One way I've managed to accept, integrate, and sync myself was to embrace and even publicly deal with, not just being a mess, but being awful. I openly shared that I'm a trained killer (I don't kill for joy, and I don't kill people), and that I'm very good at it.
The bloody work was not a problem. That's normal. The problem was constantly being trained to believe that they couldnt really feel anything, even against all evidence otherwise. The real problem, which I realized fairly early on, was that the 'belief' was actually a training method for turning our own feelings off. It worked exceptionally well on me. I became cold, heartless, pitiless, even mocking, and cruel. I became a form of living loathing.
Decades of being turned off is really hard to turn back on from. The pain is excruciating, partly because it sideswipes out of the blue all at once without warning, leaving me an emotionally crippled mess. The challenge was figuring all this out over a number of years, thankfully with the help of a psychologist.
But I live a dual life. I live correctly because it's right. There is right and wrong in these human lives. Sabotage and destruction are wrong. Even with narcissistic challenges I recognized that I only hurt myself being selfish. But even that thinking is selfish. Cognitively learning to live life well for the people around me to be more emotionally healthy is a worthy goal, to be sure, but one that goes very against my grain, thanks to a very twisted childhood.
So now I'm investigating the duality of living correctly versus the compulsive rages and deep depressions I feel as I keep my balance on what feels like a tightrope over a great height in a wind sheer. Finally processing all the things my dad taught me as a child to turn off inside myself has exponentially slammed through me faster and faster as he reaches his death day, whenever that may be. Soon.
Just like science has shown that particles can somehow affect each other at great distances, so I am affected, almost hour by hour as my dad suffers. I have awakened to the minute as he has a couple of times, going by texts, and my own daughter has awakened at least once to the minute when I did when my dad did.
If I were there I would want to end his suffering because it would end mine, in some logic. If I were there I would delight in his suffering because it's finally his turn. Or I would weep in and out of rage over thoughts of my mom. I dunno. I do know my head has felt like it's in a blender for weeks now, and my body is having a weird time of it.
Underneath it all, I'm remembering all the death. Lots and lots of twisted unnecessary tortuous death. Twisted tortuous logic keeping my mom alive years beyond a natural death without the comfort of medical intervention. And now his own fear while his body flops and flounders. He can't just 'turn it off'.
I can't even imagine putting my kids through the grind of watching me die miserably out of sheer masochism. To me it looks insanely selfish. I will happily allow sedation and pain control when my time comes.
Laughably, hysterically ironically, I'm parsing meds down to hopefully make it to an appointment without hard withdrawal. The timing is sadistically delicious. I love irony. I thrive on irony.
But yeah, working on that self honesty. To thine own self be true. Keep me away from my dad if you don't want me cutting through the crap with my own brand of kindness.
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