The dance between giving and receiving is one of the hardest things about relationships for me. This might sound crazy, but it took me until relatively recently to realize that I enjoyed helping my friends and that they enjoyed helping me. It is so important to have both energy coming in your life and energy going out!
In the past, I sequestered myself away. I tried to not ask anyone for anything. When something unavoidable came up, I had incredible feelings of guilt and shame for having to ask for help. Part of this was that I wasn't offering to help others. It was my MO, having grown up in a family where there never was enough love or energy to go around. I always felt I had to protect what resources I had. So I had nothing going out and nothing going in. Ask any organism, that is not a healthy way to live!
Conversely, at other times, I expected the world from other people, and all the years of unexpressed need would crest and crash like a tidal wave. I would become furious when others did not respond with what I thought I deserved, with what I thought they "should" do for me.
These days I have started letting my guard down a little with friends. I offer to help them sometimes, and I accept their requests for help when I can. In turn, I ask for and receive help when they can. And I try not to have unrealistic expectations.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Leaving the bakery
Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with baked goods. A warm brownie with melting ice cream on top is not so far in divinity from a kiss, if you close your eyes and pretend really hard.
For me, the wires between "love" and "bakery" got really confused. I ended up with a lot of bakery and not a lot of love. Many times, I ended up with bakery instead of love. Baked goods are easy. You can go to the store and buy them any time of day or night. You can make them in the privacy of your own home. You can go to a restaurant and be presented with a dizzying array of choices. Baked goods never get mad at you, reject you, ask you to give anything back, or bring you face to face with painful parts of yourself that you didn't even know were there.
For a long time--years and decades--I didn't realize that there was a problem at all with choosing bakery over love. I didn't even realize that's what I was doing. I convinced myself that there's nothing wrong with it as long as I wasn't fat. When became fat, I did my best to ignore it, telling myself that it didn't matter. And when I had little glimpses of the reality of what I was really doing, I felt so much pain that I tried to ignore it. I solved that problem like every other: by going in pursuit of more baked goods.
One day I woke up and realized that I was 37 years old, I had few close friends, very little love in my life, and had never been in a committed romantic relationship. I spent my time hiding who I was from myself and others. Sometimes you grow up in a family that doesn't quite get it right about teaching you how to love and be loved in the world. It's not anybody's fault, it's just the way it is. And it leaves a big hole inside. I papered layers upon layers of mental and physical insulation over that, so no one would know how inadequate I felt inside about my ability to love others and my feelings that I did not deserve to be loved.
I've learned that there are many things wrong with pretending that baked goods are any kind of substitute for love. Here are a few of the biggest ones. First of all, it's just fundamentally dishonest. It denies the true beauty and at times, essential messiness of life, and that is deadening to the spirit.
Then there are the times when you realize your resources are grossly inadequate for a challenge you face. For me, this has come up in the form of a medical situation. I'm scheduled for a simple laparoscopic surgery. I have never had surgery before, and I'm pretty scared. My parents don't live close by, and I would not want to ask my sister to come because she has a small child. I really want someone to take me who I feel a deep connection with, as this is very comforting to me. Because of the way love is in my family and the way I want to give and receive love, I don't feel that I will get that connection by asking one of my parents to take me. I found myself with a short list of friends to choose from, and they are all working that day. Thankfully, I have a friend who is retired, and she agreed to take me. This begs the point: a cheesecake can't drive me to surgery and comfort me while I wait. Cookies are no substitute for knowing that someone who really, really loves me is waiting anxiously to find out how it went.
This blog is about leaving the safety of the bakery. I hope you will join me, because I can't do this alone.
For me, the wires between "love" and "bakery" got really confused. I ended up with a lot of bakery and not a lot of love. Many times, I ended up with bakery instead of love. Baked goods are easy. You can go to the store and buy them any time of day or night. You can make them in the privacy of your own home. You can go to a restaurant and be presented with a dizzying array of choices. Baked goods never get mad at you, reject you, ask you to give anything back, or bring you face to face with painful parts of yourself that you didn't even know were there.
For a long time--years and decades--I didn't realize that there was a problem at all with choosing bakery over love. I didn't even realize that's what I was doing. I convinced myself that there's nothing wrong with it as long as I wasn't fat. When became fat, I did my best to ignore it, telling myself that it didn't matter. And when I had little glimpses of the reality of what I was really doing, I felt so much pain that I tried to ignore it. I solved that problem like every other: by going in pursuit of more baked goods.
One day I woke up and realized that I was 37 years old, I had few close friends, very little love in my life, and had never been in a committed romantic relationship. I spent my time hiding who I was from myself and others. Sometimes you grow up in a family that doesn't quite get it right about teaching you how to love and be loved in the world. It's not anybody's fault, it's just the way it is. And it leaves a big hole inside. I papered layers upon layers of mental and physical insulation over that, so no one would know how inadequate I felt inside about my ability to love others and my feelings that I did not deserve to be loved.
I've learned that there are many things wrong with pretending that baked goods are any kind of substitute for love. Here are a few of the biggest ones. First of all, it's just fundamentally dishonest. It denies the true beauty and at times, essential messiness of life, and that is deadening to the spirit.
Then there are the times when you realize your resources are grossly inadequate for a challenge you face. For me, this has come up in the form of a medical situation. I'm scheduled for a simple laparoscopic surgery. I have never had surgery before, and I'm pretty scared. My parents don't live close by, and I would not want to ask my sister to come because she has a small child. I really want someone to take me who I feel a deep connection with, as this is very comforting to me. Because of the way love is in my family and the way I want to give and receive love, I don't feel that I will get that connection by asking one of my parents to take me. I found myself with a short list of friends to choose from, and they are all working that day. Thankfully, I have a friend who is retired, and she agreed to take me. This begs the point: a cheesecake can't drive me to surgery and comfort me while I wait. Cookies are no substitute for knowing that someone who really, really loves me is waiting anxiously to find out how it went.
This blog is about leaving the safety of the bakery. I hope you will join me, because I can't do this alone.
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