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Life updates
All personal stuff
So someone is in love with me & I've been too anxious to answer their texts for like, six months (which is appalling of me). The emotion that's come up is unexpected - not discomfort. I always thought my problem was that I was ~afraid to love~, anxious about reaching out to people and the like - a bit of a void who absorbs the love of others without being able to give enough back, even at the level of like...over my life I've turned into the friend that needs to be contacted instead of the friend who does the contacting, it takes me forever to cautiously move someone into the 'are we friends?' category.
& like, I hate this - I wasn't always like this - but as is not uncommon for people who feel very deeply, one becomes burned out on feeling so much that all your receptors are singed away to nothing
but the emotion that's come up is unexpected, because it turns out I find being loved completely excruciating. Its not 'what if I reach out and get rejected', it's the other way around. A fear of being liked, because that too brings up feelings that are totally intolerable. This person likes me, and I feel extremely vulnerable because of it, and I can't even sit with the vulnerability of...but of what? Isn't it normal for some people to like you? And isn't it normal to enjoy that? What about this upsets me so intensely?
I got hurt very badly by someone I trusted earlier in the year, and wound up very socially isolated as a result; so I guess it's...early days for that. I tend to recover slowly, and I suppose where I am now won't be where I am in a years time, so perhaps I ought not to worry. Still, it feels like a new development and a bad one, to be this anxious about both directions of sociality, to be depressed about seeking conection and depressed when I am sought.
one thing I'm noticing is that I'm upset a lot about having no friends...but this isn't correct. People are constantly reaching out to me, loads and loads of them, many of whom seem to think really flattering things about my worth & basically what I'm doing in exchange is, ignoring it while feeling sad about being alone. So that's not great. & I'm trying to think of it in terms of - what if me being silent towards others is a form of 'doing harm' in its own right, like I guess all these people must be upset or worried that I don't reply or they have a loss in their life because I'm not there.
I did some notes to share here on next steps for like, Disseminating the Religion, but as I was reading a lot of polytheist blogs that week, who all stressed the importance of oracles, I thought - heck yeah, let's slam down some Tarot. I'm not a great diviner, I can get answers from cards but I wouldn't claim they are otherworld-inspired.
The cards said no, broadly. They were very emphatic that doing more ritual was now essential (the Magician and the Moon, the most emphatic Arcana on the spread) - but not facilitating open ritual or social community for others (Empress reversed, which I took to mean something which devours without nourishing).
(& like, wrt 'pay your clergy', I've certainly found that any time I spend doing community-facing things takes away from deepening my own work, so it's not a surprise to see the cards putting it into conflict. The more things you have to teach, the less time you have to teach them; or, the more time you spend teaching, the less time you spend learning and becoming someone with something to say.)
On the idea of doing lessons for others, the cards were more ambivalent - Frodo escaping the Ringwraiths at the Ford of Rivendell and the Fellowshp outside Moria. That's not a no or a yes, but both are images about unsafety/safety and the brink in between, going into danger and escaping it into a sanctuary. They reminded me of my own feelings of the open internet - a labyrinth filled with monsters and shadows and lurking deep below, the Balrog which devours one utterly - compared to which Dreamwidth and my quiet connections here do feel Rivendellesque, secluded and merry. The cards are on point about the nature of my own reluctance.
But with my new awareness of my like interpersonal problems: where it's at is that I'm not ready emotionally for that kind of responsibility, just like on a basic human level, I don't have the interpersonal skills to be good to others. & I'm toying with the idea of like, making this a religious challenge. To be true to my sense of vocation, I need to fix this, as surely as I need to read another 100 books and learn to facilitate trance. I can't build community and also be Like This. I've got to get it sorted. So perhaps that'll be motivating, but like - even phrasing it in this very mechanical way makes me so aware of being a Problem like, oh that's a problem for my to do list, alongside fixing the cabinet and picking up some bananas.
I'm reading some self help books but I am uh. struck by how much overlap there is between them and new age woo woo, like, the language is very similar to how you do a manipulative tarot reading ('when you were young, you may have felt as if nobody else understood you') and how you recruit someone into a Jesus cult ('once Laura recognised her insecurities stemmed from a lack of love, she flourished in her life and was able to get a promotion at work'), and that makes me worry that perhaps these books are designed to work on a kind of...placebo level.
One thing that astonishes me as someone who's had an internet taboo for over 7 years now is how strong that sense still is, that I 'should' be on social media - even though I can't articulate what I'm supposed to be missing there. All the same, the idea you can just...not...seems incredible to me, like I have to justify it over and over. You can just do whatever you like in life and if something makes you unhappy, you stop.
I'm trying to foster connections in my life with other people who seem to be offline a lot - Boomers, mostly - and put myself into social situations where literally nobody gets their phone out.
& I'm thinking a lot of my family (difficult relationships there, it won't surprise you to learn), in part because they're the only people who will get in touch even if I am Offline. I have these personal rules for how I engage with technologies, & as most people are evidently more attracted to platforms than people, not using the right platforms means the acquaintance lapses. And the only people in my experience who will bother to get in contact anyway are 1. family members and 2. dudes who want to sext.
Maybe I need to put aside time, perhaps? Like, a time of day I do my correspondence. I've removed myself from algorithmic environments and algorithmic triggers, but perhaps that means I now am just outside sociality too far - i've removed without replacing, like people who are unready for veganism who conceptualise it more as 'no cheese' than 'more tofu'.
but another part of the problem is that I'm actually very extroverted - I love people, I love being around people, I just feel frightened online. & the world has changed so much and insists that digital & realworld encounters are equivalent, and even interchangeable, which I guess makes it more and more inexpressible to say...there are kinds of anxieties I feel at looking at my own inbox with messages from people I like and trust, which I do not feel at a pub chit chatting to all comers. & I'm visbily trans and very rural. It's not that my irl encounters are actually safer, it's something about the medium which freaks me out and makes it harder for me to connect. I'm currently reading Alone Together by Sherry Turkle and vibing with her description of like, new kinds of loneliness created by the illusion of constant digital presence.
Another part of the problem is the NHS took me off meds that were working and I'm now coming up to a year on a carousel-rollercoaster of things that do NOT work, and so it makes all parts of my life and functioning a needless struggle. And that includes a level of depression and dissociation which make connecting to others very hard. I've got an appointment for that in like, two weeks, so I'm going to put my foot down and then if they get it (more) sorted, I can revisit some of these problems and see if they're more fixable.
cus like...being happy in yourself is the baseline for behaving well towards others. I was cured last year, and I know this to be true: being kind and open was so easy because I felt so good. It doesn't mean 'I', as an entity, lack responsibility for when I do others harm - and yet, in another sense, I know my capabilities are so, so chemical, in ways that defy philosophy. I am too tired to have energy for others, because I am too tired to make myself a cup of tea.
so like...in a sense I am just trying to hibernate, wait it out, not expand or over-promise, because I can be right as rain, and that will be the time for reaching out.