The Things We Learn - I do matter
So.
We learn things about ourselves all the time.
When you're like me, carrying around a lot of excess emotional baggage, sometimes it seems like the learning stuff comes up and hits you in the face like a ten pound sack of potatoes. It's easy to go into all the ways the stuff that happened to me in the past makes me like that. It's easy to say, well, I'm emotionally stunted. And that's true. But, that's not enough - at least not for me. I want to be more than my baggage and I want to be more than someone who lets that stuff and that person affect me now as an adult.
Tonight I got upset about something. I felt left out of something and it stung. Even though I know logically that I already did most of my bowing out of the very thing I feel left out of a while ago. I somehow considered myself special, an honorary involved person. Finding that I'm no longer considered part of it, hurt. It hurt a lot. I felt slapped in the face, like Hi, we're doing this thing and we're going to tell you all about it but then you can't be a part of it.
I realized that this is a lot like the BNF issue in any fandom that we're in or these accusations of elitism, or this bit about the communities that only some people can be in or the sekrit gay pictures or...well it could go on and on.
But the thing is, we all want to feel special. We all want to feel that we're wanted and important and that we belong. We all want attention.
And no matter how high school or immature or wanky we may say that one person or another's response to it might be, the fact is, that for a large percentage of us, maybe even a majority of us - this is a basic human response.
The estimates out there of how many of us are walking wounded from abuse or neglect or not having our basic needs met as children are rising. The percentage of us with low self esteem, low self confidence is probably pretty damned high.
So yeah, maybe people do have the right to decide who is going to be in their community or their clique or their rpg or their anything. I defy anyone to tell people who they have to read or play with or associate with. But at the same time, I think the people on the outside looking in have the right to feel upset or get a little wanky or rant and rave about it. Because however nice it may be to be on the inside, it pretty much sucks the big one to feel like you're on the outside.
Sure, we can learn to deal with it more maturely. We can tell ourselves that what those people are doing doesn't matter and in the final analysis maybe it doesn't. In a lot of ways where fandom is concerned, how important can any of it be? It's a hobby, right? But, it's no different than needle point or painting or whatever you do that floats your boat. If you're proud of it, if you worked hard on it, if you did your very best with it - it's somehow deflating to feel as though nobody gives a fuck, or doesn't think it's as great as you do or can't see that even though it's not perfect, you did your best.
I find that with my writing. I write something or other and then nobody comments and I feel somehow like...well what did it matter that I wrote something? I mean sure, I can tell myself that I did it for the pleasure of writing and that's true to a certain extent. Yet I think part of any hobby is the moment when you get to show it off. When someone else oohs and aahs and says what talent you have at whatever it is you did. Most of us don't have jobs that make us feel good about what we've done at the end of the day. That leaves hobbies.
It's no different than that old saw about, if a tree falls in the forest and nobody's there, did it make a sound?
What I learned tonight, aside from the fact that I want to feel like I belong somewhere, that I'm wanted and special - just like everyone else wants that feeling - is that I want to feel like I matter. That what I care about matters, that what makes me mad or makes me sad or makes me happy matters, that it's worth someone else's time and attention. Not that I think it does, but that other people too. Not because I'm right or because I'm eloquent or because I can make a decent argument, but even if I'm not right, or not eloquent or can't make any kind of argument at all. I want how I feel to matter just because they are my feelings and there is a person or persons out there who cares about how I feel.
I've always been the kind of person who rushed to the defense of people I cared for, whether they were wrong or right. I generally think the person or persons I'm defending are in the right, but even if they aren't, I can't stand to see somebody else attacking them. It hurts me and I want to make it stop. I've gotten involved in big kerfluffles on account of it and as sad as some of the results of those kerfluffles have made me, I wasn't sorry that I got involved. I guess, I just thought that's the way you should be if you're friends.
And this too is pretty high school cliquey and immature and having expectations of how you're friends will behave is a first class ticket to getting hurt. You can't own another person's feelings and you can't demand they feel the way you do or that they agree with you and really is that a friend or a yes person? A friend is not someone who agrees with you all the time and thinks everything you say is a pearl of wisdom. I've liked people who disagreed with me in the past and I will again.
But, I need to feel that I matter. Right or wrong. Weak or strong and so on and so forth. I don't know how a person gets that feeling and screws it in tight in their heart so that it's there no matter what. I think if therapists would figure that out, we'd all be a lot better off.
Maybe it's just like they say. Write 100 times. I do matter. I do matter. I DO matter.
I do matter. I just...need to get it screwed in to me like a light bulb where the big hole used to be. Shades of ET or something.
