Shadow Work

 

Property of Stormberry

To be perfectly honest, shadow work scares me. I just... rather not do it, but I start to think that the world around me is slowly pushing me to face my wounds and my shadows and start solving them. And who likes to poke the places that hurt? Not me, I can tell you.

Ever since I'm living alone (even though close to my family), I have been able to take distance, take place and see the things that have been harming me, the things I react to, the things that make me feel vulnerable and chip away from my sense of security, my sense of safety and even my own capabilities. By actually spending more time alone, with myself (another blessing in disguise from the pandemic and the enforced work-from-home), I have been able to start unravelling why I do some things or why I can't stop doing, saying, feeling or thinking about certain stuff.

One such thing, that has taken a lot of time for me to accept, is the fact that my relationship with my dad isn't a good one. My dad is a very toxic person, and with age his toxicity only gets worse. He doesn't like to be wrong, and he doesn't like to admit that other people might know things better than him. With age, he has lost his ability to admire people, and so, when the feeling arises in him, it turns onto bitter envy. Along with all this, he has lost his ability to be humble. Understanding this for me has taken a while, but has been inportant, so that I can learn to question the things he does and says, instead of taking them as "the only right way to do things", which is how he presents them. And it's not easy.

I'm sure a lot of people out there know people like that: only what they say is right, even when you know it's not, but they insist and fight, and go as low as insult those who question them or prove them wrong, up to the point of making you doubt what you know and probably know better than them. Why is it important to recognize this? Because interacting with people with this behavior can chip away your sense of self-worth, self-respect and even your self-trust. It puts you  in an edge, when you try to do something for yourself, the way you think it should be done, because if there is one single mistake, one single flaw, or even if your attempt fails, you will feel the failure far bigger than it even is.

I'll give you an example: my house - which I LOVE - has a "complicated" roof because I wanted gables, which is not common in this part of the world. Because of it, it is prone to have leaks. And it has leaks. A lot of them have been fixed, but some appear here and there, and some are stubborn. The "original" building crew couldn't fix it, and abandoned the house, and my dad declared that "it can never be fixed and it will always leak". Oh, and he blamed my architect, basically because she's a woman and not the architect he picked. Well, I wasn't going to have that, so I hired some workers recommended by a friend, who actually did the job really well, and guaranteed the job. Of course, my dad still found faults, and all of those faults were false. Like, he said they were so expensive, whene he doesn't know how much they charge me. Or say they work really poorly, when they have fixed the things they have been hired to do.

Now, fixing leaks isn't all that easy, and so, as part of the guarantee, when the leaks appear again, they come and fix them free of charge. However, each time a leak reappears or a new one appears, I feel so anxious because it has been hammered in my head that I can't fix it, that my decisions are wrong, and only my dad knows how to fix them (after he said it was impossible to fix). I've grown anxious with rain, when I used to love rain and rain storms, because of that, because a single little drop makes me feel like I can't do things, that I need help. And it's stupid, and rationally I know that, because I already have the solution for it, and I also know that leaks take time and many tries to fix.

Now, I finally getting to the point where I know that, I understand that, but now I have to work on fixing that, in accepting in my head and in my spirit, that I am capable, knowing my true limitations and how can I overcome them or accept them. Recently I also understood why I had such a hard time letting a person go, why I couldn't stop thinking about them even though I had nothing positive to say. I realized this was so because I was repeating the same toxic pattern I have with my dad, because this person has the same toxic nature, in the same manner as him. I saw the danger I was in.

Shadow work is important, so you can live a fuller, happier life. And sometimes, like with my roof, you must do your shadow work with the aid of a professional.

Relationships

Property of Stormberry

First of all, Blessed Litha! Another Litha celebrated in the mids of the Pandemic, but we can still find reasons to celebrate, if we so wish. In spite of what goes on with the humans inhabiting Mother Earth, the planet turns and the celestial bodies sail on, go on retrograde and pulse on the deep skies, bringing the longest day of the year. Our work is both internal and external, we still work hard, even if we don't do it as before. Our activites have changed, but they demand the same effort from us, and this we can celebrate today.

Also, in the mids of this pandemic, I wonder if people are keeping their Quarantine Journals, and how those journals may look like. Have they kept them? Have those journals become just journals, inadvertently recording the process of human adaptation, from one world obssessed with traveling and out-of-home, social gatherings and picking locations of all types for the perfect Instagram/Tumblr/Pinterest pictures, to another masked up and full of new expectations and concerns?

My own journal had a page, an entry marking the beginig for me, of this new reality, but other that that, it's filled with the same sort of entries: thoughts, gossip, venting. My daily moves have changed, but the person I am have not.

Property of Stormberry

The seasons keep turning, we are adapating, we are getting he hang of this life with more cleanliness - which is always a good thing -, more physical distance and an ample range to discover new ways to show affection. This is becoming also a world and a time where physical intimacy holds a deeper meaning because of the risks associated and the care one must practice.

In my previous post I wrote about a date I had. My first date or "going out" with a friend I have had since the pandemic has began. This date of sorts have evolved, and we have been meeting for casual sex, though not as often or as regularly as the "have been meeting" might suggest. We have talked and decided we want to sleep together one day, and so we booked a room at a nice hotel, met there, had sex, spend the night and then each has gone on their merry way. And then again, last night, though this time my companion couldn't stay the night.

And so, when I was alone in the room, it felt like a stolen moment from the days before the pandemic, when I traveled and stayed in hotel rooms alone, and enjoyed that wonderful solitude and the limitless freedom it grants on you.

