Envy, anger, and more

I have been realizing in the past couple of weeks that I have a lot of repressed envy, not just repressed anger. My envy is more, but by no means entirely, on the nonmaterial side, i.e., of people's social skills, relationship skills, starting sexual relationship skills,job-hunting skills, etc.

That said, I do envy, to some degree, other people's material possessions. There, I envy them as much for the putative security of having a higher income than I do, having a house (especially if not overbuying a McMansion), etc. Some things, like the job skills, or job-hunting skills, are partially materialistic, in the degree that material means connect in part to immaterial ends.

And, I am beginning to wonder if repressed envy of others and repressed anger at myself don't go a bit hand in hand.

Road maps for life

A COFFEE-STAINED ATLAS

Analogies. Metaphors. Deeper meanings.
My atlas is a road map in more ways than one.
Torn, tattered, browned pages of internal road trips;
Nostalgic for past journeys to American wonder,
Hopes for future getaways,
And the emotional escapes and release of both.
I haven’t opened my atlas so much recently,
Nor looked as much at old photo albums of past trips.
The nostalgic side of that atlas has little savor
At this moment, and its hint of future escapes
Is almost equally dry to my lips.
If life is an eternal now, a succession of present moments,
Then past and future gain flavor from the taste of today
And my reflecting on them.
I may need to break metaphorical bread together
And share an atlas printed for two.

Little round balls ... family of origin thoughts

LITTLE BROWN BALLS

I told my sister once that we weren’t a family when we were growing up.
Nope. Not a family. Not at all.
If by family, we mean not just white picket fence stereotypes but also harmony, communication and caring.
Of, sure, we ate all our meals together, but that was a surface event.
Mom talked about her work, her coworkers — one in particular — and other minutia of that social circle.
Dad talked about church parishioners, sometimes things in town, and other minutia of his circle.
Neither made much effort to enter the other’s circle, with a husband-and-wife version of Alphonse and Gaston playing out every night at the dinner table.
And certainly, neither one reached out to any of five children-siblings at that dinner table, not like Ward or June Cleaver.
I will not offer a simile to soften a metaphor.
We were seven individual balls of shit,
Not behind a white picket fence of outward family nicety,
But inside a swirling white commode of separate lives,
Or so it seems to me.
Although I still have trouble with expressing my emotions
As an adult, with hindsight, I look back and see one of my childhood “roles” as the family emotional sponge.
Maybe that’s part of why I have trouble expressing my emotions today.
Shit stinks and disgusts.
And a self-conscious ball of shit that “knows” it — that believes it and feels it — is probably going to hurt a lot, even if not self-conscious of it.
But flushing the mental toilet doesn’t flush all the memories. Or beliefs. Or perceptions. Of what life seemed to be.

Impulse controls

Saying NO and impulse control. They're connected. Maybe not exactly the same. "Just say no" is, not counting Nancy Reagan, a bit simplistic, or more than a bit. But, they're on the same continuum. And, whether over sex-related issues, especially while online, or some other things, I do have some issues with impulse control.

Not in all things, though. I quit smoking, and drinking.

That said, part of any impulse control issues I do have may be related to yearning for comfort against anxiety, even without any of my childhood abuse. And, so, "getting stuck" may be a flip side of impulse control.

Anger, anger, anger

Just today, with about 20 minutes of journaling, after talking with a friend online on Yahoo Messenger and other things, I realized I have touched another layer of the onion in realizing I have serious anger repression.

That goes hand in hand with anger management, assertiveness management, working for my wants and desires and more.

The anger is at various other people, starting with parents. As an adult, it's also anger at me. The events are all passed, all water under the bridge. But, this river I call my life, a Humean stream, doesn't change, it is the same river, because I don't leave it. So, learning, learning, learning more about this anger is important.

Friends, online interaction and more

I've had some more "learning experiences" recently. Without naming names, or other things, I've learned that:

1. At least one theoretically enlightened person from theoretically enlightened San Francisco is either clueless enough, or else morally repugnant enough while being hung up on herself enough, to either actually believe that sexual abuse makes boys become gay men, or else to want to believe that when a man doesn't come on to her. This woman never considered the fact that a man might see what seemed like clear "control" techniques coming out of her.

1A. She appears to be less than enlightened about gay issues in general. She says I might be gay, beyond her belief that her charms weren't enough to allegedly "convert" me, in a sense that being gay is "less than." Again, someone theoretically enlightened from a theoretically enlightened bastion of liberalism.

2. That even a few, or several, months of knowing someone purely from online interactions, is not to know too much.

I won't say more, though I could say a lot more.

I am keeping this person's e-mail, though. And, not even putting it in a separate folder. I'm keeping it in my inbox. Not to stew on it, but as a reminder.

Not just a reminder to be more careful about online trust, but, as a reminder to continue my personal growth, including to be even more aware of other people's personalities.

As for this person? Beyond anger, I felt disgust.

Beyond that, though?

Without wanting to sound condescending, I feel sad for her. In my honest opinion, every personality diagnosis she made of me in that e-mail could, in my opinion, be made of her. But, part of me doesn't even care. I am safe. What she said can't harm me.

As for the gay comments, ultimately, if I am correct about where they come from in her belief system, here, I'm back to disgust and anger, because that's insulting to countless thousands of gay men who were sexually abused as boys and who weren't "made" gay by the abuse.

I have seen grown men crying, accepting in their heads but not their hearts, that they are gay, and wondering if the abuse "made them that way." This woman's e-mail to me was not (just) an assault on me but on all these men and countless others.

And, as for control issues? Even after our friendship, or what had seemed friendship, had started drifting, for her to ask if I would visit her while on vacation in California this summer seems to me to show that she's lying even to herself.

Gratitude list, June 1, 2010

1. I woke up sober today
2. I woke up and didn't see my name in the obituaries today. (Unless I'm REALLY depressed, that should feel like good news, right?)
3. I didn't die because I had trouble sleeping last night.
4. I didn't die because I didn't fight the sleep issue and I didn't stay in bed really, really late.
5. I didn't panic over my fears of being trapped.
6. I accept that life sucks, but it does for others, too.
7. I accept that it's not always a total tomb here.
8. I recognize group dynamics, and can figure more ways to work around them.
9. I may not be "thriving" right now, but I'm not dying on the vine.
10. I'm being prodded, and responding, even if oh so slowly, to expand my career focus and search.