for Priscilla Thomas
For the past ten days there has been an unopened letter sitting on my bookcase. It contains the lab report on my tick, letting me know whether I have, or have not contracted Lyme’s disease, and I’ve been too scared to open it. I fear it could be just that one thing too much at an already very difficult time.
In my circle I tend to be a go-to person when others are in trouble – it’s a role I play often, and now that the kids are grown, Herb is gone and the nest is empty, I’m fair game. The nest, at the moment, is pretty crowded with hurt birds, all significant folks I love, so it’s not a good time for me to also have Lyme’s disease! I figured it was best not to know.
My friend Priscilla, who discovered the tick on my back in the first place, has been bugging me for days to OPEN THAT LETTER!
I ignored her, so she showed up at the door to do it for me. I let her in, handed her the envelope and left the room.
The test was negative, and today I am a very relieved wimp.
So I’ve been thinking a lot about having courage in hard times, and the value of friends, and wondering what would cause someone to become a White supremacist, for example.
I read an article recently by a neo-Nazi woman who showed off her ‘Hate’ tattoos and told her sad story of not belonging – either in her family, her community or her identified sex. She was branded as abnormal by the people around her, as well as herself. Brutality and unacceptability were what she knew, so she was fair game to others, like neo-Nazis, with whom she was acceptable. Joining their cause, she then ‘belonged’ and along with them brutally targeted others who were different from themselves and called it ‘a holy cause.’
She finally got thrown into jail for her efforts.
But then magic kicked in because she fell in love with one of her fellow inmates – a Black woman – and her life was radically changed around.
Hers was a story of unacknowledged sexuality, a disturbed family system and self-loathing.
I wonder about members of cults and hate-groups who also experience a similar self-loathing, who seek others as lonely as they are so they can project their self-hate and anger onto the so-called ‘normal’ culture? Sadly, that is how they can feel OK about themselves.
The fact is, I can identify. As an abused child in a seriously dysfunctional family, I walked around with my own version of secret shame:
I’m not like the others; nobody loves me and why should they? I’m ugly and stupid. I don’t even like myself!
Not belonging, I told myself that I didn’t want to belong because I was above all that. Who needs friends?
It takes some courage to admit this truth even now, as I am deeply ashamed of still lugging around that old baggage. But that’s the uneasy reality of it.
Nobody ever said the work of self-honesty was easy! But at some point I believe it’s essential to take on, and I seem to be at that point now.
This woman served her term in jail, learned to accept herself as she was, grieved her past and has gone on to help others through the morass of self-hate that the white supremacy movement actually is about. I wish her, and all her colleagues, much luck in their endeavor as not only they, but all the rest of us stand to benefit from their work.
I think a lot about self-hate these days because the more honestly I face my own, the more clearly I can read it in others. It shows on our faces as envy, as resentment, as fear.
I remember a conversation I once had with a gifted and beautiful musician about another gifted and beautiful musician. I asked if they were friends.
“Oh, no,” she replied, “I mean, I’m happy to play with her, but I’d never invite her to my house.”
“You wouldn’t? But why?” She looked at me as if I were a dumb bunny.
“Because I don’t want my husband to meet her, of course!”
WOW!
Perhaps many of us deliberately shut out those we envy because we feel small in their presence. It’s easier not to have to be reminded of our own lack of self-worth, so we project it onto others and then feel somehow justified.
I’ve caught myself projecting stuff onto others and I know others have projected their stuff onto me. Jealousy is unfortunately alive and well in this world! It happens every once in a while, though, that someone honestly admits to me their feelings, and tells me why they are jealous. It tends to be about wanting something I have – my family, my relationships, my stable children.
“I want your life!” a disgruntled friend once confessed, knowing nothing of my past.
“OK,” I fired back in irritation, “you can have it, but only if you take all of it! You have no idea what you’re asking for!” She backed away, embarrassed – as she ought to have been.
I’m no great beauty, nor have my gifts made me famous but after a seriously messed-up childhood, adult life has, for the most part, treated me well. That’s not the case for everyone, and some people – women especially – resent my good fortune and would rather not have to measure up to whatever success I represent.
My mother was one; my sister, another.
In our crazy family I’m fairly sane and believe me, not everyone loves me for it! For example, because of my non-standard ideas I’ve been accused of being unsafe for my grandchildren. A quilt I made with loving care was tossed on the Goodwill pile in one household, and one of my books half eaten by the dog, in another – both left there for me to find, I suspect.
Does this hurt, even after all these years? You betcha it hurts – bad!
The fact is that we all suffer from old wounds, we all seem to worry about being not quite ‘good enough,’ but not all of us can cop to that in ourselves. At my best, I try to reach deep down for compassion, but at my not-best I take slights personally and want to fight back.
Of course.
Hurting, my instinct is to retaliate with counter hurt, which then justifies retaliation and then mine back, meaner still…And so it goes until everyone is at war with everyone else, all justified in being self-protective and angry, worrying about security and theft and whatnot, all the way up to nuclear bombs!
It’s the same old same old, and it all seems to begin with variations on the theme of self-loathing.
That’s your fault!
No, yours!
YOURS!
The trick is to catch myself doing it, and take a break. Laugh at myself, if possible, and do the work of scouring out the old fears and anguish from the cupboards of my soul, and tossing them into the compost bin.
After all is said and done, I need myself as clear as possible, and I need you in my life, whether or not you need me.
That’s the truth, plain and simple.
