selkie's place

and the more it changes, the more it stays the same

is that true for all of us?

That we are caught, rolled in tight sticky mesh of realities that our feeble minds and mewling emotional needs can't change, no matter how desperately we seek it?

I struggle still with understanding the parameters of self-knowledge. 

It seems to me that so many of us (me) are on an endless roller coaster of repeated actions; we erroneously think it is all knew as the cars trundle towards the top and the stomach starts stuttering and shivering as we anticipate new venues ... and a sense of accomplishment which embraces and soothes our sense of action as we reach the top, then our eyes turn to the long, curving, steep road ahead and around the corner we glimpse.. what? the same pattern. the same journey.  and we realize. sadly.  We're right HERE, back at the beginning.

It continues to aggrevate me to no end that one's rationality is consistently and persistently undermined by emotional motivations over which I seem to have no control.  Most infuriating is the absolute truth that I have no idea where those emotional demands originate - and as such - cannot STOP them.

fighting the good fight

Selkie's place [Edit Blog details] Write a Blog post fighting the good fight Edit November 23, 2010 Mirrors ... amazing how one can actually get oneself ready for the day without taking in a full view of a self that you're not happy with. It is simplistic to say "love yourself" but reality is many of us struggle with self-loathing. The fact that such inroads on self-esteem actualy fuel addictions (such as eating) is axiomatic. But then rationality wasn't ever a particular failing of mine. I find the human brain a quixotic and curious beast. How on the one hand you can yearn so much for a certain state of events yet on the other, successfuly sabotage every effort to achieve a goal. After much thought I realize that in actuality we are all logical - which means we are making conscious choices to do what we THINK we don't want but in actual fact see as a solution. i.e. we want to be thin and healthy but we eat the wrong things (and too much of them) and don't exercise enough. So what does that mean? It means that as compelling as our belief is that we WANT to be thin and healthy, being fat and unhealthy is actually a CHOICE which inexplicably provides a solution to something else. So each of us needs to really scour our consciousness, rethink our motivations and be honest with ourselves. Why is the continued devotion to bad habits preferable to embracing good ones? Somewhere there is an answer...

Drew

Small

[note: the image I foundhere in a google search for 'red-haired boy' - it is NOT Drew BUT, when I came across it, I was shocked speechless.... because it is IDENTICAL to how I remember him - and checking with D. he too was pole-axed at the resemblance.]

There is a green sign on the highway to and from Montreal, Route 778 – Moulinette Road, Long Sault.  If you take the long winding road, you will reach a small community nestled just up from the St. Lawrence, a pristine wilderness of tree and flower-studded meadows, rocky beaches with pristine inlets and campgrounds much in demand during the hot, lazy days of summer and into the blazing glory of fall.

A spirit waits for me there, on the green verge at the side of the road, dotted with echenecia and black eyed susans swaying in the breeze from the cars which breathe past with a sigh, blind to the figure which drifts through the thick stand of trees stretching deep into the countryside.  The transport trucks that trundle along the black ribbon of asphalt like lumbering pachyderms, sense not the quiet soul which waits patiently for my frequent journeys past, dreaming of a youth forever suspended in the past. 

His name was Drew.  

His hair was a deep, rich dark red and fell in waves and curls well below his shoulders, thick and the envy of many, a source of merriment between he and I as we vied for the wildest locks.  His eyes were a clear, glacial blue, at times merry, dancing with humour and affection, but could harden into the street-smart realities of his Celtic ancestry and rough upbringing.  But I remember most the soft, limpid kindness of those lovely eyes, compassionate and yearning looking into my own as he once again would blot my tears and cup my face. 

D. filled my soul, my heart, my mind and my attention in those early days; his actions and reactions, his absences and small, careless cruelties, his compelling sexuality against which I was helpless obsessed me.  He was my puppeteer and like a marionette, I danced and cavorted to the tunes he chose and like a broken doll, would lie helpless in the corner when his interest turned elsewhere. 

