Feeling vulnerable

I've been feeling tired, but also forlorn, petulant. Various things have been a bit different, the last few weeks. A dear friend has had no internet access and our usual frequent e-mails have been replaced by intermittent text messages. Teaching has been a bit fraught, with some worry over students doing exams, though I'm less concerned now. I went to mainland Europe for a wedding, and the travel was tiring. I'm behind, as always, on various bits of admin and paperwork, and feeling a little overwhelmed with it all. None of these things are major but they are all rather wearing, and the what-ifs have been creeping in.

A bit of time with pen and paper and I can see that large parts of my anxiety are linked to a sort of feeling of impending loneliness, of not wanting to be overlooked, left behind, brushed aside, abandoned. I'd like to be adored, special, cherished... and I harbour unrealistic hopes for what that means in terms of how others interact with me. I should have recognised this sooner; it turns up in a wistful feeling of "please don't go" at the end of every conversation. Stay with me, don't leave me alone, I think as loudly as I can while saying polite goodbyes. In short, I feel unreasonably clingy.

I am blessed with many people who care for me, love me, and show it. The reality is that with the best will in the world, these people don't have as much time for me as I might like, or as they might like.

Even while I understand that this isn't something to take personally, it still makes me feel uncertain, threatened, vulnerable.

How much of this is just egotism? Does it really matter whether I feel safe, if I'm doing what I am made for and helping others do what they are made for? Isn't some sort of risk always going to be there, whether I feel it or not? Isn't living life to the full, serving God in theist terms, worth any amount of risk, anyway?

But then, how much of this is that my hope of being loved, of being safe in God's love, has been something I have primarily experienced through the love of human beings? How much is a selfish demand for impossible security and how much is a yearning for that light of Christ which I do see in others (yes, even some of the atheists)?

I don't really know how to respond to this loneliness, clinginess, yearning. I can be honest, say "I'm feeling lonely and vulnerable and I don't really know why, please comfort me" and people will probably try. Of course they will! But it seems self-indulgent, somehow, to ask for that, even from Sweetie.

I can try to ignore these feelings but they'll surface some other way. The most damaging way leads to me trying to be someone I am not in order to please people. That kind of emotionally manipulative achievement is very seductive, but I know it doesn't really work. Is being aware of that dynamic enough to stop it happening? One reason I was so hesitant for so long about the vocation stuff is because I thought maybe this was me trying on some subconscious level to please or perhaps imitate some people I love and admire (which is absurd when you think about the rather long process of discernment in the C of E, but there you go).

This isn't constant or miserable enough to be a medical issue, I don't think. I've lived with mental illness before. I don't think this is it. I think this is well within the "normal" range of healthy human experience, whatever that is.

So what to do? Turn to God with it, spend more time in prayer, wait for things to change, hope something feels better soon? But prayer isn't something I do in order that I might feel better, even though it often does have that effect. What is the point of my petty nagging?

Even posting about this seems a bit over the top. It's late, too late for me really, and I'm tired. I'll say Compline, go to bed, have six or seven hours of sleep, get up in the morning and busy myself with the day. Life goes on. Fear is part of life, and I will be frightened and vulnerable and lonely at times but I will also rejoice in the smell of the rain, the sound of a 4-3 suspension, the words of a prayer. This yearning isn't some unending misery, it's just part of being alive. Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You.

But I would still like to be less afraid, Lord. Sorry about the nagging, it's just where I am tonight I guess. If vulnerability is part of being alive, please give me the courage to live anyway. If my heart is going to be split open for fear of abandonment every time I admire someone, please make it large enough that I act out of love rather than for the avoidance of pain. If I must be hurt by people's imperfection or just by them having their own lives to lead, help me to see them for who they are (your beloved children, every last one) rather than for how they might hurt me. If I am to be someone who sees the provisional nature of all existence, the possibility of danger at every turn, make me someone who can see all of it as a loving gift. Put my worries and anxieties in perspective. Let my desire to act in love overcome my insecurity. There isn't really anyone else I can cling to.

liturgy and life

I went to an Area Vocations Day.

It made me more certain that I need to pursue this vocation stuff seriously, and also pretty frustrated at the people who were organising the day. There were too many people, the vocations stuff was combined with "leadership" stuff which was pretty evangelical in its leaning and seemed to be more about equipping people for proselytisation than about a broader definition of leadership, there wasn't enough time to reflect, process, breathe... they tried to have some silence after each speaker but starting late didn't help, and the speaker who I most wanted to hear had to rush her talk rather badly (it was still excellent, and I'm glad I went if only to hear that).

There was worship, but it was almost entirely unfamiliar liturgy -- no benediction or confession or absolution, no doxology, no psalmody (except for about two lines), no sacrament. No Lord's Prayer, even, or if there was I managed to forget (I don't think I would forget). I didn't know either of the songs. There was praise and there was intercession, both in very personal terms... flattery and whining. No depth, no real cohesion.

Thank God -- a church in a neighbouring deanery has a Eucharist early on Saturday evenings for those who struggle to get there on Sunday mornings. I met Sweetie for a bite to eat and then went there, taking refuge, sanctuary. The Lord be with you, said the priest, and I was home again, never mind the unruly children running about the place, the lack of music. At some point I wept, not the anxious and embarrassed tears I'd been holding back earlier in the day, but just out of relief. I felt physically lighter and my mind seemed less dark -- en-lightened.

