I've been back in a groove with reading, and it's hard to not fall in-step with what you're reading at the moment. Kinda like the guy you meet out who just parrots everything that he just learned in class that day. One day he is Freudian, until next week in Psych class when they learn about Jung.
Although, there are a ton of common themes in everything I am reading (mostly depression/minduflness/Buddhism books), things do differ, even if just slightly.
But where I'm at lately, like A LOT lately, comes from nowhere but it comes from everywhere too. I'm not parroting, but I'm coming to a pretty profound self-actualization -- I don't know that there's any person on this planet that I love.
It's really hard to type that, and it's really hard to read it, but let me explain:
The conventional "love" is something that nobody really knows. As a child, I didn't see one ounce of love, or even an ounce of liking each other, between my parents. It's carried through me throughout my life. I'm now fully understanding what IT IS to love, and be loved. And to love, you have to have been loved, or maybe more importantly, to love, you have to have FELT loved at some point in your childhood.
I felt loved by my Dad, but, at every turn, I was beaten down for that by my Mother. I resent that, and I do to this day. I mean, on top of never feeling loved by my mother over my entire childhood, I was turned away and told I was wrong when I exhibited unconditional love and appreciation. It was always a confrontation. Love is never wrong, but for my entire life, into my 20's, I was made to feel wrong every time I loved anybody or anything.
It has created a ton of my sadness because I don't know if I'm missing something, or if I'm right...but I don't feel that over-powering, "I'd die for you" love about a single person, place or thing on Earth.
A lot of it comes from my lack of self-love. I don't even like myself 90% of the time. I still have memories, and things I won't even delve into in counseling. Things that nobody outside of my head knows. I don't really feel the need to share those things. I've accepted them, and I do realize how they've molded me into this 30-year old loveless, unloveable person.
The best time of my life since my early 20's was last year when I was in Florida....or at least the tale end of my time in Florida. I was never more alone during that time. My Dad was in the hospital for a month. His wife was with him every night, I'd go to see him every day, and he slept while I read.
Through that time, when I could have very well gone back into a spiral of depression, I was never more alive. I worked out hard, almost daily. I shed a lot of weight. So much of what motivated me were the memories I have inside of me.
Shouldn't I have been lonely and sad and grief-stricken? I ate dinner alone most nights, I didn't see anybody beyond a friendly "hi, how are you" from the gas station clerk or person at the gym. And that was as genuinely happy as I have been for a protracted period of time.
Don't get me wrong -- the traveling I have done and all that surface stuff has been great and it made me really, really happy in those moments....But something was different for that short time down here (I'm here now visiting). It was my time in exile, yet, it was the closest I have been to self-acceptance and "liking" myself.
Everyone I "loved" by the conventional definition of the word, family, etc...they were all 1,200 miles away. I had nobody, I left them all behind and yet didn't miss them during that time.
This is all on me. I'm fucked up completely. I'm not depressed, I think I am just numb. I think the sum of my "love" has been given and given, and I've done so much surface shit to show people that I care, and again, it gets disregarded without a thought.
I profoundly care about a lot of people, but I don't know that I'm hard-wired to love. I think whatever wiring we are born with in our brains...those synapses that make you love with all you are -- those wires were shorted out before I had the chance to even stand up to the forces that were killing them.
On one hand I'm glad that I don't have attachments with "things" that replace what I feel is my incapacity to LOVE. But at the same time, it's really scary to think of a life where that doesn't turn around.
I have been blessed with so much good in my life....so why do I still come back to the bad? My compass is just broken. It's nobody's fault but my own. I keep hoping something snaps and magically I wake up tomorrow and it's like everything looks and feels different. That realization, to me, is progress though. I can identify that life is suffering. I'm turning the corner and identifying what's making me suffer. Now I need to act on some of the things that have been calling out to me, the things I keep turning the volume down on. I've left acceptance at the side of the road throughout my entire adult life. I've got to "fix this." Sometimes, shit's just broken and it needs to be thrown out.
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