So, there are tons of things to record here today, possibly requiring more than one entry. I've cancelled my trip into the city to stay out here and get my shit together, since I feel like I've been going 100mph for the whole week and not spent any time at home...something I told myself I wasn't going to do. I promised Donna the Trainer at the gym that I was going to read every day and get on a regular schedule as my TCM (Taking Care of Me) goals for the next few weeks and damnit, I mean to follow through on that. Not to mention I have a shitload of things to catch up on here, like finally plugging in the printer, and finally finishing grading all the papers, and getting my room a bit more in order, so I needs to stay home today.

My self-help book assignment for yesterday, which I didn't do, was to answer the following questions (which I'll now do):

- In my life as a whole, what people have cared about me enough to reveal personal details of their life with me?

The answer to that one isn't so easy, since damn near everyone I meet winds up divulging personal details about themselves to me. This is something that happens all the time. I'm standing in line at the supermarket, waiting to buy my milk and tampons, for example, and the lady behind me starts chatting with me, and the next thing I know she's telling me about her menopause and how it's so hard adjusting to hot flashes and this new weird paranoia that her husband is having an affair.

Or the guy on the train who gave me his number as we were parting and asked me to call his wife and explain to her that he's not really crazy and that they should start sleeping together again. But I'm not sure that's what the book is asking. So, I'll go to the really deep, sustained personal information stuff, which brings me to people like Sonya, Adam, David, Zulu, T, Danny, KC, Ash, and finally DD.

Sonya most recently with the fertility and marital issues, and Adam just on the whole with the trust issues and the abandonment crap and the family stuff and the, well, we were dating for a year and a half after having been best friends for 5 years and friends before that for 10 years, so what do you expect? Davey with the brother and the family and the depression, and Zulu, years ago, with the family and depression junk and the death/bereavement stuff which, when I thought about it later, he probably didn't share entirely with me. I think T told almost anyone about her stuff if they would listen (sometimes for shock value, and others for some extra comforting or protection); Danny cuz we're close and pancakes once a week with a close friends will do that to a guy after a while, and KC and Ash because they're lifelong friends who I lived with, and who the hell else are you gonna tell things to when you don't have many friends and there's one good one in the room next door?

- What did each person like about me that caused them to trust me? (Try recalling actual compliments and admiring words or looks you received.)

Well, fuck, I don't know. I think Sonya was first just happy to have a friend in high school, as was I. It turned out we had both "found love" that summer after 8th grade (hah!), and that sharing of similar experiences was a real bond for us. Later I think she may have felt comfortable with me despite our cultural differences. There was some dissonance for a while when culture became an issue for her (is she Indian? American? Indian American? Stuck between two worlds?), but I think we became closer when she started to talk about it with me and could hear my responses and know that I wouldn't think any less of her if I knew that she took Indian dancing lessons and wore a sari once in a while. Also, when culture became something that we both clearly enjoyed discussing, I think that may have shown her that she was interesting, rather than weird. I guess what I'm saying here is that I never shamed her about herself but rather was always interested in what she had to say and always liked discussing what was going on with her...to the point where she wanted to talk about more intimate details and see what we'd come up with together in response to those issues. It's kinda neat, now.

Adam never paid me a compliment until about 8 years ago, when we were sitting in Del Cerro Park, and he had a few in him, and he finally said that he knew he didn't express it well or much over the years, but that he really appreciated my listening to him drone on about his life, and that he really loved me. That's the only time he ever told me he loved me, and he was still with Liz at the time. Later, when we were together, he would say things like, "you know much more about this than I do...", and I appreciated his acknowledging that I actually know something about something. I don't know how that fits into all of this or why I think of that when I think of him, but maybe it was the closest thing I could get from him in the way of a compliment.

Davey is full of compliments all the time. He's constantly telling me he loves me and what a good friend I am. I am always honest with him, and there have been times when he has divulged information about himself to me when I was surprised that he took such a risk with me...as in, I didn't feel as though I deserved that trust. But he has always seen something in me that I have never seen. I think that comes from his real lack of personal insight or intuition, which has always been his downfall in most social situations. Because I'm a little more tuned in than most when it comes to those things, I think I look like an extreme to him. Like I'm bordering on psychic, when in actuality I'm just a good empath. Anywho, I think that's meant a lot to him over the years.

T told me she loved me after a night when she finally found housing and we spent 20 minutes on the cell phones jumping up and down in the middle of the street and shouting for joy and crying together. She had been couch surfing for so long, and it was such a victory, and she knew that I was the one to call to be as excited for her as she was for herself, and she was right. I think she loved that I was present with her. That I was joyfull when she was joyfull, and sad when she was sad. I think there are times and places in which this is a bad trait...that I tend to substitute someone else's emotions for my own. But for T, this worked.

With KC, I think she and I share so many similarities, i.e., trust issues, same geographic background, same school system, same interest(s) in women and books, and then the same house, that it became easy for us to just sit on someone's bed and chat about whatever. And, as we discovered more about each other in terms of emotional responses to things, I think we both got increasingly brave about divulging the more neurotic sides of ourselves, especially when it comes to interpersonal relationships. I think she appreciated the mix of humor and seriousness that I brought to each situation, which is a mixture of facing things head on and also defending/deflecting with humor. She does the same thing, so it translated well.

So, what I get out of all of this is that I guess I have skills when it comes to being a listener and being present with my friends. I'm open-minded and patient when it comes to my friends, and when there's trouble, I'm the one who drops everything to just go be with them. This is part of an exercise entitled "You Are Lovable", so I guess they're trying to get me to figure out why someone would love me. And, I suppose, this has been a good way to get there. If you had asked me, "List Ten Reasons Why Someone Should Love You," I'd have had a much more difficult time. This approach got at the same thing, I think, without forcing me to deal with feeling as though I was selling myself, so okay. I'll go with it. I'm Lovable. I'm just not sure how to let others know that.

Maybe that's next week, eh?

Posted by twids at 7:57 am