The Greater Common Factor

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Almost everyday for the past (almost) couple months, I awake and am met with anxiety and dread, "What do I do about this?" "This" being something that, for the moment, will simply remain "this."

I've written a fair amount about part of the "this," a situation that happened almost a couple months ago. But much of that material is not currently public and may never be. Part of the "this" is that I found myself in a(nother) relationship web where false accusations were being thrown around and where, in the end, someone I trusted turned.

One may say, regarding these webs, "Well, Carol you are the common factor." That is true. I have stated the same thing. I am a common factor. I must look at my contribution to the situations.

The other common factor? The similar situations happened with people who were once involved in high-control groups. This has happened to me five(?) times now since leaving The Way. (Slow learner perhaps?) In one sense, The Way was kinder than these five scenarios. That doesn't mean I now endorse The Way.

So do I avoid relationships with ex-cult people? No. My closest friends are folks who were once involved in "cults."

So the common factor may not be the involvement-with-cults factor but may be how people (me included) have processed and continue to process through our experience(s) not only with the involvement-with-cults factor, but with the experiences of life itself.

Plus other people, never in cults, go through this same stuff.

I think the greater common factor is humanity.

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Authentic Writing

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In the memoir workshops that I participate in, we write.

And then we read aloud what we just wrote, if we so choose.

Most participates choose to read, but not all. For me, there is something powerful about committing one's words to another's eyes, another's ears.

I've heard Fred say more than once, "Don't commit to reading before writing."

As I dove into writing last night, I had to center myself. Would what I write offend people in the workshop if I chose to read it? How would it affect the workshop, for I might even mention the workshop in my writing?

I wasn't sure what would come off my keyboard, but I had an inkling in my head. And if my writing took a certain course, it was going to be difficult.

I recall words from another time in another memoir workshop when Fred quoted one of the McCourt brothers, I think it was Frank. Something like, 'Write what shames you. Write what scares you.'

On more than one occasion, Fred has said something like, 'Don't commit to reading (ie: publishing) before writing.'

If only I can keep that at the center of my core. For it is only that way that I can be true to my self.

My self.

I recently made a promise to never again abandon my self to another's silhouette.

And if I find that I have failed;
if I look inside and find a hollowness;
or if I look down and realize that I am trying to mold a certain shoe to my foot that I really don't like or walk a stretch of gravel road that I really don't want to be painfully trudging...
I hope beyond hope that first I can recognize my self from the hollowness, from another's silhouette, from shoes not designed for me, and definitely from the crunching of crushed rocks from a quarry.
I hope I will always be able to distinguish my self from what isn't my self.
And if I find my self being another self, that I can get back to my self.

And when that happens, I won't be the same self.

The hollowness; the shoes; the gravel road; the silhouette - all will have become a part of me.
There is no way around it.
***

Abe

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Betrayal. Abandonment.

I don't think I can ever expect that people are able to live up to the promises of never betraying or never abandoning. I understand that a person may tell another they will never betray or abandon that person. I understand that the promise maker has every intention of living up to that promise and that they are sincere and that it is a noble and loving thing to do.

But the reality is, that given certain circumstances, an individual may not be able to live up to their promise.

Abandonment is betrayal, in a sense.

Death would be the ultimate abandonment. The loved one left to live, is left without. The abandonment may not have been intentional; death is typically out of one's own control. Still the one left living is left with an emptiness.

I don't know if a human being can live up to, "I will never leave you nor forsake you."

For me, coming to the realization that, ultimately, a human being cannot guarantee that promise, brings with the realization a freedom.

But why?

What is that is liberated? Is it that I know I cannot depend on anyone to fulfill that for me and therefore I am free from living up to the same expectation for another? Hm. Is it that I no longer need to look to others expecting them to fill that need, that in a sense it is an unrealistic expectation?

I thought earlier today that the only one I want to expect to live up to the promise to never abandon or betray me is me. And if at times I find that I have abandoned my self, that I am able to recognize that, acknowledge it, forgive that part of me, and embrace my self again.

