enfinblue's Bluey (credit to Fifi for the nickname!) Diaryland Diary

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart." -Vinc3nt V@n Gogh

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And love comes dropping slowly.

Yesterday was a really successful day.

I realized something, and some might be nodding, "Uh huh. I told you so," but I might need to distance myself a bit more from C. I love C. to bits, but in many ways he controls my life and keeps me stuck. Never once has he ever expressed a desire for me to find someone to date and be happy. Most of the time, he's calling me and wanting me to run with him, trying to organize and control the time. He gets me agitated. Often he gets me agitated on the weekends.

Don't get me wrong. He is the warmest and kindest of friends. He just isn't on steady ground himself in many ways - friends, relationships, family - and so he needs me to also stay stuck. (I've given him a copy of the Art!st's Way and he's seeing a counsellor. Apparently he started the morning pages yesterday, so I'm thrilled.) I don't know if it's the AW that caused me to finally see this, but yesterday I realized that I felt unease over the fact that he'd be calling to organize - in painful detail - how and at what time we would get to the film we'd planned to see last night (accompanied by the irritating on again/off again girlfriend of his (she's currently off).

So I was sitting in my place and I was thinking, before he called - I was in the shower, in fact - and I realized that I did not want to go. I did not want to lift my level of agitation but taking on some of his.

Again, I don't mean to disparage my lovely C. He really is lovely. But he has mannerisms and tendencies that aren't helpful to me at the moment.

Yesterday I did well. I went to the gym and had a nice run. I was thinking a lot about self-compassion in this. Yesterday was a spring-like, sunny, beautiful day, and any "normal" person would have gone running outside. The problem though is that I don't live near the wilderness park or anything, so the only natural thing to do would have been to run along the canal. On a day such as yesterday, I would have been dodging dog walkers, runners, cyclists, people with children. I hate that. I really do. When I run I want to be alone. It's why I run at night. I know that makes me weird and anti-social or whatever, but I just don't enjoy running in a crowd, no matter how nice the day. Walking, on the other hand, I can do.

So I went to the gym and took a spot looking out over the pool (which has giant windows bringing in the sunlight). It was just bright enough and I ran 5 miles in 35 minutes. I then did a few weights and a floor routine. I felt great. There were few people at the gym. I dawdled home in mid-afternoon and opened up the windows and the balcony door to the sun. I "read" some blogs (partly photo blogs) of women ex-pats living in Rome, and checked my pulse. I still wasn't agitated by looking at those blogs, and I didn't want to jump out of my seat and do exactly what they've done. It's still not the right time. I haven't found my window of opportunity.

After that I did my taxes, and when C. called I told him that I wouldn't be joining them for the film. He tried to cajole me into it, but I realized that I really have to be strong and to follow what is in my own best interest.

After that I did some cooking, watched a movie and knitted my sweater, and listened again to the podcast of Ele#nor Wacht3l interviewing Zadi3 Smith. I loved this conversation, with the parts about George El!ot being my absolute favourites.

I don't know if all of this got me thinking about feminism, and of course World Women's Day or National Women's Day or something has arrived and so therefore that's had an influence, but I've had some new thoughts about my mother.

I mean, I know that a lot of my life of extreme independence and to some degree ambition has been lived as a response - a backlash - to my mother's very 1950s choices.

I used to be angry with my mother for all of the stupid things that she's said to me to kill my more fanciful dreams - just last week it was that it was good for my future that I'm working on the "fudge it" and to keep working myself to the bone over stuff like this - but now I feel only compassion for her.

It's difficult to explain, but yesterday she and I had an exchange. She had asked me a difficult line dance question on the heels of an email she received from someone in her circle of retired teachers, and I sent her back a very detailed response. I wrote her back subsequently to ask her though to NOT send my email on to anyone else. I hadn't said anything that didn't appear in public, in print last week, but I would hate for my email to get to someone in a retirees lobby organization - the original email had been about a petition on a fax matter - and to be taken as representative. I'm supposed to be a neutral fureaucrat. Tricky to explain, anyhow.

The point is that I got a snitty email back from my mother to the effect of "I never SAVE YOUR emails."

I got the same vibe in this as I got when I was running at the national level. When I won the bronze medal at the national track championships, my mother was actually there. This was the only time she ever came to any of my races. I was so excited to have them there, and of course I wanted to go out afterwards. My mother decided though that it was time for them to start going back home right after the race (it was on a Saturday), so after the stadium I didn't see them again that weekend.

I realized at that time and with all of the discouraging remarks my mother made about my running - she mocked the way that I ran, talked about how pointless and wasteful it was, how I didn't have enough talent to make it at the world level, etc. - that she was jealous of me. It's very difficult to accept that of your own mother, but I now understand that jealousy and feel only pity for her. More and more over time I have realized how intelligent my mother is capable of being, but how much of that she squandered during her life. It must be difficult to get to a certain point and realize that you didn't make many choices that would have fulfilled you. Worse, it must be difficult to realize that your opportunities to do things are running out. She has a husband who will always have serious health considerations. Taking care of him is her primary preoccupation.

My mother DID live her life like a woman of an earlier generation, clearly. I've always seen it, but it seems most poignantly clear to me now. She married my dad not out of love, but because finding a husband with a good income was the goal. My dad wasn't a bad guy or anything, but the two of them were ill-matched and pretty stupid. I was born out of that, which I think has haunted my existence since. It's funny to think that you are a product of the exact antithesis of women's liberation.

I mean, I'm not complaining or anything. I'm here. And what would be the point of complaining about all that has come before and shaped your experience? The past is fucking over, baby, and I have my health and my limbs intact, and I have right now and a future stretching out before me.

No. I don't think that way anymore. I am thinking more these days about how I can shape the future. I have become what I have become in part as a response to my mother's disappointment and frustration, to her numbing out and becoming a bit of a harpie, really. I have also become a response to the deeply unfulfilled lives of both of my grandmothers. The two of them had so much talent and potential, and yet they both married men who were each deeply abusive.

So I have learned from these things, and as you've noticed over the last few years, no doubt, I have become patently aware of how much the ship of my life has been steering itself. We fool ourselves into thinking that we have free will in these matters, but free will is something very, very, very hard-earned.

Anyhow. Those are my thoughts for the morning. I'm going to steer my ship as best I can today. I'm not sure how today will end up, but I'm determined to make it the best one I can muster - without judgment and with a healthy heap of self-compassion.

I was rolling this Thomas M3rton quote over in my head yesterday: "Dear ____

If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully the thing I want to live for.

Between these two answers you can determine the identity of any person. The better an answer he has, the more of a person he is."

Have a GREAT one and lots of love from me.

9:52 a.m. - 2010-03-07

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