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Thanks both to Stef and to my Inner Critic for such a wonderful and helpful conversation.

In listening to the Jungian podcasts by John Betts, I have heard, for the first time, a fairy tale by the name of “The Nixie of the Mill Pond,” a Grimm’s Fairy Tale.

The point will be to take a closer look at this fairy tale in terms of analysis, and John asks us to not start analyzing it straight away, but to let it sink in.

After I listened to his reading of the tale, something seemed to stir within, and when I got into work and sat down at my desk, my hands were shaking.

Of course, this could have been a delayed reaction to the guys in military fatigues that I saw in the bagel shop this morning, prior to listening to Betts’ podcast. I saw them and wasn’t sure exactly what to do with myself… so I did nothing. I mean, what should I have done, really? (Whatever I felt was appropriate!)

So it was OK, I was keeping my distance… after all, it is just a bagel shop, and I’m just getting breakfast. I was all fine until I heard somebody else approach one of the soldiers and say, “I’d just like to thank you for your service.” A wave of revulsion skittered up and down my back, and the other guy was standing right next to me, so I just drew and released a slow breath, and got out of there as quickly as I could.

I had never quite gotten a feeling like that before, and I just had the sense that mouthing off to a couple guys in camouflage in the middle of an eating establishment where there was already one sympathizer would not be the wisest of moves.

Frustratingly, this came after I recorded the following podcast (trusted content): Reaction to “Everyday Anarchy”

I think my dreams will be interesting tonight.

Sometimes the mind works in funny ways!

This morning, after dropping my girlfriend off at work, I was driving home, musing over this and that. I happened to start musing on my parents. I was thinking about this particular journal and how perhaps I haven’t heard from one parent or the other because they happen to be reading (or they have read) this… which is about as likely as any other eventuality, I suppose.

I didn’t have much to think about regarding that other than that if somebody had read something that I said that they felt hurt by, they never said a word of it to me. I would hate to think that others are afraid to talk to me about something but, in all honesty, I’m that way a lot of the time, too. It’s something I really need to work on.

In any case, as I continued driving, a song just started playing in my mind. It was portions of “All At Once” sung by the lovely Whitney Houston. As far as I can make out, I haven’t heard that song for years, but the portions of the lyrics that were running through my head were something like this:

All at once...
*singing*
...you'd come back to me.
And that's all that matters now...
All at once...
*singing*
And it hurts me more than you know
So much more than it shows
All at once.

The thing that struck me with this song is that the character in the song is essentially wishing for a love she doesn’t have. Perhaps she never really even had that love to begin with, which is the first thing that came to my mind. In either case, she’s pining when she ought to be mourning in order to get on with her life.

I think the parallels to the parent-child relationship are astounding. In this song, the child is pining for love she never received. Sure, she remembers the good times and how good she used to feel, but she’s probably trying to forget the bad times and how horrible she used to feel.

Especially poignant to me are the last lines, which make the tears begin to well up:

And it hurts me more than you know
So much more than it shows
All at once.

It does hurt more than they know, or at least more than they’re willing to admit if they ever did notice. And it doesn’t “show” because I do try to hide my pain, because that’s what my family almost always does–they try to hide pain, ignore it, laugh it off, say to not be so sensitive, what have you. They dance around the elephant in the room, which is almost always, “YOU TREATED ME LIKE SHIT AND I’M SUPPOSED TO LOVE YOU?” When it comes to me, there’s no curiosity about my feelings, my thoughts, my desires. It’s incredibly tempting to just start reciprocating and not care about them, but I’m not sure that’s entirely possible. We’ll just have to see.