Hunbun told me something absolutely hilarious today. He told me that, being that his entire job is to play Sims Online all day, he's begun to dream in the Sims. Like.. when he's talking to someone in his dream, he'll see, like, status bars next to them. [You know, those things letting you know your comfort level, bladder level, energy level, etc.] And sometimes they'll even talk in Simglish!
That's so hilarious! And fascinating. And maybe scary.
Play it too long, and it may alter your reality.. Or confuse it at least..
But.. I wish I had the spirit to fully appreciate this. I've just been.. you know, I am so heavily in the process of working on myself right now. Consumed with it, to the point. Which is draining and exhausting and terrifying at the same time. I made some very big breakthroughs yesterday, while reading more of The Disease to Please, by Harriet B. Braiker. I checked out the book, probably three months ago from the library. And I read it up to a point and had put it down till now. Perhaps because I had gotten to the hardest section: "people-pleasing" as a way to avoid negative emotions. And so I was reading it, and a couple things were revealed to me that I never suspected would be a reaction from other people. And it just taught me so much..
Specifically:
"While you may think that your people-pleasing is protective and even beneficial to maintaining a close relationship, those who desire a more intimate relationship with you may resent your strategy. It may surprise you to learn that your preemptive people-pleasing can be viewed as manipulative, coercive, and controlling - albeit in disguised form - to those on the receiving end."
Exactly, what is people-pleasing?
It's stuff like this:
"I would go at almost any length to avoid a confrontation"
"I believe that I should not get angry or have conflict with the people I love." [And, just as I was typing this, I thought to myself, "Well, you get angry at Hunbun all the time." And I retorted back, "Yeah, that's because I don't love him." OR. This JUST occured to me.. maybe I've reversed the reasoning somewhere way back in my subconscious that since I do get angry at him, and am freely able to feel so and express so, then that must mean I don't love him.. Good god, I am an enigma even to myself..]
"When I become angry or hurt, I am far more likely to sulk, pout, or become silent than to express feelings openly and directly." [That's something I USED to do ALL the time..]
And there's more.. But, basically, it's always putting others first and leaving yourself last because of some crippling mindset, habit, or fear. Something that you've learned to do early on in relationships [like with the relationship you had with your parents] and cripples you now..
Like this:
"However, if you stay far enough away from people so they can't reach out and strike you, you are also too far for them to be able to reach out and embrace you. In this way, your 'safety zone' may turn out to be a lonely and even perilous place to stand."
And it sure as fuck has.
And here you have.. the most underlying root of why, in real life, I am usually a very quiet, shy, timid girl with nothing to say. Except I talk when approached. And I'm always obliging, considerate, cooperative. I smile and laugh and do what's asked of me right away. I try to act as "normal" as can be. And I never let a soul poke through the facade.
Except for a few chosen.
And even they couldn't break through the last few walls guarding and protecting me..
So I still don't know what it's like to have a close relationship with someone. And that terrifies and exhausts me.
I've been having cold sweats. I don't know if it's from my mental or physical state, but.. It's cold down here in Miami, but not that cold. But I feel like I can never get warm. And if I try to get warm by putting on extra layers of clothes, I start getting sweaty. And I'm still shivering anyway. My fingers are always freezing. The rest of my skin feels hot to the touch. And I don't know how to explain the sensation, but my skin feels like it's radiating heat.. kinda like that feeling you get on your skin [mostly on your face when you blush] when you are deeply embarrassed in front of a huge group of people. But it's like that all the time for me. My arms look red and splotchy to me.. and my thighs.. they look purple.
And I'm always, always shivering.
I wish I had the ability to have normal healthy open relationhips with people. And the people that have that.. are so fucking lucky. I can't just know out of nowhere how to deal with relationships, how people think and how they react to things. I only know my own situation. The techniques for dealing with relationships have to be learned. And they're learned by experience. I had a bad experience. I learned the wrong ways to deal with things. And in my life so far, I've played the role of the victim and of the agressor. And no one can tell me that my childhood wasn't played out that way. No, I wasn't sexually abused, at least not to my recollection. No, I wasn't physically abused, unless you want to count spanking..
I was verbally abused. You can ask my brother, though he wasn't dealt as harshly with. And you'll find many accounts of it in my older written diaries.. She was always yelling. She was so volatile, the littlest things would have her completely blowing up and yelling in my face. On a rampage, she was. It wasn't once in a while. It was all the time. Her words cut through like knives. The level of her voice might as well have made my ears bleed. I would write in my diary of how I would literally feel attacked.
But yet.. I wasn't aloud to get angry at her. I wasn't aloud to stand up for myself. I was supposed to just take it all and love her for it.
The rage built up. It swelled. It had no where to go.
So I took it on myself..
And cut..
In my own desperate crying fits, I would slash and slash, barely conscious of what I was doing.
It was my only release.
And of course, being a teenager, I played it up.. enjoying wallowing in my pain. But it still scarred me. Inside and out. And the experience still cripples me and I just want to get past it and figure out what to do with it..
On top of things, I learned to not talk to her. I learned to not express how I feel. I learned to stay out of her hair. It was the only way I knew to keep her from getting upset and attacking me in her way again. But no matter how hard I tried, meanwhile completely sacrificing my sense of self, mind you, she always found something to come at me with..
What do you do when this is the only way you learned to deal with someone..?
The paralyzing fear and the repression..
And now I have to find a way to UN-learn it all..