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The experience of the couple days after Fourthajuly when I alienated a friend has been with me ever since. Mixed feelings. I ask myself why I did it. Answer comes back because every time he visits, he has to pick a fight before he leaves. It is a habit pattern he got with mother's milk. When his mother was visiting the farm in the summers, she picked a fight with her mother before she left. Left in a huff, mad, driving home mad. Next time you see her or him, it's like nothing ever happened. All is sweet and lovely. I've seen the pattern for years, half my life. A few days ago he had a terminal blowout with his uncle, read what I wrote about his missionary zeal, and that was it for me too. "Total closure." This is somebody who talks in absolutes you're not to take literally. In other words, never take what he says literally, because if you go by his words and sentences, he undoes everything he says, makes no sense whatsoever. I'm expected to go by what he means, not what he says. He insists I visit Portland, wants to show me Portland, and Oakland. Some years ago he gave me a tour of Baltimore, the bars. There comes a time I see his neurotic patterns of behavior affect my emotional life, make me question my behavior when he's the only one of people I know who inspires nervous breakdown by having one in front of my face and spewing its energy onto me. It took the buzz in my head three days to go away that he'd given me in two.
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I don't like the feeling of breaking off with a friend, but I do like the freedom of knowing he'll never be in my face again emphasizing full volume that I must watch some tv show about a serial killer, "the good kind, he only kills bad guys." He was going to send me a box set of the tv show. No thanks. But you'll love it. And Downton Abbey. Another tv show I would love. He's going to send me disks of it. No thanks. But you'll love it. No I won't. How do you know? Instead of cordially rolling my eyes, I explained I don't like English upstairs/downstairs drama. I do not care about 19th century London wealth, nor do I care about 19th century London servants. I care nothing for the period, the genre, that it was made for television. If I wanted to watch television I would. It's very easy. I have thought about this. This is not the first moment it has entered my awareness. I know what I am saying. I do not want to watch Downton Abbey or whatever the hell it is. If you have to send me disks, ok, but don't count on me watching it. This is the nature of our conversations. This is what I go through from the time he arrives to the time he leaves, every time. When I call him a friend, it's despite this and the habit pattern of always ending a visit with a fight. In a way, I've been missing him; it's a bit like he died suddenly. But I do like the prospect of him staying out of my face and no more of the ongoing insult that I don't know myself. This is the only way it's going to happen. He's the one made the decision. I accept.
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As it is said in these hills, he can get on your last nerve. A day or two ago I was looking at consciously shedding the bullshitters in my life, while at the same time not quite certain it can be called conscious. I feel like the subconscious did it. It's not something I consciously set out to do. I believe it came from the subconscious, because the urge overwhelmed my conscious mind, took it over, said get out of the way, I'm coming through. Starting to get a little bit of understanding of my subconscious, feeling like I see it sometimes, not like "see," but almost. One day I saw the subconscious as a beach ball, for illustration, and the conscious mind electrical currents dancing around on the surface. When I see that image in the mind's eye, I get it. Finding that image seems like it has been a doorway to the subconscious. It feels like I'm paying attention to what it is thinking. Instead of overriding it with conscious mind, I tend now to let conscious mind go and allow the subconscious come through. When I feel like I've found a flow, this is where I'm now thinking it is, the subconscious. It is slower than the conscious mind. It's flow is slower. The conscious mind can go at whatever speed we want it to. Mine goes slower in the mountains than it did living in the city. By now, shifting to the slower lane I'm finding in the subconscious how I really feel about one thing and another. It appears I'm at a place now where the subconscious can pop up, take over and direct the show by its own will.
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I believe writing these everyday entries helps access the subconscious too. All the time writing I am looking within for how I feel, feeling it, assessing what I feel, wanting to be true to my honest feelings. Sometimes I leave decisions to the subconscious to chew on. It's that place I call the back of my mind where I can let something float for years and then one day see it. My feeling is that my subconscious came through and told my conscious mind enough's enough. It's the same thing every time. When there is nothing going on but one telling the other what to do, the one being told what to do isn't getting much out of the conversation, already knowing I'm not doing any of it. After hours of being told I don't know what's good for myself, that since I won't watch tv, he's going to make dvds of tv and send them to me. Assault is what I've called it, and the word still fits. The assault is in the repetition. After we get through one thing I haveta, needta, gotta do, that I'm not gonna do, then it's another and another and another. Takes me back to his childhood. ::Boing:: Just had an insight. Both his mother and his grandmother were adults who insisted on being taken for children. He'll never get over it. It's mother's milk that he'll need to be taken for a child all his life. Now I understand why my subconscious knew when to say enough's enough. Seeing him watch television is the same as seeing a plug in a wall socket.
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I've always "been there for him," willing to go through what it takes to be told what to do without end, dealing with an adult who talks and acts like a child. A review of knowing him shows me a child that never grows, living in an adult body. This behavior of having to inform everyone around him of what they need to do goes all the way back in him. And then I see one of my mother's characteristics in me, reaching out to somebody she feels sorry for, like she can help them. That's what I was doing. I've only seen it work against her. I thought I'd learned long ago to let go of that in myself. Here it is. Maybe this one was grandfathered in. And one of his mother's characteristics in him is getting in your face arguing and soapboxing, forcing a man to hit her to shut her up. Then, YOU HIT ME. And a new kind of hell breaks loose. I can't live with people like this doing a hatchet job to my head. One day I love you, next day I hate you, I forgot I love you, I hate you, I forgot I hate you, I love you. One thing I like about getting old is the freedom to say, Cut that shit out. It is one of many freedoms I have found in growing old that makes me wish I'd seen it all along. It's like these things have to be learned by experience.
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