When it Rains in Journal
- Sept. 30, 2022, 3:53 p.m.
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- Public
Well, you know.
DHs gma and aunt specifically invited us to their big family dinner. They said that they miss us. Which is a little funny/ ironic bc these things have so many people at them there is never any kind of intimate conversation or connection with anyone there. You just sort of see faces blur by.
It’s DHs family so really we just talked about his feelings about it and his experience. Uhg. His experience with them is just so tragic. He tells me that they genuinely care, but when I ask how, there isn’t anything to support it. Logically, he gets it that ALL these people, every single one of them, for 3 decades, never made a point to get to know him or even find out the most basic prerequisites. Are you happy? What do you like? What are you interested in? It hurts. It really does, to acknowledge these things.
Personally, I am more annoyed that they asked us to come without asking why we haven’t been going. It’s like a shit test to see how much they really are going to have to do to get what they want.
I floated the idea of asking the gma and aunt over to our place for a more intimate dinner. That way DH can be relaxed and have zero pressure to entertain family that could care less, and perhaps feel free to explain why we haven’t gone to any dinnera this year. Or spoken to his dad. And possibly the larger statement about family values, responsibility to children, etc. I floated the idea but we both know they will not take the invite. I’m not sure why they won’t, yet. But, if he decides it’s a good idea we can definitely make it as enticing as possible.
I had a daydream just now after thinking about J’s(my mom) values. We are like Russian nesting dolls. She a perfect copy of her mother, me a perfect copy, and so on. And it might continue on except I chose different. These pleas that J sends me every so often are like baited hooks to try to reel me back in. She wants me to enable her as she enables her mother, and other evil people. She cites my pain as a reason to enable her. I can only suspect that she wishes me pain, or is cursing me with pain, because I am not in pain at all. This is pain that she caused in the past, and that I strive to heal by removing the cause; her. Yet she begs to be let back into my life- the cause of my pain which she claims she would take away for me.
To what purpose?
anticlimatic ⋅ September 30, 2022
It's hard to know what love is. Or how to show it in a way that can be recognized.
Miss Chiffs Manager anticlimatic ⋅ October 01, 2022
I disagree.
Love can be defined with standards and external objective measurements. Such as the Love is our involuntary response to virtue definition.
I think the only hard part is acknowledging that the majority of people are not virtuous and cannot love.
anticlimatic Miss Chiffs Manager ⋅ October 01, 2022
I agree that no one is virtuous, but anyone can love. Ahava, the hebrew word for love, has the root word "hav," which means "to give." What if love is defined by those we feel compelled to give to? I don't think virtue has much to do with it either.
Miss Chiffs Manager anticlimatic ⋅ October 02, 2022
No one is virtuous?
If no one is virtuous, then you've defined virtue as impossible and the definition is not useful.
And, anyone can love? Are you aware of sociopaths, sadists, masochists, etc?
If love can be defined as 'to give', then what is given? Basic empathy is required to know what another person wants, and there are people who genuinely do not have empathy. They're not evil or anything, but they just do not possess this skill/ability to understand what another person wants or what would benefit them.
anticlimatic Miss Chiffs Manager ⋅ October 02, 2022
I meant that no one is perfectly virtuous. Everyone is flawed. That whole sentiment. Virtue is achieved by struggle, the struggle being the point IMO.
I'm aware that APD is characterized by lack of empathy, but love is maybe amorphous enough that they can qualify in having it. Or maybe not, honestly I don't know or have any clear opinion.
I suspect we want to give ourselves to the people we love, or at least what parts of us we are able to.
Miss Chiffs Manager anticlimatic ⋅ October 02, 2022
Of course, perfection is just another false standard which leaves the definition meaningless.
To define something as either nonexistent, in the case of virtue, or everything, in the case of love, will leave you with meaningless words. You have in effect defined nothing at all.
The definition, in order to be useful in identifying something, must be specific enough to include some things and exclude others.
Love cannot also be the opposite of love, for example. One cannot logically define love as sadism.
So if you want to define love as to give ourselves, how does that definition differentiate between other interactions? And, can one truly love their abuser? I bring this up because it is so common a phenomenon for victims to bond with their abusers - and your definition might include these people.
anticlimatic Miss Chiffs Manager ⋅ October 02, 2022
Sadly I don't think abuse precludes one from love.
Miss Chiffs Manager anticlimatic ⋅ October 03, 2022
Can you make that case with any logical consistency?
Or... Is that the sadness that you are referring to?
anticlimatic Miss Chiffs Manager ⋅ October 03, 2022
Do I have to? It's obvious. I could think about it I suppose. "You only hurt the ones you love."
Miss Chiffs Manager anticlimatic ⋅ October 03, 2022
What is obvious?
You don't have to do anything of course. But defining something as inclusive of it's opposite is not rational, and is not useful.
If I claim that a square circle exists and that it is at the same moment a square and a circle, then I'm just speaking meaningless words about things which can't exist.
Also cliches are not proof or rational evidence of anything.
anticlimatic Miss Chiffs Manager ⋅ October 03, 2022
I agree about cliches, but sometimes they can be isometric to points I'm too lazy to express.
To reiterate, so I don't wander off and get lost in the weeds- I am suggesting that someone can abuse someone they love, and be abused by someone they love. Or one, or the other. I don't recall. Though both I'd say are true. On a strictly empirical level I can say that I have taken turns with my many siblings both abusing, and being abused (both as children and rarely as adults) with love present throughout. In fact, without love to bind, separation would have long ago occurred and the any potential abuse would end.
There is a flaw in your logic, I believe, but I fully support your use of it. You suggest that the opposite of love is abuse. That's not quite right. Hate is more suiting, and hate is only loosely associated with abuse. Often it's indirect or projected- hate for one's mother might turn into abuse towards someone one loves. But that's not the flaw-
The flaw is the idea that opposites are separate and mutually exclusive. I agree that's how it looks at a glance. I agree that things would make more sense if that were the case. But I grew into the opinion, with a little help from Godel Escher Bach, that nothing has more in common with a thing than its opposite. So much so, that they might even be the same thing in any context that really matters.
Miss Chiffs Manager anticlimatic ⋅ October 04, 2022
Are you arguing that a thing is defined by it's opposite?
That isn't my argument, but it's an example of at least one requisite of a useable definition; that the definition exclude some things and include others. If the definition includes the opposite thing, then it is useless and cannot contain meaning.
anticlimatic Miss Chiffs Manager ⋅ October 04, 2022
I am arguing that in most ways a thing IS its opposite, despite our fantasies of an ordered conceptual world logically consistent with what our ape-brain-sacks can comprehend. And maybe contrary to your opinion I think there IS value in knowing where terms are alike as well as distinct. Knowing the whole term is paramount to using it, I'd say.
Miss Chiffs Manager anticlimatic ⋅ October 04, 2022
Okay, well then I suppose there is no rational definition which can meet your standards.
These are not my opinions BTW. Reason and logic are methodologies and subject to the laws of reality, as are we all.
anticlimatic Miss Chiffs Manager ⋅ October 04, 2022
I don't agree that reason and logic are subject to the laws of reality. In my experience they are better subject to the imagination. One can pave a road to any preconceived conclusion with logic and reason. It's the finest tool for self justification we humans possess.
No definition could meet an absolute objective standard for me, but I can get by working with mud.
Miss Chiffs Manager anticlimatic ⋅ October 05, 2022
Okie dokey