Dark and Difficult

At some point in my interactions with other people, I will begin to feel limited and restricted. As the feeling progresses it will grow into a sense of being trapped. If I let it expand, continuing to grow without tending to it, it will become a beast who wants to break free. Once it becomes the beast seeking freedom from being trapped, from feeling limited and restricted, there’s only one path it will take – the proverbial bull in the china shop.

The china in this case is the feelings, perceptions and egos of other people.

.

.

I used to blame other people for creating the situation which caused me to turn into a charging and bucking bull desperate to break free from the restrictions which they were placing upon me that made me feel trapped.

I felt bad about breaking the china, upsetting, offending, hurting them, their feelings, egos and the perceptions which meant so much to them, however they gave me little choice in the matter – they surrounded the bull with floor to ceiling shelves cluttered with breakables and then told the bull not to be a bull, not to move not even to breathe.

They were trying to control me, imposing their rules and regulations upon me, attempting to make me fit into the box they had crafted for me, and they were doing this for their benefit not mine. It was all about me having to shrink to fit into their version of me – the role they needed me to play in their reality so that they could be who they wanted to be and the world would spin around them as its axis.

It wasn’t illogical to blame them. I was often blamed by them for their problems, so using them as an example, as the role models which they aspired to be, meant that my problems must be their fault.

.

It’s their fault for making you feel boring!

.

Of course other people don’t like it when you blame them the way that they blame you and others because… this isn’t fair to them. They were right to blame you and others, but you and others are never right for blaming them.

It’s like blaming society for your problems and omitting the uncomfortable detail that you’re a member of society even if you feel like an outsider.

Society says: Act your age, but don’t look your age. Society makes you feel bad about the way you look, having wrinkles, white hair, so you inject toxins into your skin, pour chemicals on your head, and it makes you pay for it repeatedly.

It poisons you from the outside in and you ingest it… you accept what society is telling you to do to yourself – so is it really society’s fault or yours?

Blaming other people for your problems, even when it seems logical and you can tie it up in a tidy bow, never really solves the problem… sometimes it creates even more problems, particularly when you try to fix it by fighting back and trying to fix them as then you become the problem for them.

If I were to try and stop other people from making me feel restricted and limited… I would probably have to impose a set of rules and regulations about how they were allowed and not allowed to be and behave around me, what they were and weren’t permitted to say and do in my presence. I would end up crafting a box for them which they would have to shrink to fit into, and make them play a role to suit my preferred version of reality – one where they would be trapped by my need to feel free.

.

accept me for who I am… which is someone who doesn’t accept you for who you are.

.

This feeling and the process which unfolds from it has been around for a long time… long enough for me to stop blaming other people for it and start blaming myself for it.

It can seem terrible to blame yourself for something, especially when you’d rather blame others, when you’re still convinced that this is someone else’s fault. And maybe it is someone else’s fault – like your parents – someone else created the dynamic within you which set you off on this course. They nurtured it. It’s all their fault that you’re this way, they did this to you!

Yes, they did this to you. But does that mean that you have to keep doing it. You can’t stop what they started. You’ve been doing it for too many years. You’re in too deep. It’s ingrained. They got under your skin and planted a poisonous weed, every time you try to pull it out by the roots the roots wrap around you and keep dragging you down into darkness. This thing within fights back. It’s too difficult to stop.

Maybe you don’t have to stop doing it. It’s a part of you now… it’s your fault now, your flaw, your problem. If you keep blaming others for it, they’ll end up taking the credit for anything good which comes out of it… what’s that? They get the blame but you get the credit if the problem gets solved or if it produces positive results?

So if you look and feel great after undergoing some procedure which makes you appear ten years younger then the credit goes to you for accepting that society was right and you should grow up but not grow old. However if you feel awful and look how you feel or perhaps feel how you look, it’s society’s fault for making you do to yourself what you would have never done had you not felt pressured to do it.

What is dark and difficult is only ours if it inspires us, we are the phoenix who rises out of the ashes of a fire which consumed us and gave birth to a new improved version of ourselves…

but if it oppresses us, if it destroys us, if it leads to more darkness and difficulties, it belongs to someone else even if we have to live with it.

.

.

Blaming myself didn’t make this feeling and the problems which arose from it any easier to deal with or lighter to carry, it was still dark and difficult. In some ways it became much harder and heavier because I carried it all by myself.

However at least I had the power now – there’s power in blame.

Blame others and they get given power over you. They’re the cause of the problem and therefore they become the source of the solution. You can’t move on until they admit it’s their fault, own up to what they did to you, and apologise for it, make amends – solve your problem. You can’t get on with them, or with your life, until they change who they are. You’re stuck in a waiting room, waiting for someone else to care that you’re there, and do something about it.

My attempts to try and solve this problem were almost as bad as the problem itself. I ended up doing to myself what I’d always blamed others for doing. I tried to control myself, imposed rules and regulations, told myself to shrink to fit into a box which I had crafted for myself, told myself who to be and how to behave, what to say and do, and especially what not to say and do.

The box looked not dissimilar to the quote below…

.

.

I wasn’t doing this to be well liked by others, I was doing it to be well liked by myself.

Did I succeed?

I tore through that china shop and obliterated it… on more than one occasion.