Motivating Passion for June 25, 2007

I was going to save this for another day but you know…..once it starts bugging me….I have to say it so…it will be another two blog day. Read Passion first or this one might not make much sense.

I mentioned in a comment on my passions blog today about someone who was giving me grief on more than one front. I said….

“I think the person was TRYING to make me feel like I only LIKED people based on what they could "give" me. It was someone I have recently cut down my time with finding that their "new personality" was not working for me...in fact was causing me more trouble than it was worth.”
This person who we shall call Doesn’t Fool Me Anymore (“DFMA”) used to be a fairly close friend of mine. We have known each other a long time. DFMA is one of those people who has a passion or perhaps I should say had a passion. He has been squelching his passion for a while now and I think it has begun to warp his brain. He has become moody, irritable, and down right cranky sometimes. Normally it would not be a problem. In fact, he has gone through similar cycles before without it fazing me in the slightest. This time is different.

Always highly analytical I used to look forward to our conversations. They were always highly charged, informative, and exciting. Sounds like one of those passion things huh? Well it was. He was passionate about understanding, learning, and sharing views. It was fun to be around.
Then things changed. Suddenly all analysis was directed AT me. Not as in I was the one to converse about these things with him, as in DFMA became obsessed with analyzing me: my every movement, my thoughts, my actions, and my motives. Normally this would not be a problem. I am pretty much an open book as those of you here know. I tend to just say what’s on my mind and remain open to what other folks may have to say about it. I ask for and listen to opinions. The difference was that this person was not doing it in the “normal” way. By normal I mean, I say something, they give me their opinion. Not at all, DFMA was doing what I call the whisper. He was a “whisperer” .

I think to some extent we all have “whisperers” or have had them. They are the folks who are or become the one of the little voices in your head. Sometimes these are good voices, like the one that sounds like your mom that says, “maybe you should look both ways before crossing the street” and other times they are the bad voices that say” you aren’t good enough”. When I call someone a “whisperer” I mean that the person is in a position where their opinion carries some weight. They are more or less “trusted” voices in our life. A true “whisperer” is not a person who has your best interests at heart all the time…they have a MOTIVE. The motive may be good or as in this case, it may not be good.

As far as DFMA goes I am NOT 100% certain of his motive. I am certain it was one or two things and neither is good. The end result of which was that he had taken to making commentary on every single thing I did. Bad commentary. Making me hypersensitive and over-analytical of my every move. More than that, making me suspect the moves and motives of those around me.

You all know I have not been in a good place lately. In fact it was pretty much a bad place. I am not going to pretend that my life has been all sunshine and light recently but I can say with 100% certainty that normally it would NOT put me where I have been either. Need proof? Go read my “personal amusement” blog….nothing EVER gets me down like I have been. I was extremely sick as a child, I think the main thing it taught me besides how to amuse myself was how to laugh at myself. That carried me though my entire life. I was rarely ever sick after the age of 10 but the lessons learned carried me through lots of other stuff…hard to feel sorry for yourself because you broke your arm when you are busy laughing at what a klutz you are. This further carried me through some seriously scary stuff with my ex. Hard to be scared when you are laughing right?

A few years back, when I got hurt at work things were pretty much the same. I mocked the wheel chair, converted a mechanics creeper into my personal “DeeAnne sized work wheelie”, and generally was my normal self. Over time I noticed things start to change. I wasn’t able to laugh at myself so quickly and things began to get me down. I put this down to the drama with my sister. She was always so quick to tell me how sorry she was for me and how bad she felt for me that after awhile you start to feel like maybe you are pretty pathetic and you are bringing others down with you….it is a downward spiral from there. After our little blow up and her subsequent disappearance things were different for a bit. I thought it was because she was no longer whispering. I now know it was because I had also cut myself off from another more deadly “whisperer”, DFMA, at the same time. It wasn’t intentional. I was spending all my time doing the surgery and associated recovery. Then the contact started up again and slowly so did the personal questioning I was doing.

At first it was minor stuff just me questioning choices I made and the like. It was never obvious more like introspection. Then like I said recently all that changed and DFMA changed. Everything became a question, everyone around me was questioned, and every action was analyzed. At first I thought it was a protective thing. Honestly just now it occurs to me that this is EXACTLY the same behavior as my ex. Scary. On the surface protective but a deeper motive, one slightly more sinister. His motive was simple. He could not drive people out of my life but he could make ME do it. He could make me worry, wonder, and question those around me until I either was so convinced of their ill will that I would cut off contact with them or would make me question them so much that they would cut off contact from me convinced of my ill will.
It took a bit to figure it out. It took a lot more to make me accept it. I first noticed something was amiss back around late January early February when he made some comments about his less than pure motives and I actually cut of contact with him for a bit. Then I decided that everyone deserved a second chance so I gave him one still not really understanding what was going on. Then it came up again in April when he said some things I was not so sure about his motives for saying. Those things cause me a lot of trouble by making me even more insecure about my position. I put it down to my weird situation and again let it slide. It came up again recently and I really questioned it. This time it almost cost me a friend before I caught myself and explained everything to THAT friend. After much explaining, over-explaining, and finally simply asking and trusting I was relieved to have that friendship back on track but the whole thing made me take a good hard look at Mr. DFMA. I talked to some friends who could be trusted, I talked to some family, and finally had to accept that he was in fact not being a friend. I was hurt. I tried to justify it, find reasons for it, and excuse it. In the end I couldn’t. This person was in a position of trust, he knew what was going on in my life, and he knew what harm his words were doing. He simply didn’t care. I finally had to accept that this was how he was going to be and so I am severely limiting my conversations with him. I make huge attempts not to have any conversations with him when there is not another party involved.

I don’t like being guarded with people but I am finding that sometimes you have to….does this mean I am finally growing up? Probably not, but I can say that I feel a whole lot better since I have been doing this. I feel more…like me again. I am finding myself laughing more, feeling happy more, and able to see the good in me. It is not perfect but it is a start back to where I was. I am not sure I will ever get all the way back there to where I was but I am also not so sure I want to either.

Even still limiting my contact still allows certain things to slip through like the snarky remark about my friends and my motives for having them but the difference is that now the NEW me is learning to not question myself about them but to instead recognize the motive behind that comment and simply allow me to stand up for what I believe and quietly say what’s on my mind.

Motivating me to regain some of my old passion… hmm maybe I am growing up just a little, I kind of like it.