Recovery with Respect: a fantasie on fight club
It seems like sooner or later we all take a dive. Our carefully constructed world which kept the whispers and fears at bay eventually becomes uncomfortable, constricting, depressing, exhausting, debilitating. If we stay in it, we die a little at a time until there is nothing left but a shell.
It seems we only dare to deconstruct this illusory world when there is no other choice. When we grow sick from the very demands we place on ourselves to protect this illusion. I think you can guage the self respect of a human being by the moment they choose to change a maladaptive living stretegy. The further from being forced to, the more secure that person is. But I digress.
We all get there, and some of us chose bandaids and crutches and comfort, and others choose to engage it fully. Illness accelerates this process. Illness forces you. I was no doubt heading for my own personal dead end, but I guess I never anticipated the illness.
the longer you let it go before you address it, the less energy you have, the firmer your patterns become, the more deeper you are invested in the illusions and your unsustainable approach to living. And the illness itslef is just a symptom. It is a curse, and it can be a tool. It is what you make of it.
You can recover from this illness on supplments alone. I think. Your body and mind can anyway, just like your body and mind can recover from a particular unhappiness by changing jobs, moving, dropping a boyfriend, quitting drinking, stopping smoking, excersizing, or whatever. But, although all of these might become part of your journey, none of these will free your soul or be true recovery. You dont have to find happiness. You dont. Most people dont. They find comfort, distraction, and amusement. But true happiness is not disturbed by daily events, by change. Change is inevitable, just like poor health, death, and losing things dear to you. True happiness trascends this.
"its not until you loose everything that you are free to do anything"
Letting go is an action. It is not the absense of action. It is a deliberate, positive, step. Make a fist. Let go. its still a fist. Now open your fingers wide, make you palm large and flat. Thats what I am talking about. letting it go. Freedom is earned, not given, and you have work to do. So I hate to tell you, SZs, hista-whatever you ares, ladies and gentlement of the jury, whoever reads this blog or stumbles into it, but the decision to let go and undo the patterns that got you where you are, even should you find that courage, which is unlilkey, is not the end. No one will do it for you. It is a messy and scary process. Its a hideous process, and it must be done with dignity.
Recovery with Respect.
Many people demand respect. I wanted to be respected for my battle with my illness. I wanted people to cut me slack, and still give me respect for what I was able to do. I thought it was unfair to be held to the same standards as other people. But I also wanted to be treated as whole, even though I was not. I didnt want to be laughed at, even though I was making a complete fool of myself. I wanted people to look at me and think "there is a guy who is well centered" when I was a total mess. Through my actions, I lied to people by leading them to believe I was someone I was not. It was not until I learned to laugh at myself, and to acknowledge my limitations, and that everyone has limitations, that I began to realize that respect is not given, it is earned.
I realized that I was broken, but that I was good. I tried to tell people where the edges where, who could not see them, and I learned to not be so ashamed of falling that I failed to learn to walk again. This was hard. I am someone who found a lot of identity in how others perceived me. I had to accept that I was a mess, forgive myself that weakenss, and understand taht some people needed more than I could give them.
"You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else"
I used to feel entitled. Entitled to be a mess. To drop my shit on other people becuase I was sick. I know I did it. I wanted extra slack ebcuase I was ill. I felt so threatened whenever someone tried to teach me something. I felt like I knew things, that I was strong and smart and independant and able, and that they should learn from me. I felt like people were judging me when they made observations, or critisisms, and this was true of freinds and teachers. Grades, I felt, were an unfair judgment. I wanted to sit down and refuse to budge. "I am not at my best, how dare you judge me." Ach. How painful that all was.
but look, I am not sure I am right here. It may be that you can get there as a mess, but I am beggining to realize that it is no coincidence that I began to recover myself, which has little to do with recovery from the illness, when I began to earn my own respect. I gave myself permission to mess up, and to be sick, but also gave myself the space I needed by acknowdeging that the world did not cease to revolve when I began to tackle this. It is like being a child and a parent at the same time. I stopped having to demand to be respected.
In zen, I have heard it refered to as faling to pieces without falling apart. In fight club, they called it controlled demolition. You can enter your own name here _______. [you see, bonus techer credits for intereractive lessons. Its all the rage.].
