Not a happy camper

[omimouse]

Warin and I have been talking 'bout various and sundry stuff lately, and I've been hearing stuff from his brother, too. What I am hearing and my thought process in response to it leads me to but one conclusion:

I hate their mother.

Not dislike, or can't stand, or find annoying, or anything like that. No, I mean hate, as in, I truly hate only two people, and she is one of them.

I try very hard not to waste energy on hatred, but it does creep up on me. The fact that I love Warin with damn near every shred of feeling I have, and that I consider his brother to be a brother of my heart probably has something to do with my feelings towards their mother. Well, that and the fact that she left gaping emotional wounds on both of them. That probably has something to do with it too.

I just don't get it. I look at the two of them and see such wonderful men. They're loving, caring, have great senses of humour, are both incredibly intelligent, they *listen*, they help, they . . . They are Good People, and I just don't understand why their mother is so disapointed in them.

I see two men who have such beautiful souls, and then I see the damage that was done to them, and it makes me weep for what was taken from them. I work on helping Warin heal (something needs to be done so that his brother can move down here so that I can start helping *him*) and I push my rage and hatred down, because it will not help him. The few times that he's seen it, it (thankfully) did more good than harm. "You're *this* angry on *my* behalf?"

I don't really like hating someone, but I don't really know how to make it go away, either.

Comments

[chaiya.livejournal.com]

I don't know that I hate Kathy, per se, but I have strong negative emotions about her. She seems to thrive on tearing other people down. I even have a recent example that still pisses me off to no end.

When Colleen wrote Kathy a letter recently, she wrote about how it sucked that I had lost my job at IntrinsiQ after less than 2 months there. You know, family news-type-stuff, right? Kathy apparently took this opportunity to call my mother and beat her up about how I was becoming a failure and couldn't keep a job even after I had finally finished my degree. My Mom was so upset, she called me to find out why in hell I had given Kathy such fodder to feed her attacks.

Yeah, I really don't like Kathy. :(

[titaniablue.livejournal.com]

i wish i could help you there. i don't know how to make a feeling go away. if i could, things would be easier.

i know i've met her before. don't ever let me meet her again. it would not be a pretty sight and i know i'm not smart enough to get away with it. plus, it would hurt the boys more than letting her be. funny, i was just speaking with the kitty about this earlier. she said that she knows where she lives. i told her not to share. bad thing. bad bad thing.

why ask why? ...

[dimers.livejournal.com]

as a pre-digressional aside, i'd like to know what the !@#& "why ask why" has to do with beer?...

"They are Good People, and I just don't understand why their mother is so disapointed in them." (i want to distinguish her comments by means of italics, but don't know how in LJ.)

i can understand, at least from two angles, why she acts as she does. numero uno, she has fundamentally different values from us -- for instance, material wealth, social standing, stability. (these are different from my goals and values; others overlap, for example, that we both value education.) Warin and i don't have Lots of Stuff with leftover money for european vacations, nor the approval of the masses, nor a secure fallback position should various forms of disaster strike. kathy feels -- and according to her values is justified in feeling -- that we can't possibly be really happy like we are, that we're not making ourselves good people, even possibly that we are (deliberately or un-) rebelling against her way of life and thereby cutting off our noses to spite our faces! and if material wealth et.al. are what truly matter in life, she's absodamnlutely right.

clearly, i have a different set of priorities. who's really to say which set is more important, though? is my desire to not wear a tie any more valid that her desire that i make big bucks?

anyway. numero two is that kathy lacks ... what James Redfield might call a "mountaintop experience." she has no source of energy, no calm place in her mind when the storm strikes, no wal, no god's voice within. when she feels bad, there's nowhere in particular to go, nothing to do which will wash it away and renew her. like any person who's lived in a society ever, she has come to know that one can take energy from other people. and now, i think, whether or not she wants to and whether or not she intends to, she hungrily draws energy from others. even when she's feeling alright, the *conditionally* sensible habit remains in place (though i've noticed that she really does act much more human when she's not in whatever kind of pain herself). ... by conditionally sensible, i mean that it makes sense to get energy from others if you can't get it any other way -- and she ain't aware of no other way.

so yeah, i can *understand* why mom's disappointed, i can sympathize after the fact when she grinds her teeth around in my soul. i don't give her actions my approval, regardless. and i'm not okay with her lifestyle. the best viewpoint i can usually arrange is sorta "Well, you don't know any better, and inertia is normal." i'm too personally hurt to really let the lovingkindness flow. that's a problem i hope eventually to fix: best to do so before she dies, too.

"I don't really like hating someone, but I don't really know how to make it go away, either."

compassion will do the trick. comprehend her point of view. you'll pity her instead, which in my experience isn't a really thrilling step up, but IS a step nonetheless. i now pity the (incredibly numerous in this area of the country) assholes who drive insanely near me in traffic, in the same way: it must be very painful to feel the need to be somewhere ten seconds sooner, and be willing to take drastic steps to achieve that end. it's not fun; i've felt that way before. see what i mean? you pity the poor wretches, knowing they'll not achieve mental peace thus. but i digress. =)

da drew!