Issue #27 romanticism is my jesus
Welcome to A Most Unreliable Narrator, the slice-of-life newsletter of GenXer around town, Lisa Rabey. I talk about anything and everything with a bit of swears. I’m glad you’re here.
TEH is subscribed here but reads at his own leisure. He's not sure why he's subscribed other I thought it was important for him to know what's going on in my head. "But I live with you," he says. "Nonetheless."
He turned to face me the other day. "I read your newest newsletter." "Yeah?" "You romanticize the past. You hated living at Throbbing Manor; you weren't happy at your job; why do you do this to yourself?"
I don't know. Because it's easier than facing the future? Because I can manipulate the truth to fit my mythology?
All of it? None of it?
I said to Kristin just now, "Does it make you mad that maybe you're just a regular schmoe who works, pays taxes, dies?" and she said that was part of moving away from goal orientated tasks—you're never just happy because there is something coming up and in the end, those tasks really don't matter.
Logically and emotionally I know she's right. Andy, my dude from Headspace.com, keeps talking about happiness doesn't have to be fleeting if you learn to live in the moment and "just be." Thoughts and feelings are just that, thoughts and feelings. Kristin, in a non-meditative way, figured this out.
I want to figure it out.
This is my struggle.
As TEH and I talked about that particular newsletter, I found myself internally resisting and my brain going out of focus the more he talked. Why the resistance? I acknowledge the resistance, I accepted it was happening, but why was I having difficulty just letting go.
"Why do you do things to hurt you or agitate you or things that are not good for you? Are you talking about this with your therapist?" (No.) "I've noticed you do this with our couples therapist—you just brain dump without talking about specific problems. I'm sure there is some benefit to that but in the end, what do you want to do? Nothing is going to change if you keep doing this."
I want to bang my hands on the counter and smash my head against the wall in protest of my self. I've written about this place time and time again over the years and here it is, laid out prettily in digital space, only I'm not moving past this part. I keep asking why I don't pass this part and I come up with brilliantly laid pieces of hope and movement except once the words are laid out and "publish" is pushed, I do nothing.
And so, here we are yet again.
(The resistance is, and I have swallowed hard for this, the acceptance I am no better than anyone else. My inflated self-esteem, at times, goes beyond having confidence in myself and more in a superiority over others. This doesn't mean I'm not special, but I need to stop thinking that the world is going to land at my feet. Once I get over myself the world would be so much more enjoyable. The trick is, I don't know if I'm ready to do that yet.)
(Fuck fascists and Nazis!)
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