I Heart RWE - But Could RWE Ever Heart Me Back?

"Don't tell me who you are because who you are is thundering so loudly that I couldn't hear you anyway." Ralph Waldo Emerson

This saying by Emerson has been resounding through my chest cavity and bouncing off my ribcage ever since I first heard it probably twenty years ago. It was quoted to me by that same good friend of mine who spoke with me of disappointment: please see former post, "The Fabulousness Of Disappointment." She felt moved to quote RWE to me in response to my attempting to give her an extremely lengthy justification (droning on and on and on) for why my being a control freak was so necessary for the survival of the species. Please also see future post "My First Fourth Step." (Yeah, I doubt it!)

I think the woman who originally quoted it to me was really just saying, "Wow, give it a rest, wouldja? Give other people more credit for their own intelligence and perceptions - who they think you are is more about what your actions say than it is about your words!!" Or maybe, "Shut it, already!! We got your number a long time ago!" That sounds more like Ainsley.

Ironic, isn't it, how we're always the last people to know who we are? I remember after being clean and sober for awhile, warily approaching a long-time, dear friend of mine who had told me to pretty much get lost a year earlier because, in her words, she didn't want to watch me kill myself with booze and drugs. Now I was terrified that she would hate me once I told her the truth about me but I did it anyway. I met her for coffee at the corner of 42nd and Ninth and shyly told her that I was sorry for anything I had done to upset her, but that I thought she should know that I quit drinking and that I was an...an alcoholic. Her response to me was to laugh and say, "Yeah, no shit!!"

I recently had a fatal fallout with a different friend, specifically about "the obvious." I told her how I saw a situation where she was desperately trying to change and control some of our mutual friends. True, I could have stated it more simply myself, but she went on to write email after email, paragraph upon paragraph of explanation, justification and the theory behind her rightness. And then to show up later to publicly recruit other people over to see it "her way" too.

I know what this is. I know it because I've done it myself, all too many times, particularly in work situations where I thought someone was a bitch or I felt threatened by someone else's good fortune that I thought was undeserved. And I have felt perfectly justified and righteous in making my correctness known worldwide re this given situation. Only to go home and later feel baffled as to why I hate myself so much and feel the need to eat an entire layer cake or scratch at my wounds or cut my nails too short. Little did I know that it was Ralph and his wisdom, thundering their way up through my denial, telling me, "Hey, you don't believe that crap is right anymore, remember? Knock it off!"

These days, when I don't act well, I don't feel well, no matter what I've said and to whom. I still do these things on occasion, although only about 1/24th of the time I used to. But now I know what to do about my regression into fearful self-absorption - own it, baby, both with myself and with those I've visited it upon. And best of all, I get to do it with the helpful insight of my beloved friends.

Today I am grateful for the path and all the challenging mirrors I find along the way. Even if they sometimes don't look "right" to me.