Look, pieces are fine. But they are you. You will have to find them, polish them, and reorder them in a better, more stable way. Falling apart it just letting yourself wallow in self pity. It is seductive, because being down is secure. Assuming failure means you never have to be dissapointed. There are no risks to take, no judgments to be passed, no marks to miss. It is disempowering and it is not living.
well, I guess thats my point. even though you are sick right now, you cannot fall apart. You may feel entitled. You may feel like you are fighting more than you ever asked for and more than anyone you know is dealing with. Well, good for you. Let me tell you, such is life. It is what you have, and it means nothing more than that until you decide what to do with it. Take charge. Arrange your helath givers, and make decisions. When you need to be alone, ackonledge it and ask for the distance, dont slink off. Learn to laugh at yourself. It IS funny.
You will interact with people. being sorry is not good enough. If you love them, you will have to earn thier respect. You will do this by acting in ways in which you are proud. You must, and will , first take care of yourself, of what you need, and you will acknowlege your abilities, and then, you will earn their respect by doing what you do well. If you cannot be intamate, dont. Dont involve someone esle until you have sorted yourself out. If you cannot be consitent, dont tell them you can. If you dont trust your emotions, dont ask anyone else to. People respect people of lesser ability everyday when they realize that that person respects themselves enough not to try to do more than they can. They may reach, but they are not foolhardy.
And finally it is up to you to build something from these parts. You are not Sz. That diagnosis is meaningless once you have found an avenue of recovery. You are the sum of your actions. Not the outcomes of your actions, but the process behind them. Sz, should you be diagnosed, or OCD, diabetes, cancer, etc etc, these are facts. They are part of your body, but they are not you. You have control over one thing: the ability to make good decisions. This requires honesty, research, careful thought, planning, and courage. You cannot control the outcome. Let it go. I know you want to be well, but it might be a long time. It is the process of your recovery, and not the recovery itself, which you can influence.
And that process, and not the recovery, and not the illness, is who you are.
It seems we only dare to deconstruct this illusory world when there is no other choice. When we grow sick from the very demands we place on ourselves to protect this illusion. I think you can guage the self respect of a human being by the moment they choose to change a maladaptive living stretegy. The further from being forced to, the more secure that person is. But I digress.
We all get there, and some of us chose bandaids and crutches and comfort, and others choose to engage it fully. Illness accelerates this process. Illness forces you. I was no doubt heading for my own personal dead end, but I guess I never anticipated the illness.
"this is your life and its ending one minute at a time"
"Only after disaster can we be resurrected."
It looks different every time, yet it always looks the same:
--> there was a young man I once knew. We will call him CS. He swam fast, and beautifully and everyone knew he would be the next olympian. He started swimming twice a day, then lifitng also. the awards and accolades built up. One day he just sat down. He realized that he would never swim fast enough to feel better about himself, to be happy. Swimming was supposed to set him free, but it never did, so he stopped swimming altogether.
--> another guy I know built his self respect on the attention of women. The chased them and they chased him. It became a fever, where if he just scored that perfect 10, or slept with enough women, he would find peace. One summer he slept with dozens of women. And then he broke. He cried, and he stopped dead. It took him years to find himself again.
--> A girl I know, she had been strong. She had held her family together while they were intent on tearing each other apart. She let them lash out at her, so that they could cry, and reover and heal, and she never shed a tear. She went to work though. And she poured all this intensity into her job. She got promotion after promotion, more and more repsonsibilty. She was a rising start. One day, she hit that wall. She was the best at what she did, and she still hurt. She sat down and entered into a year and a half hibernation to get to the bottom.
"I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire
generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising
has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we
don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We
have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our
Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe
that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we
won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off. "
the longer you let it go before you address it, the less energy you have, the firmer your patterns become, the more deeper you are invested in the illusions and your unsustainable approach to living. And the illness itslef is just a symptom. It is a curse, and it can be a tool. It is what you make of it.
You can recover from this illness on supplments alone. I think. Your body and mind can anyway, just like your body and mind can recover from a particular unhappiness by changing jobs, moving, dropping a boyfriend, quitting drinking, stopping smoking, excersizing, or whatever. But, although all of these might become part of your journey, none of these will free your soul or be true recovery. You dont have to find happiness. You dont. Most people dont. They find comfort, distraction, and amusement. But true happiness is not disturbed by daily events, by change. Change is inevitable, just like poor health, death, and losing things dear to you. True happiness trascends this.
