Double Edged Sword

So there is a whole block of songs that I absolutely LOVE, but I can't listen to them very often.  They remind me of the black hole I was beginning to descend into almost at this same time last year.  It's a bittersweet feeling.

Bitter because when I listen to them, I can close my eyes and remember how bleak everything was, and how broken my heart was, and how I had broken a heart.  I can remember lying on my bed playing one song in particular over and over, and just crying until there were no tears left to cry.  Until the next day, when they ran fresh.  So vivid is the memory, I can feel my chest constrict and my vision begin to blur at the opening chord progression.  It's almost like I'm watching from above as I sing deeper into the abysmal depth that I thought I couldn't get out of.  My mind even does that movie cinematography thing where the camera kinds of spirals up from the girl on the bed in the fetal position.  (The only good memory I have of that time is weighing 128 pounds, at the same Dr's. appointment where I was prescribed antidepressants and antianxiety meds!  Told ya I was jacked up!!)

Sweet because I can open my eyes and look back and see how far I've come.  And when I realize just how far, the tears become tears of gratefulness.  I can look back and see the baby steps that got me to where I am right now.  Baby steps that, at the time, seemed ineffective and even counterproductive!  But a baby step is still a step, and lots of baby steps add up.

I'd like to think that I've learned a lot about myself since then.  Exposed weaknesses that I thought I was immune to, and strengths that I didn't know I had.  I've lost any kind of ability to b s about life being great when it's not, to give the response I've been trained to give.  To pretend I don't need help when everything inside of me is desperately longing for it.

I've also learned that I'm not the only person to experience any of this, which in some kind of perverse way, makes it a little easier.  And when we can stop being afraid of not living up to self imposed expectations, and other-people-imposed expectations, and start being honest, that healing can happen.  And when it's all said and done, we end up more whole than before we started.  The pieces may all be arranged a little differently, but who said different is bad!

Jeremiah 29:11

Anatomy of Hate

It takes more effort to hate someone than to love them.  Or even be indifferent.  Why do I waste so much energy and emotion completely loathing someone who is only in my life peripherally??

Practically speaking, I have so many reasons to hate her, I can rotate them around and not repeat one for months!

She has caused so much hurt and despair to the people I love the most.  I see them trying to love her and her doing everything she can to make them hate her.  Why was it so easy for me to stop loving and start hating???

I look at her life and realize that, by a simple twist of fate, it could have been mine.  Is that why I hate her so much?  Do I see some glimmer of myself in her, and think that maybe if I hate her enough, I won't turn into her?  Like some sort of checks and balances, maybe?

Or, worse, what if you become what you hate?  Like Luke Skywalker in "Return of the Jedi".  You know the scene where Emperor Palpatine is encouraging Luke to feed his hatred.  And for a while, Luke does, but when he realizes that my doing that, he is becoming what he hates.

Or, is hate just a deformed expression of love??  I'd LIKE to think that that's viable, if only to soothe my scorched conscience.  I'd even settle for getting to the point where I don't give a fig, either way.  Indifferent.  Neither here nor there.