by Charity and Mary
C: After our discussion earlier this week I had this vision of myself lying prone on my stomach on the floor, with Mary sitting on my lower back, facing sideways and keeping me from moving. :-/ She didn't have any particular expression on her face; she was simply constraining me and leaving me disempowered.
I'm tired of going around in circles, trying to no avail to get people inside and out to see things from my point of view. I deserve validation. We all deserve validation. We deserve validation regardless of how healthy we are or how well we take care of ourselves. We need to be nourished by validation and acceptance the way we're nourished by protein and carbohydrates. Some people may not need so much of this nourishment. But I'm not one of them.
So when someone significant in my life, particularly Mary, leaves me with an ultimatum, I get angry. I suppose this is a good thing on some level, because earlier in life I believed that anger was a Bad Thing. I got depressed instead. I'm finally learning that I have a right to my feelings. I just wish it weren't such a difficult lesson to learn or to live by.
M: So on Wednesday evening I was around after perhaps several weeks of....not being around. :-/ It made sense for me to be the one to talk to our T this time. Charity didn't object, so I took my turn.
C: I didn't object, because I think it's important for each of us adults to do our part to work on our healing. Mary knows this; I'm just stating it here for the record. I don't want to get into the issue of whether I'm putting pressure on anyone else, especially given that others inside pressured me to do the work that I've been doing. I'm not trying to get back at anyone else. I have just as much right to have expectations of the others as they have the right to have expectations of me.
M: I agree that we each have our own work to do, and that each person's work is essential to our healing as a whole. I agree that it's not fair to Charity or to others that I keep disappearing. I agree that I have an obligation to myself and to the system to find out why I keep disappearing, what formative trauma lies at the root of this issue, and what work I need to do on myself to improve the way I function. I want the relationship between Charity and me to flourish, not to deteriorate.
I stand by my belief that Charity needs to make healthier choices. I stand by my belief that she can't keep doing the same thing and expecting different results. And I stand by my belief that none of this means that I don't validate Charity's feelings or her right to be who she is.
C: Hearing all of this made me feel less backed into a corner. As if Mary literally got off my back and rescinded the ultimatum that had felt so threatening to me earlier. If she's willing to adjust the way that she approaches things, then I am as well.
We played SuDoku on the train home last night, Mary and I. I have no interest in activities based on logic or anything that involves analysis. My lifeblood is feelings and values. But I knew that working on the puzzles together would strengthen the bond between us that had been so painfully....tested....in recent days. We didn't solve the puzzle, but we made a very good run at the majority of it, especially considering that it was marked at top difficulty. And I could resist the urge to berate myself or slip into depression for not being perfect.
M: We can continue to work together and individually. Both of us.
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