i'm not really sure how to talk about this bit but like - okay, so i periodically socially withdraw from everyone for weeks or sometimes months at a time and one of the worst things about that experience is learning that nobody really needs me for anything
Conversation
and tbf i've carefully set up my life so that nobody needs to depend on me for anything specifically so that i can do that withdrawing, it just turns out that it sucks a lot more than i thought. it makes me feel... expendable? replaceable? useless? i don't quite have words
2
1
57
like i lowkey feel like i've been wasting my life for years and in some sense i needed to do that but also i've been waiting for someone to get mad enough at me that i can tell it matters to them that i am doing this and they want me to stop
4
54
there are at least two components here and i don't have great words for either of them, one is like "i want what i do to matter to other people" and the other is like "i want someone to believe that i can do much more than i'm doing"
4
51
the funny thing is that as i was going through all of this privately the other day i remembered that actually did get mad at me about approximately this, twice, the first time long before i could really metabolize it and the second time right when i was on the edge
1
34
i mentioned awhile ago that i was trying out the ideal parent figure protocol - it's significant that when i was doing it i was exclusively working with an ideal mother, infinitely loving and accepting, all that jazz. even that was hard. i didn't feel ready for ideal father
2
23
that's changing though. the ideal father... again i don't have great words for this. the ideal father has standards. there are values he wants to pass on, skills he wants to teach, dangers he wants to guard against
GIF
read image description
ALT
1
1
29
"standards" doesn't mean that his love is conditional - that's one way father energy gets twisted and distorted and then people rebel against it - but that there's a difference between being strong enough to defend the village vs. not and his job is caring about that difference
2
43
I lost my father when I was 8.
I was given another when I was 12.
They were as different as night and day.
My birth father taught me compassion for the weak, how to be kind, and the value of laughter.
My 2nd father taught me how to fight, loyalty, and the strength of cunning. 1/
1
1
Both these men were deeply flawed.
But, between them they showed me how to balance power and grace.
How to know when to lead, versus when to follow. They showed me the importance of building community around myself and vice versa, for the benefit of all 2/2
1
1
Replying to
dudes truly rock 🙏