Therefore, what?

It is reasonable to see if we have gotten anywhere, since it was supposed to go somewhere.

I think a big part of it was kind of dealing with my father. Identifying him as the common factor between my sisters and I was fairly new, so working out that by writing about it probably helped. I thought maybe I needed to take some time to mourn what I didn’t have, but I haven’t really been grieving. Still, processing changes in perspective is important.

A friend had seen the one post and we were talking about it, and her reaction surprised me because she was so appalled by him. I think she said “disgusting” twice. She’s not wrong, but we hadn’t been thinking in those terms. It’s just been so much a part of our lives, that even if you know it is not normal for the rest of the world, it is our normal. So, there was taking a new look at that as well.

I think this may also be a step to eventually learning to drive. For me, it’s not just all of these metal bodies hurtling around at high speed where you can really hurt someone. It is that even then I was uncomfortable around my father, and scared of him, and so did not want to learn to drive with him. It is that initially he said it was okay, but then changed his mind and had me go out with him, and that I hit a car. It is that if there were not neighbors outside when it happened, he would have hit me right there. And it is that after that day (the day before my seventeenth birthday) he did not speak to me for two and half years. It’s that his ego meant more than any love he had for me. I still don’t have the time or money to really take the lessons and get a car and all of that, but I believe I am getting into a better place for it mentally. Apparently all it took was deciding that it’s not my fault that my father is a dirtbag.

I have gotten better about accepting my limitations. I have tended to expect too much of myself. Part of that is being the people pleaser and needing to take care of everyone else, but also, I just know there is a lot that can be done and should be done. It’s just not my job to do everything, or to everything at once. I am still creating the long to-do lists, but I am focusing more on what was accomplished than on what was missed, and trying to set good priorities on what gets done first.

Again, I am quite comfortable not seeking out dates, though I do want to be careful about making sure that I do stay in touch with friends and volunteer and do social things. I do still sort of want to be attractive, but I can’t think of any attractive women feel like they are, and having lots of males attention would probably be overly complicated. I may just be better off looking this way, but healthier, which I am working on.

Remember, part of not looking for love is that I am pursuing heath, and a writing career, and I can’t do everything at once. (It’s back to that limitations thing.) These things are more within my control, and perhaps more immediately important. 

(It would be a perfectly valid question to ask why, if I am trying to become a professional writer, I am spending so much time on something that is not at all marketable, and that is almost 200 pages and keeps getting longer. My only answer is that it’s what I feel like I need to do, and I’m going with that.)

I find I have gotten more assertive about expressing when something is bugging me. It seems to me that it should be possible to not let things bother me, therefore not need to say anything, but I’m not there yet. Maybe this is an intermediate step.

I don’t really have any ideas on the physical contact thing. I have asked my mother to hug me twice, and she has. However, I know she thinks it’s weird, and I don’t know that it’s really getting to the core of the issue. It may not be time to work on that yet, or perhaps it is a different process now since I have gone feral. The fifteen-minute a day boyfriend still does sound pretty good on that level.

The other thing that will be different, and this will be hard, is that I am going to work to build up my mother and sisters. We tend to be somewhat deprecatory here, both self and otherwise, and it’s a lot of fun, and it does not seem to cause damage on the surface, but maybe it does.

I was reading in Psychology Today about how efforts to build your own self-esteem don’t work, but that if you work to build someone else’s self-esteem yours goes up as well. It’s an interesting concept. On one level I hate the term self-esteem, and I hate the way that some schools of thought work so hard to convince everyone that they are special that they are working on raising a generation of entitled sociopaths. However, if I compliment them on things that are real, and refrain from anything insulting, even in a joking manner, that might be worthwhile. It does seem to me that people who criticize others a lot are harder on themselves as well.

It will be difficult passing up easy jokes. I have kept delaying my start because I get such good setups and I hate passing them by. I guess I will have to come up with different types of material. After all, we will still have quoting movies to each other, and political humor, and making fun of stupid people and ugly clothes, as long as they are not affiliated with anyone in the household. And yes, my mother laughs when I imitate family members, but she also goes nuts for my Swedish Chef impression, and that harms no one. It will be an adjustment.