Often, on those cruel nights when D.’s demons drove him from me with a shrug and a careless wave, it was Drew who would appear beside me, his big hands gentle on my face as he wiped away tears, his voice gentle in my ears as he crooned comfort and reassurance and assured me of my worth.  He called me Treasure; I remember that now, though for a very long time I had forgotten.  He would walk me home after D. abandoned me, his big arm warm around my shoulder, our hair, almost identical, curling in the hot, humid embrace of a Montreal summer night, our thick, red waves twining and dancing as we walked the deserted streets. 

At my home, he would lift my hand to his lips and kiss it gently, and run his fingers along my cheek and take upon the tip, the glistening salt drop of my tears and sip it, gently, into his cruelly beautiful sculpted lips, then sighing, tell me again I was a Treasure and send me in. 

Even while I felt grateful for his comfort and caring, I was blind to what I think now might have been more; so entwined was I with my obsession, compelling and overwhelming, with D. that there existed not even a small space in my soul that recognized trueness of caring, the genuineness of want. 

But I cared for him, my friend and warrior Drew. 

Though somewhat a ‘bad boy’ like many I knew in the day, I felt comfortable and safe around him, relaxed and confident of being accepted and liked.  In hindsight, I was an innocent among a lot of rather bad wolves and often marvel that it must have been that naivety, the freshness of it that stayed their hands and made their fierce grins gentle, the predatory slavering want, quieten. 

Long Sault was a favourite haunt of the crowd among which I mingled, a place where weekend bacchanalias of indulgence played out, maenads and satyrs cavorted and played out their riotous revels against the background of campfire and the blaze of stars in a wine dark sky.  But for me, innocent that I was in those days, Long Sault was off-limits and though I sometimes envied and secretly yearned to experience the wildness of those summer nights, I remained obediently home, D’s secret escape, his to take or not, his property and despite the heartache and the agony, content to be so. 

And one hot, humid summer night, his eyes alight with the dying cry of starlight, with colours weaving and dancing in a moonless sky, his body insubstantial and ethereal, Drew staggered his way to the black river of asphalt and opened his arms and his heart to the glory of light which swept through the hot summer breeze and grasped eternity . 

And I do not pass Exit 778 without thinking of my friend Drew and feeling a poignant sadness for the dreaming spirit which drifts insubstantial along the black-topped highway and dreams of youth and a future never realized. 

Drew, you are not forgotten.

 

The sea

The sea isn’t always benign, a soft blue blanket, drowsing under a noonday sun and yawning to a horizon of sky and water that melds and melts into a homogenous whole, a universe of soft breeze and the gentle lap of wave and the rhythmic rocking of surf lapping against the shore.

The sea isn’t always kind, sweet breeze breathing salt along closed lids and puckering lips drying in the heat of the golden heat which spills down from a sky which reflects back the infinity of blue and the wisp of cloud and hope which resonates in your breast as you breathe the rhythm of the surf which whispers sibilantly in your drowsing mind.

The sea is capricious and called cruel when cruelty is a human concept, lending meaning to what is a reality of droplets of salt and precipitation, of cold which snakes up from the depths yet unexplored and is comprised of a thousand million cellular realities of death and life and excretion and endless, repetitive rich cycles of life and death.

And I love it for its capriciousness.

And I love it for its gentleness.

And I love it for its rages.

To stand on a cliff, lashed by wind and feel the slash of salt and frigid water against your skin and hear over the cacophony of your thoughts the roar and rage of water lashed into madness by a night which wheels around your head, a kaleidoscope of light and fury which flashes electric in your mind and resonates a great and powerful throbbing in your heart.

To look through the gloaming dusk and watch the waves vomit spume and heave their great levitation bulk against the standing rocks and send fingers of frigid rage into the crevasses and seek egress to the land which defies its might.

To lose the delineation of skin and sinew, muscle and blood coursing through human veins and feel instead your body expand and reach out and embrace and become one with a sky which wheels and screams and sinks into the heaving brine until the moisture and fury of both coalesce and become a great and wonderful terror that one can breathe in and feel explode in realness in your soul…

that is MY sea.

The one which beckons in the furthest reaches of my soul, that fills my mind with green and grey and fluid depths of cool want and need and makes my heart ache with a physically compelling pain that pulls me towards the water that breathes pretence in its pristine, staidness through the towering steel trap of the city.

