Quote: I’ve learned a heck of a lot; and I KNOW when I’m screwing up, sometimes even before I do it – and here I am balking at letting my backslides be known, my trials be seen, because it’s embarrassing in a way, or disappointing… a let-down. How can I give sound advice in others’ houses when I’m stinking up my own house?
In working through a lot of issues from my past, I was very active at MaleSurvivor.org. I am still "known" there (not as "koshka"). I eventually did meet "in real life" some of the other people there, too. I worried sometimes about posting things for these same kinds of reasons.
What I discovered, for myself, is that many times the answers that I needed for myself were showing up in the things I wrote to others. I try to write in "I statements" and relate my possible understanding of someone's sitch to common elements in my own. I don't want to sound like I know what I'm talking about, or I'm offering "the solution." But because I take that approach, I very often find (usually after the fact, unfortunately) that the solution to my "problem" was couched in the words I wrote to another. Not always, of course, but often enough for me to believe that this kind of reaching out does me good.
It's ironic, because so many things that I learned to accept about myself in T are things that W had noticed and I denied for years. Granted, her way of communicating them to me, often through insults, was ineffective. If I had only been able to see the truths she was telling me then, I might not need to be here now. But I had to find these truths in my own thoughts and words, through T, before they "sank in." Now I suppose she will have to find any truth in what I see of OR for herself, in her own way and time, as well. It's a lot easier to write that than to have the strength and patience for living it.
Thanks,
K
My sitch More importantly, Light A Million Candles
