The Eighth, Soul Searching

Ok, so the eighth (now doesn't THAT word look silly?) is soul searching. This will not be an easy one for me, I was taught to not show weakness, to not show if something wasn't right. So please don't judge me too harshly for this installment. It may take a while.

It has come to my attention over the last few years that I may not be as....liked as I thought I was. I honestly do try to be kind, to be friendly, to be understanding of people's fear's and phobia's.
I was a Girl Guide, I try to help other people every day.
I strive for humour and sincerity.

I don't do this because I want it back.
I do this because it is right to do this, I do this because it makes me feel good to help people, I do this because I like to help people, I do this because I am my mother's daughter and I don't know how else to be.

But it would be nice to get some of it back. Is that naive of me?

It started a few years ago when, what I thought was, a good friend of mine did something to me that made me feel very betrayed. She passed me over for an old friend of her's who had not spoken to her, or been nice to her, or even said anything nice about her for years. I don't, really, blame her, but it didn't change the feeling of betrayal, of hurt, of being blindsided that I had continued to trust her after the other person came back into her life and it bit me in the ass.

Then, while my father was in hospital dying, I noticed something else. There was no one outside of my mother and her sister around. All of my 'friends' seemed to desert me when I needed them. ("where is my friend when I need you most? Gone away") I received no phone calls of "how are you doing?", there seemed to be no outside helping hands reaching out....no, I lie, there were a few. A handful of Wonderful Ladies who work in the same building as I do who never let a day pass without asking how things were going, a friend out West who regularly checked in with me and a friend back East who would do the same.

At his funeral I was shocked at how few people showed up to support us. The Wonderful handful of Ladies took time off to come, my best friend from high school who I had seen once in the last 15 years (thank you, Karen, you have no idea how much it meant to me that you were there), Earl, who has been a brother to us for over 25 years, and a handful of my mothers friends. The two who live nowhere nearby, obviously, could not come, but one of them did send us a beautiful bouquet of flowers, (thank you, Annebel and Cathy, for being there as best as you could at a distance). I think there were about 20 people who took time to come who were not family members. My ex best friends mother sent me a condolence e-mail, but not my ex best friend.

In the time leading up to his death the only non-family members who offered in-person support were the Wonderful handful of Ladies. I had one friend tell me that someone else's dad was dying too, and change the subject. At work no one said 'boo' to me until I left the room, and then the talking about me would begin. And let me add that none of it was nice.

When I returned to work I was told how hard the previous week had been for them.

Two weeks later I had a cherished staff member of two years quit. I recently found out that part of the reason was that I had been 'negative' and that I had not been on the ball about a couple of business related issues during the 8 weeks that my father had been hospitalized. I have since found out that she really, really doesn't like me.

Things have gotten back to me about what some people think of me, and none of it is pleasant to hear. All I can think is that I must really come off in a way I do not intend to. That people take my sarcasm as harshness when it is just a defence mechanism and it's also my sense of humour, I was raised by British parents in a darn near total English family. Dry is our humour. Sarcasm is our language. I can't help that. But I think that it is misunderstood.
I think that it's misunderstood that sometimes, when someone is gloomy and glum and negative and down in the dumps, what they really really need is a hug. And they don't need a knife in their back while the hug is being given.

I am not a tactile person (see the English note above, lol), but even a verbal hug, a "we understand what you're going through, let's talk about it", is far better karma then just treating the person like dirt.

How could you? How could you possibly take someone who is already down, and push them further down? How do you sleep at night? How do you put on your make up in the morning without looking at yourself in the mirror? How can you be so selfish as to only see yourself? To not see that maybe the person in front of you, the one that you are disliking so much, may need help? May be crying out for help in the only way that they know how to?

I lived my life trying to live up to what my father wanted.

And what my mother wanted.

And they were two very different people that they wanted.

My father wanted me to be a cut throat business woman who stepped on toes and treated people harshly (while being skinny and beautiful and having men fall all over themselves to look after me) and my mother wanted me to be kind and helpful and sweet to all (while bagging myself a rich husband and giving her lots of grandkids).

I am stuck in the middle. There is no way to be both things. And I don't know what to do. I can try to modify my behaviour, but how? The mother side of me wants me to be accommodating to everyone, but the father side tells me to make sure that they know it is a favour.
This is very hard to do. It seems that I am coming off as a bitch, and that is the opposite of what I am.

I don't like confrontation, the mother side of me deals with it passive aggressively (which I hate) and the father side of me tells me to write off the problem. I make a bad compromise by tolerating being treated in a manner that I am not comfortable with until resentment grows. Then I snap.

I am no good at dealing with the problems as they arise because I was never given the tools to do it. I try to not say anything right away, in case tomorrow I feel like it was not such a bad thing for the other party to have done in the first place, which is usually the case, but then the same situation, inevitably, rises again, and I do what I did the first time, so it happens again, and again and again....this is where men have it easier. They get pissed off, they tell you, it's over. It's not brought up again. They vent, you say sorry, it's done. Women are not programmed to do that. We are programmed to be tolerant, gentile people. Who then get so full of anger that we become bitches.

Nobody knows what I went through with my father's death. Nobody knows the internal dragons I was slaying, or at least trying to hold at bay. Nobody knows how fucking hard it was to be there for him every fucking day and try desperately to not think of how much I had hated him growing up. Trying to stay my hand. Trying to put aside the comments he'd made that had cut me to the bone every day of my life. Putting on the back burner every derogatory remark he had made about my body, my intellect, my being. Nobody knows because nobody asked. Nobody cared enough to even find out how I was dealing with it. If I was dealing with it.

One of the Wonderful Ladies told me that they weren't asking because they were afraid. They didn't know how to deal with it. Well, that may be true, but; I don't care. There are times when you have to crawl far enough out of your own ass to realize that there are other people in this world besides yourself. Maybe someone is hurting. And maybe you could help with that.

I try not to put people down. I try to understand where they are coming from. I don't laugh at phobia's (I have a few of my own. I know what it's like to have people laugh at them), I don't mock people's fears.

I have a very nervous stomach. If I feel stressed I grind my teeth, clench my jaw, and live in a semi-permanent state of nausea. Some days the nausea is mild, other day's it controls my life. At this point I should add that one of my phobia's is emetophobia, the fear of vomiting. This does not make for an easy life. It is made worse by people who just don't get what a phobia is. Who make fun of my nauseousness. Who see it as a hindrance to their lives, and don't think about what it does to my life. Me. Who has to live with it every waking moment of every day.

When a celebrity comes out with a book about their lives, their fears, their parenting. Everyone says: "oh dear, how terrible! How could people treat them like that??". But when it happens to someone you know....well, too many people just can't understand why you can't just get over it already. Why is that? Why are we, as a race, more inclined to feel sympathy and empathy towards total strangers then to the people right in front of us?

This is all I can post right now. I am tired. Introspection and soul baring is exhausting. This post may be deleted before you read it. My father may make me do it ;P

In harmony. Please,

IrishRed