We talked before he had to go, and at one point he said he would not hide "what we have" if he was asked, and that got me thinking. What we have? And what do we have? I had not stopped to consider it. I had to ask him what he meant by that, "what we have". He said we were friends with benefits, and it stroke me that he might be right, but I never really stopped to think about that, and maybe realize that I am, inadvertently, entering a sort of relationship. Yes, I guess we are friends, and we have a lot of things in common, and sex is good, but just because we share sex together on a very random, casual manner, does that stamp a new name, a new label on our friendship?

I wish sex could be seen like sharing coffee with friends, or books, or music, and so friends who sleep together, because they enjoy it, could simply keep unlaterated the tag of friends without having to add words that let others know they also have sex.

There are things about this too. Now our friendship is part of his "love life", and I wasn't even considering him or our encounters as part of my love life. The first day he refered to us having sex as making love, and I also found that not only outdated (in my mind you don't "make love", love needs no making, but also, I don't like mixing sex and love, as love is an emotion that can permeat everything you do, and sex is an activity like eating, walking or spending time with someone), but also weird. Why "make love"? Now he simply says "fuck". I find it interesting that he doesn't say "have sex", which is more neutral, and yet chooses words or expressions that charge sex with a social or emotional connotation. He qualifies the sex between us, and with it, his mind expands and he qualifies the rapport between us, labels it, boxes it and so the thought in his mind arises about whether do admit or deny what happens between us, while in my head there is nothing to admit or deny, simply a connection that pertains only him and me, and nobody needs to know about it.

So I wonder if it could be the effect of the Pandemic, filling casual contact with more intimacy, deeper meaning than what it had previously, or whether we are still exactly the same, we still related to each other the same way, and only the logictics have varied.

Blessed Litha!

Property of Stormberry

It's taking me time to write lately. Have I told you that I've embarked in the adventure of writing a novel with the express intent of having it published? Yes, there's that. That that went all good and nice for two days through which I literally psyched myself with non-stop Nickleback music to get me into the right mood for this particular story, and now I'm stuck. The story still keeps rolling inside me, and I can see it in my head - and it should be much easier to write than others, because this is based on my story with Feds - but no new words get typed down.

I'm staring at the weird spiked wheel in my bullet journal, and the goals I scribbled for 2019, and I'm so freaking behind the post-quota for my Hungarian blog that... yeah. That's happening. Other yearly goals and resolutions are also dragging and lagging behind, but what would be of life if we didn't leave behind some of those good intentions? Imagine a year in which you conquer all of your resolutions. The next year you would have to come up with NEW ones! Oh boy no, leave some to be recycled.

So, shall we talk about Litha? This is the sabbath of light, Midsummer's Eve, the day of the year when we have the most of sunlight, and the shortest night. Some parts of the world have no night at all. As a person drawn to the darkness, I find this depressing. Yet still, light has a place and a purpose in life, and this year for me, it means "bring things to light". It's time to face things, but also to recognize things, good things, we often don't want to admit to. Facing things often mean to us, having to admit to negative, uncomfortable aspects of ourselves or things and situations and circumstances that we do not want to deal with.

Light for me, also means the things we have shed and the things that have come to my life as result. The cycle ending with this last thesis I'm doing, the breaking with Starbucks and the journey I've started in search of my next coffeeshop-of-my-soul. Being also that my spirit has been making waves in the realm of romantic contacts, I think I'll also review that and whether I'd like to step on more firmly into the ground of dating. This is a tricky turf for me, because I know I don't want to have a relationship of any kind. I don't want routines, commitments, compromises, regular dates, meeting friends and family... I don't want anyone attaching to me, or starting to calculate me into their lives... because I won't return the favor. I don't do "couple". But being that I actually decided to write this story with Feds to exorcise him out of my system, I thought that maybe a somewhat steady influx of harmless fun could be a nice way to keep my head and spirit fed with... human entertainment. Yes, I know it sounds awful, but I really don't know how to explain it well.

You see, in a hook up or a fling, I kinda look for certain things. It's not just the sex, but also the conversation. A person can really be good in bed, but if their conversation is flat, superficial, boring, then I feel like I'm not fed. Like that happened with the physician I met last year: he was rather nice and socially a catch, but there wasn't really any sort of conversation I could follow with him. There has to be something in the brain, thoughts and connections and old books stored there, which they can recall and talk about.

Other people have other needs, but these are mine: food for the spirit, food for the body. And these are some of the things I bring today to light, in Litha, to contemplace, rejoice in them and decide how to work with them from here on.

Thoughts on Manipulative Friends

Source: Tumblr
Shallon Lester's Channel

One of the vloggers I follow in YouTube is Shallon Lester, a former magazine editor, who now gives relationship advise online. I have seen several of her videos, and though I don't agree with all of her advises, I always enjoy her videos and her style.

Something she does in her channel is to psychoanalyze drama among celebrities and their private life. What she does isn't going for the gossip - though she does benefit from it - but also to teach people lessons about themselves and the people around them by using behaviors widely known through the media to pinpoint what people can also encounter in their lives.

The last video I saw touched on the current drama between beauty vloggers Tati Westbrook and James Charles, in order to talk about manipulative friends.

The topic of manipulative friends hits me close because I have had to deal with those. I mean, if you read my blog you probably know about those cases, right? Yes, it's not pretty but it happens and we need to be prepared to del with it.

I have a friend who is married and he's not very happy with his spouse. We talked recently - he has taken time to open up to me about his marital issues - and he said that though he wasn't happy, he was chosing to do the "right thing" rather than what he really wanted and what made him happy. I didn't say much - with words - but me being as transparent as a glass of beer, probably let him know what I thought: "you are being profoundly stupid". Now, judging and finding solutions from the outside is very easy, but it's not as simple when you are IN the situation. That's why it happens that you can be very good at giving relationship advises to others, but you still get yourself in all sorts of relationship jammies. Why is that? Because when we are IN a situation, we usually don't have the panoramic view people not involved in it have. When we are in the situation we find it hard to untangle, to be objective, to see the good and the bad, and we are subject to emotional pressure.

