As they do; in the silence.
I have wondered about the difficult times. The times where I felt scared, angry, helpless and just wanted it to stop. I just wanted people to stop demanding that I be different, that I not feel the way that I do, that I just change and acquiesce to their demands.
I’ve realized that that is the pattern. Whenever I express how people’s behavior affects me negatively, it is my expression which is judged as wrong and which is to blame.
I internalized this. It was my expression which is to blame- even retroactively! I am unhappy because I frowned. I’d be happier if I smiled more. Why don’t I smile? Just don’t feel that way. Just change how you feel. I created plenty of misery through internalizing an enmity of my own feelings. And all that comes with its own feelings.
It is the aggression of the othering which brings out the worst in me. The urgency and insistence that expressing my feelings is the problem, is bad, is dangerous. It is the absolute conviction without thought or question that it’s me that is the problem. It’s the willingness to turn to brute force or violence to assert their own narrative. And it’s my weakness or trauma to not be able to remain unreactive or stable. I feel like my very self is being attacked. I react defensively. I become desperate, angry, full of terror and rashness.
And I realize that I just do not like who I am around those people. And that it’s okay to value my own peace over their interests. It doesn’t make sense for them to value their interests over me, and I also value their interests over me. It is perplexing that ones of this mindset wouldn’t be overjoyed that it’s been fully accepted and replicated. Isn’t that the purpose of instruction?
There is something quite different about the generations of this time.
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