Blog on the Lillypad
Thursday, September 11, 2003
 | Cannibal's Lunch
That's me; anyway, that's how I felt yesterday: once again being hungrily eyed by somebody who wants me, and wants me in the worst possible way. There are ways we can have each other--some of them quite distant and detached and yet beneficial. The doctor who really cares about juvenile patients with leukemia cannot be too warm, too close, too intimate. She has to have some distance if she's going to save them, think clearly, and at times do things that cause them momentary pain. But the things she does saves them. At times she spends every waking hour trying to devise some workaround for them when the conventional medical protocols don't work. She knows she's done her job when they leave her to go out and live healthy lives, never to return. |
There are ways in which one person of any twosome has to do all (or most of) the giving. I learned long ago that equality in relationships is a big fallacy. Respect and generosity are the most important aspects in meaningful relationships. Sometimes one person sees the needs or injuries in another and simply gives and gives in order to bring the person to recovery. My friend Deb is like this. She doesn't think I know that she's been very generous and kind to me, but I know. And I know that she is very strong, very happy, very deeply rooted in her life, and I do not have the power or the gifts to be her equal in our friendship. But because she approaches me with respect and generosity, she gives of her time and concern and helps me when my mind is running overtime and is hurting me with brooding thoughts. The best I can do with Deb is always be very courteous with her and show my respect for her, because I know full well I can never give back to her what she's given to me in terms of guidance, candor, and supportive words. I'm not going to let that bother me----quite the opposite. I am very honored.
The only way to build true friendships is to be honest and respectful. And respect has to exist on both sides. I have a great friend from long ago who is in a rocky marriage. I care about him a great deal, but it gets a little tricky when you're a single woman and he's a married man, in a marriage that's in trouble. By tacit agreement, we never see each other in person, and I do most of the writing, e-mailing, and I listen over the phone if things get really bad. Of course it's not equal. It can never really be an intimate friendship, for our goal is the same and doesn't involve me: to help him keep himself and his marriage together. I know full well I'm the best friend he's got, but it won't end like the storybooks end. Even now, as he is getting better footing with the situation and has learned to accommodate to some of the difficulties, I am starting to fade away from his life. Like the doctor with the leukemia patients.
But the only way this friendship could have worked in these conditons is for both of us to respect the other's views. He's not a Christian and despises astrology, but he learned (and I learned) to respect the differences and try to work with them. He doesn't express scorn for what he regards as superstition, and I don't keep hitting him over the head with the need to be saved. But there are moments in discussing his options and his grief when he has to say, I just don't believe that, about advice I give, and I accept that he doesn't. And there have been times when in his grief he asks a question, and I have to say, I can only answer that in terms of Christ because Christ is the only answer I have. And he accepts that. But I know that eventually I have to fade out from his life. And I respect that, too. The friendship cannot work without that respect and a recognition that we both have boundaries we cannot tear down.
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And then there's the other extreme: when somebody wants more than the friendship you can give. You're walking along, minding your own business, trying to put the Rule For Being a Nice Person into practice, and then you get this person who at first seemed nice, and now she's crossing those sacred boundaries. My emotional state seems to be a matter she keeps under close scrutiny. |
Over the next several weeks, my attempts to put some healthy distance in place slowly take hold. And yet any indication of emotion in me have been met with a ubiquitous solicitude that I find profoundly annoying. She's always at my elbow if she sees an opening. I begin to think of it in terms of cannibalism. This person wants something I find death to provide. I'm not even sure I know what she wants, but I know she does want what would harm me to give. The cannibal wants you.
 | I begin hearing the phrase, "You'll have to come over some time." This chills me. Sure. Come right over to the cannibal's house for supper. Guess who's on the menu? Over the next several weeks I figure out it must be more an emotional attraction than physical. I am emotionally strong and forthright, already a beacon for needy guys, and they have come in droves until I beat them off and learned not to let a needy guy see me as a mother. I hadn't thought about needy women. Or if I had, I suppose I'd readied myself to deal with openly hurting people in an open, kind way while maintaining the boundaries I require. I had not considered backdoor approaches of false and cloying solicitude. |
After all, I am single. I'm supposed to be needy. Ok, I am needy. Life can be wretchedly lonely. But somehow I have learned, after being overly dependent on others for a good part of my life, that I have to be dependent on God, on the goodness of His grace, and I have to be strong for myself. And I can depend on others but must never be dependent on them.
But now the cannibal has come, wanting my emotions, wanting to know my fears, wanting to peer into my deepest heart where I store both grief and joy. Is she doing this because she knows I find it annoying to be under scrutiny, or is she really clueless? This is a person, I remind myself. A human being. But, I keep thinking, this human being is a cannibal. Ah, the great terror to a person with a ninth house sun and the Ascendent in Sagittarius (like me): to be confined, to be restricted, to be owned. And worse, to be consumed or carved up in such a way that the core of what I am is rifled by another person merely to get an emotional high. That's what this is coming down to: an over familiarity that wants to keep coming, wants to dispense with the part of me that she considers minor or trivial to consider, and wants to get to that big juicy heart, so full of passion to live fully and know my world.