I hope that I am finally learning to not betray my self, and to not abandon it to someone else's silhouette.

As I met with Dr. McColloch yesterday, I asked if everyone has such a deep need to not be silenced? It is like air to me. I have a deep need to express, and to express out loud, in a sense. Like on this blog, not hidden in my journal.

We both laughed, because for years, I hid in my journal and Dr. McColloch was my soul audience. I'd go into his office, journal in tow, and I'd read bits and pieces of what I had written that week. He was my first publication, so to speak.

God, I loved my journals. They were my salvation for years. All that suppression that was bottled up came pouring onto paper. But only for my eyes...at least for about eightish years.

Abandon. Etymology. "A" means "at, to." "Bandon" means "power, jurisdiction." Etymologically, the word carries a sense of "put someone under someone else's control."

Wow. Interesting.

Betray. Etymology. From the Latin tradere "hand over," from trans- "across" + dare "to give." Hm. Similar to abandon in the sense of it is handing over, like giving someone else control.

I have two poems about "abandonment." They describe a part of me. A part of me that I named Abe.
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Shadow Colors

I just read a couple pages that open "Chapter 3: Commitment and Consistency" in the book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini.

The chapter (it appears) will explain how humans figure out a way to justify a commitment, even when that commitment is at cross purposes with what a person may really want or is a commitment that may be detrimental to the person.

As I read the first couple pages of the chapter I thought of what is known as "cognitive dissonance," that is when we justify our choices so that our brains don't blow a gasket when we are confronted with opposing information that crosses what we believe is true. As humans, we somehow must reconcile that kind of dilemma. So we reframe the situation in order to justify our decision in order to bring down the static, the dissonance, in our minds. It's a human thing.

But sometimes the static gets too loud and the justification makes it even scratchier. At that point we then make a change. Hopefully, it's a change that is beneficial.

Anyway, I read a sentence in the book, Influence, that caused me pause.

"Once a stand had been taken, the need for consistency pressured these people to bring what they felt and believed into line with what they had already done. They simply convinced themselves that they had made the right choice and, no doubt, felt better about it all."

It is the second sentence (in the quote above) that caught my attention.

When I read that second sentence, I felt that something might be "wrong" with me. I then had to think through why I felt that way. Only after writing this out, have I figured out why I felt there might be something "wrong" with me. And that is because I seldom feel I make a "right" or "wrong" choice.  I simply make a choice based on the best of my ability at the time of the decision.  I won't know if it is "right" or "wrong" until later, if I ever really know at all.  

Perhaps that outlook comes with age, or perhaps it is due to experiencing 'shattered faith,' so to speak. That is when one's structure around which they built their lives comes crumbling down and doubt the size of a gigantic edifice is continually looming casting shadows.  

There are most always more than two choices, than "right" and "wrong."  There are most always a variety or "right" choices and a variety of "wrong" choices. And many in between choices.

In other words, life has many shades of gray in the shadows. Not to mention all the colors and hues in the prism of a crystal.

Unplugging from Facebook

Note: Apparently when one deactivates, their page still pops on and off of Facebook (at least currently). Around September 9, someone at work asked what was up with my FB page. I asked them what do they mean. And they told me that my page has been on and off about 8 times. I'd appear as a friend on their page and then I'd disappear. Well, 'twern't me doin' it. Not sure what's up with that. She said it was happening with some other FB friends as well; they had deactivated and were popping on and off.

***
I realized this past week that I haven't blogged about deactivating my Facebook account.

I pulled the plug toward the middle of August. Some folks have asked me, "Why?"

The simple answer is, "To simplify."

Like other folks I'd thought from time to time about deactivating. But I would always opt to stay plugged in because of the great connections I had found, the cyber companionship FB offers via chat and reading what folks are up to and responding and updating my own status, the platform it provided me to express my voice and share about my blogs and about art, to support people's expression and art and writing, and probably some other reasons - if I were to ponder it more.