Now, the thing here is that we are also vulnerable to these same things with our friends, with the additional threat of us being less prepare and less suspectful since we think friendships are much safer than romantic relationships. Just think about that. In a romantic relationship you prepare yourself to suspect your partner of cheating, of being with you for your money, your connections, your looks, your status, or because you are just a device for them to fulfill a life goal: it's not you, but the ring you can put on their finger, or the ring they can put on your finger.

With friendships, we often tend to believe they are honest, serious, and when they are not, they tend to be scarce enough to be filed as "acquintances", so you don't worry. We also think that the "bad friends" are easy to spot, because they will pressure you for money, or ask you to bail them, be their guarantors for loand they then want to leave on to you and so on. We are not prepared for the manipulative friends that seek to leech on you in other ways.

Shallon Lester mentions as manipulative friends the people that are very self-centered and who talk only about their endless problems, and it's always the same issue. Here I want to make a distintion. There are friends who have a specific type of problem that is either eternal or cyclic, like issues with their job or issues with an illness or a family health problem. Yes, there are limits for that as well, BUT we can also understand when a person always talks about their problems in these topics.

What makes the difference - for me - is when the recurring issue is something the person can't really escape, and is bound to keep struggling with. An issue with a job can't always be fixed with resigning or looking for a change in positions, specially not when the market is in turmoil. People are also bound to their jobs because of the income and obligations they carry, like loans, mortgage, supporting their family, and so on. Health issues also take much of the attention and energy of the people. Being there to let them vent is important for them.

However, a friend who is going through these struggles will also ask you about your life, your issues and pay active attention to them.

By no means, a stressful job or a health/family issue entitles someone to monopolize the conversation.

Curiously, as a Childfree person, I have noticed this with some friends and acquintances who are parents: all topics are always child related, and if you try to go to a non-child related one either they veer from it, or just stare at you while you say your piece, and then go back to a child-topic. Now, 1) this is also a way of manipulation, by diminishing your topics and your issues, compared to theirs, and 2) beware because this is not a "parent thing", but a thing manipulative people do. I'd given you the example with the "child topic", because we all have had that new-parent friend who gets lost in parenthood, even though later they get out of it, but we know the experience.

So, when you are with someone and you feel like something is just not ok, you feel a bit bad or shamed, take a second to compare the situation with that "new parent" hype. If it fits, you are talking to a manipulative person, and they are casting their net on you.

Manipulative people monopolize the time, the conversation and/or the situation. It's always THEIR problems, THEIR issues, THEIR concerns, even when they are not presenting them as theirs. For instance, the friend that every so often comes to you crying about how much they are suffering by witnessing the suffering of someone else. Be it a family member, a close friend, a dear colleague... they pick someone who is close to them, or are portrayed as close to them, and then paint a gloomy, terrible situation (whether it is real or not), that makes the person a helpless victim, and they (the manipulative friend) is forced to witness it, wants so desperately to help BUT can't do anything. This last part is crucial because it ensures pity ON them, while looking at the same time so selfless and saint. There might be even a tear or two for dramatic effect and blocking logical thinking and trigger emotional response from the audience.

I used to have a friend who did this often, who used another friend to gain pity for herself. Curiously, when you talked to the martyred friend, they seemed to be absolutely ok. The cover of the manipulator? Oh, Martyr doesn't want others to know/notice. Does it ring a bell? You have no idea, how I wish it doesn't.

In other cases, the manipulator does use a real situation, a real problem of someone else - the Designated Martyr - in order to give their manipulation tools legitimacy. Here, the key one has to pay attention to is whether the issue can actually be fixed by the manipulator, and what is the manipulator doing to fix it. The issues manipulators pick are often the kind that can be milked for a long time. The longer they can exploit the topic, the longer they can command attention, earn pity/admiration and even get away with whatever they want.

Finally, here is the last element manipulators use to get their "reward": they often seek to push your boundaries. They get a boost, a victory when they can exert power over you by making you endure dissing, humiliations and other forms of disrespect. This is a way to state to you that they are more important than you: it sets a hierarchy among you, where they push themselves to a position - rather subtly - where they wistle and you jump. Part of the perk of these moves is that they are subtle enough to be easy to turn against you if you realize what's happening and complain.

What do I mean? For instance, the friend that's always late. Yes, we all are late from time to time, but there are people who seem to be chronically late and late by a lot. For me, the reasonable window to be late is five to ten minutes. I mean, consider traffic, finding a parking space, public transportation being late... A regular friend being late usually calls you to let you know they are going to be late. A manipulator won't tell you because part of their power trip is to keep you expecting, insecure. Manipulators also tend to make you wait for really long periods of time, often stretching into hours. It's usually a progressive thing, as they need to "train" their friends to just keep waiting. To "reward" the waiting friend, sometimes they shower them with excuses and copious amounts of apologies.

A rule of thumb here: someone who consistently makes the same offense or disrespectful action, and always apologizes for it, is placating you, not really apologizing. True apology is often followed by real efforts to correct the undesired behavior.

Now, being late and using tardiness to manipulate others is quite a textbook case, and easy to spot, but there are other, more conceited ways to bend other people's dignity and will to you, as a goal of manipulation. In this type of manipulation - into which chronic tardiness also falls - is about forcing others to accomodate to the manipulator. Instances can be the case of the person that always changes everybody's plans at the last minute, always dictate the whole program or part of it. A typical case would be that of the vegan friend with whom you always have to meet and go eat at vegan places. There are many excuses for this, such as "there are so little options for me in other restaurants" and "the menu says it's vegan, but they actually use animal byproducts in the dressing of the salad".

