Alana's Dharma Blog

This blog is a direct continuation of the previous entry — Its about me and me. If you have not already done so, please go back and read that entry before you proceed here.

On the tail of realizing that my own standards/impossible desires –and my inability to uphold them — lay at the heart of my negative feelings about my Mom, I started considering a few other troubled relationships in my life to see if I could find the same pattern at work again. My mind immediately flashed back to my old mooching friends, Sandy and Blake (the blog is here), who never seemed to pay for anything when we spent time together.

Ultimately, out friendship ended because of money. We sold them a car, that we had a better offer on, but I wanted to be a “good friend” and sell to them for less because they were in financial straights. A few months later, they sold us a different car in return, but it needed work to be brought up to emissions standards. Technically, the car was illegal to sell in the state of California until the emissions work was done, but again, knowing they needed the money, we bought it from them on the promise that they would get the emissions work done quickly, at their own expense, and get us the working car we had paid for. But months went by and no car. They had brought it in to the mechanic, but the work never seemed done…finally I had enough — I felt like we had gone above and beyond to be good friends and they didn’t return the favor, they didn’t respect us at all. In the end we told them to keep the money and the car and we went our separate ways, the end of years of intensely close friendship.

Now, when I look back on this, I can’t help see the same pattern emerging as I saw with my mom: I wanted to be a good friend, I wanted to be giving and generous, I wanted to be patient and let what I saw as them using me roll off my back. That was an ideal, magnanimous friend in my mind, that is who I wanted to be. But, I couldn’t muster continual patients, my friends forced me past the edge of my generosity ‘comfort zone’. I stopped hanging out with them not just because I felt like they took advantage, but because they made me feel lesser –like a bad friend and an undesirable person. There was a feeling in my heart, each and every time they made me pay, of anger and discomfort because my selfish reflex didn’t jive with the compassionate, always giving, good friend Alana I wanted to see myself as.

What is more, I wanted my good friends to act in a certain way –namely I wanted them to do things I believe confirmed me, made me feel good and special and loved. The problem with all the mooching was I began to wonder if their friendship was validating my awesomeness or validating their want for money.

Obviously, there are a ton of wrong views in these thoughts: That good friends are by definition people who are generous and giving; or that the purpose of friends is to validate; or that Blake and Sandy’s behavior was mutually exclusive with respect; or that the reasons for the car not being done were about me, or them for that matter; that making us pay regularly was taking advantage and that the non-monetary things they contributed to our life had lesser value. I dealt with many of these, years ago, in the original blog (the blog is here). But the truth is, none of these views triggered powerful enough emotions that they would have led me to dissolve such a dear relationship on their on.

What triggered emotions strong enough to break up with Blake and Sandy was me and me: It was the fact that my emotional response, to their behavior, reminded me of the limits on my own self-imagined magnanimity.  It was always me, my views of right and wrong, my standards for good and bad friends, and my need for friendships to validate my view of myself…I am starting to suspect that, in fact, it is ALWAYS about me and me.

Today I was at Whole Foods and a call came over the loudspeaker, ” Can the owner of the silver BMW with plate number XYZ please come to the front”.  That was me, “that is my car” I said, as I rushed to the front desk. It turns out I had parked crooked over the line and the person in the space next to me couldn’t get out. I hadn’t realized I had done it, and I was already feeling bad and self conscious as I went outside to straighten the car, when a stranger in the parking lot mutters, “who the hell would park like that?”

I was so angry, I suddenly hated that stranger, even though I didn’t know her at all.  But in my mind, I was sorry, I didn’t park badly on purpose, it was an accident, so why the fuck is she being so mean and judgmental? As I fumed in my car, repeating the mantra, “I hate her, I hate her, I hate her”, it dawned on me,  I don’t really hate that woman at all. The person I am truly hating right now is me…

Alana is considerate and kind, those are traits I pride myself on. I think these are important qualities in a person, and in a community. In my mind, situations where people are considerate go smoothly and those where they don’t, well the threat of disorder and violence lurks beneath every honk and curse and broken social norm. I value living in orderly places; it is the reason I moved to uptight Greenwich from unruly NY, it makes me feel safe. But here I am breaking my own rules. Feeling upset when the place I normally appreciate for its citizens’ polite policing, is finding me to be the offender. I can’t just let go of my rules, I can’t admit that the fact that I can’t even keep them faithfully should call their absoluteness into value.  No! For me polite/considerate/compassionate is true and good (even though their upholding is making me feel pretty bad about myself right about now). So, instead of dealing with that whole kerfuffle of contradictions, I shortcut the cognitive dissonance I feel with a simple emotion — hate.

In a flash I project the hate outward, on the woman who wouldn’t give me a pass. Who judged without seeing my intentions, my usual polite nature. But it is my own value of this quality that makes me so upset at being judged lacking in it. It is really me, my failure, that I hate.

