From: anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson)
Subject: Re: Personal losses in CO 2
Organization: Madison Academic Computing Center, UW-Madison
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 93 04:44:15 GMT


In article <1993Jan21.111021.21793@lclark.edu>
snodgras@lclark.edu (Bil Snodgrass) writes:

>I don't know why I assumed any differently.....but my
>mother, the person I love the most on this planet, voted Yes
>on 2.  I didn't ask her until today.  [...] When I asked her
>who she voted for she said Bush.

>[...] I stopped the conversation almost in tear and told her
>I had to get off the phone before I said something I would
>regret.  I am in a daze now.  Guess I should have faced this
>long ago.

Perhaps, but spare yourself worry and recriminations now
over what could have been, since that is more likely to
drain away emotional resources that you need than it is to
bring you helpful insights at this stage.

Perhaps it will help to remind yourself that what today
seems stunning and painful is taking place in a much larger
context, so that downstream some suitable distance, weeks,
months, or years from now (whatever it takes), these matters
will be but one part of a longer-term perspective.  Whatever
it is that fills the life for you will have done so in
whatever way it does, by then.  Maybe there will be even be
subsequent chapters or episodes that involve your mother
that will serve as clarifications, modifications, or
reconciliations of the present contretemps.

>I could go on and on.  I couldn't believe my mother.  It
>really hurts.

There's this to say, among other things, about such pains:
they are proof positive that we are feeling beings (not
everyone is, of course), and this is a good thing to know
about ourselves.  The pain of a broken loyalty, even if it
is really nothing more than an illusory loyalty, is sharp
and disorienting, I think.  As you say, disbelief: one can't
quite take it in.  The disorientation element, when it's
present, is something like a magnifying lens, increasing or
dramatizing the emotional situation, and in a sense it
strikes us in a more vulnerable place, our *inner* sense of
what is good and fair and right.

>When I was getting ready to come out to them I remember
>people talking about the chance that they could disown me.
>That I could lose them.

Maybe this explains, at least in part, why you find yourself
now in a state of shock, set up by not having wanted to
fully entertain the idea of such a rupture earlier.

>Well I am here to say that it is just as possible for me to
>let go of them.  That I don't deserve the pain they have
>caused me.

>[...] I have to let go.  They cannot or shouldn't have this
>power of pain inducement.

I suppose it's less a matter of *actually* (certainly in the
sense of permanently) excluding your family from your life
than it is of establishing a certain detachment and
independence, to the degree required by your need for inner
emotional stability and poise.  Being *able* to let go, it
seems to me, is a key ingredient there.

On the matter of pain, there is always an element of our
cooperation involved, and while you may never be able to
change them, or (even more unfortunate) maybe they will
never be able to change themselves, still some component of
the feelings (loss or whatever they are) resides in your
insides, and that you do have control over, even if in the
heat or disbelief of the moment it seems less than clear
that you do.

Take heart in the long view, if you can.  Such things not
seldom get resolved in due course.  In the near term, try to
gather support from those nearest and dearest around you,
make it an explicit objective to maintain your own mental
hygiene, and chances are good that all will be well at some
future time.

-- 
[Jess Anderson <> Madison Academic Computing Center <> University of Wisconsin]
[Internet: anderson@macc.wisc.edu <-best, UUCP:{}!uwvax!macc.wisc.edu!anderson]
[Room 3130 <> 1210 West Dayton Street / Madison WI 53706 <> Phone 608/262-5888]
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