Approximate reading time: 13 min
I kind of feel like this poem needs to come with a warning!
From someone who spent years following other people’s spiritual teachings, sucking it all in, trying to mould myself to somehow fit into other people’s paths the last thing I would EVER want to do is to imply that there is EVER a right way to do something!!
However when I read back over this poem it smacked of all that ‘turn the other cheek‘, ‘be the bigger person’ malarkey.
(Lol you can see I am my own worse critic:-)
I wasn’t actually going to even put it up, except for the fact that it was the point in my journey when I truly started to notice how so many of us are simply knee-jerk reactioning to everything in the world.
(My self included)
So it gets put in with a big WARNING attached:-)
I think what frustrated me the most with my own journey through the years was how I wasted so much time trying to practice different spiritual principles and ultimately ended up hurting myself in the process.
Trying to forgive others, without processing my own pain and anger first.
Trying to practice gratitude, without being able to love myself first
Trying to be patient, accepting and compassionate of others, when I had NO IDEA how to do any of that for myself.
The list is endless…..
While I think a did a dam good job attempting to do all those things,
(Remember I have Neurotic Angel to keep me in line!:-)
deep down I knew I was secretly holding onto a shit load of anger and resentment and so I never felt truly authentic. That then lead to my very own outpouring of guilt which just compounded all my feelings of utter shittiness and shame.
(Surely people could see through the mask- down to the deep depth of my never-ending pettiness?)
As I have got older, infinitely wiser and with lovely hindsight being my new best friend. I have begun to realise that there are two factors that I wish I could had of taken into mind for all those years.
I know, I know! They both sound pretty obvious.
And yet we live in a world filled with millions of self- books written about people’s experiences with them guiding us with the ‘life – principles’ that worked for them.
(And henceforth WILL WORK for you too.)
It’s bull shit!!
(I apologise, I feel a rant coming on!)
It’s absolute fucking bullshit!
In my completely SUBJECTIVE opinion, one person’s redemption can quite easily become another person’s hell. A tad dramatic, perhaps, but I will admit that this has been a bit of a sore point for me.
Growing up in a Christian family I was never allowed to make or form any of my own opinions of what God meant to me. (And believe me, I had many) Any attempts of my talking or thinking about God in any way that didn’t fit into the ‘Christian mould’ was quickly shouted down. (Add to that the LONG list of things that I was apparently not allowed to do if I supposedly wanted to stay in God’s good graces and you will have a bucket full of frustration and rage)
(FYI: Thank goodness I never listened to that one!)
My mum’s whole life revolved around her faith and her church, which in her own words literally saved her. In her journal, she poignantly wrote: “Jesus is the loving father I never had”. Her life experiences lead her to Christainaity and I know that her ‘faith’ help ease her own pain in many ways. Jesus was her entire life and she saw it as her Christian duty to make sure he was part of mine as well.
But that was never my experience.
From a very young age, I grappled with this very apparent lack of choice that I had, to make up my own mind about things. My own innate God consciousness, which I believe we are all born with, (AND which I believe Jesus came to teach us ALL about) didn’t stand a chance.
I was 35 years old when I was finally able to break out of that MOULD and even say those dreaded words out loud:
“I’m not a Christian!”
(Before that I had spent 10 years teetering on the edge of the damnation abyss,
trying to make the leap!)
So ya, it hits a nerve.
How can we EVER, ever know what will or will not work for another human being who essentially has their own emotions, perspective, opinions, memories, passions, interests and past experiences?
Don’t get me wrong I am certainly not shitting on all self-help books out there. (Nor for the record am I judging Christians!) I have read some amazing books in my life that have truly given me great insight and comfort on my own path. But as someone who spent most of my 20s and 30s O.D.-ing on them, I just wish I had given more credence to the fact that ‘other peoples’ stories are just that –
Their own experiences of what worked for them.
Hell, I wish I had tattooed EVERYTHING IS SUBJECTIVE on my forhead to continually remind myself to….
