Nonperson wrote:
It's a choice. It comes down to whether the good opinions of the people in question are more important than your happiness and that of your family. You mentioned "survival" - yes, sure, completely alienating everyone around you can cause you to end up unemployed, homeless, and with your kids in foster care, but that's an extreme scenario and the fact that your kid's best friend's mom thinks you're a flake (for instance) isn't that serious a matter.
When I was a kid I had a huge ego and would stand up to anybody. When I started middle school, though, I was so ostracized I ended up internalizing the bullies' hatred and became a very self-destructive, depressed and paranoid person. I didn't emerge from that until 25, and by then I'd managed to screw my life up good and proper by dropping out of school and marrying a sociopath. Since then I have been slowly putting things back together. Sometimes I slip back into self-loathing when I run into a setback, but overall I have chosen to reject that mindset. When it comes to pleasing others and conforming, well, it is impossible to please them all and beyond doing the minimum to stay out of trouble I refuse to worry about it. I managed to find a small circle of people who accept me as I am, and that's enough for me. There will always be someone, somewhere, who thinks you're trash/crazy/etc., and sanity is recognizing when you do and when you don't need to care.
Interesting thought. Think I have had that one before myself.
I don't know. I would like to like me again. The person I was when I liked me built this life and loved it. I remember being happy; I remember all of us being happy. I was kind of talking to DD11 about it. She misses the way things used to be. DS5 says he "likes the other Mommy better." I would like to have that attitude again, be "the other Mommy" again.
I don't think I can recognize from minute to minute when I do and do not need to care. Do and do not need to conform. I am afraid of everyone at this point-- even some stupid speech pathologist who in one breath tells me DD3's language is developing at or above normal and in the next breath says, "So your insurance will pay for 30 sessions; when do you want to start?"
I would like to like myself, trust my own judgment, all that stuff. I even do it, like, in my own head. I'll be driving down the road or whatever-- all the kids are asleep and it's just me and I'll be having these conversations with myself, and I say what I think and believe it and just think I'm a pretty fine hominid.
No paragon or anything, but pretty good. As good as most anyone else I'm likely to meet on the street. Good Enough.
I just can't bring myself to actually do it openly any more. Too dangerous. No point anyway-- What am I going to do, mouth off to the people I have to talk to that just ignore and/or dismiss what I have to say?? Start standing up to people?? Seems so much safer to just keep remembering that I'm dogshit on the bottom of the human race's shoe.
Agreed-- Mommy Wars are totally s**t. I avoid other mothers who engage in mommy wars. Now it's people I can't avoid-- teachers and aides at school giving me s**t about the disservice I've done my kids by not having them brought up in daycare from 6 weeks old, over and over that's all they'll say when I bring up concerns about DS5. I note the people I have trouble with are all female nonparents-- young women in their early 20's, the kind of people who pass out photo holiday cards to their classes with pictures of their weddings and pets and captions like "Happy Holidays" or "Merry Everything".
I don't want to be critical but--- Really?? Really?? Are we f*****g living in The Giver yet?? Part of me wants to give up and conform no matter what I believe in; part of me wants to start looking at homeschool curriculums and rebel in a huge, huge, huge major way.
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"Alas, our dried voices when we whisper together are quiet and meaningless, as wind in dry grass, or rats' feet over broken glass in our dry cellar." --TS Eliot, "The Hollow Men"
21 Apr 2013, 3:35 pm