We talked afterward, the vicar and I, or rather she listened while I talked, scattered and unfocused after the events of the day. I floated home, exhausted, still upset, still uncertain, still frustrated but aware of being loved, connected to and grounded in the love that underpins everything.

How many times, earlier in the day, did I hear people talk about equipping Christians for outreach and mission, equipping people to change the world?

What feeds me, sustains me, equips me to do my work, is prayer and sacrament, mystery and miracle.

Maybe providing more of that would be more useful than having fancy leadership conferences.

Just saying.

Keeping on

I had a more relaxed Easter week; some gardening, then at the weekend some spring cleaning with Sweetie and Intrepid Anthropologist. My ankle is better than it was but still a bit complainy; other standard aches and pains are behaving as they usually do.

All that stuff I put off until after Holy Week? I have to do it now. Can't keep putting it off.

I'm away the end of this week and all this weekend. The idea is that after I've settled in I'll spend a day writing music while my host is at work, and then when she comes home we can have some social time.

It will be my first Sunday morning away from Nearest Church since I went to Leafy Suburb Church for All Saints, back at the beginning of November. I'm really looking forward to that. I love the work I do at Nearest Church, but it will be good to see how things look from the west end for a change.

In May I am pulling the same trick one week, going to visit Kathryn for a few days. Again I hope to write some music while she is working; last time I tried this I just sat underneath her cats instead, and if the same happens again it is no disaster.

I'm doing this stuff now because I'm well aware that once Networking Organist leaves I'll need to be ultra-reliable for a time, in order that the choir at Nearest Church get to know me better and get a feel for how I am going to do things.

I keep trying to tell myself I don't want to change too much, but there are some things that absolutely must change, and those are going to be a big shock. We are going to start doing some breathing exercises and vocal warmups at choir rehearsals. We are going to start doing a teensy tiny bit of sight-reading practice. This is going to make some waves, I think, but after people get over it I think it will help.

But it does mean I need to be there, I need to be consistent, I need to be trustworthy. I need to make it clear I am going to push people but that I'm going to be realistic about where we are now.

Processing

I've been thinking through some stuff about childhood and abuse and memories that keep cropping up, partly precipitated by conversations elsewhere. It's... all a bit too personal to go into much detail here, I think.

In more general terms:

People talk about breaking a cycle of abuse as if it's a black-and-white thing, as if someone is either a monster or a saint. That isn't true. When I look at how my stepdad treated us compared to societal norms, some of what he did was pretty bad, and it's hard to see how anyone could do that. When I look at it compared to the abuse he suffered at the hands of his family, and I consider that he didn't have any sort of ongoing support or stability or guidance except from my mother (who was definitely as much a victim of his abuse as I was), I wonder how it wasn't much, much worse.

Abuse is systemic, even if it isn't systematic. For my stepdad to be abusive toward me, my mother had to not stick up for me. Later on that may have been because I didn't tell her, but earlier it was because she was also afraid. Why was she so afraid, too afraid to speak for her own daughter? Her own childhood, her own difficult background, a history of conditional support from others. It's very easy to talk about this and say that she was also responsible for what I went through, to apportion some sort of blame or fault. But that isn't useful, and I'm not trying to blame others for who I am now, just to acknowledge what happened (admittedly not easy when I'm also trying to protect anonymity). But breaking the cycle of abuse, if it can be done, is not only about teaching abusers other ways of relating to people: it's about teaching victims not to be accomplices, not to look the other way.

Given that my stepdad is clergy some who don't know the details would say that I have an obligation to report the abuse, in order to protect others who might be vulnerable. But despite my own experiences, I do not believe my stepdad is generally dangerous. His abusiveness was in the context of family life, not in the context of church work. Oh, he was (and to an extent still is) a bully and that permeates everything, but honestly? There are so many minor bullies about, people can deal with it. The physical abuse was generally poor anger management and would never get that far at work; the sexual abuse was rare and, I believe, accidental (no, I cannot explain this without going into detail. But what he thought was okay, what was an attempt at building intimacy and trust into a fractured relationship, was not okay with me, and I didn't tell him any differently because by then I'd been terrified of him for a decade... and yes, I think that is abuse, even if it was not severe or violent), and again would not happen in a work context where there are stricter guidelines.

However, I'm also aware that I can't think about this without bias... that my own issues make this frightening to me, to the point that I might rationalize away my responsibility. Maybe I am messed up enough that I could think he is not dangerous, even if actually he is; maybe what I went through is the tip of the iceberg rather than the worst of it, and I should be shouting from the rooftops in case anyone else has been hurt.

And yet I do not want to bear false witness.

I guess I need to have a good long talk with someone about this, someone who is going to be confidential about it no matter what and who won't automatically advise one way or another. I've always compartmentalized it... spent three years talking to the brainhacker about the emotional problems and a bit of the physical stuff but didn't have the courage to go further, have alluded to the sexual abuse without really discussing it properly. I don't know if the latter is protecting privacy or another form of false witness.

Meanwhile today I am remembering that the man who terrified me throughout my childhood also stood up for me. I had a paper route, and one of the kids from school lived on it, and he used to throw things -- tennis balls, rocks, whatever -- at me when I went past. One particularly bad day (I think there might have been broken glass involved) I came home crying about this, and my stepdad noticed (unusual) and asked why, and I (reluctantly) explained. And we walked to the house, there and then, me terrified the whole way, and knocked on the door. And he told the kid's father, calmly, what had happened, and the kid's father said he'd talk about it. I hope beyond hope that it was just talk. But that kid didn't throw stuff at me any more.

I'm really looking forward to Mass later.