Again, I use a vegan individual in the example because this might be easier to spot, so it can be used as a template to discover similar behaviors, but think of the friend who always picks where do you go because "they can go to X place because there are so many memories there with their ex", or because "they have read the reviews", or "it's closer to their place, and they have so little time, since they have to take care of children/job/project/you-name-it".

This can also be the case of the friend who always picks the movie you are going to see, picks the seats, or picks where are you going for vacation and where are you staying. It's also the friend that orders for you at the restaurant quite often, usually disguising it as "you have to try this", or the friend that gives you tasks, or in any other way takes away your power of decision.

These forms of manipulation are particularly tricky, because if you react against them, the manipulator will always act surprised or offended, and turn the blame on you. They have a situation that's very difficult and you are not being understanding. They have so much work and they are trying so hard and you don't want to cooperate. They are trying to accomodate and make it good for everybody and you are being insensitive/spoiled/selfish.

Other forms to take power from you and manipulate you, is through making you suffer public humiliation or guilty tripping you. For instance, they can be prone to burst into tears at any thing, scream, throw temper tantrum... Things that are designed to make you feel bad, so that you will always do whatever there is in your power to keep these scenes from happening. If it happened once, rest assured it will happen again. Manipulators dose these incidents to keep the threat alive.

Ms. Lester gives a lot of good advise about how to deal with them, so I encourage you to look up her channel and check out some of her videos. If you ask me, I always go for the cut throat solution. Yes, I've been roped into these games, I have had hope my friends would enmend their ways and I have tried to minimize their antics. Experience has thought me that accomodating to manipulators and trying to softly undercut their antics only empower them more, because their realize you want them in your life, so they will keep playing on that and finding new ways to exploit you.

As I've grown older, my response to manipulators has been swifter, which as result has led me to lose those friendships. Then again, if I was being used as a toy for their instincts, was there really a friendship?

So here are my Cut Throat Advises:

1. You may allow the behavior once or twice, until you notice the pattern and can establish there is really a manipulative intent behind. Then, cut it.
2. There needs to be a facing of the facts with the manipulator. Ms. Lester recommends you frame your issues, when you confront your manipulator in "I feel" sentences. Here I tend to use two ways: the indirect one, where I answer behavior with behavior, and simply don't comply with the expectation of the manipulator, and the direct one, where I purposefully refuse to use softening phrases like "I feel", "I think" - which can be later used against you are a part of an argument of "everything is always about you and how YOU feel and what YOU think"- and rather state things in "you" sentences. Say things like "Don't talk to me like that", instead of "I don't like the way you sometimes talk to me", and don't fall for the trick of "What did I say?", or "When and what exactly did I do/say?". This is a favored trick of manipulators because memory is tricky, and they usually deal with subtext and tone, leaving their words purposefully open to interpretation. If they do that, don't answer, and if you are pressed reply something in the line of "don't add insult to injury", "I know you are smarter than that". The trick here turn their game: they want to make the problem about you, so you have to call them on it and place the problem on them.
3. If their game is tardiness, leave after 10 minutes and don't call them to let them know. If you call, you are opening a chance for them to keep you waiting. If they didn't call to tell you they'll be late, you have no obligation to call them to tell them that you are leaving.
4. If their game is changing plans at the last minute, you have to options: you stick to the original plan (and make previous arrangements to make sure you can go without the manipulator), or cancel them. If you cancel, don't go even if they set the original plan again. Show them there are consequences.
5. If their game is to take decisions away from you,  when the place is selected or the task given, tell them no. And stick to it.

Never be afraid of cutting a relationship with a manipulator person. Remember that you are in an illusion of a relationship, one where only you are. The relationship is a box, and you manipulator wants only to play.

Atheists Reacting to Super-Christians

I call them Super Christians not because they have super powers, but because they go far and beyond, and I recently read that people of the Jewish faith take it to heart when non Jewish people throw around the term "pharisee" as a way to point out that someone is way too wrapped up into religion and behaves in a visibly hypocritical and holier-than-thou fashion.

Source: Dear Mr Atheist YouTube

So, the thing is that I've been watching Dear Mr Atheist's channel on You Tube, which I find very entertaining. Mr Atheist makes mostly reaction videos to videos posted on christian channels, and most of the ones I've watched are reactions to a famous christian channel hosted by two christian sisters called "Girl Defined". The channel of these women has a happy, chirp kind of tone, and seems to seek to attend to the questions of young women living within an overzealous christian community. If you've ever attended christian churches - particularly the evangelical types - you surely have run into this type of person: the ones that look so perfect, like they have attained that elusive godly status that seems to elude you, normal, regular, daily life mortal ("sinner", in christian parlance). Some of the topics they raise - what I know of them, as I clearly, have only seen what critics post and share, so there might be a score of other videos that are much more muted, soft and helpful - are seriously troubling, or eyebrow raising, like one about whether godly woman should or should not wear make up.

Source: Google Images

In general, from what I gather, the sisters follow a way of presenting their topics and arguments that relies on dizzying the viewer into loosing sight of the actual topic, to then concoct a message that doesn't actually reply the bait topic, makes it look like it replies a big question AND disguises harebrained life rules as easy-peasy godly solutions. Rather dangerous, if you ask me, to feed these "advises", specially to an audience with little discerning capabilities, or enough information from alternative sources.