The lake I watch with jaundiced eyes mimics the import of words as the lake mimics the sea. They whisper pretence and promise yet carry in them nothing of import or genuineness. I remember when the words would capture me in silken strands of yearning, infused with significance and pregnant with substance and sincerity. I see them now in the harsh light of experience, and while the words wend and encircle my heart in pain and ache, I know beyond their utterances is a vapid reality of lies. Lies, I concur, not always consciously driven nor meant to be not truth.

My youngest daughter runs with a set whose parents utter often the words “I love you” – when greeting, when leaving, when seeing and sighing. I do not. Even before my current reality, I always felt truly that hands and heart and action served more truth up than words which can be released without thought or import or true intent. For me love is the doing not the saying. My love for her is in the creation of meals to tempt a 16-year old vegan appetite; in the stroke of hand through hair when a child is weary, in the knowing and the doing and the nurturing.

Words can carry with them a powerful impact, that I do not deny. But conversely, when the words are exposed and become trite, then the impact is more hurtful, more agonizing in the unmasking of the realty of the moment a harsher lesson by far than mere pretence.

I read the words and I feel a great and terrible rage build.

For I live the reality and it is not those words.

I want my sea and the lonely aerie of sky and brine and the harsh crying roar of an ocean which calls me to its frigid embrace. I want to leave behind the words which wound and cut me like the sharp jutting reality of rock and cliff against which my sea pulses and tears and weeps salted tears of despair.

Rant: Transgender issues ...

[DISCLAIMER:
1. No animals were hurt in the making of this rant

 

 

the photo is an image of the actor, Jaye Davidson (MALE but intact)) from The Crying Game ]

In a recent blog I read about a guy who had a casual reltationship with a post-op transsexual woman, about whom only in hindsight did he realize she was once, physiologically, male. His question was, should she have informed him of her status beforehand? The discussion centres primarily on whether or not a post-op transsexual has a moral imperative to inform potential partners of their sex change?


It is my own opinion is unequivocally that the lady had NO imperative – moral or otherwise – to reveal what is in fact her private and personal business and is ultimately irrelevant to who she is, I thought I would outline my arguments.

First, from a biological perspective, there is ample and irrefutable evidence that gender is not based on physiological sexual characteristics. How we present physically is not always commensurate with the thought process, emotional needs and gender-choice that an individual internalizes as real to them. Studies have revealed, again and again, that nature is fluid when it comes to sexual orientation. From observations of homosexuality among numerous species (not just homo sapiens) to case studies of people – and animals – who despite having the sexual characteristics of one gender, live and present as the other sex are there for the asking.

In short, nature screws up – quite often.

A case in point would be the sad history of hermaphrodites in our society. From freaks displayed in circuses, an almost equally repugnant trend began in more “enlightened” times when babies carrying both sets of sexual organs were almost inevitably “turned into” females. Arguments were specious, fulsome and full of scientific jargon as to the necessity and reason for choosing the female sex when both gender sexual organs were present. The reality was simply it is easier to create a vagina than a penis. This caused a great deal of distress and emotional pain to individuals who would have identified as male (not to talk about those content to carry BOTH – as they were born).

The reality is that many of the characteristics we identify with gender are actually artificially imposed dictates of largely paternalistic and misogynist religious dogma. Like many of the prejudices we internalize as fact, the reality is that most of our biases arise as a result of societal imperatives and dictates – NOT because the issues are inherently ‘wrong’ or “unnatural”.

Second, identifying females as female BECAUSE of owing a vagina and breasts and males as being MALE because they have penis and testicles, then we are certainly narrowing down the realities to an unacceptable level. So if a woman has a double mastectomy- does that make her “less female”? If a man is for whatever reason, emasculated by having penis and/or testicles removed – is he “less male”. What about individuals who experience some form of trauma to their sexual organs (i.e. are not born that way) through disease, accident or malicious intent? Are they somehow then NOT the sex they presented as originally?

Third, undertaking an operation that will permanently change your sexual characteristics is fraught with anxiety, emotional trauma and is the result (I would think in pretty well every case) of a lifetime of confusion, distress and insight. Nor is the medical profession quick to perform such a task. Candidates must go through a rigorous and drawn-out period of emotional, psychological and physical testing to qualify. It is, when all is said and done, intensely and powerfully, personal.

