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From: sunny@sun.uucp (Sunny Kirsten)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: vulnerability
Message-ID: <1970@sun.uucp>
Date: Tue, 29-Jan-85 03:32:05 EST
Article-I.D.: sun.1970
Posted: Tue Jan 29 03:32:05 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 2-Feb-85 08:57:28 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Lines: 191

oh, hey, don't read this, you know all this already!

We all want to be loved.  It hurts when we aren't.  Lack of love isn't
the only pain we have to face, but it's the one we all share, the one
we know the most about, from many painful experiences.  Our primative
little bodies, into which we try to squeeze so much soul, are still
like all the other animals on this planet, primative neural networks,
programmed to remember pain.  Remembering pain helps us to avoid
repetition of past mistakes, it's evolution in action, evolution of
behavior patterns, adapting to do what doesn't cause pain.

Once one understands that pain is part of the human condition, one can
do two things with that knowledge.  One can continually do everything
possible to avoid experiencing any future pain, by shutting down,
closing out the world, curling up into the fetal position, pulling
one's energy field into a small self contained little ball of
self-regenerative existence, grabbing your teddy bear, and going:
"Ow.  I hurt.  Maybe if I hug my teddy hard enough, it'll all be OK
when I wake up in the morning."

Another alternative is to refuse to deal with the pain, to hide it
away, to put up a little internal wall between "myself" and "that pain"
that won't go away.  To try to make the pain gone, outside ourself, no,
it's not part of me, I refuse to let it be.  But it keeps on nagging,
gnawing, growing, festering, and immobilizing us.  For me it's
something I give to my stomach to digest... here stomach, you're
supposed to deal with the pain, apply your acids to it, and neutralize
them.  But when the stomach has applied all its acids, it finds nothing
but itself to work on.  Now the psychic pain has become a physical
pain.  Mind over matter. Psychosomatic illness.  The pain is still
there, it won't go away, but now the body is being taken over by the
accumulated pain.  It's not enough to cry yourself to sleep with your
teddy bear, because the pain isn't gone in the morning.  Nor all day.
Nor ever.

These things just keep gnawing at you till you break.  It was hard to
face the days pain with teddy, but a lifetime of accumulated pain is
more than even teddy can face.  Why you stupid bear, have you nothing
but fluff for brains?  Why can't you make the pain go away?  Oh
BOTHER!  Where's Chuqui Robin when you need him?  Well, he's got his
own pains to deal with.  Catharsis is the answer.  It doesn't matter
whether you cry silently to yourself, cry with teddy, talk it out with
teddy, or take a full core dump on your SO.  The point is to stop
storing the pain inside.  To deal with it as it happens.  To break down
and be human, to cry and need a hug.  Some of us cry on the net, that
others may learn from our insights.  Some of us cry on the net, looking
for insights from others.  But whether it's a teddy bear, a person, or
"the net" you gotta cry.  You gotta go, "Ow.  It hurts here."  Figure
out why it hurts, learn all the lessons you can from the pain, and then
let go of it.  You can't avoid it, and you can't store it.  You've
gotta face it, deal with it, and leave it behind you.  Let go.

The temptation is very large, to learn a simple lesson from each
pain.   "Ouch, I won't do that again."  Hey that relationship really
hurt me.  I won't have a relationship again.  It would only hurt.  And
pretty soon all you can do is hug your teddy in the fetal position.
Because you are refusing to be vulnerable to future pain.  But by
avoiding the experiences which might cause you pain, you're also
avoiding the experiences which might cause you pleasure.  Yes, bear,
there's no free lunch.  We eventually reach the bottom of the honey
jar, and even though we stick our heads so far into it licking the last
little bit of honey off the bottom of the jar, "yup, I was right, it's
honey all the way to the bottom", that we get our heads stuck in the
jar, we eventually realize the inevitable, the damn jar is ... EMPTY!
That jar is your life, and it's only as empty as your life is at that
point.  "I've just lost the only woman who matters", or "I've failed
with another SO, I'm so useless".  Sometimes it just feels good to
wander around blind to the world with this silly empty honey jar on
your head, bashing and thrashing, wondering, why is there no honey in
the jar? why do I bother?  OH BOTHER!  All I really wanted to do was
catch a heffalump!  And, damn, it feels miserable to look at your honey
jar and find it empty, or only full of pain.  So you say "BOTHER!"
another time, turn the damn jar upside down now that you've pulled it
off your head, where it looked pretty silly anyway, and pour out all
the pain, even if only by telling it all to Piglet, and decide you're
tired of wallowing in the pain, or tired of having stored it inside you
for so long, and you make yourself vulnerable to bee stings.  'Cause
that's the only way a bear is gonna get a full honey jar again.  You
drag the thing over to the nearest beehive, where all those beezzze are
buzzzzing.

First of all, bear thought: '"That buzzing noise means something.  You
don't get a buzzing noise like that, just buzzing and buzzing, without
it meaning something.  If there's a buzzing noise, somebody's making a
buzzing noise, and the only reason for making a buzzing noise that *I*
know of, is because you're a bee."

