song of the week: ray charles, you don't know me
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-5LwRinkJ0
i think i'll never forget this song. it started with watching groundhog day. and then i listened to it ten times in a row (it's getting to about thirty), thinking about something that really troubled me. and it gave me the solace to think. this song and this grand old voice... set the mood for me to think and think and think.
i realised why i disliked my dad. i thought very carefully about the events of the past few days, and i realised that although i didn't like a lot of things he did and a lot of things he said, i didn't really blame him, partly because i knew he was like that, and partly because if i wasn't annoyed with him i wouldn't hold it against him anyway. and i was feeling guilty for avoiding my dad, who asked me if i needed a lift to school, and if i wanted to have breakfast. and as i thought more i realised he even did his own laundry, and i got annoyed when he asked me where the detergent was. this and other little things, i actually felt annoyed with. so weird.
anyway i acknowledged that i didn't really blame my dad for the things that annoyed me lately. i thought i disliked him and i just needed to have time away from him so i'd stop being annoyed. but that wasn't it either, because i wouldn't dislike him if i weren't annoyed with him.
i thought, he's such a show-off, and so selfish, and so insensitive... yada yada. but all these things i don't really blame him for, or hold against him. then what was troubling me?
and it took me an hour of sitting and thinking to get this. it was that i liked my dad, but i didn't like him when he acted differently around other people. i realised that it was these different characters about him that i really didn't like.
it was often necessary for him in different circumstances, i know. but it's the difference between the part of the person's character i like and the other parts i don't like. it's not so much that i dislike each of the different parts. it's that i don't like there being different parts, expressed in different circumstances. and the problem is that because every one of those different parts is also part of my dad's character, i don't like it.
i don't like liking a part of a person and not liking the rest of him as well. i wish he would act the way he was around me around everybody else.
i suspect all these things when people act differently in different circumstances:
that they're not secure with the way they are
that they manipulate people, or at least their relationships with people, by how they act
that when they're around me they conceal a lot about themselves that they don't want to show me
that if they truly acted the way they entirely are around me i would dislike them
and thus i find it very difficult and fucking annoying. partly because i do like my dad, when he's not full of shit. and thus when he says or does something that triggers me being annoyed, i'll probably attribute it to him acting in another character that i don't like, or showing a part of his character i don't like, it could be either. anyway it makes me annoyed that there is firstly something about that particular thing done that made me annoyed, something that i wouldn't like him to do around me, and secondly that there is something about my dad's character that i don't like.
and the thing is, that's people. everybody is like that. i may be too, although i really don't think so, as in i don't think i act differently around different people. but not everybody would agree with me that they could or should act as they would, as they are, and i can accept that of people. then what is it that annoys me so? i wondered if it was a trust issue, that i didn't really trust people who were like that, who acted differently around different people. and i think it's partly attributable.
and then take the textbook example of a guy who acts differently to a girl. conventionally acceptable, sure. but even that annoys me.
what's wrong with me?
i'm getting tired of people.
i thought i was, maybe a week ago.
and i thought, this is too early, too soon.
but now it seems,
i'm really tired of people
i'm too critical
this is a part of me that is
very difficult to live with
there's only two ways
one is to avoid people and stuff. i think i'm doing this more and more if i didn't change the way i thought of people.
the other is to accept.
just, to accept.
i thought i'd regret not letting my dad know that i didn't accept him. if tomorrow passed and i never got the chance. but my dad knows that i accept him. it's just that i get annoyed with him when i don't.
but i'll try. it's very hard, for some reason that is peculiar to me. to accept. what a laugh. but it is.
so i'll try.
is it hard to accept? how do other people do it? this is, both strange and difficult to me. it's got something to do with... taking things, people, life, seriously. but can't both be done? ah, enough.
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postcript:
paraphrasing as well as i can from memory, this story i remember from somewhere.
a man and a child were at a pool of water. the man asked the child if he could see his reflection in the water, and the child said yes. and then the man struck the pool of water, and asked the child again if he could recognise himself. and the child said, "no, that's my reflection, but it isn't". and then the man said, "if there's something you instinctively don't like about someone, it's because you see something of yourself in that person. always remember that."
