Sometimes it just kills me. No matter how many times I choose integrity, honesty and faith over fear — I just can't win. All I can do is pray that the things I am doing are good for me because they certainly don't make anyone else in my life happy.
But how can I even trust that I am making the right choices and doing the right things? I mean, I feel good about the choices I have made, but again and again, I am met with anger and distrust instead of understanding and support. I mean, have I been such an asshole in my life that I'm just not the sort that anyone trusts or has any faith in? Am I really just that much of a disappointment? I know I have made mistakes and I've always tried to make ammends. I can admit when I'm wrong and that I've stumbled in the past. Shouldn't that count for something?
I'm always expecting a warm hug and some encouraging words — and getting scolded and shamed instead. I'm left feeling completely blindsided. Will the past always be thrown in my face despite turning over a new leaf? How long do others get to define me? When can I be in charge of being who I am? Tonight I feel adrift at sea without a compass. Anyone got one I can borrow?
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About Me
- Anima Sola
- Chicago, IL
- Anima Sola isn't fond of labels. She is, however, fond of embracing her many paradoxes, and walking the fine lines between religion and politics, with an eye turned toward postmodern religion, feminist theology, and challenging patriarchy from inside the Roman Catholic Church.
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Quoting...
There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love
anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken.
If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart
to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies
and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the
casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark,
motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will
become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to
tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only
place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the
dangers and perturbations of love is Hell."
~From the book The Four Loves by C.S.Lewis
anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken.
If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart
to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies
and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the
casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark,
motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will
become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to
tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only
place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the
dangers and perturbations of love is Hell."
~From the book The Four Loves by C.S.Lewis
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1 comment:
You're asking a lot of heady questions there, my friend. The answer, which I don't think you're going to like: yes, it should all count for something, but... if you're changing yourself so someone else can be happy or their fears can be assuaged, that's not genuine; that's you twisting yourself into a pretzel to gain approval and love. Speaking solely from personal experience, at some point it gets pretty damn tiring doing everything under the sun (ha ha... I just accidentally typed "son", which would have been really a Freudian slip given all the religion that's going around) for someone else to finally say, "You are a good person."
I'm learning (slowly and with a LOT of pain) that there is absolutely nothing I can do and no one in the world who can give me that stamp of approval. It's a scary prospect, this idea that getting the affirmation that I'm a good person is the same thing as learning to love myself and stop depending on other people to give me things that were never theirs to give in the first place.
Sorry for the long comment that probably isn't what you want to hear. It's 4:21am and I have to get up at 8:15am to go teach, and the prospect of continued sleep deprivation is making me a little insane.
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