More discernment…

Can writing still be fun? Can I find people who want to write with me and grow with me? What is it going to take to know and remember that I am valued and can contribute something of value to the world? I am back from a climate change demonstration today and I suppose that helps: we had way more negative responses than usual, like four or five people shouting things like ‘climate change is a hoax!’ out of their cars, but we get sooo many positive responses, so many honks and so many people who just smile really brightly or make really positive affirmations in some way, that it doesn’t seem to matter. If the down we demonstrate in were a microcosm of the US and mirrored its political values I feel certain something would get done because there is a tremendous amount of support around here. Fire trucks, big trucks, motorcycles. People care about the issue and if only that could lead to a conversation. It kind of feels like when we demonstrate there is all the support in the world and then everybody goes home and is anybody still talking about it then? I hardly know how to bring up the subject, I don’t know what to say, it just matters to me. I am inspired seeing that it matters to so many others, too, and I wonder if anyone else feels as alienated as I do these days… I hope not.

Back to where I started: finding more friends to write and create and *act* with and I suppose I mean act in many different ways: be theatrical and take actuon in the world with friends who care about the environment and the future of the world. It is a very small thing perhaps but in those moments of being smiled at by someone who cares about these issues too, I feel safer. I am pondering how social I want to be and how alone I want to be and wonder if I will ever figure it out. I am so susceptible to what other people say about how hard relationships are, I just don’t want to get close to anybody if there is even a chance they might hurt me, if I could get embroiled in all this drama that can exhaust me at the very least. But creating and being in spaces that are safe for whatever is real, that is what I want, and writing with others who get something out of releasing something that is real onto a page or into a song really makes a difference for me in feeling less alone.

I don’t just want to be loved because it is soneone’s value or perceived duty to love; I want to be liked, I want to be seen for my positive qualities and I want others to care about me enough to kindly and compassionately share with me what they perceive to be my flaws or my ‘tail’ so to speak. I want to know: do you experience me as a safe person, and is there anything that we can talk about around that that could help us all feel better about things? I don’t want to be welcomed where I am not really liked and few people would give me the time of day for real and people are not sure what to think about me as an unsafe or safe person and there is no way or desire to start resolving those issues. I am just thinking about this retreat centre and how likely it is that I will feel loved and cared about and seen if I go back there; a lot would depend on if I can have a real conversation with the retreat leader I did the most work with and my gut feeling is they don’t like me too much and may have inaccurate stories or ideas about me but I’m not sure if they would say it. What I’m asking for is just honesty: do you like me? Do you appreciate me? Is there a chance I can contribute something of my leadership and would I have to give any of myself away to do that? Have I burned too many bridges? Can you truly forgive me? Would anyone love me in a puppy pile sort if way?

Would people here still like to be part of my life? Do they see my strengths, my gifts, my talents, and ways I may… more than being on the borderline between admission and exile… contribute my leadership to others, that I may not see myself? I am not asking a lot. It is just a retreat and I want to resolve matters in my heart and see how it goes for me. I am pretty sure domeone I really liked there does not like me one bit at all and well I have to change the name of my guitar for one. They asked me, in my meeting last week, if anything in particular was on my mind as far as my relationship with that retreat centre, and the truth is, I miss the way it used to be, miss being seen without fears of projections about me flying all over the place. I once said that this person was the only reason I would go back there, the only thing that kept me hanging on so long, but I don’t think that is quite true right now because to be honest they really are not part of my consideration in my desire to give this place another chance to be a part of my life in some way. I have no hopes or expectations that they have any positive thoughts or feelings about me at all and I do not see much hope of changing that. If I saw them it might just be awkward; probably what the retreat centre gatekeepers (as they called themselves) are thinking is that this person would be one of my main motivations for discerning these next steps as far as my relationship with this place. I am letting by-gones be by-gones and I feel horrifically about so many things but… if I seek some kind of resolution with this place, it will not be because I am looking to finangle my way into some kind of connection with them. At all. Though I do hope they would let me process how much, perhaps all my own fault, my heart has hurt around that. I guess there must be more to my desire to seek another opportunity to be on that Mountain after all, but I don’t know what it is; I miss community and the promise of community and I miss the days when my terelationship with this retreat leader was simple and not full of unresolved stuff in my heart. There is a lot that I miss, of course, and I am not going to energetically cross a boundary and hope for a connection that is just not there; I am past their being a motivation for wanting to return, I think, or at least that is where I am in this moment.

So, if I still feel drawn to this process of discernment, there must have been more to my love for that place than my hopes for connection with one person. Maybe I miss things feeling okay with this retreat leader who taught me so much. Maybe I miss the sense of magic snd unexpected possibilities unfolding when you least expect them. I just want to trust the captains not to lead me astray and throw me overboard, and these are not fears that I think should gwt me excluded, but they should be held in love with all the rest of me that I hope is welcome. I have to take steps forward, fake it till I make it, or I’ll never get anywhere.

Imagining connecting with this person more deeply taught me what balanced and grounded connection could ferl like at its best, though, and I am so sorry for using them for that exploration. It is so hard when you are as isolated as I have been. My fear is that if it came doen to an analysis that retreat center would probably misidentify the causes and sources of my isolation and the solutions. I don’t know, but maybe what I would like is feedback and help identifying these causes and sources and encouragement and support in taking action — getting unisolated, finding belonging, finding community, finding playmates and friends to share my life with (in a way that lets me imagine possibilities way beyond that one community that I am not sure whether I would devote my time to as community because that takes much bigger leaps of trust than this).

Still if I can find some kind of support on a retreat, that is ideally what I might like to find, how I might know I can trust, at least in the context if a retreat: I am asking for what I need, and feeling a loving response to that need; and I have no desire to change anyone else, or to criticise the organisation despite issues I do have with it. We will have to agree to disagree on some things but I promise to be respectful and trust the process… and if I can come to believe that more connection and sense of belonging and self-worth is possible for me if I put the eork into it, that is quite a lot. It is a matter of whether my retreat leader has given up on me, and if so, why; would they be willing to love me through such a process, and why? Just because I am having a hard time trusting these days, does not mean I should be made to feel pathological or ashamed for it; I am taking courageous if perhaps foolhardy (though slow discernment will course correct) steps into trust, and it is up to them how they want to take it. I am just doing the best I can with what they taught me: trusting the process of my life. And that is really hard right now. I could use a little help feom people who care, but not when people don’t actually like me. If you like me, see redeeming qualities in me, I’ll take a step forward… but please do not waste my time.

I am not so dependent on this place being respondent to a crisis or holding me in a particular way as I once was and I don’t have a lot of expectations or need a whole lot but I would like their word that they will treat me honestly and fairly and do the most loving thing: truly seek to help me find my aliveness and even my ecstasy, and if you can give me your word that you will treat me ethically, and that your commitment is to my wholeness, that word is enough: I want to honour their word and take it at face value. From there I will take a step into trust, and I may be disappointed or hurt, but I will not be broken by it.

If they like me enough and are willing to love me through a retreat for what I will take as their word are ethical reasons, I will take a chance if stepping into trust. I have felt ignored within that community enough that I really do not expect much and I can take responsibility for my own feelings and reactions. It is just a matter of whether they want to let me in, and in either case, I want to trust that whatever happens is for the best. I want to love, I want to forgive (and forgiveness I want to do so much of but it is so hard to do when you are used to and feel so defensive against narcissists who will abuse you and haha you in a Nelson-like way with your very forgiveness…)