More musings..

So where did I leave off? Oh yeah, I was trying to get to the core of what may be keeping me from true enlightenment. Before I get to that I just want to say that what I said about the guys I've been involved with being unacceptable or unavailable was meant in relation to me. Most of them were perfectly nice guys...just not right for me. There's only one who I'd like to see under a bus, and I'm even at peace in my mind about him. I'll never see him again. Unless I find myself stranded on some unmarked road in Mississippi. Even then I'd call law enforcement or even the Klan before I thought about giving him a ring. No drunk dialing him. Ever. But even in that situation, in retrospect, I can appreciate how I contributed to that disaster. But there was no way I could have seen it coming or unfortunately prevented it.
But this is no relationship post-mortem. I just didn't want to give the impression that I'm morphing into a man-hater. It would be bad timing since I stopped knitting and don't have my kitties anymore. No, I am looking back so that I can understand where I am and if necessary make adjustments going forward. So back to that...
The common thread in the 'things I'm ashamed of' seems, in my preliminary assessment, that they are things that were outside of my control, but caused me great pain. And while I can understand intellectually that the things were outside of my control, I still cannot figure out why I am ashamed. As opposed to mistakes I've made, which I have no shame about because I made the best decision I could with the information I had at the time. I don't do regret...My shame seems tied to misplaced trust and fear of judgement. So the aforementioned Man From Enterprise, for example, I have no problems about the circumstance of our relationship and some truly scandalous things I did during the course of the dalliance. what I have shame about is something that he did in the course of the relationship that I had absolutely no control over, that I will not specify here, that I did all I could have to prevent. It was something HE did, but I feel ashamed. That's illogically. Relatedly, the other issue I'm wondering if I need to dig out of the crates is something(s) that happened that I did not do, but at most participated in before I had agency or capability...Sorry to be obtuse...So if there is no way I would hold another person responsible for these things, why am I ashamed of them in relation to myself. Why don't I volunteer them in relevant conversations? For example, you know I experienced something similar to that...Never happens. Mums the word. Except for a few bonding sessions with friends I've known forever. In bits and pieces. If I died tomorrow, it would take a team of forensic investigators to put together my biography and the most reliable sources would not be my parents or family members. Even my closest friends and consorts would realize there were huge gaps, questions, inconsistencies, etc. in their versions. And they might come together in a wholly unexpected way.
Maybe that's OK, maybe it's not... Maybe it's relevant to me moving forward, maybe not. Going back to the daddy thing and even a mommy thing. Should I, as an adult about to change demographic brackets (gasp), spill the beans to my parents about things I experienced? Knowing it would drastic change, even ruin their perception of who I've been and become? I rationalized...no need to dig up the past, to hurt them, to disrupt the present with all that. But is that just self-manufactured bs?
More important, how has keeping these secrets and shame affected me? Changed how I see myself and how I interact with others. So far, the few times I have revealed things to friends, I've been floored by how understanding they are and how much overlap there is in our experiences. It's made me challenge one of my youthful handicaps--now returned in different form--self-isolation, detachment. I would avoid connections because I was afraid of rejection, judgement. And back to my motley relationship crew, I hid myself from every man I've been involved with...Sometimes 90%, sometimes 10%, but always enough so that after the pieces fell, I could get up, dust myself off and say "aww, that didn't hurt so much." I wasn't really all in anyway. And that's not good for a woman, ahem, of my age. So there's the realtionship problem there. I can't connect with someone else when I have all this crap I'm keeping cordoned off from view. even if I'm good at it. When I like them, I get neurotic from trying to hide it and when they are into me, I resent that don't notice that I'm withholding. A conundrum!
So that made my head hurt.
On a lighter front, I finally read enough of the blogger instructions to figure out how to add pictures to my posts! It's on. Between my camcorder and my cellphone, no one will be safe! You've been warned...

I just added-- I think-- a picture of our uninhabitable adobe in New Orleans...