Anyway, today the topic was "Six Types of Men You Shouldn't Date, Court or Marry". My first question was "who the hell 'courts' in these days?". But then again, I'm the same person who, upon hearing in a song lyric the phrase "save me from Hell" wondered who would ever want to be saved from Hell. So yeah, my wonderings about what people do or don't do, or want or wouldn't want might not necessarily need to be taken as guides to judge human behavior. Anyway, the sisters go into a listing of the types of men you should cross out of your list, and Mr Atheist dutifully addressed each of them, but still, there were things that needed to be said, or needed to be further commented, in my opinion. I don't remember all the types but they included Mr Talk, Mr Anger, Mr Pressure, Mr Struggle, Mr Obssessed and Mr Unsaved. Already the designation of "Mr" made me cringe. There's something kind of bothersome about they defining themselves as girls and refering to men they would date, court or marry as Mr. Sure, it might only be my impression, but this screams to me of pedophilia in the worse case scenario, or a misogynistic scenario were men are always portrayed as superior to women, in command, knowledgeable, responsible, while women are perpetual children in constant need of guideance. The Mr-girl relationship mentally created automatically place women at disadvantage: they are faving something bigger and stronger than what they are.

There is also the cautionary note that has not been added by our critic, where the viewers - all of them imagined as "girls" - are not asked not to fall into the same type of behavior that is not desired of their potential male partners. (There is no mention of Ms Talk, Ms Anger, Ms Pressure, Ms Struggle, Ms Obssessed or Ms Unsaved).

So, the point of all the types basically boils down to christian men that are not as crazily church obssessed as these sisters claim themselves to be. I say claim because I am personally not witness to their churchgoing habits. The types go from the guy that pretends to be an overzealous christian but probably is more of a generic church going believer or so - going through the type that desires more than the clean-cut, super-religious courting kind of relationship, to the last type: the Unsaved. The problem with all the first five types is basically that these guys don't put God first and foremost in their lives. Now, actually, from the signs these women give you as indications, you can't know that. From the many stories of abuse that surface from the Church, we can certainly say that the outwordly image of holines and dedication can cover up a rotten, currupted heart. We can also assume that a subdued, silent exterior can cover a deeply faith commited heart. In other words, the external signs - such as Bible reading, church going, participating in different ministries does not really reflect how a person actually related to their Divine entity, or how deeply and involved a person might be to follow their faith.

This also speaks about what people perceive as their faith, their god or gods and the path of their religious beliefs. Two christian people, claiming to believe in the same God, might have strikingly different personal faiths. One might believe God and his path might lie in the Bible and the strict interpretation of the preachers of their church, while the other might believe that God being good, his religious path lies in the way of being good and helpful and loving to others. And both being christians and being convinced of being good christians might believe the other is dead wrong.

Girl Defined's list mostly show their personal preferences, but they mask it as guidelines inspired by faith.

The last category - the Unsaved - covers every single guy that's not christian. For them, the sisters didn't even go into explaining the type: if he's not christian, it's an automatic NO. No matter his good qualities: not a christian, not an option. Wow, there goes christian piety, and there goes Jesus' lesson about the good Samaritan and him taking to all the outcasts. At one point one of the sisters actually claim that the Bible says so: not date-court-marry the non-Christian. Ok, where does it say so? Can you give us chapter and verse? More so, since the Bible is full of Jewish rules, laws and customes, a direct quote from Jesus would be needed in this case to make the rule stick.

I have not read the Bible (in full), but I kind of sure it doesn't say so. (Jewish people might not marry non-Jewish people, but such a rule might not apply to christians, as many inter-religious marriages show it). However, it's sad how these women are suggesting to their audience to cut off their lives people that think differently, that see the world differently and that could add to their lives. Thankfully there are plenty generic christians out there whose faith isn't so fragile as to be shattered by the smile of a non-christian person. People who are so confident in their own system of believes as to happily engage in a friendship, a romantic relationship with someone who's faith is different, and not feel threatened by it.

However, to the Defined Sisters that refuse to take upon adulthood, I have good news: I doubt any Unsaved, be it boy, guy, man, Mister, Goodman, simple person, Miss, Mistress, girl or woman, would not be interested in a godly girl or guy, but will probably run as fast as their feet can take them in the opposite direction... and probably not stop until they have crossed the border (another reason why Trump's wall can't be erected: the Unsaved need to flee the Godly).

New Year, New Starts

Property of Stormberry

It has come that time of the year, when we all make resolutions (or at least a significant part of the world that does celebrate the New Year around this time and adscrie to this type of rituals), and so, of course, I have made my own. One of them- which I fully intend to keep, because it's one of those I have more control over - is to post 52 posts this year. This translates pretty much to one post per week. No, of course you don't have to endure this journey with me or anything, so feel free to do as you wish, the same way you have been doing so far.

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I don't have that many resolutions either - I wrote some of them in my new bullet journal - and then I discussed some with my gods... which I should probably write down before I forget them. One of those was to considerably reduce my spending on physical books, mostly due to the plans to build my own house, and in light of the impending expenses and moving. I'll try and keep that one in mind.

2018 has been a wonderful year for me, full of achievements, successes and blessings, so I am happy. One thing I'm quite happy about is that I finished the year with having read 46 books! Awesome! :-) For a slowpoke reader like me that's quite an achievement. This had emboldened me, so I made it my resolution to read 45 next year (instead of my regular goal of 24 books per year). I actually made this resolution in the last days of 2018, when my count of books in Goodreads was somewhere around 41 or 42 books read. I decided to challenge myself - really challenge myself - and go for the kill. I mean, next year I have no classes planned, save for my German lessons, and only will have a thesis of marketing to write, which will rest mostly on groundwork than theoretical construction, so that should give me the time and space to gnaw my way through roughly a book per week.

Property of Stormberry

One added blessing from 2018 was the addition of a new client for my accounting private practice, which I appreciate greatly. As per usual, it's a relative of a friend, so someone with whom I have a previous relationship, and someone I care for a lot. Given the particularities of this case, I travel once a month to the location of this client to do some basic accounting, and oftentimes, after meeting them, I meet with my friend, who lives close by. Yes, it's a tad far, but I like driving, the road isn't challenging and I like the chance to meet with this friend, for otherwise we would hardly meet at all. So it's an absolutely positive situation for me.

