Connections
a close friend of mine told me that i was too into the meaning of life to be majoring in international politics. this entry could prove her right.
this is what i think people need: people need to feel connected to other people (by connection i mean a solid relationship) or else they would feel alone. connections make you unafraid to try things, unafraid to fail. it's a feeling of safety. you feel like nothing bad will ever happen to you because no matter what, someone will be there to give you a hug and tell you to get up and keep trying. the deepest connections involve love in the most unconditional sense. if you feel like you have a reciprocal connection like that, you are free to do anything. if you don't--you either don't know that and exist in an ignorant bliss, OR you feel like you are walking on a tightrope that is life, so to speak,--and you are worrying about which way you are going to fall off. you feel certain that you are going to fall off, but unless you end your life, you never really do fall off of life--you just kind of hang onto the rope in one place for as long as you can, and then move to another place and hang there for awhile.
the role of family: i think it's safe to say that a "normal" family can provide you with the previously mentioned connections. but i don't think that any family is perfectly "normal"--i think some families are closer to the ideal than others, however. ideally, family means people that you live with, who share the same genes as you--mom, dad, brother, sister, etc. but in reality, i think a lot of people tend to view those who they feel most connected to as their family. as a result, people who feel disconnected from their family have a lot more at stake in every single one of their friendships. that's kind of an unsteady feeling.
so why don't people like that just try to then become connected to their nearest relatives? Or parents for that matter?
For me, I mean, I love my parents. But I stopped telling them that I loved them when I was really young. I don't really know why that is. It's like I just can't do it (unless I'm being sarcastic). So basically, what I'm saying is, that I haven't felt connected to them, maybe for a really long time. It's like, I know that they love me, but that hasn't meant very much to me, I guess. I could say that they pressured me to do things, to be good at things, and I could say that I didn't like feeling pressured like that. But I knew my parents weren't going to disown me if I was a bad student, for example, but for some reason I knew that I could never let that happen. They never came out and said, "Ok you need to do this and be like this." Instead, I feel like they just trusted me to achieve things on my own; trusted me to not have problems. Throughout my entire life, never am I more embarrassed to tell anyone that I have a problem than I am when I have to tell my parents. I think the idea of me being embarrassed to tell them things is related to the fact that I don't tell them that I love them.
(Then again, maybe that's normal. Most kids don't like to tell their parents stuff right? Most kids quit it with the "I love you" after awhile don't they?)
Ok but anyway, I've concluded that my parents partly pressured me into doing things and being a certain way, but I also put pressure on myself. I had to to prove myself to other people, myself included. Perhaps such pressures explain explain my neuroticism about things.
So if I don't feel connected to my parents, who do I feel connected to? Well, certain boyfriends in the past were great, but I am single at the moment. Some of my extended family is awesome, and so is my "stepdad" or gentlemen friend of the family, as I like to say. Of course I've been lucky with friends during the last two school years, which was awesome for me. (despite the fact that I think I have either scared or confused the hell out of most of them)
But maybe I am still in search of this feeling of connection that I'm talking about, and if that is the case, I have learned a lot about looking for it in the wrong places. At this point in my life I think this is true: I can always live without any particular individual (as I've found out with several lost friendships in the past), but I cannot live without anybody. So maybe all my connections right now aren't the unconditional, safe, kind that I was talking about, but if you really think about it nothing between two people is REALLY unconditional.
(Just for the record--because I said I can live without any particular individual does not mean that there are not certain individuals who I would love to have around. There are several. But that wasn't the point.)
Or who knows, maybe some connections I have are perfect, and I don't know it or believe it. Maybe I'm not taking advantage of all the possibilities--for example, maybe I will fix things with my parents. (but I seriously do not see how I can "fix" something with them. Nothing was really broken, it just didn't exist in the first place)
Incidentally, whenever I talk about connections like this I start to feel stupid. How needy do I sound right now? It's like I have to care so much about this connection feeling--that that idea alone makes me want to completely stop caring at all, and believe that I don't need to feel that. But most people DO need to feel that don't they? Or maybe something to that effect?
(Alright I really hope someone isn't reading this and going what the fuck is she talking about.)
