Today I pondered the land of obliqueness and if it was actually a kissing cousin to denial, or was it totally different. (after a conversation with my brother)
I felt that obliqueness would allow you the comfort of not committing...while actually knowing where you stood. Is it possible that obliqueness is a form of denail or is it denial of being openly truthful?
I looked up the definition of the word obiqueness and found this, "The property of being neither parallel or perpendicular, but at a slanting angle....not level or upright; inclined; not straight to the point; not straightforward;"
Obliqueness has a tone of weakness to me, of declining either side.
I can see how it has great advantages, of not standing for anything, but being accepted by either side.
I lived like this, tilted nowhere....until I committed myself to being abused. Once I did, I no longer could be oblique. I stood upright.
I can see how we learn to live on a slant, for we are made to lean away from our truths, and even away from theirs. No one in my childhood home stood directly and distinctly against abuse...all sorta slanted away from it, yet neither could we live totally in the land of love and trust.
This awkward leaning is being oblique.
Unable to voice the truth, you learn to just lean away from it. The truth doesn't go anywhere, nor are you living in the land of wholeness, but rather the space between the two.
When I stopped leaning, and stood up, many relationships fell down. For our common field was to be slanted folks. All in agreement to the slant we lived upon.
Obliqueness is the silence space that is between the truth that surrounds us. Not actually open denial, yet not actual open truth. But the cirtuitous place of nowhere.
I had to look up the word cirtuitous, to make sure that was correct, here is the definition; "1. describes indirect, unclear speech or behavior; 2. having a circular, indirect course."
This is the place abused children learn to live in...when our truth isn't welcome, we are not welcome, we are sent to obliqueness or in a cirtuitous land. Our speech, our thought patterns, and our actions are directly impacted by this place. We form our speech and actions to always remain slanted....slanted away from directness.
It isn't that we want to live this way, but in order to be accepted, we must.
In order for their to be peace and a loving family, we slant ourselves away from who we are, our experiences, our feelings and emotions; our truth.
We can't even know we are doing this. For our slanting began so early in childhood, we never were able to grow standing upright.
Out of fear we slanted...and now to straighten up, we fear again.
Fear the outcome of standing to one side...and being direct.
There was a cost in childhood, and there same cost is present today, even if it is 40 years later.
My mother and I had two perceptions, but we both lived slanted. I from what I felt was the truth and her from hers....in this middle space neither of us had to deal with our lives, we lived obiquely.
When I no longer was slanting away from my truth, but upright in it, she and I no longer matched. IF, she were to flop back into her truth, we would once again meet.
My experience of her is that she wants to keep far away from the truth of her life...while I am clinging to mine...she wants me to come to the land of obliqueness and I am no longer interested in returning there.
We are at an impasse.
We no longer speak the same way.
I head directly in, while she lives in the noncommittal place of obliqueness.
