Bah bah black sheep

I caught the end of Oprah today, an episode about families struggling through the difficulties of raising a child with mental illness.

To a mother she was interviewing, Oprah mentioned something, a paraphrase from someone else I think, that went roughly like this:

"There is no 'black sheep' in a family. The person who is considered the 'black sheep' is usually the most sensitive person in the family and they take on all of the negative energy from everyone else in the family."

Wow, how right is that? Speaking as the 'black sheep' in my family. And speaking as one who has generally been a sponge for the negative energy of others around me. (I will never forget the moment when I realized this with clarity and certainty for the first time.) And speaking as one who has often wound up in the "scapegoat" position in dysfunctional situations.

I searched via Google, hoping to find the source of Oprah's profundity. It looks like maybe it's something from Eckhart Tolle's "The New Earth," which I have not read. But maybe I should read it. Tolle seems to talk about something called a "pain body" that feeds on pain.

Mostly this post is just about the mini revelation I had while listening to Oprah quote Tolle. I ran for my journal so I could capture the phrase before I forgot it.

Having been the "black sheep" of my family (still am, really) I definitely came out of childhood and adolescence as a giant "pain body" and have been struggling to rid myself of that pain ever since. It makes a little more sense to me, my little "aha!" moment just now, why I've had so little resilience around the happenings in my life the last two years or so in what was the most significant relationship of my life (save  relationship to my parents when I was a child, which set me up for this whole mess).

It's been like someone took my pain-absorption vacuum and turned it up to high-speed or something.

I need to find a way to pull the plug out of the outlet. And throw out the container bag. And then dismantle the motor on the damn machine.

To have a witness

I can't remember now which book I found this story in. When I figure it out I'll add the reference here.

"There's a scene we both love in the movie Shall We Dance? The story is about a marriage that has not so much fallen on hard times as fallen into the doldrums of routine. The wife fears her husband might be having an affair; she hires a private detective to find out what he's up to. It turns out that he's spending his Wednesday nights taking ballroom dancing lessons! She tells the detective she no longer needs his services. He is intrigued by her devotion to her husband, and they have this parting conversation:

Wife: Why is it do you think that people get married?
Detective: Passion.
Wife: No.
Detective: That's interesting because I would have taken you for a romantic. Why then?
Wife: Because we need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet. I mean what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things. The bad things. The terrible things. All of it. All the time. Every day. You're saying, "Your life will never go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go unwitnessed because I will be your witness."

I will be your witness. I will be your companion.

Now that's some profound and right shit.

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One bad mind-trip circle

It's awful to, day by day, miss your best friend.
Worse, to realize that they treated you like no friend at all.
It's one bad mind-trip circle to be on.

From another angle... It's useful to realize where I was (emotionally) a year ago this week: Right in the thick of watching the betrayal in all its technicolor glory. I didn't register the significance until I saw a Valentine's Day commercial on the television today. The realization is useful and constructive toward maybe cutting myself some slack. I've been telling myself for a good long while that "It's been over a year already!" But really it's only still just coming up on a year, in many ways and for all real purposes. Heck, it's only been just over two months since the last contact. (I sure hope that doesn't control the year marker!)

And I've done a lot in that year toward putting myself back together. Without the help of any king's horses or men, either, tyvm.

Still feels like there's a long, tender way to go, though. That's discouraging.

My butt is dragging a bit lately. Spirits flagging. Keep trying to walk toward the "Exit" sign on the mental merry-go-ground, but with the periodic dizziness also comes the two-step-stumble. Two steps forward, one step back. "Progress, not perfection" is maybe my new best friend.