My friend and I often meet at a Starbucks close by, or either I pick her up and go there for a coffee and chat. We are both big pen-&-paper junkies, so we have our raves and long, gushing chats away from people who do know us and who would never understand how can anyone get so excited about fountain pens and paper (or pay so much for it). I know, I know, but you know muggles: they just don't get the excitement of experiencing a smoothly gliding pen, or the delight of the right quality of paper, the comfort and joy of handwriting or... having access to text that does not depend on electrical power to exist.

We had our date, had great fun and then her husband came to pick her up and our ways parted. Before I went to my car to drive back home, I went for a coffee and a bottle of water for the road. As I stood there, a man came to order and noticed a frog shaped pendrive I have hanging from my bag... that was missing its bottom half. He told me about it (I had no idea my frog had lost its legs), and told me he had found the legs outside. I thanked him and thought that was it, and proceeded to turn away and make a mental note to go out and pick the legs up. The man, however, kept talking to me, telling me he would help me find them, which was odd, because the place isn't all that big and I had an idea where it could be. Anyway, we struck a conversation of sorts.

It turned out he's a physician, and works at one of our biggest public hospitals. That's impessive. He also has a private practice, so as an accountant (I felt no need to explain to him all of my career background as that can be compicated for anyone upon first meeting) I gave him a couple of useful advise. He was quite free telling me at once that he was divorced and got the custody of his children, which was hard to get, but he had a good lawyer and... why was he telling me all that? The man was being a typical Latin male, seeking to rope me into a formal relationship. He seemed nice, and his children also seemed nice, so I kept contact with him - not to mention that he could be further a source for more clients to my private practice - so I was nice and polite.

He started texting me a lot. A Lot. Daily. Ok, I wanted the friendship and the contact, but not any relationship. I am not looking for any kind of boyfriend or partner or anything. By the second day he was already asking me if I had a partner, so I told him that I wasn't into relationships. He did try to make his case defending relationships, but not in a too pushy way, but it did was... unpleasant. He clearly thought he would need to "work me" in order to convert me. Yeah... no.

We kept texting back and forth, me pushing longer and longer pauses, and him quite clearly trying to get into the space of intimacy in conversation that would help him leap closer to a relationship. He also started to unload a lot of personal stuff about himself that I've found... intrusive. I don't know him all that much, and I don't need a crash course about him either. The whole feeling about him was that of a person absoutely desperate to get a partner, like the kind of person that invites you to a date (not even starting with a non-date casual meeting for coffee after work), and by the time water is served states that they don't want to waste time with someone who doesn't want to commit for the long run. And I say this because, by the second day he was sending me a frog emoji and saying stuff like "your frog brought us together", and then saying the third day that he was happy to have met a woman like me, "with values". I was flabbergasted, because I acually doesn't know anything about me, and though I have values (actually everybody does), he doesn't know mine and if he did, he would probably not agree with them. It did sounded, though, like the kind of flattery you say to someone you don't really know, but with which you want to get into that person's good graces. Providing the person is clueless enough not to see through the ruse. Sadly, I do see through the ruse.

He did try to edge into asking me out on some promenade, but I cut into his attempts (he asked me what plans did I have for the day... on the second or third day) by telling him I was spending he whole day reading. Which I actually did. Next day? Yeah, I'm still reading. Oh, I read a lot. Yes, I want to spend every single available second of my vacations reading. Hey, this year I didn't travel, so I was going to use this exceptional occasion to do what I haven't done in ages: read, and read, and read non-stop. And you know something? Fuck, it feels like heaven!

Anyway, one thing he did learn about me was that I read a lot. He asked me what I read, I told him in broad lines (LGBT Romance, Crime, Politics, History, Philosophy), and he said "Great, crime!". O...k.

Property of Stormberry

Day... what would be today? Like... day five? He asks me what I'm doing. I reply that I'm reading. What I'm reading? Fire and Fury, and I send him a picture of the cover of the book, so he gets a better idea. I'm about to tell him about all the other books I plan to read after it (A Higher Loyalty, by James Comey; Russian Roulette, by Michael Isikoff and David Corn; Collusion, by Luke Harding; and Fear, by Bob Woodward), when suddenly he goes off track saying that history is often partialized. At first I'm taken aback thinking he might be a Trump supporter or something, though I actually think he has no idea about what this book is really about, or anything about the books written on Trump. But he goes on and on, fueled by himself, bringing the Second World War in his next text, and then how the Germans were painted as monsters only because the Jews wrote the history books (someone needs to see videos about the concentration camps), and from then on, and through some 30 texts he unleashed the most horrendous, ignorant, conspiranoic anti-Semitic views I have ever witnessed.

I was baffled that he thought he could unload such a hate speech on me. Not only he doesn't know me, but such intolerant views are preposterous! And no, those are not an "opinion" or a "humble opinion" as he wanted to portray his hate speech: it's intolerance and hate-mongering. In hs diatribe he called Jews a cancer and justified the many attempts throughout history to exterminate them.

This is a man with higher education, a good job, family and looking for a committed, stable, long term relationship. The first impression he makes is that of a catch, the best party anyone could have. Within five days he proved to be everything but.

I have held my turf, and I have come out convinced that social convention doesn't assure you neither happiness of satisfaction. By today, I could have found myself in a long term, committed relationship, mature and adult and proper in all superficial and socially meaningful aspects. I am free from it, happy, and have been able to discern good from bad.

I share with you this experience to let you know that patience is important, that looks deceive, that you need to see beyond the surface, and always consider your true needs, your true desires and your true expectations before those imposed by society. Pursue your own happiness and satisfaction, not the one society tells you you must chase.

