instead, I get aware. I don't know if it's recompense: how can you judge what you've never experienced? I don't think it makes me wise or strong or deep. I don't think it's a gift. No gift hurts as much as this hurts, and nothing free should be paid for in your own blood. I think it is what it is, and this is how my life is.
posted by tattybluetrees at 5:09 PM
1 Comments:
Tatty - I hope you don't mind that I tracked you down here. I have been feeling melancholy and nostalgic and missing old friends and that includes you. I hope that you are reasonably well. I still love the way you write. Some of it brings tears to my eyes.
Susie (Beachgirl)
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