“Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing
there is a field. I'll meet you there.”
Rumi
When I look at my siblings, especially the ones that I haven’t spoken to, seen or interacted with in many years, I wonder if there is an opening, a new beginning, a place for us to meet, where we can begin to forge a new relationship.
My sister is attempting to walk back in, yet I feel we both have ‘standards’ that we won’t compromise. We both are holding onto ‘beliefs’ either old or new, that we clutch desperately to ourselves.
What will it take for us to meet and begin anew?
To meet is to introduce our selves to each other. To open the dialogue and exchange information with integrity or honesty as we know it.
I put out a few questions that remain unanswered, so then what. Do I just meet her as a ‘surface sister’ one who only can skate along the surface of life, the trivial and vanilla subjects, to not glance back or delve to deeply, just comment like pleasant strangers?
What would our field beyond the right and wrong be? What place could we meet?
Is there a way that I can begin and she could follow, or do I follow her? Where is she going? How can I know, if she doesn’t bring me in to confidence?
A thought came to me yesterday, “would we be friends if my father was out of the picture?” Let’s just keep this between two ladies and take out the others, to drop the people that cloud the issues. What then would we have in common? Is there a place we would meet then?
Since I have been absent in her life the past 5 years or more, there is much I don’t know, so I am back to where I started.
Introduce me to yourself, and I will share me with you, and then we will see if we still want to play together in this field called life.
When I spoke to a Therapist, she stated the levels of human interaction, ‘social niceties’ was on the top, and I believe intimacy was on the bottom.
Looking backwards into my family exchanges, we were mostly up near social niceties; we never seemed to talk about the things we should be talking about.
There was an elephant in the room or the uncomfortable feeling in the midst of a conversation.
It seemed we were always stopped before we could shed our façade and just be ourselves. We had to pretend to be something we were not, like fake being comfortable, fake being ok, fake being pleasant, to be accepted.
I am no longer willing to fake anything or suppress a feeling or thought; I want to express openly who I am.
Our initial conversation reveals that she is not willing to even read the blog, for it is all about me, then who is she wanting in her field to play with?
When Rumi says, ‘I will meet you there,’ I guess I was picturing two people meeting, not just one.
I looked up the meaning of relationship;
noun. the quality or state of being related; connection; connection by blood, marriage, etc.; kinship; a particular instance of being related; a continuing attachment.
When I read ‘kinship’ I now understand. I want them to be related to abuse, to connect with the abuse, when in their minds it is absent.
There is no meeting of the minds, and can you have a relationship with some one you feel no kinship?
Kinship, are we sisters of the same cloth?
We were both draped with the cloth of abuse.
And I am asking her to disrobe, to take off what she has been using to cover it up. She is clutching that tightly, and is it up to me to tear it off?
And I feel she is asking me to cover up, to not show all my ‘dirty laundry.’
We are sisters of the same cloth, but differently displayed.
What field than can we go in? Where can we both stand? I see us yet to begin.
We haven’t started to start.
We failed to start.