We learn things about ourselves all the time.
When you're like me, carrying around a lot of excess emotional baggage, sometimes it seems like the learning stuff comes up and hits you in the face like a ten pound sack of potatoes. It's easy to go into all the ways the stuff that happened to me in the past makes me like that. It's easy to say, well, I'm emotionally stunted. And that's true. But, that's not enough - at least not for me. I want to be more than my baggage and I want to be more than someone who lets that stuff and that person affect me now as an adult.
Tonight I got upset about something. I felt left out of something and it stung. Even though I know logically that I already did most of my bowing out of the very thing I feel left out of a while ago. I somehow considered myself special, an honorary involved person. Finding that I'm no longer considered part of it, hurt. It hurt a lot. I felt slapped in the face, like Hi, we're doing this thing and we're going to tell you all about it but then you can't be a part of it.
I realized that this is a lot like the BNF issue in any fandom that we're in or these accusations of elitism, or this bit about the communities that only some people can be in or the sekrit gay pictures or...well it could go on and on.
But the thing is, we all want to feel special. We all want to feel that we're wanted and important and that we belong. We all want attention.
And no matter how high school or immature or wanky we may say that one person or another's response to it might be, the fact is, that for a large percentage of us, maybe even a majority of us - this is a basic human response.
The estimates out there of how many of us are walking wounded from abuse or neglect or not having our basic needs met as children are rising. The percentage of us with low self esteem, low self confidence is probably pretty damned high.
So yeah, maybe people do have the right to decide who is going to be in their community or their clique or their rpg or their anything. I defy anyone to tell people who they have to read or play with or associate with. But at the same time, I think the people on the outside looking in have the right to feel upset or get a little wanky or rant and rave about it. Because however nice it may be to be on the inside, it pretty much sucks the big one to feel like you're on the outside.
Sure, we can learn to deal with it more maturely. We can tell ourselves that what those people are doing doesn't matter and in the final analysis maybe it doesn't. In a lot of ways where fandom is concerned, how important can any of it be? It's a hobby, right? But, it's no different than needle point or painting or whatever you do that floats your boat. If you're proud of it, if you worked hard on it, if you did your very best with it - it's somehow deflating to feel as though nobody gives a fuck, or doesn't think it's as great as you do or can't see that even though it's not perfect, you did your best.
I find that with my writing. I write something or other and then nobody comments and I feel somehow like...well what did it matter that I wrote something? I mean sure, I can tell myself that I did it for the pleasure of writing and that's true to a certain extent. Yet I think part of any hobby is the moment when you get to show it off. When someone else oohs and aahs and says what talent you have at whatever it is you did. Most of us don't have jobs that make us feel good about what we've done at the end of the day. That leaves hobbies.
It's no different than that old saw about, if a tree falls in the forest and nobody's there, did it make a sound?
What I learned tonight, aside from the fact that I want to feel like I belong somewhere, that I'm wanted and special - just like everyone else wants that feeling - is that I want to feel like I matter. That what I care about matters, that what makes me mad or makes me sad or makes me happy matters, that it's worth someone else's time and attention. Not that I think it does, but that other people too. Not because I'm right or because I'm eloquent or because I can make a decent argument, but even if I'm not right, or not eloquent or can't make any kind of argument at all. I want how I feel to matter just because they are my feelings and there is a person or persons out there who cares about how I feel.
I've always been the kind of person who rushed to the defense of people I cared for, whether they were wrong or right. I generally think the person or persons I'm defending are in the right, but even if they aren't, I can't stand to see somebody else attacking them. It hurts me and I want to make it stop. I've gotten involved in big kerfluffles on account of it and as sad as some of the results of those kerfluffles have made me, I wasn't sorry that I got involved. I guess, I just thought that's the way you should be if you're friends.
And this too is pretty high school cliquey and immature and having expectations of how you're friends will behave is a first class ticket to getting hurt. You can't own another person's feelings and you can't demand they feel the way you do or that they agree with you and really is that a friend or a yes person? A friend is not someone who agrees with you all the time and thinks everything you say is a pearl of wisdom. I've liked people who disagreed with me in the past and I will again.
But, I need to feel that I matter. Right or wrong. Weak or strong and so on and so forth. I don't know how a person gets that feeling and screws it in tight in their heart so that it's there no matter what. I think if therapists would figure that out, we'd all be a lot better off.
Maybe it's just like they say. Write 100 times. I do matter. I do matter. I DO matter.
I do matter. I just...need to get it screwed in to me like a light bulb where the big hole used to be. Shades of ET or something.