Delayed Reaction

Hullo Again.

Here is another installment of my blog, sliced with exquisite care from the days of my life and served to you on a platter. Will anyone read this? I don't know. Blogging is more for the blogger than for the reader, I think, an exercise in discipline more than anything else. Like all exercise, I suspect there's a bit of masochism mixed in, because one gives oneself to the writing and the exposition without editing to make the entry real and true to life. We cannot look at it and edit out the ugly parts or gloss over the details to paint a perfect picture of an artificial life as that would defeat the purpose of the blog itself.

I blog because I need to write. Writing about me is a chore, but one necessary to the process of self-discovery. If I never analyze the things that happen to me, if I never examine my life and actions, then I am doomed to repeat the errors I have committed in ignorance and I will never acknowledge that I have done something worthwhile either. My conscience is hostile to me. It remembers only the worst things I have done, taunting me with regrets and self-castigation, and it never seems to draw into sharp relief the good things I accomplish. I will be the first in line at a kicking contest if the contest is to kick myself to death.

I think there are a lot of people like me in the big world. I think that an enormous percentage of the population is down on themselves all the time, keeping their hurt and pain in secret. I know that there are a large number of people with the exact opposite problem: they see only their good deeds and never see their sins.

I have a relative who does this constantly. He complains a lot about how people take advantage of his generosity, how they use and abuse him, but does not hear the mean and selfish things he says about them in the next breath. Life is mean to him without reason, he thinks, because he only tries to do for other people. He never seems to hear himself saying that the people he helps OWE him some sort of consideration for his efforts on their behalf. He knocks them down behind their backs, is hateful by attitude and holds grudges. When the people he offers aid to accept his help, he fully expects that they will waive aside his protests that they need not pay him back and is nearly always furious that they don't do this.

Perhaps I am wrong, however. Perhaps the people who broadcast only their good behaviors are covering up that constant internal criticism and trying to silence their conscience by repeating a litany of their good. Certainly I can see this in my relative's situation. He may be all too aware of his attitudes about others and their refusal to return the favor may be a reinforcement of his internal critic: You did that with ulterior motives, what other response can you expect?

That happens to me often. Even if I wish to make a sacrifice of time or effort, later my conscience will critique me endlessly. It's hard to manage your thoughts, isn't it? I have never mastered the ability to lie to myself although I think I can lie effectively to others. For years I deceived people into believing that I was happy and normal when I was really a mass of pain and conflicting moods and self-hatred. That alone should tell me that I am a good actress, no?

These past two weeks I have been practicing this same old deception and I've done better than before, I think. During Thanksgiving, I learned that something I was told was true my entire life is, in fact, a lie. It has rocked my world, readers, although it really shouldn't have had the power to that, and I have been struggling with it. It colors how I view my life because the safe and secure framework that my life has always rested upon is now revealed as unsafe and deceptive.

Let me give you an example for illustrative purposes:

Imagine that you grew up as a girl. You wore pink, you had a normal adolescence and you were happy to be a girl. Then decades later, someone tells you "Oh, you were born a hermaphrodite and your parents wanted a girl so they had you reassigned female through surgery." The unconscious framework of your identity would be compromised in one fell swoop. Before that conversation, you never questioned that you were a girl because you were one, why would you have ever thought otherwise?

Not only would you question your gender identity though, you'd look at your parents in a whole new light. Why didn't they want a boy? Why did they think that you were better off female than male? What prompted their choice and decision? If your parents weren't available to ask, what would you do? How would you come to terms with this tale?

This is not my actual situation. It approximates the issue. Something I have always taken as a fundamental foundation of my identity has been revealed as a deception, perpetrated by my parents for the past 42 years of my life. (No, I was not adopted either.) My father cannot answer my questions and my mother has been dead for 8 years. The resulting revelations about our family are things that I must learn to deal with alone as there is no one I can ask about the lie.

It's been a rough two weeks since the news broke and I am dealing with it the best that I can but it's hard to keep from blurting it out to all and sundry, looking for some sort of advice or compassion. My children know that something has changed but they don't know what. I cannot tell them the details, haven't even told them the basic situation because it wouldn't be fair to color their memories of the people involved. I am trying hard to be grown up about this when really, all I want right now is to retreat to the age of six and find my grandmother's lap.

Eh, writing about this is painful in the extreme and I have exhausted my blogging time. For now, I am going to draw this entry to a close and bid you good day.