Hard to Love....

Sometimes it's really hard to choose love...

As much as we might want to try.

This post is kind of personal and stupid. I won't be offended if anyone clicks away. It's just something I'd like to say. Thinking "out loud".

Tuesday, I went to apply for a part-time job. There's something I want to get done by January and a part-time job would help me do it. I'm not the only person who's tight on money right now ~ but I'm the only one who can do anything about my situation.

I didn't actually apply. I'd called on Monday and was led to believe that all I had to do was show up. So, I decided to take a long walk there. It was a pleasant day weatherwise. Not hot. Not cold. A little bit cloudy. The walk was more than a couple of miles but I was looking forward to that part.

Once I arrived at the "job site", I figured I'd be shown how to do the project which was building a simple database. There wouldn't even be much programming involved. If anything, it was a high level data entry. I'd been told that I could take the information home and do it from here. We'd even agreed on a price.

When I got there and met the woman in person, I could see it in her eyes that she didn't like what she saw. It wasn't an age thing, either. She knew from the phone call that I am "retired" which is usually a keyword for "not young and spry".

Maybe it was the clothes, although I know when to modify that. I'm not a moron. I didn't go in there looking like a temple dancer. If anything, I looked like an old hippie ~ which is how I look all the time. Maybe I looked like her ex-mother-in-law. Those things are always impossible to pinpoint. It could be anything and I'm not going to waste my energy trying to figure it out.

She gave me the "we have other people to talk with" speech and I knew right then. The call the previous day had been deceptive. I got up and left with a probably rather curt "good luck".

I went across the street to a shopping mall and consoled myself with a Thai lunch at a restaurant. Then I walked back here.

As the day went on, I began to ache. Every muscle. By the end of the day ~ and the next day ~ and yesterday, I felt like I'd been beaten up. All my muscles ached, my throat was sore and every step felt like walking through thick molasses. I was sick. As in no-shit-I'm-really-sick sick.

This morning, I feel better. Not entirely healed. But I do know the origin of the sickness and why I felt the way I did.

I seem to have a constitutional inability to tolerate dishonesty. This almost-Asperger's quality to my personality makes living in the world really difficult sometimes. Most people lie to avoid confrontation. They lie to make their own lives easier. They lie for a variety of reasons.

I'm not suggesting that we should be so honest that we're cruel. I don't think honesty has to be "rigourous" in the sense that we say everything that comes into our heads without regard for anyone else's feelings. I believe we can be honest and kind at the same time. To do so respects another person's autonomy and dignity. It allows them to make choices.

Is it unreasonable to say that I think it would have been perfectly okay for that woman to be honest with me? To simply say, "this isn't a good match and here's why"? What is the purpose of the deception? Why mislead me to benefit herself?

It's times like that when I find it hard to choose love in my life. It's times like that when all the old toxicity releases itself into my body and makes me sick. The root cause is rage. Unexpressed rage.

My rage isn't outwardly aggressive. It turns inward and makes me sick. Then it globalizes. Now that makes a lot of sense, doesn't it?

It's an unhealthy dynamic and I'm aware of that part. I know that consciously choosing to love is important at those times.

It's important to choose to love because then I can feel some compassion for someone who is so uncomfortable that she couldn't tell another human being the truth. I can feel some compassion for the fact that she is likely not even aware of the damage she does when she misleads someone, leads him or her to believe something that isn't true, causing that person to take action on her words. I can feel some compassion for someone who is not living the life she could probably be choosing, if only she knew it existed.

I'm no longer angry at her. I just feel a sort of hollowness. And I know for certain now that I can never knowingly dunk my toes into that lake again.

~*