nancy ries writes...

Desperate

I accept the fact, the cold hard fact, that I am a desperate woman when it comes to finding the right man for me.  I am what men would mostly call ‘psycho’.  The woman who calls a lot, or sends too many emails, chases with no self-dignity whatsoever.

Why, you may ask, would I know that I am like that, and still continue to do it?  Why, indeed.  It’s behavior that guarantees rejection.  It’s behavior that will bring pity to me.  It brings me depression.  It lowers my already low self-esteem.  It’s utter complete lack of self-love.

Horrible.  Terrible.  It’s a black hole of neediness, loneliness.  It’s self-destructive.

I am also that kind of woman who picks the ‘wrong’ kind of man.  The more unavailable emotionally, the harder I try.

Oh, I hear you:  Daddy stuff, right?  Well, even if that’s the answer, that doesn’t remove the behavior.  I have been ‘understanding’ my psyche for decades, and my family’s.  This is the one area that really bites me.  It just will not change.  It is so stubborn, like the oldest growing weed in the garden. 

I’ve tried chemicals to get it out.  I’ve tried digging and digging, but still don’t have the roots out.  I’ve tried ignoring it and just planting some roses, hoping they will push out the weeds if I just nourish the roses.  But the weed gets nourishment from the roses no matter how hard I try to section off the weed’s growth.  It still makes it way past any psychic barrier I build.

I’ve tried talking to it.

Mowing it down.

Consulting with experts about it.

It remains.  It wins.  It succeeds.  And I am the one that dies of starvation for love of the right man.

My degree in psychology didn’t kill it.  My years of therapy didn’t kill it.  My decades of spiritual practice didn’t kill it.  A lifetime of physical disciplines and creative adventures – also did nothing.  Nothing.

Maybe it’s one of those things that can’t be ‘cured’ at this time in human history.

Maybe the only way something like this gets cured in a person is when some other major sort of emotional evolution takes place, some kind of healthier acceptance of who women are, and also who men are.

Maybe my disease of the heart can only be cured when love itself becomes healthy in the world.  For surely, the world would not be what it is if love was truly healthy.

Yes, love is everything and everywhere – but it’s not that simple.  Only some love is awake in the world; most of it is still sleeping, inactive, unawakened.  Hence, there is suffering, of all kinds in all ways.  If love were indeed fully awake in the world, it would be impossible for poverty and hunger to exist anywhere on the planet, or for tyrants to rule a people, or for disagreements to lead to bloodshed.  Or for love to be not returned.

Love can only exist where there is an awakened intelligence, and the world is not fully intelligent yet.  I don’t mean worldly knowledge, I mean awakened intelligence.  Wisdom.

So, maybe I just have to live with this weed until wisdom prevails.  As much as we would like to believe we can change everything as individuals, there are actually some limits, and there are many more things that cannot change without group effort, group awareness – group intelligence, awake and thriving.

My group isn’t quite there yet, though God knows I keep doing my best to keep it moving along.

I guess I just have to live with this until wisdom prevails.

Even if I was the most beautiful specimen he had ever found, there was still a power problem.

I let him do it, though – control me.  I gave him that power.  He needed it, so I let him have it.  I didn’t care about the power; I cared about getting to his heart and trying to help with some pain that I knew was there. 

I did help with that pain, but he would have benefited far more if he had allowed himself to loosen up a little of the restraints he placed around me – and around himself.  A very sterile glass jar.  Yuk.

But I had underestimated his fear of me, though, I really did.  I thought he would be able to grow out of it and even be willing to see a deeper side of me that would have made our friendship so much more valuable and beautiful.

But there are a lot of false assumptions we too easily make about what is the perfect butterfly and, of course, the biggest one is:  Is it beautiful enough?

Unfortunately, he had decided – too soon, without getting all the facts – that he knew what he wanted in a butterfly, and it wasn’t me.  And of course he went looking in all the wrong directions for THE butterfly and got it all wrong.  Twice.  Or it may have been three times.  They were moths, that much I know.

Now he says he has found the One Perfect Butterfly and it’s great, this is it.  Hm.  He suddenly is so sure he has picked the right butterfly.  I don’t think so…but what the caterpillar do I know?  He barely let me fly, barely even looked at me.  He certainly isn’t going to consult me.

Of course, by looking at me he was able to see he had picked moths and not butterflies.  But then he decided he would just trust himself and stop looking at me.  Guess he figured he had all the information he wanted from me, and I wasn’t useful to him anymore.

I was just a butterfly on the wall with a jar over my head to keep me contained so he could observe me, and learn from me.  Nice enough to have around when he wanted to look at something – different.

You see, at first I thought the jar was a temporary thing and then he’d see I wasn’t a wasp and sting him, or a moth to chew a hole through his clothes, and then he could see how I could really fly – to see what a real butterfly can do.  And if he opened the door of his heart as well I’d be able to take him into the garden and really show him some beauty – but it didn’t happen.  I stayed in his lab.  Being observed. 

For awhile, though, in the beginning, I liked it because I knew I had a reason for being there, and he needed to learn something from me.  So I made good use of his jar.  Got to know its boundaries and tried to make a bit of a home there, but, he would forget to feed me and give me a little water, so I started getting a bit run down.  Couldn’t fly much either.  Small jar.

Nonetheless, butterflies are really very optimistic – especially after all the gooey mess we have gone through to become a butterfly.  We already know a lot about containers, cocoons.  Lots.   So I gave him as much butterfly language as I could, but he wasn’t very good at paying attention.  Easily distracted – mostly to fake glittery stuff elsewhere in the lab.  He’d even forget he was trying to find his butterfly.  He’d forget I was already there.  There wasn’t much real life in that lab as far as I could tell.

Needless to say, I finally had to scoot out through a chip in the glass.  Whew.  Free again.  Wings still intact.  Still pretty, but a little bummed on what he still thinks beauty is and isn’t.  Cried some butterfly tears.  I loved the guy despite the control thing.  Even if he didn’t think I was all that colorful.  Not the butterfly he was looking for, or I wasn’t mesmerizing enough, or something. 

Whatever it was, the jar thing became a bit much.  The container became more about his control of me, then me being safe in that jar from…..uh, what?  Did I really want that container?  Or did he?  Ok, I let him put me in there, like I said.  I gave him that power.  He needed to learn something, and I did what I could. 

Hey, and I learned a lot, too.  Mostly about his container – his lab. 

He just didn’t realize that if he had given me freedom voluntarily, and had followed me outside, he would have seen – well, let’s just say it would have changed his mind about butterflies completely.

Oh, well.  I need to stick to my own kind, I guess.  Nature and science really still do have some problems.  Although, there might be somebody out there fearless of butterflies.