among other discoveries tonight, last.fm, which is a wonderful streaming service with ‘intelligent monitoring’ and matching of your listening preferences. so far, they’ve done a stellar job, with only one song in about oh… four and a half hours of listening that just wasn’t interesting to me.
in other news…
tonight i’m considering perspectives again and more specifically, how mine is changing rather surprisingly in a relatively short period of time. i think i’ve found the killswitch for asking for trouble/pain and believe me, no one could be happier for it than i am.
all i need to do is hand it all off to the internal narrator and it seems i can largely forget about it. and do, actually. which is curious, interesting, and a little bit scary. i sometimes frighten myself with how well i can shut things down when i have to… and i get amused with myself over what i will endure trying to avoid having to do so.
stars above, i remember when i didn’t express any emotion whatever. didn’t cry. didn’t laugh. more or less lived as an automation. and i remember how hard it was to uncork it all. i was afraid if i ever started crying, i would never stop. a foolish fear, of course, but how was i to know back then?
i also remember being afraid to get upset because i was terrified i would be like my “father”. that was also a baseless fear, but mostly because my distaste for that behavior seems to overwhelm any true urge in that direction rather quickly.
with the birth of my daughter, i had to figure out how to stop making briquettes and burning all my insides. and i needed to learn how to open up and give because i couldn’t afford to cannibalize anymore and i really didn’t want to spend the rest of my life being shut down, and most importantly, i did not want to teach my daughter how to do the same thing.
and here i sit, roughly 19 years later, feeling relieved that i still know how to do something i had to work so hard to undo. it’s kind of funny, and kind of comforting. i made it through a lot of real shit thanks to the strength and tenacity of the internal narrator and a few other slivers of me that seem to be around just to help with the heavy lifting, so to speak.
even more comforting (and mildly amusing to me) is the alacrity with which i was able (and willing) to back up with my hands up and say, ‘oh no… no thank you… i really don’t want any more of THAT kind of pain. no, really… let’s just see what may be done for this before that kind of repeat is necessary.’
i think i’ve managed it. well, with the help of a good friend, i have managed it. i suspect the latter has largely made the managing possible, since there have been more than a few folks over the years who pick crossroads like this to look at me and go, ‘well, been nice knowing you, but time for me to mosey on.’
i still think on it with some wistfulness here and there, but that’s normal i reckon, and i’m not going to kick myself for it. all things considered, it’s a damn sight less knotted up than the last time i did it and the credit for that, frankly, goes completely to my friend’s willingness to stick around and put up with the sticky stuff.
if i didn’t know better, i’d think that maybe, just maybe, my idealism is finally getting comfortable with my pragmatism. which is a damn surprise and really quite amazing in itself. i think i have to give the credit for that directly to practice and the dogged dissection and contemplation of the last few years. i’m always a little surprised with myself when i see a dramatic shift in how i handle things.
i suppose that sounds odd. but when you’ve been so used to being a certain way, and you’ve hit your head on the same brick wall so many times, it is kind of surprising when the moment comes that you manage not to do it. if i had to paint the image, it would be of standing quiet and still in front of a rather gore-flecked brick wall…. my hand lightly rubbing my head in spite of myself, looking for a goose-egg bump that isn’t there this time.
i’d like to think this means i’ll never take another rush at the damn thing, never crack my skull on it again… and maybe it does… but it seems saving the self-congratulation for later is a good idea.
funny how it works. but i am smiling to find that it does.