I also wish I had understood that healing is not linear, its a continuum and that there is an ebb and flow to it. Sometimes it’s one step forward, 3 steps back. Life isn’t black or white and ‘our truths’ can quite easily change from one situation to another depending on the circumstances or perhaps the phase of life that we might be in.
Comparing ourselves to others is absolutely futile.
So this brings me back to my poem…..
(Sorry this is a long disclaimer;-)
Like I said, for me this poem kind of sounds like I am preaching that it’s better to not fight back when on the contrary I spent years of my life, before this, learning that I actually had the right to fight back.
Let me explain….
Growing up one of the things that I absolutely hated was being out with my mum when she lost her temper with other people. My mum had a heightened sense of right and wrong.
(Which you might have noticed I have definitely inherited:-)
Many times her anger and frustration at things were completely validated but how she handled the situations often left much to be desired. I used to want to absolutely die of embarrassment when she would start getting angry at some poor shop assistant/ bank teller ect because of this or that. Her sense of entitlement at times meant that she could quite easily be triggered into a rage if she didn’t feel like her demands were being taken seriously.
Watching this behaviour over the years lead to me making the unconscious decision to
NEVER to be like that.
I was NEVER going to be that person who lost it and got angry with strangers.
Sadly, what happens so often when we grow up with any kind of negative behaviour, that affects us adversely as a child, is that we naively try to rewrite history. In our attempts to avoid going down the same path as our parents we sometimes facilitate the pendulum swinging to the absolute opposite extreme. Rather than learning to express my anger in a calm and rational way, I spent years trying to suppress it completely, to make sure I would never blow up at anyone like my mother used to do.
Of course, I was just as fucking angry as her….
I just tried to keep it hidden under a facade of ‘chillness’
(Which I have no doubt I failed at horribly at!!! I am certain my anger was oozing out of every available pour – even if it wasn’t expressed verbally!)
That inappropriate joke passed about a child in the staff room,
I’d chuckle along with everyone.
(While fuming inside)
People would cancel plans at the last minute
(Via text – URRRRRRRG!)
and I would always message back
‘No worries’ ‘It’s fine, don’t worry about it!’
(While contemplating hiring a hitman!)
It was only in my early 30s when I started to go to co-dependent anonymous groups that I even started to realise how much I was doing this.
It took me sitting in a room full of strangers all talking about their internal rages and frustrations to finally wake me up to mine.
(Earth-shattering I tell you!)
My first step in learning to process my own anger was simply recognising that it was even there and then NOT reacting ‘positively’ if that wasn’t how I genuinely felt. I didn’t really have the means of expressing it so simply being silent at times was a huge step for me.
I got a little bit braver and would not laugh at the inappropriate jokes.
(Even if it meant looking like a prude)
I would not join in on the child-bashing conversations that so sadly seem to permeate many staff rooms these days.
(Even if that meant I was seen as being ‘unsociable’ and ‘unfriendly’)
(Doctors have ‘ The Hippocratic Oath’ that stops them from discussing their patient’s medical needs and situations with others.
Well us teachers should have a ‘Teachercratic Oath’ to prevent us from moaning about kids in the staff room!
First do no harm!
(When I A.M Queen!!!)
I then kind of went through this whole process of realising that I actually HAD the right to get angry and that I also had a right to express it.
And express it I did! 2011 and 2012 were particularly ANGRY years for me….at times I was like a bull in a china shop –
it would come out in rage,
it would come out in tears,
it would come out through gritted teeth –
but when I felt pushed (hard enough) I was able to stand up for myself and find the words.
After 2 years or so the bull got tamed, a little bit. Finally, I was starting to stand up for myself without needing to be pushed first and it felt pretty dam amazing, (if not petrifying at the same time.) I learnt that some people respected me more for it, and some people bulked against me changing the rules, for not toeing the line and playing my part anymore.
I had to learn to be comfortable with other people’s anger and frustration with me if they didn’t understand this basic right that I had to be angry.
(Although, honestly most of the time, it wasn’t comfortable!)
I will admit I lost a couple of friends during the last ten years.
Friends who told me I had anger issues and needed to get help!