Then she thought another long time, and said: "And the only reason for
being a bee that I know of is making honey."'

And then bear got up and said: "And the only reason for making honey is
so I can eat it."  And bear began to climb the tree.

Ow! Ow!  Back you little buzzers!  I'm hungry.  I'm tired of hiding
from the world to avoid pain.  I want some love, and I'm prepared to
take a few hurts to get it.  My jar's empty!!!

*CRACK!*

"Oh, help!" said Pooh, as she dropped ten feet on the branch below.
"If only I hadn't-----" she said, as she bounced twenty feet on to the
next branch.  "You see, what I *meant* to do," she explained, as she
turned head-over-heels, and crashed on to another branch thirty feet
below, "what I *meant* to do----" "Of course, it *was* rather---" she
admitted, as she slithered very quickly through the next six branches.
"It all comes, I suppose," she decided, as she said good-bye to the
last branch, spun round three times, and flew gracefully into a
gorse-bush, "it all comes of *liking* honey so much. Oh, help!"

She crawled out of the gorse-bush, brushed the prickles from her nose,
and began to think again.  And the first person she thought of was
Chuqui Robin.

("Was that me?" said Chuqui Robin in an awed voice, hardly daring to
believe it.  "That was you". Chuqui Robin said nothing, but his eyes got
larger and larger, and his face got pinker and pinker.)

So Wendy-ther-Pooh went round to her friend Chuqui Robin, who lived
behind a green door in another part of the forest.

"Good morning, Chuqui Robin," she said.
"Good morning, Wendy-ther-Pooh," said you.

"I wonder if you've got such a thing as a ballon about you?"
"A balloon?"
"Yes, I just said to myself coming along: 'I wonder if Chuqui Robin
has such a thing as a ballon about him?'  I just said it to myself,
thinking of balloons, and wondering."
"What do you want a balloon for?" you said.
Wendy-ther-Pooh looked round to see that nobody was listening, put
her paw to her mouth, and said in a deep whisper: "*Honey!*"
"But you don't get honey with balloons!"
"*I* do," said Pooh.

You have to allow yourself to be vulnerable, if you're ever gonna get
any joy.  You might get hurt some, but that's the cost of it.  I came
to the net in fear a year ago, looking for ballons to prop me up.
Chuqui's words of wisdom were there to soothe me.  And I learned to
grow and face my pains.  Some I've carried since I was a *very* small
child.  You have to learn to not let the pains you carry around with
you ruin your life.  When I was in the "terrible twos" I drank a bottle
of ant poison, because I couldn't face the terrible pain of being a
little girl stuck in a little boy's body.  I've carried that pain in my
stomach ever since.  And now the pain is worse, because I'm still a
little girl, but I'm stuck in a big man's body.  And the pain of my
life, just waking every day, is often more than I can bear, so I give
it to my stomach to digest.

Then I gave it to my shrink to digest, and it came right back to me,
until I finally dealt with it.  And I started to live as a woman, and
started taking female hormones, and started to deal with my pain.  It
will never go away.  Not in this lifetime.  And I put on my smiley
face, screwed up my courage (hey, that was easy, I'd screwed up
everything else) and got on with the business of learning how to live
as a woman.  And I started probing,  asking questions, making
statements, learning what the differences were between men and women,
so I'd know which way to be.  And doing it on the amorphous net made it
easy.  Because I could work on the me inside, my personality, without
my body getting in the way.  But by playing the charade I missed the
growth of really being vulnerable.  I could only be part me, and
couldn't quite fill my jar all the way to the top with honey.  And, I'm
hungry!  So finally I took the final scary leap, and said, "hey world.
I'm not just a login-name, but a real live vulnerable human being, I
just happen to be a bit, well, uh, different, than most."

And it hurt to get flamed by a couple, but it felt so good to find
acceptance by more people than flamed me.  And folks, my vulnerability,
my laying my soul on the line, reached out, well, and touched someone.
It seems we have another netter out there in net.singles land who's
struggling with a gender identity problem.  We may not be close friends
for sharing that, but my willingness to take some flames, to be
vulnerable, let me contact that soul, and give some guidance down a
path I'm only a year or two ahead on.  And there were the curious, the
concerned, the new friends, who had their own struggles not so serious
to deal with, who were helped by knowing my real situation.  And that's
why we're all here.  To help each other by sharing our experiences, our
vulnerabilities, as we all explore the difficulties of life "alone", as
a single person rather than as half of two unified spirits bound in
marriage (like, wow, what a weird concept!).  You can't have love
without being vulnerable, and you can't have the opportunity to
experience new joy without risking the possibility of experiencing some
new pain.

With the security of guaranteed love, comes the frozen stasis of love,
and a set of experiences limited by the maintenance of that guarantee.
Some want the easy way out... love without the pain, but never find it.

				Sunny

-- 
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