Journaling project, Day 25

[drwex]

You won’t always be a priority to others, and that’s why you have to be a priority to yourself. Learn to respect yourself, take care of yourself, and become your own support system. Your needs matter. Start meeting them. Don’t wait on others to choose you. Choose yourself, today!

Why do you often turn to others for the support you can easily give to yourself? How will you choose yourself today?

I'm simultaneously reminded of three things by this prompt. One is the "choose life" rant from Trainspotting (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Naf_WiEb9Qs). This always appealed to me because I've always felt like society forces us to make thousands of absurd, meaningless choices, and then punishes us no matter which choices we make. Or at least "makes us feel guilty about our choices" as a form of punishment. I don't really feel the draw of heroin or other life-obliterating choices but I do wish there was a way to reject the social scripts and choices.

The second thing is how Pygment and I structured our vows. We are both once-divorced and agreed that we weren't going to promise things like "forever" (though it looks like we're on a good course to get there anyway). Instead we promised to make each other, and the relationship, a conscious choice and to do the work that choice implied. In a way this is the contrapositive to the first item - we explicitly reject the standard social script in favor of writing about (and then trying to live) the choices that are most meaningful for us.

Finally, there's the ongoing sense that surviving this particular socio-cultural Superfund site we find ourselves in is going to be a long struggle. A marathon, not a sprint. Even once Drumph is gone, we'll be living with the people who voted for him, the people who wear "I'd rather be Russian than a Democrat" tee shirts, the people who call the cops because a black person is napping, walking into his own home, standing in Starbucks. The people who think child kidnapping is OK if the child in question happens to have brown skin. Those people aren't going to disappear overnight, and while I believe that the arc of justice does bend, I also believe it bends slowly. To make this marathon requires self-love and self-care. So, yeah, I'm completely down with that idea.

As for the question of why turn to others for support that I might give myself? Because it's EXHAUSTING, amirite?! A while back I got introduced to the concentric circles of support model (sometimes called the "Silk Rings Model" after the woman who is credited with codifying it: http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-oe-0407-silk-ring-theory-20130407-story.html thought the Web is confoundingly vague on whether this is the first codification or not). The idea is simple: support in, dump out. The person in the center has their chosen support people who make up the first ring. Those people consent to give support to the person at the center; in order to get the support _they_ need they bring in a second ring of people who consent to support them, again sending support inward and letting the first ring dump outward.

In other entries I've talked about how I am working on valuing human connections over things or ideas, and part of these connections is allowing consenting people to offer support and help where they can. As a survivor and person with an anxiety disorder I know damned well that I can't actually rely on anyone else, but that doesn't mean that I can't choose to get support, even if it's for something I could easily do myself.

I also think it's too narrow to think purely of "support" alone. Part of this exchange is a different viewpoint, a set of opinions. I've complained in response to other prompts that they seem to suppose a near-magical ability to differentiate. I lack that ability, but I also know that other peoples' views can help me see things clearly. Fish, meet water. Yes, support implies an emotional component and I agree that being able to support oneself and being emotionally self-reliant beats all hell out of needing others' validation for one's emotional stability.

But I think that if we look at the fuller picture of what support entails it's unreasonable to think that self-support is going to cover a lot of ground. If nothing else, my cis, white, male, passing-privileged self can't see the world through eyes I don't have. That leads me to errors and harms my life. Supporting me includes helping me stay on a good path (telling me when I've gone astray), making me aware of distinctions and subtleties I'm blind to, and ... hell, I don't have a better phrase than "making my brain bigger than it could ever possible be on its own."

I think that idea was written down by Arthur Schopenhauer as "Reading is thinking with someone else’s head instead of one’s own." For me, a crucial part of support is always going to be how other people let me share their heads.

Comments

[mizarchivist]

Why do you often turn to others for the support you can easily give to yourself? How will you choose yourself today?

Because we are social creatures who benefit from the perspective and care of others. I think it's good to find ways to support yourself and self-sooth, to find ways to find your own happiness, rather than waiting for it to be doled out at the happiness bread line. But it's nice to share. To feel connected. So I embrace the power of AND. Again.

[drwex]

Indeed.