1. As the astute reader knows, I have this blog because I do not have an analyst. I spend a great amount of time writing myself through emotional pain, pain I might not suffer if I simply changed my life, but which I must get control of in order to be able to change my life. Pain that, before I – on orders from an analyst – allowed it to overtake me, I was slowly healing. Wounds that were torn wider through inept attempts to heal them.
2. In any case, I think there has been real progress this year and then this week, even if not in a straight line. I am so much stronger than I was two years ago, or five years ago when this blog started. And Spring 2011 an awful semester, yet there was some progress in it. Recent progress comes from:
♦ the mantra, “you have no power over me any more;”
♦ the decision I not to feel guilty any more about having accepted the inheritance that permitted me to go away to college, and to attend a public research university rather than a SLAC or an art school. I am so glad I got to do this.
♦ that phrase, woke up this morning with my mind stayed on freedom;
♦ the amazing realization that the famous time I got stuck on that manuscript, it was not because I lost skill or power or expertise or discipline — or “fear of success.” I think it was a sign of health not weakness, not to want to write a whole book I couldn’t support, and to want to choose activities more in line with my own vision and goals for my life.
(Yes, of course I wish I could have just said that then, not taken seven years to even perceive it and another seven to stop feeling so guilty about having taken seven years to see it. And yes, in theory I could have written a false book and then disavowed it, politely saying I had “changed my mind” or that it was an immature work. But I could not face doing this I am not ashamed of that.
Of course I feel guilty about not being ashamed of it. If I were a good academic I would “productively” write things that I didn’t believe but others would find acceptable. But I am not capable of that. I feel guilty not to be ashamed of not being capable of it, but the fact is I am not ashamed.
I am only interested in writing my own texts, based on my real research, and I am only interested in answering questions directly — as opposed to coddling the feelings of abusive old men who can easily kill me, which is how I feel I have to be in the academic world.
In my present field I do not feel free to be the person I would like to be. I do not have the right to exist as that person, so it is sinful to do so and I feel guilty doing it. Yet still I want to be free or leave and this is why I keep quoting Sandino. No me rendiré y aquí los espero. Yo quiero patria libre o morir.)
3. Perhaps I will have an unaffected response to the next query I get about my aunt. I feel nothing but gratitude toward her and I wish I could have gotten to know her better. I will try to channel my lost cat and her as well.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 