On the religious front argument, if you believe in god- how can you then turn around say “he” made a “mistake”?? i.e. these individuals feel to the core of who they are that they trapped in a body which outwardly does not reflect who they are. They were (if that is your belief) “MADE” that way by god – so HOW can it be wrong to correct that?

Fourth, from any perspective, I fail to see why someone is required to reveal their previous gender to a casual sexual partner. If indeed, a relationship formed and it looked as if what began as casual was turning serious for both, I think it probably a good idea to discuss when a rapport, mutual trust and mutual commitment is starting to form. Any relationship must have at its core, honesty and a sense of trust. By the same token, I think it honourable when entering into what looks to be a long-term commitment to be honest about a lot of other things too.

I equate discussing your previous gender on the same lines as sharing information about your upbringing, family issues and/or past emotional trauma – only to be shared with someone with whom you feel a committed, caring and mutually trusting relationship is being formed.

Fifth, CHOICE: On a moral –hell, a LEGAL perspective, it is important to offer full disclosure when it comes to certain things. Like if you have HIV. Or herpes. Or some other sexually transmitted or other form of transmittal disease (i.e. Hep C is transmittable through body fluids and mucus membranes but not necessarily sexually-related).

But I feel strongly I am NOT compelled on any level to offer full disclosure about certain parts of my life that I consider irrelevant except to someone with whom I am planning to form a committed and long-term relationship. I do not believe even in a committed relationship that an individual has to vomit out every single emotional trauma, moral dilemma, past relationship or experience that has ever taken place in their lives. I truly, honestly and sincerely feel that each of us is entitled to some privacy of thought and emotion, no matter how close you are.

Because transgender issues are so fraught with controversy, I DO believe it would be wise to share this with a potential life partner or one runs the risk of your potential partner feeling betrayed down the road when it comes out (and secrets ALWAYS come out). In that sense, yes, that is where the element of choice comes in.

Like any bred in the bone prejudice – some form of which we ALL exhibit – I think one of the most persistent and prevalent viewpoints regarding transgender individuals is a stubborn insistence on seeing them as ultimately REALLY “male” or REALLY “female”, despite the reality that from almost their earliest memories they truly, sincerely, completely and utterly felt themselves trapped in a body which did not reflect their internal vision of self. And when they then successfully take their physical body and create a shell which then reflects their inner conviction, there is a vast majority of the population which continues to tell them they are “wrong” – that they are in fact the sex they were born.

The bottom line is that it is NOT my place to tell someone who they should live their lives – nor in what form – that is an intensely personal choice and one which I respect.

 

Happy Easter from my Easter Puppies and I!

Moonlight

I stand looking out over the lake, the restless, mumbling water an intense deep navy. Above me, the full moon spills a silver waterfall of light through the deep morning sky, dancing and weaving and sliding along the opaque expanse of cold morning until hurtling through the unforgiving sky it explodes against the yearning flesh of my face and shatters into a million glittering diamonds of promise.

The lake inhales, a deep, intense breath and then breathes out, sighing spring which licks my cheeks until I shudder and feel the grumbling protest of winter past as it reluctantly retreats into another season..

I raise my face to the breathing moon and drink in its celestial ache and open my mouth and pull its yearning want into my lungs until I feel as if my body throbs with light which spills and dances and glows reflected glory in alabaster Irish skin and leaves the golden kiss of freckles stark on its thinning delicate membrane.

My eyes close, flooded with the white light of an ancient planet and feel its call and whispers to the secret part of me that yearns to be untethered and freed from the constraints of flesh and time and soar free to spill into the endless expanse of sky and flow into a universe of possibilities to which my narrow vision has condemned me.

Man’s greatest gift is also his greatest curse – our ability to move beyond the moment and look behind and look ahead until the reality of the now is blurred and hidden behind urgencies born of past experiences and unknown futures. We clutter our minds and hearts with possibilities that may never be and carry the burden of the past in heavy packs on our backs, bowing our spines and forcing our eyes to the path beneath our plodding feet as we stumble and fall instead of looking up and into the endless expanse of sky and promise of what might be.

