so... I realized a little while ago today that I genuinely, down in my core of cores, do hate myself and want to be punished.
I do not know why.
This fact, though, has ruined my life and my relationships. It is the reason why I "test" people, why I drive them away-- to make them "prove" how much they love me.
It's like I told my friend Laura yesterday. You cannot "prove" anything when it comes down to it. Everything is dependent on trust. We trust that the sky is the color called blue. We trust our eyes that they are seeing what "blue" really is. We trust that water is wet. You cannot prove the simplest fact, and you certainly cannot prove something as complex as love.
And I realize right this instant the connection between hating myself/wanting to punish myself, and my "testing" people. It's this: I know that you cannot truly prove anything, least of all big things like love. And so when I "test" people to make them "prove" their love for me under cover of my being afraid to trust them due to the possibility of me being hurt, I all along know that love cannot be proven. Therefore, I all along know that they will fail to prove their love. And therefore I all along treat them as though I expect them to fail-- because I know that they will. Because love cannot be proven. It can only be trusted. Not the greatest person in the world, not God himself, could prove love. And ultimately, every relationship ends for the same reason-- I am told, "you expect too much of me," or "I can't meet your demands of perfection," or "I don't have the time and energy to try to live up to what you want." Because yes, for love to be proven to me would require perfection. But the thing is, that I know subconsciously all along, that even were someone to be absolutely perfect, there would still be room for doubt in my mind of their love. Therefore even if someone is perfect, they fail. There is no way, in my method or mind, for anyone to succeed in loving me. And I am convinced of this before I ever set out in a relationship. And therefore, my "testing" of people is in reality my method to ensure that I am punished by systematically and purposefully taunting myself with and then depriving myself of the one thing I want most in the entire world-- true love.
The word "grace" has entered my mind... and so has the term "the gospel"... but does it matter? Grace is supposed to be the solution to the plague of punishment, and the gospel is supposed to free, but down in my core I do not know what grace and the gospel are, nor do I want to accept them in my life. "Forgiveness" has entered my mind as well, but if the term means what I dread that it means, it is another thing that I do not want to accept into my life.
My life has been punishing myself for as long as I can remember, in every aspect. Not only in love and relationships, but physically as well I have punished myself, and by denying myself everything I've ever wanted, I have punished myself.
That is all I have for now and there may be more later. I wholeheartedly welcome any genuine, wise insight. And I mean it better be wise-- cause I am pretty darn wise myself sometimes, and you're gonna have to be able to top my wisdom on this one in order to help me out. No pat religious or one-size-fits-all insights allowed. At the same time, don't let that scare you off-- because I do want insight. Meeting those requirements.
** addition (3 hours later):
So... it's a cycle. I want to punish myself because I have failed to meet my own standards. BUT, I intentionally set standards that I cannot meet-- because I want to have an excuse to punish myself. Which came first? The desire to punish myself, or the false standards? And unfortunately, the way you treat yourself is the way you inevitably treat others. And therefore I have impossible standards for other people, and punish them when they fail to meet them. Although there is a part of me that HATES that I do that... I can't seem to act otherwise. Because to act otherwise, I suppose, would cause my whole system of living to come crashing down around me. And throughout all of this, I still want so desperately to be able to love and be loved in return.
Which comes first: the hate of ourselves, or the false standards? I punish myself because I hate myself... but I hate myself because I am such that I punish myself. What starts it all?
I know that grace proclaims God has no such standards for us as we have for ourselves. What he expects is what is true, because of who he is, he can expect no false thing. Therefore he never expects us to be different than we in actuality are.
So if I learned to see myself for who I actually am, could I end the punishing of myself forever?
But the problem has been that I am afraid of the "me" that I dread that I actually am. That is, I dread potentially discovering that I am a different person than I long to be. I would rather hide and be no one than be fully me and for "fully me" to not be the me that I want to be.
So can I just decide who I want to be, and make myself into that person? I guess to an extent that's plausible... but say I was set on being 6'2. There is no way I will ever grow a foot. Some things are impossible to change. (Fortunately, I'm content with my height for the most part). So... in principle, there has to be some requirement of simply accepting myself as I am and learning to love myself as I am. And this, I hear, is why people rebel with all their might against the concept of grace. "If I love myself and others as we are," they cry, "we will just stay in our current states and never achieve our full potential!" Or more sinister-ly, "If people are loved as they are, in their current mistake-making, flawed-thinking states, then they will just keep on making mistakes and thinking in flawed ways, because love is everyone's goal, and once they have it as they are, why should they change? And improvement, of course, is what we want."
What grace proclaims, as many smart thinkers have worded in various ways, is that in order to change for the better, it is mandantory that a person first accept themself fully as they are! In other words, the truth is that love produces change for the better in some magical way from the deepest roots of a soul. Fear produces behavioral change that rises and falls with the flow of the punishment. Until you reach the breaking point when you can no longer motivate yourself, even with punishment... I have been there.
This grace-life requires trust! Trust in some mysterious force in the universe that is better than we could hope for, despite all our raging doubts and a world that seems so full of disappointment.
I have known for a long, long time that "trust" was what was being developed in my life... (supposedly?) but have I learned a damn thing? I don't feel like I understand trust at all. In fact, I feel I understand it less than I ever have. Let alone do I know how to "do" it. Other than to just... do it. I have heard it said that trust just "happens"... that it grows in us as a seed grows in the ground. Due to no effort of our own.
But why... how... I have begged for it so much, why leave me in torment without it? I do believe that there can be no lasting happiness or pure love apart from trust. It seems to me you must trust in order to trust. Which is as ridiculous of a cycle as the hate-standards-punishment cycle. How do things work? I don't understand.
