Authenticity III
 

Good morning friends :hug:

And so we continue our journey together in Part III :)

Part II can be found:
http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...ticity-ii.html

Part I begins here:
http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...henticity.html

Mornin', Robby!!!!!

It's a beautiful morning here! The sun is just coming out through the clouds. I'm thinking it will soon enough be pool side summer soaking up all that fresh air and chillaxing big time with friends and family!

:)

Good morning, Robby. Thanks for the thread!

Morning Robby ive had real strong winds & big rain today but your posts do indeed bring the sun out

Have a nice day

Good morning, Robbie!

It's a beautiful and warm, blue sky, sunny day here. :)

I hope you're doing okay.

Good morning...it is the the 4th consecutive nice day here. I think I am now fairly safe to pack away my winter coats.

Raining here but happy to see this thread continuing!

Hi Robby :) I just came to SR to respond to the points and questions you asked me about family, and I see now we have a new thread and the topic is the weather! Okay, my report is a beautiful summery day here.
Enjoy yours! :ham4

Good morning Robby and friends! :hug:

Warm, overcast, and super windy here!

Rain rain go away.

But really, it's still a beautiful day. One the rain is gone, it's supposed to last all week, the colors will really start popping!

Raining off and on in St Paul. Getting my ass kicked at work.

Hi Robby hope your day is going well bud

Well I had a mini meltdown this morning when there was no Robby thread to post on...good grief!

The weather has been all over the place here, I don't know what it's playing at quite frankly. But I've had a lovely day. Wednesday is my teaching day and I love every minute of it. I have been teaching them all about the seaside this term and we are going to the coast next week. They are SO excited, I'm not sure many have actually seen the sea at all. I had a hard job convincing them that we weren't actually going to meet a mermaid! I blame Disney for that....

So pleased that you are continuing to do well Rob. Lots of love to you and Melissa and everyone who loves you both xxx

Glad you are enjoying the pool and sunshine Robby--I'm reading even though not posting much at the moment.

Thanks from me too for continuing the thread :)

Hi pal,

Just stopped by a little local chapel that has perpetual adoration. Kind of a sweet concept. Took you and Melissa with me. Lit some vigils. Said some words to the Universe about my buddy. Also thanked it, on my knees, for souls like you.

Give Melissa a "Robby" for me, K ? :hug:

Hi (((haennie))) :)

I'm happy you want to continue and respond from the earlier thread, my friend. Weather was just some early morning pleasantries. :)

Hi everybody!!

I just had a nice stroll with Melissa. We were up and about for a hour and more. We found a little corner with some seats and just did the romance thing. Very nice and refreshing for us both. Sure, we were still in the hospital, but not really, yeah?! :)

well good morning finally... thread was closed this morning...
Doing the job search and resume thing, and then I still can't get the printer to wrok, aaaaaaaaaaaand I haven't used my other (wife's) computer in so long I forgot the logon password.
So I did the only thing any reasonable man would do, I went fishing. Hooked into a decent brown on a black nymph, easy release with barbless hooks, but he was a fighter.
No grilling in the rain so I need to wake up the queen so we can eat before the hall and oates concert tonight.
When I need a reset now, I don't drink, I go fishing! Best two hours of the week so far.

Yeah, in my mind, the pool is awesome. I'm still in the hospital as yet though. I was just daydreaming. :) Hope to be pool side in a few weeks. It's unusually warm for Ottawa right now and it just brought back some seriously fun times of years gone by. :)

I have to admit that when I logged on last night/ this morning and saw that the thread was closed, it felt like when I've been watching TV and the electricity went out, you know? I kind of sat there and thought, "what should I do"?

Well, glad to see the lights came back on this morning with the continuation of the thread. And it was pretty interesting to hear about people's weather around the globe. It lets me travel vicariously.

Yes, we had a lovely hallway date, my man and I. Sat next to each other, holding hands, touching heads together and just being. How I love him!

Awesome LBrain :) Yeah, fishing is the thing to do to just unplug. I'm looking forward to those lazy easy days too!

Geez--can you tell it's end of semester for me?
Sorry I missed that.

However, the "romance thing" sounds even better. . .

Okay, here it is.

So what I meant about the grace is the way you seem to handle and process your current situation based on what we see from it here. And the respect you have shown to people here in your communications since I first started reading your posts. I see that everywhere on this forum. The way you describe your parents, it sounds like they are people who do not appreciate your attitude and who you are the way we do here. Probably a different level of awareness in part, and certainly a different level of personal development. Definitely not everyone (perhaps not even very many people) are able to comprehend that dying does not have to focus on misery and cause the collapse of the individual's dignity and the world around him, but can also be the "celebration" of a life well lived. I guess probably some of your doctors did not find you very graceful though when you challenged their knowledge and methods :)

And yes, of course it would be best if we all had nurturing parents and wonderful families. The stuff about the dysfunctional family members being "OK" was referring to my own experience... I just accepted them being that way, but with some, it was a very difficult and long process to get to a stage that I can say this. This refers mostly to my mother, whose dysfunctional "nurturing" and expression of love contributed to psychological problems that actually threatened my life also when I was young, and then she did nothing to help me resolve it. Of course she never meant to have that effect and was probably totally unaware of it in her whole life.

