What about using “tough love” to solve all problems? This was exactly what was used on me to silence me about the real issues in our family and the struggles I was having as a migrant. I became the one scapegoated for my father’s emotional problems in particular. These were more extreme than mine, but he put up such an act and made it so convenient for everybody else to treat me as if I were the problem. Interestingly, my father chose to view my interest in reading as a sign of depression. Actually, it was my lifeline — my means to try to find a way out of the idiotic situation. Lying in bed late to recover from the ‘flu was also viewed by him as succumbing to blind depression. Indeed, he was making me depressed — but so was my inability to rise above the situation whilst others continued not to listen to me.
Tough love may seem like a really clever solution in all circumstances, but usually it’s just an excuse for others to pile on and express their particular immature states and barely disguised malice. I’m not conforming. I’m reading too much. I’m trying to engage in self-care when I’ve been knocked down hard. It takes an extreme amount of mental and emotional discipline to follow the golden thread that will lead you out of a cave, when others want you simply to conform and justify their own views, values and perspectives. To me it was vital to stick to my own path with only a small margin for falling into non-being, as my health had become extremely eroded by being obedient to others’ needs and suggestions. It’s not that I hadn’t tried conformity, but it clearly had not worked out for me. I’d developed chronic fatigue syndrome and a digestive system that did not easily tolerate solids, and made this known by developing huge and painful air bubbles. I was in a bad way, since all my repressed rage had been turned inward. I’d been directing it inwardly for years.
I sensed that accepting more of others rage and then repressing it would have pushed me over the edge. I had to develop other ways to see the world, which would give me other methods of coping. Hence, I had face in various philosophy books, much of the time. I wasn’t doing this to waste time, but to save myself. It was vitally important that I find the means to get out of the Christian indoctrination that had held me to a standard of perfection whilst telling me that as a woman I was worthless. These were, indeed, my father’s views of me and consequently I had to draw together all my mental and emotional energy to defeat his perspective that I had started to internalize.
2.
I did not get any feminists on my side during this long drawn out psychological battle. I know why. A battle is an ugly thing. There are no clear marks defining good and evil. One has to do combat just with what one has at the time and sometimes one is poorly prepared, one’s weapons are not sharp or effective and one is immersed in a lot of ignorance. It would have been nice to have feminists on my side during this time, but I can’t say they were. Many feminists tend to side with the person who seems to represent the neatest solution to the problem, even if that person is a patriarch.
Many feminists prefer neatness to reality and they like to be one the side of what society defines as “good” — that is, they prefer a posture of moral conformity over understanding a complex issue.
3.
My solutions, although they did not involve socially condoned productivity, involved pushing myself into my discomfort zones, with regard to expressing emotions, especially those that were not socially acceptable -- for I had a lot of socially unacceptable emotions during that time and I had never beel allowed to express any emotions during the war. Expressing distress of any sort had been strictly forbidden. At times a male may be forgiven for ascending to a state of rage, but not I. Should I become upset for any reason, my father would descend aggressively on the behavior to quash it. My father had been engaged in an actual war for fifteen years and he had repressed all those emotions, including the ultimate humiliation of defeat. Then he'd taken it out on me. I had some extremely warlike emotions in me, as a result. In fact these were his, that he had given me to cope with.
Tough love may seem like a really clever solution in all circumstances, but usually it’s just an excuse for others to pile on and express their particular immature states and barely disguised malice. I’m not conforming. I’m reading too much. I’m trying to engage in self-care when I’ve been knocked down hard. It takes an extreme amount of mental and emotional discipline to follow the golden thread that will lead you out of a cave, when others want you simply to conform and justify their own views, values and perspectives. To me it was vital to stick to my own path with only a small margin for falling into non-being, as my health had become extremely eroded by being obedient to others’ needs and suggestions. It’s not that I hadn’t tried conformity, but it clearly had not worked out for me. I’d developed chronic fatigue syndrome and a digestive system that did not easily tolerate solids, and made this known by developing huge and painful air bubbles. I was in a bad way, since all my repressed rage had been turned inward. I’d been directing it inwardly for years.
I sensed that accepting more of others rage and then repressing it would have pushed me over the edge. I had to develop other ways to see the world, which would give me other methods of coping. Hence, I had face in various philosophy books, much of the time. I wasn’t doing this to waste time, but to save myself. It was vitally important that I find the means to get out of the Christian indoctrination that had held me to a standard of perfection whilst telling me that as a woman I was worthless. These were, indeed, my father’s views of me and consequently I had to draw together all my mental and emotional energy to defeat his perspective that I had started to internalize.
2.
I did not get any feminists on my side during this long drawn out psychological battle. I know why. A battle is an ugly thing. There are no clear marks defining good and evil. One has to do combat just with what one has at the time and sometimes one is poorly prepared, one’s weapons are not sharp or effective and one is immersed in a lot of ignorance. It would have been nice to have feminists on my side during this time, but I can’t say they were. Many feminists tend to side with the person who seems to represent the neatest solution to the problem, even if that person is a patriarch.
Many feminists prefer neatness to reality and they like to be one the side of what society defines as “good” — that is, they prefer a posture of moral conformity over understanding a complex issue.
3.
My solutions, although they did not involve socially condoned productivity, involved pushing myself into my discomfort zones, with regard to expressing emotions, especially those that were not socially acceptable -- for I had a lot of socially unacceptable emotions during that time and I had never beel allowed to express any emotions during the war. Expressing distress of any sort had been strictly forbidden. At times a male may be forgiven for ascending to a state of rage, but not I. Should I become upset for any reason, my father would descend aggressively on the behavior to quash it. My father had been engaged in an actual war for fifteen years and he had repressed all those emotions, including the ultimate humiliation of defeat. Then he'd taken it out on me. I had some extremely warlike emotions in me, as a result. In fact these were his, that he had given me to cope with.
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