"its not until you loose everything that you are free to do anything"
Letting go is an action. It is not the absense of action. It is a deliberate, positive, step. Make a fist. Let go. its still a fist. Now open your fingers wide, make you palm large and flat. Thats what I am talking about. letting it go. Freedom is earned, not given, and you have work to do. So I hate to tell you, SZs, hista-whatever you ares, ladies and gentlement of the jury, whoever reads this blog or stumbles into it, but the decision to let go and undo the patterns that got you where you are, even should you find that courage, which is unlilkey, is not the end. No one will do it for you. It is a messy and scary process. Its a hideous process, and it must be done with dignity.
Recovery with Respect.
Many people demand respect. I wanted to be respected for my battle with my illness. I wanted people to cut me slack, and still give me respect for what I was able to do. I thought it was unfair to be held to the same standards as other people. But I also wanted to be treated as whole, even though I was not. I didnt want to be laughed at, even though I was making a complete fool of myself. I wanted people to look at me and think "there is a guy who is well centered" when I was a total mess. Through my actions, I lied to people by leading them to believe I was someone I was not. It was not until I learned to laugh at myself, and to acknowledge my limitations, and that everyone has limitations, that I began to realize that respect is not given, it is earned.
I realized that I was broken, but that I was good. I tried to tell people where the edges where, who could not see them, and I learned to not be so ashamed of falling that I failed to learn to walk again. This was hard. I am someone who found a lot of identity in how others perceived me. I had to accept that I was a mess, forgive myself that weakenss, and understand taht some people needed more than I could give them.
"You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else"
I used to feel entitled. Entitled to be a mess. To drop my shit on other people becuase I was sick. I know I did it. I wanted extra slack ebcuase I was ill. I felt so threatened whenever someone tried to teach me something. I felt like I knew things, that I was strong and smart and independant and able, and that they should learn from me. I felt like people were judging me when they made observations, or critisisms, and this was true of freinds and teachers. Grades, I felt, were an unfair judgment. I wanted to sit down and refuse to budge. "I am not at my best, how dare you judge me." Ach. How painful that all was.
but look, I am not sure I am right here. It may be that you can get there as a mess, but I am beggining to realize that it is no coincidence that I began to recover myself, which has little to do with recovery from the illness, when I began to earn my own respect. I gave myself permission to mess up, and to be sick, but also gave myself the space I needed by acknowdeging that the world did not cease to revolve when I began to tackle this. It is like being a child and a parent at the same time. I stopped having to demand to be respected.
In zen, I have heard it refered to as faling to pieces without falling apart. In fight club, they called it controlled demolition. You can enter your own name here _______. [you see, bonus techer credits for intereractive lessons. Its all the rage.].
"First you have to give up, first you have to *know*... not fear... *know*...
that someday you're gonna die. "
Look, pieces are fine. But they are you. You will have to find them, polish them, and reorder them in a better, more stable way. Falling apart it just letting yourself wallow in self pity. It is seductive, because being down is secure. Assuming failure means you never have to be dissapointed. There are no risks to take, no judgments to be passed, no marks to miss. It is disempowering and it is not living.
well, I guess thats my point. even though you are sick right now, you cannot fall apart. You may feel entitled. You may feel like you are fighting more than you ever asked for and more than anyone you know is dealing with. Well, good for you. Let me tell you, such is life. It is what you have, and it means nothing more than that until you decide what to do with it. Take charge. Arrange your helath givers, and make decisions. When you need to be alone, ackonledge it and ask for the distance, dont slink off. Learn to laugh at yourself. It IS funny.
You will interact with people. being sorry is not good enough. If you love them, you will have to earn thier respect. You will do this by acting in ways in which you are proud. You must, and will , first take care of yourself, of what you need, and you will acknowlege your abilities, and then, you will earn their respect by doing what you do well. If you cannot be intamate, dont. Dont involve someone esle until you have sorted yourself out. If you cannot be consitent, dont tell them you can. If you dont trust your emotions, dont ask anyone else to. People respect people of lesser ability everyday when they realize that that person respects themselves enough not to try to do more than they can. They may reach, but they are not foolhardy.
And finally it is up to you to build something from these parts. You are not Sz. That diagnosis is meaningless once you have found an avenue of recovery. You are the sum of your actions. Not the outcomes of your actions, but the process behind them. Sz, should you be diagnosed, or OCD, diabetes, cancer, etc etc, these are facts. They are part of your body, but they are not you. You have control over one thing: the ability to make good decisions. This requires honesty, research, careful thought, planning, and courage. You cannot control the outcome. Let it go. I know you want to be well, but it might be a long time. It is the process of your recovery, and not the recovery itself, which you can influence.
And that process, and not the recovery, and not the illness, is who you are.
posted by warnerk | 12:07 AM
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