Some musings
So, having wasted more than an hour trying to find an LJ post that I couldn't find because I pretty much lost the link and couldn't remember who wrote it--oh, wait, I just found it. So here: http://copperwise.livejournal.com/666865.html
*cheerfully ignores that he was thinking of some other copper-person and moves on*
Am I broken? Hell yeah. I has issues, peeps. I have triggers. I make no secret of that. And please, don't trigger me. That would totally suck. But I'll air that on this LJ as seems necessary and I'll tell the people who need to know as required. That time is not now. So why bring it up at all?
Because I'm broken. I can't escape what family shit has done to me, what several groups of deceptive friends have done to me and what I've done to me. It's with some amusement that I realise that, as copperwise says, most of what I've done to myself came from trying to be what I wasn't; trying to hide what I am--that is, broken. And sure, as I said in the previous post, some of what I've done to myself was by not being the friend I should have been.
Yet... I have been experiencing things that seem very weird to me in the past month or so.
I have a girlfriend, you see. We're engaged. I can't remember for sure if we've talked about being broken and I doubt she'd remember, but with all that we've struggled with, always making it through to the other side, I'm certain we would have. Certainly I am sure that we know and accept all that is good and bad about each other.
I met her about a month and a half after one aspect of the family shit ceased to be, which in turn meant that I was not fracturing every single day from the amount of shit and stress it brought. She listened, she loved, she accepted. There was nothing I could not bring to her, nothing that would make her leave. By Eris, I figure I bored her so much with some of the repetitive things, but she never failed to give me what I needed: her love and her listening.
In the past month? I have a good few triggers--or had. Things that should have triggered me just haven't been. It rolls off like water off a duck's back. I'm not ready to start throwing myself back into those triggering situtations; doubt I'll ever be, but I think that if I get stuck in them--which should be rarely--it will be okay.
Maybe she's healed me of the pain. Maybe I grew up. Who can say?
Do I still have issues? Yeah. In all likelihood, I have resolved none of the issues; merely relieved myself of the pain of the incidents that caused them and deactivated some triggers.
Still... it's something of a victory. I'll take it.
In the course of the past few years, however, I've come to amass some realisations or opinions, so I may as well post them here, in no particular order. Because who knows, maybe it'll help someone else, even if they can claim to not be broken. Because I think it applies across all humanity.
i) We don't talk about a problem once and then it goes away. If only it did work that way--but it doesn't. This is one of the things that leaves me wondering why people have double standards. In my experience, it seems like that there's a shortlist of things---sexual abuse and terminal illness being the only two coming to mind right now--that it is permissable to be upset for always about. But anything else must be solved in a finite number of talks/days.
Addenum: And even if a problem is put to rest, that doesn't mean it won't crop up again. So please don't expect it to stay buried.
ii) Being unwilling to do something about a situation does not necessarily equate to wanting that situation to go on. It may just be that you're offering solutions that just don't work, because we've tried them. Experience trumps research, I'm sorry. You may be able to show that we can do [solution] but you need to accept that we have found that [solution] does not work. (Honestly, if we're bitching, it's also probable that we don't want solutions; we want someone to listen.)
iii) Our problems may be small compared to something like an earthquake and we may have all we need (a home, clothes, food and a job) but that doesn't mean that our problems are irrelevant or insignificant. It's important to us.