Neurotics: Those Who Are Made

Yesterday I met with a friend of mine and we ended up talking about our old relationships. We don't exactly have similar experiences, since her break-up was traumatic for her while mine... well, you all know how that went ^_^. I've quite good break-ups, actually. Anyway, we were revisiting things about these more recent finished relationships and one of the topics touched stuck to me: the moment when you become neurotic.

I wonder if this happens to all of us...

Anyway, through her experience with her latest ex, she was slowly driven to a state of distrust that put her on a basically neurotic state around him. We talked about it at lenght and she told me that she isn't like that, and in fact, with her current boyfriend she isn't like that, but that with that guy - let's call him Jim - she always felt kept out of the loop, like he was constantly hiding things from her. My friend - lets call her Amy - told me she initially always trusted him and believed all he said, until she started noticing things that didn't match, or things that were left out. Jim seemed to be in a rush, was careless about things, didn't tell her about places where he went, people he met and stuff like that. This not in the sense that she expected him to report to her all of his activities, but in the sense that he was supposed to be marrying her eventually - so he had told her and so his parents told Amy - yet she basically knew nothing about him.

She would find out by others that he was meeting weeking with some friends and getting wasted quite often, when as far as he let her know, he hardly ever saw those friends. Later on Amy realized that Jim actively worked to keep her in the dark about his life. They actually broke up because Amy found out that Jim had never intended to marry her but considered her an entertainment while a suitable wife appeared. (Jim is of one religion, Amy is of other and Jim and his parents were actually pressing Amy to convert to their faith so Jim could marry her.)

Amy comes from a very tight, deeply moral family background, one of those old-school, large families, that are very tight, eat together and have big family gatherings at each holiday. Really, like in old TV series. She has this very romantic view of life and realtionships, and she did work hard to fit into Jim's world and Jim's life, so when she found out how she was merely and funny, laughable entertainment, it devastated her. Prior to that, however, though she did struggle to keep the relationship afloat, these fractures in Jim's stories made her  pull her shields up and distrust of his words.  He always kept her in the dark about where he was, what he was doing, who he was seeing or what he intended to do. As result, whenver he told her something, Amy would automatically think he was hiding something and tried to find out.

As she was telling me of these, suddenly I found myself thinking about my own relationship woth Kari, and realized that I had also become neurotic, though I had not realized it. I never really was into distrusting him about where he was or who he was seeing, but my concerns were always of the practical nature. Through the time we were together my trust in him eroded in aspects related to what he was saying to me and whether it was true or not, whether he was telling me something I could quote later and he wouldn't pretend he had said the opposite, but also matters like his reliability to do things, get bills paid, tell me if there was some issue with something, if there was some trouble that needed fixing, and also the eternal matter of financial situation. These things of course are entirely meaningless if your relationship is a light kind of relationship where you meet only to feel good, spend a good time, but all parties involved manage their own lives. Naturally in a life project that involves two people together, these are deal breakers for all the obvious reasons. And trust me: if these things appear, pack and go because there's no way in hell you can work around them. I know, I tried.

Anyway, back on topic, my brand of neurosis came from not trusting him about what he said, what he was supposed to do and how much could I rely on him with my livelihood. The thing is that, when you are on your own, you have a given set of expectations about your life that basically go around what you can achieve, and thus you are content with that, count on that and you are relatively sure about that. However, as a person enters a relationship, expectations about life change depending on the quality of the relationship itself. The person starts factoring the partner in different parts of their lives, such as for holidays, free time, hangouts and maybe even their life project. In good theory, when a person factors another into their life project, that obeys to the pair actually discussing the course of the relationship. Some people of course, rush ahead and think that because they were kissed in a party or someone winked at them, they will marry and have 2.3 babies and whatnot. No, I'm not talking about those. I'm talking about the case were you go out with someone and the topic of "living together" or maybe even "marriage and kids" comes up as the endgame of the relationship.

When a commitment of this magnitude is made or talked over, expectations of people change, and thus it's normal for people to expect their lives to start merging into a family unit. In Amy's case, she was made believe Jim would marry her as soon as she converted to his religion, thus while she struggled with the decision - she needed time to prepare herself - she expected not only support from Jim for her transition, but also their lives being transparent, both of them being clear with each other. It wasn't a matter of them losing their individuality, but more of living a life of openness, with no secrets held from each other. What does it mean? It doesn't mean reporting to one another, or reading aloud to each other each message and each e-mail received, but rather to involve the other person in their lives.

Ok, that peobably isn't clear, so let me give you an example. Say Amy likes, cycling. It doesn't mean that now Jim has to go cycling with her too, whether he wants it or not, but rather that he knows Amy likes cycling and Amy feeling sure she can tell him about her cycling adventures if she feels like it. It means Amy not just disappearing to go cycling, but letting Jim know "Hey! I'll go cycling! See you in the afternoon!". Perhaps Jim likes playing the guitar. It doesn't mean that Amy has to learn to play the guitar or go to all of his concerts, but it means that Jim opens the invitation for her to go listen to him play, when such a thing is possible, and that he would say "Hey, the guys and I signed it for a guitar camp next week! It's so exciting! I'll be back on Thursday". It doesn't mean that Amy doesn't even know that her fiancé likes to play the guitar and has to hear from others that he actually spent three days in Vancouver in a huge acoustic guitar concert... from a third party.