I want to shed the cumbersome, cloying prison of my clothes and shed with them the tumbling, sticky prison of thoughts and emotions I am exhausted from feeling and living and dealing with.

I want to cast of the restraints that pain and broken trust have placed around my heart and waken a body grown cold from betrayal and rejection. I want the hot moist need of lust to blaze desire into the stiff, crimson yearning of nipple and lick demand into the humid, swollen folds of my sex until my body thrums with the ancient call of sacred lust and signals the fecund reality of my fertile sweetness .

I want to peel of my skin and dive into the cold navy ocean and feel the soft, burning clasp of water around me, embracing and soothing me in its shivering embrace and feel the burn of muscle and sinew and the sweet lick of velvet water against every crevasse and fold until I cannot discern where the water starts and I end and simply rock myself into the rhythm that will propel me into a moonlit sky.

I want my mind quiet as I slice through the deep coolness of arctic water, my shattered heart trailing away on the eddies of tide and ebb and flow of the moon and find instead the contentment of simply glorying in my flesh.

I want to just be.

Patterns

Patterns seem to be an inevitable rut into which the human species is doomed to fall again and again.   It is as if our feet get stuck in the groove of our own making, and without conscious thought or volition, we trudge forward, placing each foot squarely in the same imprint made a thousand... a million times before.

Why do we do so?

I think it gives a spurious comfort to perform repetitive functions, to create in a sense, a ritual which can be enacted and completed without challenge to thought or effort.  For while ritual can provide meaning and focus and encourage one to enter a state wherein you are open to and able to internalize thoughts and emotions not readily quantifiable in our workaday lives, “ritual” performed by rote, without introspection and thought, becomes not insightful but destructive.

Ritual done without intent becomes a pattern and a pattern is, when all is said and done, a predictable sequence of behaviours. 

Predictability has its place in every life, but when it permeates every facet of existence it becomes stifling, destroys creativity, smothers possibilities and leaches colour from your existence.

Most decidedly, there is something in the human psyche that seeks order.  We even create deities and then mythologies around those deities in an attempt to create reason and order out of what often feels like a chaotic universe. 

The universe itself seems to favour order and pattern, as sequence, patterns and order are increasingly revealed as the preferred status quo.  Science and technology continue to affirm again and again the hypothesis that where there is chaos, the universe demands harmony.

The problem of course is that while there can be comfort derived from ritual and equilibrium from a pattern in your days, mindless rote in the end serves only to undermine creativity, spontaneity and ultimately, can be and is often used as a substitute for insight.

I’ve also always found it mystifying why we continue to engage in patterns that are patently destructive to our peace of mind, happiness and ultimately, the quality of our lives. 

Why do we do that?

I’m not talking about patterns we don’t see (because, like it or not, each of us engages to some extent in a groove of repetitive habits that through their very predictability, have become invisible and fallen off the edge of awareness).  I’m talking about patterns about which, through trial and error, through experience and repetition, are obvious and in their obviousness, destructive to our peace of mind, quality of life and happiness.

What are your destructive emotional patterns?

Do you have insight into why you continue to follow that path?

I sure as hell don’t.

I consider myself relatively intelligent, with a modicum of insight and believe I at least deserve credit for determined if not fruitful contemplation of esoteric meanderings yet damned if I can figure out why I engage in the same self-destructive patterns decade after decade.

I think fear has some bearing on it; there is a comfort, spurious or otherwise, in “known” actions – in being able to anticipate and even predict outcomes.  Breaking a pattern brings with it the loss of certainty (in essence, inviting chaos); the question of course is WHY is that seen by many of us as a negative consequence?

While “patterns” are often seen to be synonymous with “harmony” and thus desirable, I think that is perhaps a rather shallow interpretation of the balance in life.  I think sometimes that chaos is far more gratifying, more life-affirming in its own way than peace.

Chaos in short has had a bad rap.

If the point of life (and I believe it to be truth) is in fact for each of us to strive to live up to our fullest potential, then I believe that too rigid an adherence to patterns can stultify and impede our journey to true self-insight and discovery.

The reality that in many instances we are our own jailors is moot; our fear is strangling us.

In ancient Greece, Chaos was the dark, silent abyss from which all things came; as in life, as in the creation of same.  But somewhere along the philosophical trail of history, we’ve redefined it as a negative, something to be avoided.

