my first blog entry
my first public publishing of anything that was revealing of me
presenting a me so different from who i've wanted to be and for years thought i was -
because many others were fine with suface interaction, had not themselves investigated their own hidden places, and so would not think to ask who i else i was or to anticipate harm i may do,
i had myself and the occasional fed up friend or lover say "wait i think what you're doing sucks" - or more perceptive strangers who kept their distance because something was off obout what i was presenting.
no my context has changed -
my scripts running
tonight's projected feature:
the people who think i am interesting , based on my constructed facade of friendly, affectionate, sane are going to take one look at this and say holy crap this is deadly boring. what a head case- smile at me weakly when they next see me and start to cut me out of interaction.
oh no thats me. right. thats what i do.
what i've done. i cut people out
i'm righteous and superior.
the fact is i am depressed
and its actually not boring to live.
depression as i'm experiencing it
a stuckness. a nowhereland
i've been letting go of myself for some time now.
looking at at some of my behaviours and saying no- thats it, enough
i've been stripping all these old layers of myself, not wanting to do it resisting ferociously the actual doing of it- the stuff that would actually change my behaviour
and certainly i have never experienced sitting standing as myself.
not trying to change not trying to be somewhere .
maybe thats what this blog is,
what happens when the ideas person sits in reality. doesnt go anywhere with the dreaming the planning the nothing just being. here. now.
just being me.
that i've been depressed - that my mother was depressed
that i 've been taught depression.
i wanted to look at myself - to a point . beyond that point no.
i'm looking for a place a way to bring together all the things that arduously had to be wrenched from me in terms of understanding - acknowledging , even for a moment
i've been good with seeing myself in dark rooms- crying by myself to myself,
hating what i saw, punishing mysel with self hating words and insults
you're so slow
you're so stupid
you can't do anything right
on time
you're always fucking up
my mother says she thought i might be retarded- her words- when i was small.
she would bring that up throughout my childhood and teens
i had at the heart of me at the core of me - at least i'm a good person.
now i'm there at the threshold
where i can often be found hovering undecidedly (but certain that i dont want to go forward)
i want to move but i hate change.
i want to move but i want to do it in my own time only - my big plea for autonomy is- i want to must do it myself
but now i'm in community
where they see me when everyone is being made to see me
seeing ourselves and unable to ignore pretend deny
posted by taz at 8:18 PM
photo by njeri-damali (campbell) of 
3 Comments:
Taz,
I can identify with a lot of things you say here. I am tormented by the reality of being faced with myself as I really am, instead of who I have pretended to be. I’ve also had people in my life who have kept their distance from me because they felt that there was something ‘off’ about my energy... it has taken me years to understand that they were/are right. I fear that people will look at my blog, and, as I become more real, more truthful, that they run from me. I have tones of insults, put-downs, mockeries of myself from my childhood, adolescence and beyond. I also want to run from myself, which I do by passive aggressively attacking people in my family.
I’ve spent so much time pretending to be someone I’m not, and finding a false sense of safety in mimicking other people so that I could find favour with the popular folks. The popular folks.. this is so short sighted because I understand the popular folks to be white heterosexual men, middle class, lighter skinned women of colour (such as yourself), those who perpetrate as 'cool' but who are really a bunch of fuckheads with fans. They are not people who love.
I really fear looking at myself outside of anyone and everyone else. Sometimes, I tell myself that I don’t have the capacity to see and understand and sit with the ‘real me’. I used to have dreams of meeting myself on a street, in a mall, on a plane and not being able to integrate the parts of myself together.. And the doppleganger would always hate me, and run.
Its not pretty to sit with the fact that I would rather hurt the people I love in order to save myself the pain of my own torment, my own troubles. But that’s where I am right now.
I have to be careful to accept the pain, while still living, loving and breathing. When I don’t, the hurtful actions that I engage in as a way to block myself from feeling this pain, continue.
What about you?
Another thing. You talk about seeking autonomy. But we all comitted to being autonomous in Azania, to think, reason, love, live and engage autonomously in alliance and community with each other. Autonomy is great.
I found this definition at families.com
"Personal autonomy refers to a person's sense of self-determination, of being able to make choices regarding the direction of her or his own actions, including the freedom to pursue those choices. With personal autonomy, an individual is able to engage in effective self-regulation—successfully monitoring needs and values; responding adaptively to the environment, and initiating, organizing, and directing actions toward the achievement of needs. For some theorists, the psychological experience of autonomy has its origin in the organism's natural tendency to organize both itself and its environment in the pursuit of goals. In this view, a sense of autonomy requires the absence of restraining forces that can limit this natural tendency. Importantly, feelings of autonomy are not only crucial for adequate intrapersonal functioning—competent action and adequate psychological health—but are also essential for the adequate functioning of a healthy society."
I think that our choice to forfeit our personal autonomy is about ourselves, and our unwillingness to be responsible for who we are, what we want, and what we'll do.
It is dishonest to present our community as one that prevented us from achieving personal autonomy when the reality is that neither of us embraced it before engaging in community, and have not now. Autonomy was/is what we need/ed to help communities move and grow.
Bongafish,
Let me add words yes?
There's no question Azania has been/ is a place where i had been/ am still asked to live an actual, authentic life-
i fear actual authentic autonomy.
In Azania i was wanting to avoid creating a life of choices that were fully my own and was consistently frustrated that my "let me give you my power,subjugate myself and dissapear into a collective" were met with a "no,you need to ground in your life. you need to be and live and interact powerfully with everyone in your life. handing overyour power to others is a trap."
truly
i would have cultified azania had anyone let me - and sabotaged it futher.
what i did instead,in the face of being asked to live my own life fully was to swing between two freak-outs:
one- i dont need anybody. leave me alone! stay away! i need to live/ do whatever by myself.i can do everything i dont need support.
The result of which was that when my self-created shit hit the fan and i found myself needing the knowledge/experience,energy or emotional presence of others, the crisis i had created would get me care and support without ever having to ask for it.
I robbed myself of showing myself to be fully human and needing of others.
Conversely i have also enacted
"Help! i am needy,i am incapable, i am incompetent, do everything for me, come to me and never leave my side, not even to occupy your own life."
Which was more emotional manipulation i offered to other Azanians- to do the work of sorting out my endless attention seeking (unnegotiated demands as well) and then to strategize about how they would interect with the lightskinned peach who was sitting on her power and privelge, crying whenever she was asked to do, or create, or think,or work,demanding that the darker skinned members mother,father and work for her even as she did not replenish all this energy she was benifitting from. would not integrate an understanding that i needed to actually ground in my shade within azania( amonhst other things)
Or would acknowledge fully the energy i had received in any lasting way.
which is how i allowed myself to swing to offensive numer one: "leave me alone",
as if i had never taken, sucked and profitted from my strategies.
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