Commitment.

I have commitment issues. I haven’t always had them; they developed to 100% fruition somewhere between my current relationship and the relationship prior to that. I haven’t yet put my finger on exactly why they developed (for the record, I don’t place the blame on anyone else) but sometimes, when the commitment issues rear their disfigured head I can’t help but try again to fully figure it out…usually to no avail. Although, today I may have hit upon a piece of the puzzle.

Today, in what began as a joking sort of funny conversation, an innocent remark was made that made my brain spin a little. It happened so fast that I didn’t really process it at all until I was on the way home on the bus (at a training this week and it’s just easier to avoid driving and spending a million dollars on parking downtown). It all started out during lunch while walking by the KCJ (King County Jail)…apparently it was their hour of ‘yard’ time; I learned this because I remarked about how it was possible that I could hear inmates whooping and yelling. Then I mentioned how glad I was that I had never done anything to land myself in jail. Then I took it further and mentioned how funny I thought it would be if my companion at the time ever had to actually bail me out of jail for something. Then he said that he hoped that if that was the case it would happen before we were married.

Wait. Just, a, minute…is what my brain did.

My mouth did better than my brain because I just asked why that would make a difference and the conversation went on from there.

To fast forward from there (through many poorly drawn stick figures and such for the training that we’re doing) I revisited the conversation on the bus. Specifically I mused about my silent emotional reaction to it. Then I started thinking about all the significant relationships that I’d had. Specifically for some reason I thought about how healthy or unhealthy each relationship was in relation to my level of commitment to it (really instead of commitment, at the time I was thinking about how much I felt I needed the relationship/person at the time I was relating to them). An interesting correlation took shape in my brain. It is best demonstrated in graph form:

I think this makes me look crazy…but let me explain if I may.

I took all of the relationships that I consider significant as far as longevity, closeness, etc. and gave them all two different number values (scores, if you will). One score represented the level of how healthy I felt the relationship was/is; 1 being incredibly unhealthy and 10 being significantly healthy. The other score represented the level of need I felt for that person/relationship; 1 being the most unhealthy level of need ever and 10 being a feeling of not “need”ing at all (as clarification, in the brain of Kelly “need” = “unhealthy”). If I really wanted to delve deep into the motivations of my relationships with people I could have labeled “perception of need” as “codependent” (on my part at least), but anyway…

As you can see it starts out representing a relationship where I felt I needed the person sort of a lot and therefore the relationship was fairly unhealthy (for details I won’t go into here). It improves some with the second relationship where the level of need felt was not high at all and the relationship was fairly healthy (in terms of how someone treated me, honesty, etc.). Something important I need to add here…though the relationship was fairly healthy my level of commitment to it was not very healthy and not very high (come to think of it I should have added that line to the graph too, but oh well). Then you can see that it dips a bit with the next one in terms of both needing the person more and the unhealthy nature of the relationship. Then the outlier appears in the data and his name is George. That isn’t something that needs to be detailed at this time. Suffice to say I was malfunctioning at the time and felt that I needed him in order to breathe and the relationship was terrible…but eventually I got over this.

The rest of the data steadily improves and eventually demonstrates how I feel about my current relationship. It’s very healthy in terms of trust, kindness, friendship, love and all that stuff. In fact I can honestly state that I have never been treated better by anyone else. But the commitment thing still causes my internal thoughts to go a little haywire. After making a crazy relationship graph I think I understand why.

As we’ve already discussed my brain equates need with unhealthy because when I think of need I think of codependent, which has clearly been an issue for me in the past. Intellectually I realize that the most important part is “wanting” someone (for a myriad of different reasons) but this is where I get screwed up.

I don’t trust my sense of “want” and I think that’s where the problem lies. Having been used to operating on a “need” basis and then getting to a point where I vehemently throw that out the window after a number of poor experiences (one in particular) I’m just not used to basing commitment on “wanting” to do it. I don’t trust myself.

And I remain unsure of how to get to the point where I fully do.

Crisis

There’s one reason that stands out to me as to why I’ve lasted as long as I have with the job that I do. I have what I would consider a somewhat admirable ability to remain relatively okay and keep it mostly together in a serious crisis. Only when it’s serious though. Put me in front of something seemingly small and it’s usually enough to derail me. I’ve done a lot of thinking as to why this is (because really…it’s pretty backwards) and I’m grateful that my P was able to put it in words for me that I agree with. It’s a product of growing up in a household where crisis was sort of routine. You eventually learn to cope with it in somewhat of a stride because if you don’t you end up crashing every single time someone gets hit, or hurt, or abused. Sometimes as a result, it’s the seemingly small stuff that can tend to cause abnormal anxiety and distress (which needless to say, can be incredibly frustrating on a daily basis).

This is not to say that I don’t cry if, for example, a family member ends up in the hospital; but truth be told the malfunction of being used to crisis seems to allow a grace period of getting through it without breaking down. This is good in its own way, but also bad. What it really means is that the breaking down doesn’t come until later…sort of like a rubber band that has been stretched for days and is finally allowed to give way.