In doing so, those of us who rigidly, persistently and blindly continue in our repetitive, often self-destructive behaviour are in essence contributing to the hobbling of our own probabilities.  And that is just plain sad.

Sometimes it takes a hint of chaos, a small tremor of disorder, a frisson of turmoil to open our wilfully closed eyes to the realities of our existence and, while that can sting, hell it can be quite agonizing – I think the most important thing to bring away from the pain is self-realization ….

They don’t have Ketchup Chips in America, eh?

 

I’ve been told by my best friend Sally (about whom I’ve blogged before – for I truly believe EVERYONE should have a “sally”), that our family has weird conversations. That particular comment arose because I was relating D’s permanent scarring of Daughter 2- Rowan.  This occurred when cooking dinner one night, Rowan perched on the counter, D. holding onto his coffee as if it contained the elixir of life, we were discussing the castrati (http://www.essortment.com/all/castratihistory_rzna.htm) during the Baroque period.  The discussion was lively as we argued the merits of emasculation in terms of creating a better life for you and your family, how it was ostensibly, a good economic decision, the ramifications of the life, what was involved and what the futures held for these divinely voiced boys. 

 

Thinking about it, D., in I am sure a very male moment, grimaced and said the WORDS “When I had my vasectomy”, thus permanently scarring Rowan who collapsed to the floor clutching her ears, screaming “TMI, TMI” –because of course, as her DAD, he had only had sex four times (under duress) to create herself and her siblings, thus there should have been NO need of a vasectomy, particularly in view of our advanced age. 

 

Sally looked at me and said “Yes, we stand around our kitchen when I’m making dinner and discuss things like the castrati in the Baroque period ALL THE TIME”…

 

Last night I thought of that.  D, son Declan, daughters Rowan and Kealin were sitting in the living room discussing Rowan’s experiences at a protest by students of York University (aka GODDAM YORK – as I had JUST finished forking over close to $6,000 in tuition last October and two DAYS later they friggin went on STRIKE – and refused categorically to return said $$$). 

 

Did you KNOW that in Toronto, and for all I know in the rest of Canada – you BOOK a time and an AREA for a PROTEST????

 

Good rebel child of the 60s and 70s that I am, I am aghast.  You BOOK for a protest??? How CANADIAN and polite is THAT??  She was like, yeah, we booked our time, then they assigned an area and we protested.  All I could think was How the Mighty have Fallen!  What happened to CHAOS? What happened to REBELLION?  Where are the hippies gone???

 

The conversation ranged then from the protests of my youth to the Black Panthers, the Weatherman, touched on the Stockholm Syndrome and Patti Hearst, meandered into whether violence was an acceptable solution, flared into arguments over unions, tripped into a tirade against CUPE (who had tried to incite the students into violence) and then suddenly, Kealin, who had been sitting quietly (we thought) taking this all in …

 

“Do you know you can’t get ketchup chips in America?”

 

HUH – we all stopped short and stared at her.

 

“Yeah – I saw this interview with Jimmy Kimball and Seth Rogan – Seth Rogan was like, you have to IMPORT ketchup chips”.

 

She nods sagely, appalled at how limited the shopping apparently was in our neighbour to the South.

 

“Imagine, not being able to get KETCHUP chips”.

 

D. and I looked at each other and I said considering – “well, they DID push for amnio in view of my being a senior mum… maybe we should have listened…” 

 

sighs.

 

Tears

Eyes

I was reading a blog recently that explored and asked readers their perception of tears ... whether they found crying catharthic, whether it provide release, how in fact they viewed tears.

 

His questions provoked a rather contradictory response in me and while I went to comment more than once, I realized in the end that I would have to explore it further in my own venue as my thoughts were convoluted, complicated and verbose.

 

My gut reaction was quite simply to declare “ I HATE tears” and further thoughts on tears, while providing some insight, did not change that initial flush of emotion at all. For, right or wrong, it is bred in the bone to me to equate tears with weakness and I cannot tolerate nor abide any weakness in myself.  I despise crying and have spent my life fighting a natural propensity to tears, refusing to surrender to a passionate heart and a genetic predisposition for revelling in great emotions.  (The Irish are well known for their ability to tear up at the slightest brush of emotion – from rage to passion to love – requited or unrequited.)