A few weeks ago I was at the Wat and LP Anan was playing a little instructive game with me. He opened up a website about ‘miss-matched’ couples and started sharing pics. One was of a super tall guy and a tiny woman, another an old guy and a young woman, another a fat woman and a skinny guy. He asked if I agreed with the website that these couples were, ‘mismatched’, if their being together bothered me in some way. I admitted they did and he asked why. I said the guy is too tall for that lady, the second dude too old for the woman, the third woman too fat for the skinny guy.   He called me out — he said that the problem wasn’t with the coulpes, the problem lies in my heart: The height difference in the first couple exceeded my threshold for height differences in a couple. The age difference in the second couple exceeded my threshold for an appropriate age difference in a couple; that the weight difference in the last couple exceeded my threshold of acceptable weight differences between a couple. In other words — my thoughts, my judgments, were not about the couple at all, they were about my standards and expectations. They were about me and me.

I had taken this lesson home and started contemplating on it when it hit me. My Mom and I have struggled with a hard relationship. But ever since a trip we took last summer together, I have been feeling like I hate her. I agreed to the trip because she wanted to travel so badly. She promised she would be ‘easy’, not make a big deal about her religious diet, that she would be so very grateful. On day 1 she was dragging me to restaurants I didn’t want to go to so she could get a kosher meal. A small misunderstanding about a rural stay, and her diet options in the town of 150, had her screaming at me for 45 minutes telling me what a bad person I am, how inconsiderate, etc. I broke. I yelled. I wanted to drop her on the side of the road and drive away. Instead, I calmed down on the outside, and seethed on the inside, through the rest of the trip. Them, I went home, with hate unlike any I have had before, in my heart.

Now, almost a year later, with LP’s lesson on the brain, the hate starts making more sense: I want so badly to be a good kid, to be a calm, patient, saint-like person. To be equanimous, like a good Buddhist. It’s the Alana that hugs homeless people, and frets so much about being a good Buddhist. My Mom, she pushed me too far to be that ideal Alana, she forces me to acknowledge that there is a threshold, after which I am not calm or patient or good, I am just fucking pissed.

My hate of my Mom is really just me hating someone that reminds me of my own failings, of failings of this world. I need the world to follow my rules and standards, only in this world of rules, and consideration, and goodness, and patients, can I possibly be safe. I can’t bear to see the bald truth, that my own inability to maintain these qualities means they aren’t really absolutes of this world at all. Nor is Alana identity, rife with wonderful qualities, an absolute. So, I just tune out the uncertainty and impermanence and fixate on nice, simple, hate.

But is it really fair to hate my Mom just because she reminds me that I come-up short in following the rules — that I made up in the first place — about how things and people should work ( even though they don’t actually always work that way)? This really has nothing to do with my Mom; this is about me and me.

All those couples LP showed me obviously don’t agree with my standards. My mom doesn’t think she is acting in a way that would drive me away, or she wouldn’t do it. The lady in the parking lot today was Greenwich-style-polite-policing in a way I usually do, I usually agree with, only this time I needed a pass. Clearly these standards of mine aren’t absolute truths of this world, because not everyone agrees with me. I am catching myself up in webs of me and me, worsening my entrapment and suffering with each surge of struggle and hate, while the world moves along, being what it actually is, unconcerned with me and my standards.

• For time with my beloved father, for feeling special and valued when he loved and approved of me, I had a childhood suffering with an ill mother, bullying, being jealous of my brother, striving for popularity and friends, and then shattering pain and loss when Dad died.

• For time with my ex Fede, and the imaginary future of a long happily-ever-after marriage, I had to deal with him prioritizing his studies over time together,  his years of absence when he went to study abroad,  his condescension and withholding of affection, for sexual deprivation and ultimately the sorrow of a bad breakup.

• For my time with my ex  Alex I had years of sexual tension between us, the fear of losing a friend, his acerbic comments, worry about him and drugs, awkwardness of losing my virginity, getting used for a final stand, all for a few weeks together and then me sobbing away our breakup.

• For my job I had years of anxiety trying to prove myself, frustration with my boss, stress of employees, embarrassment of not being more senior and anger at being constantly reminded of it. Uncertainty, feeling like I was undervalued in the search for the director’s replacement, travel back and forth, stress on low pay, all for a few moments when I feel exhilarated, pride at being a part of something I identify with.

•   For my beloved Eric, I trade the stress early dating if he was the one, stress being domesticated and feeling like I cant go out , be sexy, build my identity and worth off of everyone wanting me, stress of him being distant in early Uber and dating days, stress of the times I feel like I have disappointed him, stress over his health and his jobs, feeling dragged around, under valued in one way and undeserving in another, stress of missing him and of having him there, all for the moments and memories of joy and hope for more later.  And definitely an end where, either I leave him and worry for his wellbeing, jealous Ill be replaced, worried we wont meet again, worried I will owe him. Or he leaves me and I am lonely, I miss him, my identity is shattered, my sense of safety and wellbeing is shook, my financial and logistical worries take over, I worry about if to ordain or keep lay living, of where to go and what to do with myself when I exhaust the imagination of a partner shaped object beside me while I enjoy life, to make me enjoy life more and prove it is enjoyable. And the pain when my hope for finding my happy ending is dashed.