(Hands up, I absolutely did and learning to express my anger, was my first step in HELPING myself!)
Friends who didn’t appreciate me setting boundaries on how they were allowed to treat me.
Or friends who were just downright horrified when they saw the intensity of my anger rising up at times.
(Especially when I felt my pain was being minimised and I was told NOT to be upset about something, that was quite frankly upsetting!)
But as painful and as uncomfortable as these years have, at times, been I have started noticing a couple of very interesting things happen. As I have started to put down healthy boundaries in my life, as I have started standing up for myself, my time and my beliefs…..I got a hell of a lot less angry and I am more ‘naturally able to let things go’ to ‘turn the other cheek’ so to speak…..
(Who would have thought it?)
Along with this I also noticed that my ability to ‘pick my battles’ grew.
To know that sometimes I would need to stand up for myself and sometimes I could let it go.
I got better at assessing people and recognising those toxic narcissistic people that you quite simply don’t even bother wasting your anger on, because they will never see reason or admit that they might be at fault.
(Although it took my 2019 experience with that awful estate agent to FINALLY CEMENT that one!)
Random story:
On the bus the other day a drunk man got on and started singing. One of the passengers, who was either in a particularly good mood or drunk himself started dancing to the singing. ‘Drunk man’ was obviously delighted that someone had decided to play with him and was then clapping away joyfully. They were both being silly and playfully and everyone on the bus was laughing and loving it. It was one of those beautiful moments where it feels like human beings are able to come together and connect, where we are all on the same frequency and the world feels good. When the drunk man got off at his stop, he delightedly took a bow and the whole bus applauded.
Except, of course, for one lady who shouted at him to be more respectful of other passengers.
A young girl in front of me, obviously felt as irritated as I did that this woman had single-handedly put a huge damper on our lovely experience and she angrily shouted back at her that it was a free world and he could sing if he wanted to sing!
(In my head I’m going “Nooooooooo don’t do it!”)
She then had this woman turn around and start yelling ‘God knows what!’ at her.
This poor girl didn’t stand a chance.
I have to admit it kind of made me smile, a little. (Not because I was happy that she was getting shat on from a dizzy height, of course.) It just made me think of the many times in the past that I had jumped in to defend a principle with these types of people and had learnt the hard way –
You just can’t win with them.
They don’t fight rationally!
They don’t fight fair!
But I noticed that I also had a tiny bit of compassion for ‘Grumpy Lady’. I understand now that people who are in a lot of emotional pain, can’t bare being around happy, joyful people -it irks them no end because they have NO idea how to even get onto that frequency. Their only recourse of action is to get angry and act out their rage in the hope that they can turn down that ‘Joyful frequency‘ to one that is a little more intuned with where they are at that point in time.
So why get angry with them, when we should actually be feeling really sorry for them?
I smiled, a little because I was so grateful that I had finally learned that lesson.
‘Learned’ being the imperative word.
And just think ‘life -experience’ is completely free!
Ok, I’m done vindicating myself!!
Written the 5th February 2021
My right to fight
The right to fight is something I own,
to stand up for myself and make myself known.
That overwhelming feeling look at me!
I exist my feelings matter!
Don’t sideline me!
I feel like I’ve been fighting.
my whole life to be seen.
The child in me always so ready to scream.
But as I’ve got older I’ve started to see
a whole world full of children,
child-adults just like me.
All reacting getting mad and quietly taking offence.
It’s exhausting to watch!
(Can I just climb the fence?)
To take a hiatus by a lush flowing stream.
With beautiful green grass like you’ve never seen!
I’ll learn to relax,
simply let things go!
Be more like water that over hard rock flows.
No point in being right,
if you know who you are.
You are never a failure.
if others judge from afar!
So, this time I will keep quiet,
and let it all go!
No need to get emotional or put my feelings on the show.
No need to defend or state my own case.
I am stepping out of the popularity race.
You can think what you want,
make your mind up about me.
Credit
Stream Image by Tim Hill from Pixabay (Taken at Janet’s Foss)
Bride Image by sfetfedyhghj from Pixabay