 

I cannot stand to be vulnerable. And there is a vulnerability to the soft eyes, the trembling lip, the heart which leaks in trails down soft cheeks. 

 

I cannot stand to be seen as weak. And while society wrestles with the reality of tears and the knowledge that tears do not necessarily equate weakness nor does the saltwater of passion mean a lack of character, I can’t internalize that any more than the general populace. 

 

Tears have caused me much anguish during the years.  Oddly, while I have learned since very young to ruthlessly suppress the tears of sorrow, pain and anguish, I continue to find it almost impossible to contain tears of rage.  Which infuriates me even more.  For women are still underestimated, seen as emotionally unstable, irrational and apt to be dismissed out of hand.  To be a rational, intelligent person and have your concerns dismissed because of being unable to contain a few inadvertent tears is infuriating ... and to have my rationality challenged, my facts suspect, my arguments dismissed is galling to the extreme – because individuals look at the tears and ignore the substance of your argument.

 

I don’t necessarily feel that my obsession with NOT crying is linked to any child trauma either.  I had, when all was said and done, a loving childhood with passionate parents, both of whom were unashamed to cry and did so on occasions of sorrow, joy and passion (whether fuelled by rage or simply a conviction of their validity).  But I do believe that it is partially a personality quirk, intrinsic to who I am.  For in my own children, I see myself in that respect in my eldest, who you could have flayed alive before she would cry while my second one never stopped her wailing ....

 

Ultimately, tears to me are a weakness and one in which my pride prevents me from indulging.

 

I think too that being a woman in male-dominated fields in my 20s and early 30s (1970s/1980s) at a time when that meant you bore the brunt of harassment and contempt, when you had to fight hard for simple respect, when you had to work twice as hard and twice as long as men, meant ANY vulnerability, anything that linked you even tenuously to what were perceived as “weak” feminine traits HAD to be ruthlessly and positively suppressed and tears certainly would fit that kind of narrow viewpoint.

 

Further, I have a rather rigid sense of honour, and tears have been a woman’s weapon for many years (understandably so, shorn was we have been and continue to be, of many other ways of defending ourselves or asserting our own will).  But I despise manipulation of any form and while I believe that most women do NOT use tears to manipulate, there is enough perception of this being a “feminine” trait that I avoid it as yet another reason to suppress my tears – for fear I would be seen as resorting to a backhand and less than honourable way of getting what I wish.

 

One of the questions asked in this blog, is do they provide a catharsis?

 

For me, NO. In fact, they leave me more anguished than before, bereft and vulnerable.  As if personifying my dislike of my vulnerability, tears of sorrow or anguish physically hurt ... it is as if some form of acid has etched its way into the saltwater of my body and escapes to trickle burning down my cheeks, hot, acidic and hurtful to the soul and to the body.

 

And when I do cry, I want to be left strictly, completely alone – not unlike if I hurt myself physically – whether spiritual, emotional or physical, when I hurt, I am an animal who needs to be left alone to deal with the pain as best I can.  To touch me, feel me, reach out to me is ultimately destructive to my sense of self and my ability to control my emotions and will leave me crushed.  I don’t think that is necessarily a positive trait, incidentally, and can be immensely frustrating to those who love you and reach out caring hands only to have them smacked away a snarling virago spitting rage at them for daring to care ...

 

I slipped once and fell down steps and broke three ribs and absolutely refused to even be touched or helped to my feet but lay, pulled in on myself, clutching my agony to me, fiercely mine, not to be shared .... and that is how I am when tears do sometimes claim me.

 

Even physical pain seldom makes me cry.  I have an immensely strong constitution and take pride in my tolerance and ability to withstand pain.  In actual fact, physical pain is probably the LEAST likely trigger for tears .

 

Oddly, I have NO issue with tears in others and soften and want to reach out and nurture when I see others’ tears.  Other tears open the deep wellspring of caring I carry inside me always and makes me move mountains to bring smiles, to bring some level of comfort to the individual crying ...

 

But tears... at the end of it all, I HATE tears in me.