selfish

I listen to how people talk, their use or misuse of grammar (thanks Dad) and how confusulating the whole thing is these years. I suspect the rebellion against the structure that began in my childhood, now a very distant memory, those days when syntax, sentence construction and punctuation moved like a rainbow over the settled earth of academia, causing a grandiose upset. It was needed, even if I am oftentimes huffing like Hogwarts train over the rickety bridges now connecting the old acceptable to the new ‘anything gose, or is it goes’? Mostly I love it, even though I find my old fingers snatching for words that nobody ever uses anymore. The rhythm and beat of new language is, if we choose to engage with such a ‘new’, both exciting and inevitable. At least, I tell myself in my huffing days, at least I knew the beauty of fine language, well placed commas and how to spell Chiaroscurist.

However it has always been the pronouns that bothered me. In my young recalcitrant days of frustrated rebellion, listening to the Beatles singing about the Sun and Here it Comes, I was reliably informed that to say, ‘I’, was arrogant, challenging, selfish. ‘We’ is how it’s done. It was perfectly fine to say They, We, Them, (although here I confuse pronouns) Us (ditto) and You. Don’t even go there with that one. It is often considered aggressive. There was, and still is, a warm hot milk thing about hiding behind backstage pronouns. Employing them allows our deodorant to remain effective. Moving on.

I hear couples use the We. A lot. We go here, we go there. I get that. But when I hear that We like this and don’t like that, my ears get indigestion. I can hear the gurgle of rebellion and the acid of warning. As long as the strong ‘I’ is lost in the ‘We’ a trumpet should sound in the soul, loud and acid, because one day the ‘I’ will struggle for breath.

Keep your ‘I’. No matter parental teaching, no matter the warm, honeyed, seduction of the ‘We’. I know it well, loved it, was warmed and honeyed by it and I am not saying it did me wrong. (sorry Dad) But, had I known, had I been taught, that the ‘I’ is powerful, beautiful, important, back in my youth, I believe the rebellion might have been better informed, better educated in a kindly and more gentle way. I hope our children learn how to see the one as a valuable person, no agenda no gender judge, just who they are. My prayer. Don’t wake thinking ‘we’. Think ‘I’ and then study and learn and listen.

As I complete my task of sewing up a hole in Sheepy, it comes to me. All my days I have worked on repairing the tears other people made in things, in each other. From Sheepies to hearts, from fixtures to fittings, through burned casseroles to burned chances, I have pulled out my needle and thread or my magic wand or the car keys and set out to patch and heal. I felt like an angel at times when it seemed to work and an obstacle in the way when it didn’t. This morning’s epiphany showed me that a lot of my actions were, in fact, self-gratification. Although my intent was to dry sad eyes and to mend broken hearts, I had set myself up as the answer to the problem. In other words, it was really all about me, not them. It saddens me to realise this. My own longing for love manifested itself in my attempts to please others, more, to be the one inside their lives who could patch to perfection. A wiser me would have done it differently. A wiser me would have stood beside them in their desert and listened, comforted, told them they can sort this and asked them how they might see themselves doing just that, whilst assuring them I would stay right beside them at all times.

I am grateful, always, for the way life teaches me important lessons. Not as an opportunity to blame myself but to move forward in my learning, with curiosity and acceptance. The way a new understanding comes into my head whilst repairing a hole in Sheepy chuckles me, even if I do immediately dash back over the decades past with a machete in my hand, ready to take revenge on my earlier ignorant self. Woa! I say. Steady girl. That woman back there had the best intentions and did good, really good, mostly. She didn’t know what you know now, old woman. She didn’t know the lack of unconditional love in her own life would drive her to select herself as guardian protector of pretty much everyone in her care. Give her a break and tell her Thank you for all you did in love.

These are wise words. Seeing something old in a new light, one that illuminates all the faulty wiring simply means I tried my very best under the circumstances. No matter that I was naive or seeking to fill my own black hole with good deeds (which never works by the way). Let the judge in me leave the courtroom. I recall my mum saying a similar thing to me once after she had felt criticised and judged by us. She said, simply, I Did My Best. And so she did.

However, whilst we girls and women of good intention repair until our fingers bleed, we may forget that we too need that care and love. I certainly did. I took the smallest portion, the back seat, the last straw. I taught myself to accept mean graces because all the best ones were doled out to others. I was the one who cleaned out the landcover with a smile, allowing everyone else to run indoors for toast and jam. I was the one who couldn’t sleep if a child was troubled at school. I was the soother, I was the warmth and the safety net. But what was I to me? Not enough and there’s another learning. In my day to think of self for more than five minutes was heresy. Women who shared the same turning of the earth, at the same time as I, knew this too. To be accused of being selfish was devastating.

Now we know different and thank goodness for that. However, it does present us with a problem. If we have loved and patched and healed others for most of our lives, how can we now place ourselves centre stage? The super trooper is too bright and we have forgotten our lines. Do we have opinions or did we just repeat the ones we heard others opine? Do we like pasta, kangaroos, thunderstorms, cats, driving, dancing naked in the rain? Can we quickly make a decision when someone asks Early Grey, Darjeeling, Builders, or coffee? Oh……I’ll have what you’re having. Wrong answer. But we all make it. We have spent so many years obliging that we have mislaid ourselves.

Recently I have been stopping myself from answering like a well trained robot when faced with a question. I pause. this pause can irritate the questioner. It’s a simple question after all but I am tossed on a stormy sea and feeling seasick. In the past I was a I’ll Have What You’re Having sort of woman and she is quick to come forward at such times with her pinny on straight and her bright voice loud in my ears. I push her back. Hold………! What is it I want? I know what I want but I don’t think it will be popular so I can’t let it out. Speaking my truth takes balls and I am terrified of critical judgement, of upsetting the others, the applecart. However, it also feels free-ing.

I suspect it is never too late to learn. I’m curious, too. I might discover what I do like, what I do want and that learning might lead me a very merry dance.