tuluum's Diaryland Diary
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Love and Loathing
Demure Flirt
What Kind of FLIRT are you?
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Hmm like many people the events this weekend in a certain corner of this here neighborhood called Diaryland left me confused and a bit disillusioned. As I tend to do when things challenge my worldview I retreated and thought a lot. And the one thing my mind came back to was the word love. Our need for it, our search for it, and the lengths and forms each of us will go to find it...
I remember reading an article last week by Rabbi Shmuuley Boteach who used to be a close friend of Michael Jackson. In it he quoted Jackson as saying that everything he's ever done he's done to feel loved. Whether or not he is guilty of the current accusations, I believe that statement. I believe that when that core sense of trust and love of who we are is lacking we will go to more and more perverse lengths to fill it, while simultaneously trying to numb ourselves from the source. You can't do both and win. It's bulimic. It's a spiral that sooner or later will implode and destroy us, and none of us are immune.
I have become convinced that this need for love is what really drives us and not sex or propagation or any of those Freudian theories. I also think it's this strange untouchable need that is testimony to our connection to the Divine, a soul if you will. Where the problem occurs is when there is a disconnect. When one of us feels that Divinity is to be sought, rather than it just is. Always inside, always accessible. I think that the greater the disconnect, the greater the darkness, and the greater our reactions to hold on to it, as if it were finite!
In seeking that love that we don't feel we are deserving of as ourselves we construct other realities, other personas with which we can solicit, and simultaneously not confront the disconnect. The extent to which we can do this on the Internet are greater than in real life, simply because of the lack of visual cues and feedback. For others of us we reinforce the disconnect by mutilating the physical form that we feel is a mocking representation of how far we have Fallen (if only we knew how absurd that is). Overeating, purging, cutting, slutting around, snorting blow, ivory towers of solitude, and yes lies. They are all branches on the tree of self-loathing. Dirty, dark, secrets that look back at us in the mirror. Sometimes those who we hurt will number a handful, other times maybe it will number in the hundreds. Regardless, it's not only ourselves that we are hurting by our actions. It never is. Love and trust are so fragile. And yet by fighting so hard to achieve them sometimes our needs blinds us to the fact that we are destroying the landscape as a result. Maybe the harsher we judge others is a reflection of our harsh we are on ourselves. Maybe by allowing ourselves to get to the root of the pain that no doubt bore this fruit we'll reflect healing towards those wounded parts of ourselves in turn.
There are very few of us, and I can think of none personally, who have not hurt or pushed away someone in our life, either through the acts of our own self-loathing, or through our relentless pursuit of that 'love' that will rescue us from it all. That validation that we at some point decided/believed belonged in the hands of others, not ourselves. If we don't believe that our authentic selves are worthy, why should we be shocked when others don't either? If we are willing to go 10% down a road of anger and hurt, it is only natural that there will be others who take it to 50, 60, 70. It is just sad. sad. sad. Sad all around. Especially when none of it is grounded in fact.
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There are no winners in this, but maybe if all affected , whether directly or indirectly, use this as a catalyst for raising a mirror to those areas of their lives where they too are living in deceit and denial (and hurting others/themselves as a result), there need not be any losers? I know I'm gonna try... I know I've already come to a deeper sense of peace and forgiveness about some events over the past 2 years in my own life as a result of these thoughts. And even if that's the only result of my search, it's blessing enough for me.
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4:49 p.m. - Sunday, Feb. 01, 2004
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