I’m still on the fence as to whether this is good in the long run or not. Is it better to just initially break down and get it over with? Or is it better to hold it all together in crisis mode only to end up completely drained and in tears when things calm down?

Where I was (at least part of it)

I don’t think it matters precisely what it is that eventually pulls us to our history or roots although I like to think that at some point most of us do get drawn to it. When I look back at the span of about 12 years of my life it isn’t one certain situation or one certain time period that drew me to it; it’s been a bit of a steady march, if you will. That being said I can recall distinct legs of the march that did have a little more significance in relation to wanting to understand more.

I often have odd dreams (yes, I realize that odd dreams are not unique to just me) which initially are usually dismissed by me as irrelevant to everything. Some of them come back up though and appear to have more relevance as a result of some real life event or situation that happens later. A couple of weeks ago I had a dream in which Jen popped up…smack dab in the middle of accidental dreamy images/events completely unconnected to her. To be quite honest with exception of noticing it when I woke up the next morning, I didn’t give it a ton of thought. However today I once again ran across one of my favorite pictures of us and consequently cried for a while. The immedate connection was obvious to me; clearly it happens to be one of those times when I have some ‘dealing with it’ to do (to be clear I do not think that we ever truly get ‘done’ dealing with the death of a loved one; grief is weird and sometimes it will hide for a while but eventually I think we are reminded of it again and deal with it some more). There was another connection which at first wasn’t as immediately obvious to me.

I think it has been times of strife or sadness which, either purposely or coincidentally, have drawn me a little closer to wanting to ‘get’ part of where I came from. Thinking of both sides is a bit daunting so I started with Native American (there’s still Norwegian to go). In my perception of American culture (which is obviously not necessarily “correct”) when someone dies we usually have a ceremony to remember them right after their passing but don’t necessarily tend to continue to have ceremonies to remember people that aren’t here anymore. Some of us do and I have had personal experience with this but for the most part I don’t see that it’s necessarily an expected part of the culture to do so.

As of late I’ve been chatting more with an Uncle on my Dad’s side which alone is clearly awesome, but even better he has provided me with some starting points online to understanding more about that side of my culture. And I’ve actually been reading about it. For a very simplified narrative on our history courtesy of the ever dubious, Wikipedia:

The Ojibwa (also Ojibway or Ojibwe) or Chippewa (also Chippeway) is the largest group of Native Americans-First Nations north of Mexico, including Métis. They are the third largest in the United States, surpassed only by Cherokee and Navajo^{[citation needed]}. They are equally divided between the United States and Canada. Because they were formerly located mainly around Sault Ste. Marie, (Sault Ste. Marie is where my people hail from!!!) at the outlet of Lake Superior, the French referred to them as Saulteurs. Ojibwa who subsequently moved to the prairie provinces of Canada have retained the name Saulteaux

As a major component group of the Anishinaabe peoples—which includes the Algonquin, Nipissing, Oji-Cree, Odawa and the Potawatomi—the Ojibwe peoples number over 56,440 in the U.S., living in an area stretching across the north from Michigan to Montana. Another 77,940 of main-line Ojibwa, 76,760 Saulteaux and 8,770 Mississaugas, in 125 bands, live in Canada, stretching from western Quebec to eastern British Columbia. They are known for their birch bark canoes, sacred birch bark scrolls, the use of cowrie shells, wild rice, copper points, and for their use of gun technology from the British to defeat and push back the Dakota nation of the Sioux (1745). (bold emphasis is mine)

Which is all fine and dandy but not effectively exciting in my opinion. The enchanting (at least to me) and most relevant (also at least to me) information comes from actual tribal members. According to Fred Harrington jiibaykwe (ghost suppers) are ceremonies that originated from when tribes would move the remains of loved ones from temporary to permanent burial grounds (link: religion, under funerals). On the same website, if you click on the link that says ‘ghost suppers’ more is revealed about the custom. What I took out of what I read is that it is to remember and honor others that have passed regardless of when. Additionally the same link also describes a custom on Halloween to remember those that have passed. In contrast, in American culture the custom on Halloween is to dress up children to go house to house and get candy which in relation seems (at least to me) to lack any spiritual meaning (but that is also my own judgment). If one does not have children and is of the mind to celebrate and intake spirits (or not) one dresses up and attends parties of various kinds. Also, in my own judgment to lack real meaning.

Maybe what I’m selfishly looking for is a means to remember people that I miss and are not here anymore in a way that I can perceive as not so sad (for example, not having to have it smack me in the face all of a sudden and spend a whole afternoon in tears but instead remember and deal with it in a way that honors them more and is less about me). (Is it possible that I have an ulterior motive to learning about my culture and if so is that bad?) But then that also means I’m continuing to attach the ultimate sadness to someone’s death all on my own when I could instead be attaching a different emotion to it. It’s all heady stuff to be quite sure and I’m not even sure I’m getting close to what it all really means.