Like you, I have also avoided my family members (except my dad) as much as I could. I was also not chasing them for love or tried to provoke their attention in any way -- quite the opposite. What I meant by all this finally turning out well is that I did not become like these relatives and the independence I developed very early is something I have always cherished. But of course there is no way of knowing how everything would be had most of my family been a loving, successful bunch of people with high integrity. Maybe I would have lived a very different life, for example, not moving away and globetrotting the way I do.

I also totally get what you are saying about not desiring their love. I desire the company of people who actually know how to relate to someone else and can form healthy attachments. Sadly, there are many people though who keep chasing childhood abuse and dysfunction in their whole life. This is another reason why I say I am fine with things as they are for me.

I think that you absolutely have no obligation to satisfy your relatives any craving at the price of giving up being true to yourself, and I think it's a very healthy attitude.

Stroll sounds wonderful Rob :)

D

Afternoon, folks. Sounds like a pleasanter day for you and Melissa, Rob. May they just get better and better.

Borderline hot here in ATL. 80F today.

Evening Robby sending love

Hi Robby -- weird day here -- I apparently spent the night being pinched by demons, yelping howling & cursing at unseen forces. So I'm pretty achey today. And I've had a positive flurry of communications from the less functional ends of my bloodline & past life, which always take a while to settle into sense in my head. In short, not quite overwhelmed here but looking forward to some rest soon.

Enough about me -- my plights & gripes. How has your day been? Do you have nice or nasty nurses? I hope nice.

https://deeppoliticsforum.com/forums...e%20smilie.gif

Hi haennie.

The conversation is difficult, nonetheless it is my experience I have survived "growing up" in a dysfunctional family which equated "love" with chronic mental, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse hidden away in the family closet. Out of sight out of mind. For me, my parents "philosophy of life" was to encourage and enable myself and my siblings to "love and protect" at all costs our parents. You know, when the abused allow the abuse in the name of love, always hoping for real love to manifest. Of course, it never does.

I'm not going to go into details. Its not the details which are important in this thread. What is important is my parents didn't struggle with being parents. I don't think they ever really assumed such responsibility. I think they did struggle with guilt, remorse, regret, and self-hatred, which they projected onto their children.

They saw me as not being in the fold, if you will. They also saw me as being aware of what was going on. I partially remember an incident when children's services were investigating what was later officially rendered as "rumour and suspicion." A policeman was in the front hall asking questions. I spoke up. I was like 7 or 8 years old. When the officer left, I was slapped in the face for "telling stories." Of course, this was back in the mid 60's. Child and family abuse had an entirely different legal and social understanding. Back then, parents ruled.

So, its not that they didn't appreciate my attitude, lol, they didn't appreciate my not loving them back as they had so earnestly taught me. I really can't be more clear. I have many experiences which will never be shared. Ever. What would be the point?

haennie, you and I share a valued friendship, which we are both grateful for goes without saying. We nourish it, we put it into action, we take joy and responsibility for having such a friendship.

As for my parents, its not like they tried and failed loving me. They were already all set with themselves before I was born. In their eyes they were quite successful. In my eyes they failed to raise the son they desired. In their eyes, I simply won't fall into my place with a smile on my face. In my eyes, I did my best to stop their abuse of me all prettily wrapped up in what they sold as "family love."

I wasn't entirely successful. And yet, successful enough to know I am responsible for my own thoughts, feelings, and actions. My past circumstances do not offer me a pass. It's not about fault. It's about responsibility. It was always about responsibility.

I'm okay with these discussions. I haven't been their "son" for many decades now. Thanks for continuing this haennie. My experiences are mine to own.

No worries.

It's scary how hard it is to put one's parents to rest, even when they're dead. My mother haunts me now -- she was all safely tucked away and powerless as an old lady in her small town with her tiny life & her scotch, but dead she's resumed a lot of vigor. My poor brother wrote me today that he's created an alternate personality for all his bad crap and he's named it after her! It's so sick, it's funny. ;)

I wrote this about her a year ago -- Enjoy if you like! http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...ml#post4564429

Hi Robbyrobot, this conversation is way over my head, that's why I don't usually say much. I hope I don't seem shallow because of that, I just prefer to say nothing if I don't have anything useful to contribute. But, I am so very sorry you were treated that way and I can identify with the loss of not having a family. You deserve better.