As I was backpacking in May on the Appalachian Trail for over a week, I seriously pondered about pulling the FB plug. At the time, I opted to stay for the reasons above and also for future promotion of a project I was working on at the time.

Yet I too often felt a tether to my FB page and a responsibility to respond and keep up with it, as well other pages and groups I had joined on FB. I like to support folks.

I know I could have simply ignored the tether feeling, or continued to put it in perspective. But it was still a tether.

Once the project I was working on was aborted..well..damage was wrought due to the way it was aborted...and I felt silenced..and wasn't sure about parts of my online presence. The day after that project ended cold turkey, I took to the Appalachian Trail for a LONG day hike some 15 miles across the Roan Highlands in Tennessee. I again contemplated pulling the FB plug, and maybe even Twitter and my blogs. Oh my.

Twitter and my blogs deleted? Hmm, that would be too much of a disappearance. Though, one's postings never really disappear (at this juncture of cyber history) once on the net.

Facebook? I felt the most *duty* to it, a duty I really no longer desired to feel. The tether feel.

In less than two weeks from that hike, I sent my FB page into the deactivation vault.

I admit that I felt a wee bit guilty for abandoning my FB page. It felt somewhat like I was committing a type of social-cyber suicide. And in one sense, I was. I also felt like I was destroying part of my identity. Huh?

Those feelings just further confirmed another reason for me to deactivate. Facebook is not my identity. Yikes!

I made awesome connections during my brief FB lifespan, which was around twoish years I think. Some of those connections will remain.

I'm glad, for now, that I deactivated. I have less emails and life is simpler.

Deactivate. The word reminds me of the Borg. Faceborg? Haha.

I still have my Twitter accounts though. I like Twitter. For me it's much simpler than FB.

But who knows, one day I may stop Tweeting. Perhaps I'll take up neighing at that point.
***

jury dismissed

I've taken pen to paper lately.

I used to live for ink. To have time for my 'guilty pleasure' of journaling.  To dive into the pages, between the covers.

In the past few years, I do more composing at the computer. And since I've had my laptop, a bit over a year now, I type from it a lot. It's like it has become another appendage. Funny that, because just five years ago I didn't really like computers.

As I sat in the Jury Pool Room at the courthouse last week awaiting to be called into the courtroom and questioned as potential jurors are, I wrote with ink in one of my journals, a Moleskine.

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[journal entry]

Thursday, 8/26/10

I currently find myself not feeling as free to write publicly. Sit with that Carol. Just sit with it in your heart.

Get back to writing Carol. Write for no one else.

But is that possible?

Once, or rather since, I blog and am public with my words, I find it difficult to write for me. Yet that is how I started. Some of my first public things I put on display were writings that were hidden in my journals. Recall how nervous I was? How I trembled at my keyboard?

Once a person opens their life for the public to view, once a writer exposes their soul, those inner works are committed to the public eye.  Once that happens, the writer is open to criticism and their words become open game. Open game on a few levels.

• The "quality" of the writing in content, grammar, structure, punctuation, etc.
• Is what is written accurate? Facts, places, peoples, times.
• The author's motive gets attacked. Questions as to why is the author making their life public - it must be pride of wanting attention or narcissistic or something along those lines.
• Whatever is written and read, the reader interprets as the reader will. The reader brings their life experiences with them to the page.

So especially in light of the fourth thing above, why do I, Carol, write publicly? Hmm. Perhaps the fourth thing doesn't prompt the question, but rather the answer. My answer, at least part of the answer, as to why I blog.

This is something I come back to again and again.

If I were to create, design, display a poem or a piece of music or work of art - why do I put in on display?  That would be a good question for any artist, would it not?

[end of journal entry]

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I then pulled out Sudoku while I continued waiting in the Jury Pool Room.

The trial was a criminal trial involving a drug dealer. The accused plead guilty that morning. There was no need at that point for a jury. We were all dismissed.