On a sort of side note, but not really, if you were to check out the website and check under the ‘ethics’ link, specifically under “first philosophy, to women” you would find what (again sort of selfishly) touches my heart most about my culture. Word for word (part of it at least) would say the following:

The cycle of life for the woman is baby, girl, woman, and grandmother. These are the four directions of life. She has been given by natural-laws the ability to reproduce life. The most sacred of all things is life. Therefore, all men should treat her with dignity and respect. Never was it our way to harm her mentally or physically. Indian men were never abusers. We always treated our women with respect and understanding.

Yes, I get that nowadays (and obviously before-adays) this does not always happen. The important part of it is that culturally it was such that women were respected/honored and not abused which is in clear contrast to how ‘American’ culture began and how it sadly, often plays out today. On this note alone, if only we could go back a ways and start over. But at this point, as a woman that is part of this culture I am sort of obligated to go forward facilitating this idea whereas in certain situations before I allowed abuse in various forms. Not that I necessarily needed this information to carry this out in my life having been through it before, but having the knowledge and caring about it just makes it that more important to me.

Thanks Jen, for a lot of things.  

 

 

Leaps of logic and what should have been done

Today I illegally perused blogs while at work on my lunch break. I say illegal because technically it wasn’t work related and they’re (the infamous ‘they’) cracking down lately. I came across an entry in a popular feminist blog (Feministing) detailing a messy little situation that the Supreme Court is ruling on. Bottom line really, is that they must decipher and clarify what is said to be a poorly written law. 

As a result of the alleged poorly written law the current ruling could allow those who have been convicted of misdemeanor DV crimes to own guns:

Congress in 1996 sought to strengthen the laws against domestic violence. Before, only persons convicted of violent felonies in such situations lost their rights to own a gun. Going a step further, lawmakers adopted an amendment to take away gun rights for those who had a “misdemeanor crime of domestic violence” on their records.

Problem with that?

But last year, the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia cast doubt on the law’s reach. Its judges decided the federal gun ban did not cover misdemeanor convictions involving assault or battery at home. Instead, it said the federal ban applied only to those convicted under a state’s domestic violence law. 

Not good. Most states don’t have specific misdemeanor laws re: DV. No misdemeanor laws + upholding the constitution = violent wife/husband (because yes, there are women that beat mean…statistically not as high, but it happens) beaters could have guns with which to do more harm.

Instead of focusing on these small facts, the website I read chose to verbally nail the judge in the case to a cross for doing his job. Choosing instead to paint him as a sexist a-hole who doesn’t care about women.

In this case the judge ruled per the law.

Justice Antonin Scalia was unswayed by that argument. “People are governed by the law that is passed, not by the law that Congress intended to pass,” he said…But during Monday’s argument, Scalia said possessing a gun was “lawful conduct,” and a wife-beating charge lodged against a West Virginia man was “not that serious an offense.” The government lawyer shot back that the defendant “hit his wife all around the face until it swelled out, kicked her all around her body, kicked her in the ribs. . . . “

“Then he should have been charged with a felony,” Scalia interjected, “but he wasn’t.” (emphasis mine)

The bottom line for the blog? Judge thinks DV is not serious and does not matter. Judge is dismissive towards DV. Reality? Judge does his job and rules on the law alone. Did he write it? No. Did the U.S. tell him he could just make decisions willy-nilly based on his emotions? No. By saying it’s “not that serious an offense” I might guess that he was talking strictly about the actual charge; the state decided it wasn’t that serious an offense.

This I think, is what is irksome about how some of us demonstrate feminism. Leaps of logic based on emotion. It sort of makes the whole thing look bad.

6 (count them)…6 loads of laundry

Yet there is still a few more that I didn’t get to today. I know, I enjoy waiting until the last minute. I will continue to do so.

I did 6 loads of laundry today and after doing so I realized two things:

1. I do not regret a single thing that has happened in my life thus far.
2. My achilles’ heel=new toys (I probably realized that before, but I really realized it today).

Today was spent getting some things done and spending some time with my Kait. It was nice. It was a Sunday at Uptown.

Somehow in our twists and turns of conversation we ended up talking about past relationships and thus the George factor came up. It came up and as a true friend would, Kait said “I’m sorry that happened to you”. I replied and said that I wasn’t sorry. And, I’m truly not. I know that I’ve said that before to people and to myself as well, but I think sometimes we fake it until we get to a certain point; I’m at ‘that point’ where I officially mean it. I told her more than I have before about everything that happened during that time but I still spared some of the gory (read: sad/pathetic/sordid) details.

The fact of the matter is that lessons tend to continue to rise up and smack us in the face until we really learn them. Had I not learned it then I most likely would have learned it later; and later could have meant learning it married to someone with kids in tow. I’m glad I learned it when I did so that it was mostly just me that got hurt, and not innocent small people. Funny thing is that he had asked me to marry him and I had agreed; but that was before anything had started to happen. Had he waited to show his true colors I probably would have been married by the time they did show through and who knows, we may have had children. If I obviously had to learn that lesson at some point then I would say that I learned it in the most optimum time possible to do so, when I was on my own doing it. So no, I’m not sorry about the fact that it happened, and I’m not sorry for anything else that’s happened unrelated to that so far. It happens for a reason.

And in all that seriousness that took place for a bit today, I continued to play with my new cell phone.