Ok I think I have gotten ahead of myself. It is now three forty in the morning, and I read yet another chapter of astronomy before writing all this down. And I am still awake, but I don't think I am awake enough to do my math homework.
this is what i think people need: people need to feel connected to other people (by connection i mean a solid relationship) or else they would feel alone. connections make you unafraid to try things, unafraid to fail. it's a feeling of safety. you feel like nothing bad will ever happen to you because no matter what, someone will be there to give you a hug and tell you to get up and keep trying. the deepest connections involve love in the most unconditional sense. if you feel like you have a reciprocal connection like that, you are free to do anything. if you don't--you either don't know that and exist in an ignorant bliss, OR you feel like you are walking on a tightrope that is life, so to speak,--and you are worrying about which way you are going to fall off. you feel certain that you are going to fall off, but unless you end your life, you never really do fall off of life--you just kind of hang onto the rope in one place for as long as you can, and then move to another place and hang there for awhile.
the role of family: i think it's safe to say that a "normal" family can provide you with the previously mentioned connections. but i don't think that any family is perfectly "normal"--i think some families are closer to the ideal than others, however. ideally, family means people that you live with, who share the same genes as you--mom, dad, brother, sister, etc. but in reality, i think a lot of people tend to view those who they feel most connected to as their family. as a result, people who feel disconnected from their family have a lot more at stake in every single one of their friendships. that's kind of an unsteady feeling.
so why don't people like that just try to then become connected to their nearest relatives? Or parents for that matter?
For me, I mean, I love my parents. But I stopped telling them that I loved them when I was really young. I don't really know why that is. It's like I just can't do it (unless I'm being sarcastic). So basically, what I'm saying is, that I haven't felt connected to them, maybe for a really long time. It's like, I know that they love me, but that hasn't meant very much to me, I guess. I could say that they pressured me to do things, to be good at things, and I could say that I didn't like feeling pressured like that. But I knew my parents weren't going to disown me if I was a bad student, for example, but for some reason I knew that I could never let that happen. They never came out and said, "Ok you need to do this and be like this." Instead, I feel like they just trusted me to achieve things on my own; trusted me to not have problems. Throughout my entire life, never am I more embarrassed to tell anyone that I have a problem than I am when I have to tell my parents. I think the idea of me being embarrassed to tell them things is related to the fact that I don't tell them that I love them.
(Then again, maybe that's normal. Most kids don't like to tell their parents stuff right? Most kids quit it with the "I love you" after awhile don't they?)
Ok but anyway, I've concluded that my parents partly pressured me into doing things and being a certain way, but I also put pressure on myself. I had to to prove myself to other people, myself included. Perhaps such pressures explain explain my neuroticism about things.
So if I don't feel connected to my parents, who do I feel connected to? Well, certain boyfriends in the past were great, but I am single at the moment. Some of my extended family is awesome, and so is my "stepdad" or gentlemen friend of the family, as I like to say. Of course I've been lucky with friends during the last two school years, which was awesome for me. (despite the fact that I think I have either scared or confused the hell out of most of them)
But maybe I am still in search of this feeling of connection that I'm talking about, and if that is the case, I have learned a lot about looking for it in the wrong places. At this point in my life I think this is true: I can always live without any particular individual (as I've found out with several lost friendships in the past), but I cannot live without anybody. So maybe all my connections right now aren't the unconditional, safe, kind that I was talking about, but if you really think about it nothing between two people is REALLY unconditional.
(Just for the record--because I said I can live without any particular individual does not mean that there are not certain individuals who I would love to have around. There are several. But that wasn't the point.)
Or who knows, maybe some connections I have are perfect, and I don't know it or believe it. Maybe I'm not taking advantage of all the possibilities--for example, maybe I will fix things with my parents. (but I seriously do not see how I can "fix" something with them. Nothing was really broken, it just didn't exist in the first place)
Incidentally, whenever I talk about connections like this I start to feel stupid. How needy do I sound right now? It's like I have to care so much about this connection feeling--that that idea alone makes me want to completely stop caring at all, and believe that I don't need to feel that. But most people DO need to feel that don't they? Or maybe something to that effect?
(Alright I really hope someone isn't reading this and going what the fuck is she talking about.)
Ok I think I have gotten ahead of myself. It is now three forty in the morning, and I read yet another chapter of astronomy before writing all this down. And I am still awake, but I don't think I am awake enough to do my math homework.