Good Thing Friday (66)
May 22, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $1551.58; Rural libraries, $321.62.
1. I learned to play Uno for the very first time this week and it was fun!! I’d forgotten how to just have fun, a little bit.
2. My friend is reading through my archives and texting me quotes. This one made me laugh because I still do this: “Tell me honestly, now, is it really weird that when I sustain a really fantastic-looking injury, I want to show people? I’ve got a newish 1 inch by 2 inch gash across the top of my foot from an altercation with an unfinished edge of a desk, and I had to fight the urge to snap a photo and share it. It’s mostly a morbid fascination that’s probably not shared by the world at large.” We discovered that we both do this thing! I have someone to share war wounds with again!
3. In this moment, I really don’t miss anyone. I know that will change when we get into the summer when we have plans, but at this time of year I normally have my nose to the grindstone so that is feeling a little bit “normal”. Minus all the frustrations of being overloaded with work, cooped up with very few safe outlets because even where things are opening, people refuse to wear masks and I can’t risk catching this thing.
Challenges this week: Therapy was unexpectedly tough. We explored the idea that you can have emotions or feelings without any obligation to act on them. That is a completely foreign concept for me. I’ve always had action and obligation tied to feelings. Growing up, family meant obligation. You were duty bound to love them, which means take care of them, make them proud or add to their reputations by visibly doing well in life and sending money home and caring for them in your old age. Love was nothing BUT duty and action. And in my current life I express and perceive love through action. What does it mean to acknowledge the complexity of loving and hating someone at the same time? To me, it means having conflicting needs to both distance myself and do for them. Which is, of course, not at all ideal.
<– I also have trouble with this idea for myself ….
When thinking of other people, it’s obvious. I don’t love them solely for what they can do for me.
But I do think I have to do things to “earn” or prove my worth for love. It literally doesn’t make any sense to me that someone would choose me as a person they’d like to have in their lives just for the sake of having me around. My utility is my worth. Which is probably not a great thing to believe.
4. They are nowhere near out of the woods but we got a little heartening news – a friend’s cancer is not the worst it could be. So we have some hope for treatment. Please cross your fingers that they come up with an effective treatment plan.
*socially distanced air-hug*
nicoleandmaggie recently posted…Ask the grumpies: What is your favorite board game?
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glad to hear about the fun!
I’m sorry your therapy was rough, but thank you for sharing, it helps to hear someone else articulate this: “But I do think I have to do things to “earn” or prove my worth for love. It literally doesn’t make any sense to me that someone would choose me as a person they’d like to have in their lives just for the sake of having me around. My utility is my worth. Which is probably not a great thing to believe.”
I also struggle with my worth if I cannot find a way to be of service to someone. I have noticed I specifically and preferentially choose flatmates that are in some need (just moved to the country, don’t speak a lot of English, need help doing something that I’ve done before (e.g. apply for NZ residency)). I feel more comfortable around people that I feel I can be of help to. I call myself a foul-weather friend–I am in my BEST friend mode when someone is down and needs help or encouragement. I love helping friends move, for example–which most people avoid like the plague. Of course I encourage and am happy for friends when they succeed, and help them celebrate fun things and birthdays and stuff, but in the off times, when nothing is amazing nor horrible, I’m probably a semi-crappy friend. I’m messed up.
hope your friend gets through treatments OK!!
I’m glad to share!
And I have referred to myself the same way! I tend to think my only use as a friend is for the bad times and that’s just not healthy. I suspect we’re not being very fair to ourselves, are we?
Thanks for the good wishes, I appreciate all the goodness in their direction.