The neurosis Amy and I experimented came precisely from this: Jim and Kari created in us an expectation which they themselves undermined by being untrue or secretive about vital aspects to bring those expectations to completition. I believe our neurosis came as a defense mecanism we developped, each in her own turf of attack regarding the perceived threat upon the future that had been promised to us. In my case, my neurosis came from the systematic losing of trust in my partner and the conscious decision taken after each failure that I couldn't count on him for this or that, but that I had to rely entirely on myself to deal with these issues. It wasn't until I realize that I was basically "the relationship", that I came to the conclusion that I had to end it. For Amy, it wasn't until she realized that it was all a lie that she came to de decision of ending the charade. From the outside it looked like we were being neurotic - me the pushy girlfriend, she the controlling girlfriend - but what made this happen was the distrust that these guys fed in us, and our attempt at covering for their shortcomings in order to save a relationship that should have been left to die.

Through the coffee shared with Amy I realized that you can be a normal person and become neurotic under a given set of circumstances, and well, that's ok. However, when you become your neurotic self, when you are made neurotic, as freaking hard as it is - and trust me, it's so freaking hard! - you must stop yourself, take stock of what's making you so, and seek to cut the cause of your neurosis from the root.

Hidden Resentments

People tend to keep certain cards quite close to their vest, whether to the best or worse. These are cards we don't share for different reasons, but mostly because we feel they would do more damage than good. But it is so? What motivate us to keep for ourselves negative opinions or believes we have of others, instead of sharing them and clearing the air between us?

There's this group of people where everybody is really friendly towards each other. I've always assumed they were really good friends, and on the surface it looked so. However, as I've got to know them better, often having conversations on a one-on-one basis, it turned out that none of them really liked the others, always having rather important objections about the rest. Curiously, all of them resented the others because they felt all the others imposed on them, minimized their jobs, all of them assumed the others thought in a negative manner of them, an often they thought the others lied or made up excuses to get out of some commitments, tasks or so. So why they kept meeting and making plans together?

Perhaps sometimes we feel it's strategic to remain in the supposed good graces of others, maybe because we don't want to lose our belonging to a given group, specially if being alone in a given environment means we would be exposed to harsh conditions, or because belonging to a given group mean we have access to benefits we otherwise won't have, or just because we've been in a given group so long that we don't want to be without them anymore. In these cases, perhaps, we make a pro-con analysis and we come up with the decision that we are better if we continue suffering the bad because the good is better. We convince ourselves that we are making a commitment by bravely enduring what bothers us of others. But are these analysis always correct? Are we really making the measurement, or are we pondering with already a result decided and fixing our measurements in order to fit that measurement?

I think that often that's what we do, and in some occasions - specially when we talk about relationships - our actual friends do tell us about the shitty situation we are in, and yet we convince ourselves that still, things are not as bleak as our friends tell us. Even though they are.

The thing is that separation, breakup, is hard. It's always hard, no matter how much you prepare for it. We are willing to put up with a lot of things that only fuel our further accumulated, unreleased, unspoken resentment because truth it that we are not brave enough to walk away from a sickening situation. We seek validation in others, try to convince ourselves that though something is already insufferable for us, if others see it as something manageable, then we should manage it too. But if you are the one living and suffering a given situation, shouldn't you empower yourself  to put a stop on it?

There's a magical measure we should always keep in sight: if you catch yourself always complaining about something or someone, then it's time to take that something or someone out of your life. Hard as it is, but nothing and no one is worthy of sacrificing your happiness so you won't be alone or you could reap benefits you won't even enjoy.

Yes, it's hard, and it goes out for everything: your family, your relationships, your job, your projects, your hobbies, your friends... Some of them would be harder for us, some of them maybe easier, but none of them would be painless. That's the true bravely, not pulling up with shit because we "don't walk away from hardship" or "you are not a quitter" or "maybe it would change". Walking away is a form of hardship, which you face in order to make things better. Quitting something that no longer works doesn't make you a quitter, because you are not quitting yourself, you are not quitting your happiness, you are not quitting your integrity: you are standing next to it.

You can change yourself, but you can't expect others to change for you. And you also have to be realistic with yourself: there are things of yourself you can change, but there are things you can't or shouldn't, because they are who you are. No one should ever renounce for anyone or anything to those things that make them who they are. There's no job, no relationship, no family member, no group, no "opportunity" worth denying who you are and what you believe in. No commitment should ever be made on the grounds of sacrificing those features that make up your personality. Commitments should always be respectful of your core elements.

No, we can't live without hidden resentments, I believe. When I started working in the public sector, way back in 2001, I learned that hypocrisy is an important element of the working environment. Little by little I learned to halt my natural tendency to be brutally sincere, and learned to lie, or hide the truth as much as I could, in order to get on with the program. The six months I spent in Hungary in 2012 put me back to my factory setting, and unable to be hypocritical, life at the office became quite hard. In these years that have passed, I began reclaiming those old acquired skills, slowly re-learning the obscure art of pretending to be pleased and pleasant while wishing people dead. I'm far, I know, from the master level of being able to be friendly and pleasant while stabbing people on the back - skill I don't think I'll ever be able to master - but as I walk down the path of this necessary evil, I realize hidden resentments lurk in a dark place of our souls, and they are not good for us. We choose to live with them, for whatever reason we have, but as they rot our spirits, shouldn't we, at least, try and hold as few of them as possible?

Last week the dams opened for me, and I let out resentments I had been holding in my chest for many years. This week - today, actually - they were talked over and a door closed behind me. I won't lie, it was damned hard because with this admission, with this releasing I released also something very, very precious in my life. I'm mourning a sensible loss now. Tomorrow, to mark this change in my life and perhaps find a symbolic milestone, I'll cut my hair. I still don't know how much, how short, but I want to have this symbol, to remind myself now that life goes on just like hair keeps growing, and that this is a new chapter in my life, a new begining and that chances are there for the taking. The loss will be felt, fuck, I'm not made of ice and stone, no matter how much I wish I were, but must keep my head held up high and keep on.