MAD.

I am mad at myself.

I can't believe how shut, how gullible I have been throughout my life.

I was a phrase monger and a trend runner,

a know-it-all who questioned herself too little. Or I should better say that I thought what I heard and read in slogans, headlines, books, media, the internet and what people who consume slogans, headlines, mediocre literature and the internet say, was normal. Which it was, of course, but what I thought was "normal" didn't necessarily mean it was "natural". Or in order.

Though in crises or moments of striking severity and hardship, did thoughts emerge that I wondered where they came from. It was often just a hunch that something was wrong, but what, I didn't know.

The moment I became a mother, for example, was a phase in which from one day to the next I no longer held feminist convictions. Not that I suddenly actively spoke against "the liberation of women", but I haven't spoken for it since then either with zeal.

The widely quoted "ticking biological clock", for example, which is rejected or denied by hardline feminists, only has a kernel of truth to the extent that a woman who wants to become a mother does not want to be reduced to that. It smacks of biologism and contains a slight according to which a woman "can't help" wanting to become a mother as if this were a weakness, not her strength.

Today I see this point as irrelevant because the reasons for being a mother weigh less than parenthood that has actually happened. Once the baby is born, this question becomes meaningless.

On the other hand, I think the question of which man a woman has a child with is more important. The saying

"Therefore test those who commit themselves forever"

is an unpleasant sentence if one rejects such a test from the outset because, for example, the word "forever" feels bothersome. Or why does it say,

"Blind man, open your eyes, marriage is not buying a horse"?

I ignored such folk wisdom because I did not think much of it, I did not put myself to the test, sensing that if I had, the choice of the father of my child would have been to his disadvantage. Because I cheated my way around this test and told myself lesser reasons for a familial union, it is not surprising now, in retrospect, that my first marriage did not last.

As untested and frivolous as I had entered into this union, so frivolously was it disengaged. Quite logical.
Indeed, one "lesser reason" was that despite not wanting to have a ticking clock, I had this thought on the surface that "it was time to become an adult".

I don't like to shame myself.

At all, In general, I have a split relationship with shame.

I refuse to be shamed because part of me is not convinced that such helps me to bring order to my life. I think I've observed that when I see shame coming down on others, it doesn't bring them to their senses, but rather causes them to overreact.

But was I perhaps confusing practice with theory?

How did I feel inside when someone shamed me? Outwardly, I rejected the person or their statement about me. But what did I do or refrain from doing afterwards because of the effect of the shaming?

I must admit that it worked on me.

Though I still defended myself against the shame with whatever argument came to my mind, I later on stayed away from practising what one friend had told me was weird and questionable.

Today I think that to accept having been shamed is a huge step towards maturation.

That I have changed within time, I realized when another friend of mine - we were meanwhile in our late forties - expressed romantic feelings about her very first love from a time when we were sweet sixteen. She is in a relationship with a man for well over ten years, and one day confronted me with having actively searched this other man from her past and contacted him.

Immediately I thought: "What? Why? Is she crazy?"

What does she hope to gain from that revival of that relationship? Why is she sitting in front of me like a teenager, glowing with satisfaction and delight of having a telephone affair with that guy?"

My reaction towards her was very sparse. I almost did not respond and I felt guilty having these "nasty" thoughts. I did not want to shame her.

I felt that she wanted me to share her delight for that matter but I was not in the least sharing her emotions. My further thoughts were that she will have her joy and that this little self created excitement will soon fade away because nothing can have a foundation if it's built on vanity. I judged it as melancholy and liking to be nostalgic, too. I did not take it serious and therefore was unwilling to dwell into having a good "girls talk".
We long passed the time being "girls".

Of course, she sensed right away my reserved thoughts and insisted on receiving one. Finally I told her just that:

"You'll know what to do about it."

But that got her even more dodgy and was not the end of that story. I just stretched the time in order to avoid shaming her. She insisted very strongly on opening my mouth in the later course of arguments. So I finally let her know how immature I found that whole affair and that I can in no way share those girlish feelings and that she would have double standards towards her current partner. I underpinned my distaste also with saying that I don't want to waste my time with this and it does not interest me in the slightest.

Those words hurt. But I think that's how shaming functions.

No pain, no gain, as they say.

If something is not accepted by your close ones, you will keep it to yourself when you estimate that coming out with whatever topic or mental affair might get you into trouble. That is not a bad thing. Often it is the best one can decide for.
Ultimately it's important to know about the values of those who have an impact on you. It may save you from premature actions. Or it may not save you and you explore for yourself what you think is "your freedom" to do.

"You do you". Really?

The reverse of that would be that all around you would say: "Oh, darling, do whatever seems fit to you. You do you. It's all fine and you deserve to make your own choices and experiences."

Nowadays it's called "positive affirmation".
I would call it what the anti-authoritarian education style was called when Hippies wanted to educate kids: boundless and irresponsible. Telling a kid that all what it wants and what it does is "just great" and "fine" is mental laziness and under matured thoughts. In order to need to know what is great about you, you need to know what is terrible.

A kid has whims.

An adult has responsibility.

When the adult has whims, what is the child supposed to show?

Now, I tell you about my whims.

Since I rejected Christianity and dismissed praying at the table, I was lost in how exactly I could show my own child to be grateful to what food comes on our table. Since the wording was lost, the wish was not. But what to say instead?

What came out of my mouth was lame in comparison.

I felt it, while I uttered those poor terms. I said, for example: Let us be thankful for all the food. Let us say thanks to the pig and the cow, all the creatures and plants which end up being eaten by us. But since I felt insecure about my conviction, I was inconsistent in replacing these words for other words on a daily basis. When it came to my mind and I found it important, I said it out loud. But as my son did not respond and no one else maintained a habit to show themselves thankful for having food, I stopped.
So much for being consequent, right?

When my son asked about how the earth and humans came into being, and what "God" means,

I did not know what to answer. I then said: "God is energy. It's just a word for the vast universe." Lame, again.

"Energy" is not a term understood by kids as something divine or inexplicable but as running a car with fuel. Or heating the house. Or the kid's parents who say "I am low on energy today".

I had nothing to teach on that front and so I parroted what I heard somewhere someday.

All those half cooked ideas about what is supposed to be meaningful.

Those abstract slogans which tell you that "you can do it on your own", "You can be a single mom", "you can seek your true self" or "you can be a better version of yourself".

Yeah, well. You can. So what? Why is it aimed at the "sole" me? Am I the one who will build a new faith? I am afraid, I got hooked for a very long time, what already people in the seventies called

"new age".

And that what it was and still is, something "new aging". Until another trend shows up. Because, trendy it is.

I Imagine, at my moms funeral someone would have held a speech and said about my mother that she became finally the better version of herself. ### Ridiculous.

To cut a long story short,

I jumped on pretty much every trend, fell for pretty much every new age idea that circulated. I believed what I was told by the media and its arms into the greater society to be true. The realisation that most of what I thought was right and important was exactly not. It was bollocks, but I thought it was fancy.

This realisation of my lifelong errors is a shock to say the least.

I never imagined that I would feel this way, painful and impressive.

I suspect that these are the things that are spoken of in matters of faith and theological considerations. Nothing less than recognising oneself as a Judas, as an immature adult, as a lost soul who realises that one had fallen into countless mis-takes.

I have become very sure that I share this with very many people. Now I could pass the buck to everyone else and "hate the world", as they do nowadays, right? But since earthly life has consisted of trial and error since time immemorial, I assume such things have always happened and will remain so. It won't help to redirect my anger towards whomever.

In the meantime, I will polish my arguments and reactions.