My lizard – that jealous, pain in the ass creature that lives in a dark place in the back of my mind – made an unexpected appearance the other day. That fucking creature ripped off the scab to a wound that, until then, I thought was partially healed. And that wound that I thought was going away reminded me it was it further away from healed than I had been believing.
And I hated this discovery.
I hated the feelings. I hated that fucking unrelenting creature for whispering things in my ear that just made me feel even more raw.
I have, in truth, been struggling with the thoughts – the questions – that this uncaring creature – my lizard – has been putting in my head. I have been struggling with the message of how this should change me – for the positive, I hoped.
I read this quotation:
Emotional discomfort, when accepted, rises, crests and falls in a series of waves. Each wave washes a part of us away and deposits treasures we never imagined. Out goes naivete, in comes wisdom; out goes anger, in comes discernment; out goes despair, in comes kindness. No one would call it easy, but the rhythm of emotional pain that we learn to tolerate is natural, constructive and expansive… The pain leaves you healthier than it found you. – Martha N. Beck
And I wondered – what treasure is this giving me?
Because kindness is what got me here. And what is the wisdom that should come out of it? Be more guarded and less open? Be less accepting of people? Hold my feelings back? Hold back my caring? What, fucking universe, is my lesson??
And this is what my lizard loves to sit back and and watch me struggle with. When the lizard sees a situation where I have been ditched and another has been chosen – and the other is described as someone who can’t accept all parts of what the person choosing is – then I wonder how I am unworthy of what she gets when I’m the accepting one. I’m the less demanding one. I’m the supportive one.
This is the stuff that make my lizard grab a beer, sit back on the couch, put its feet up, and enjoy the show it created.
While comparison is the source of unhappiness, I can’t help but feel devalued. And when I look around at others and how most treat me, it is the same feeling. I am not valued. While I have a lot of people in my life who believe they are not the person I’m describing, they do treat me less valuable as a friend than how they treat the drama creators or the people who do not accept them as they are. It’s amazing because, when I start adding up the number of people I would have to toss out of my life, I realize how incredibly lonely I would be.
And how unlike me that is.
The other night when my lizard was ruining my night, I had one person see my internal struggle and actually reach out to me unprompted. The one person actually hugged me and helped me. The rest were caught up in their own shit or their own feelings about the situation I was struggling with that they blew me off – even when I reached out and said simply how I was feeling. One person. And while that one person is all that is needed sometimes. It was quite the thing to realize in reflection.
So what is my lesson here? I ask the fucking universe – how is this experience supposed to change me? How it is supposed to give me wisdom? Because I’m not willing to close myself off. Is that the lesson – to struggle through the pain and know it can’t break me?
I have no idea anymore.
Because while I have not defined myself as the person described below, I like knowing that this is simply part of who I am.
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