Don’t let it effect you.

People tell you all the time when other’s act in a hurtful way that you should not allow it to effect you. But how true is this statement? It’s just something I am wondering. This week I started reading Alice Walker’s latest selection of poetry and some of the poems relate to oppression such as that faced by the Afro American community as well as the Palestinians. Going through oppression or repression yourself makes you have empathy for all of those people ever oppressed or repressed. I guess if it never happens to you, you cannot REALLY know how it feels, suffice to say it’s a very unpleasant feeling and worse are the dark feelings of hatred that can start to brew in your heart, gut and mind.

I am feeling somewhat sick to the stomach today. I just went out to do a bit of gardening but thoughts of my brother are going round and round today. My father oppressed me a lot too so that is probably why I am being especially triggered of late. That someone can through their own will and lack of feeling actively block your requests and needs is frustrating and its making me worried about my breast cancer vulnerability too. My brother can live in a world where he doesn’t have to connect emotionally with anyone. He can ski all day and drink 2 scotches and a bottle of wine at night and not care.

When I got picked up for drunk driving in my early twenties he thought it was a great joke. Now that I am sober I am considered strange. Going to family functions and having to hear him drone on with monologues about our family business with absolutely no emotional content at all in what should be highly personal eulogies or speeches is painful and embarrassing. I know he is just a product of his generation (1940s). I know he has a wife who never once tells him she loves him and they live apart for most of the year. So why would he understand me wanting to be close to another human being. He just doesn’t!!!

A while back to me he said “we all know you are very lonely”, he does not even know me. He never asks me anything personal, any time we talk its purely about finances. I know I cannot change him, and it is probably wrong to go public with all of this but at the moment my body is screaming inside. I know people in AA have to deal with this all the time. It came up in the meeting yesterday about resentment and wanting to hurt someone who is shut down or abusive. How many people serve sentences for reacting in self defence if they were bullied or abused for years and finally ‘snapped’ one day? Is it a defect of character to feel like lashing out?

I am not condoning lashing out but I know there comes a time to fight repression. I think of all the very good people who fought against repression or oppression and tried to face off forces of darkness around them. Martin Luther King comes to mind and there are many others. How do you come out of this situation not wishing the other person ill?

I am going to try and do some loving kindness practice today for my brother but its not coming easy. At the moment I want to throttle him. Then I think of Scott who is so kind and said to be the other day “don’t be too hard on your brother, he is only trying to protect you.” I wish it didn’t affect me but it bloody well does and I would be lying if I said it doesn’t. In AA we are taught to pray for these people who are said to be spiritually unwell. Its not right to oppress others, but it happens all the time. Its finding a way to live with it and not let it destroy your happiness that is so important.