Merl,
You express, “I am frustrated as all hell.” And you ask “Do others have issues meeting their own (and dr’s) expectations??” I have always wanted to have a personal impact on the environment and I wanted to see my will and ego extended into it. This determination became a fighter against my environment and also this power to get things done. My power became this male drive, which made me extremely macho, a man’s man, although others regarded me merely as boastful and arrogant. It felt like I had to prove my superiority by what I could control and dominate. When I had confrontations against others I made sure I was the superior person of a stronger will. Even now, with my cells no longer producing sufficient energy for my muscles and I am dragging my body around, my ego inflation is difficult to stop. I am still getting pissed off, even when I have been placed on this stage of acceptance.
My struggle with this stage of acceptance is the powerlessness it creates and I associate this closely with hopelessness. For some reason this hopelessness creates emotional conflicts within me and my difficulties fan the flames of self-doubt and self-hatred. This can make me withdraw into a darkening world of more torment and despair. I get overly touchy and too ruled by my feelings, which can make me believe I can find a solution to my emotional turmoil by endlessly replaying my problems in my imagination. I go around and around, stirring up emotional crosscurrents and this draws me father inward, until I lose perspective of myself. This undermines my ability to deal effectively with life, I know.
For me, my emotions are stronger than knowledge and will override what I know. I can even have full understanding of acceptance, even want to participate in it, and then the powerlessness hits me. I do not want to accept feeling powerlessness. I do not want to feel I am inadequate and defective, unimportant and undesirable, shameful and misunderstood by others, distraught and fatigued, and then feeling this inability to walk. I will refuse to go on being tormented and sometimes I contemplate suicide, as this aggressive act is withdraw without feeling guilty or facing the consequences. When I am despair and I have rehearsed suicide in my imagination this is dangerous because I will act without any consideration or warning to others.
It feels like I cannot commit suicide so I am trying to free myself another way. I am now wanting to be at home in being a failure and being humiliated, even by my own body failing me. Accepting this powerlessness, even the hopelessness mixed into it, sometimes makes the void okay and other times the lack of acceptance creates this black hole. And maybe my emotions are not as lush they use to be and maybe I am not as bitter as I use to be, but his stage of acceptance takes guts for me to face the powerlessness.
This raw material and the courage to accept is a meaning beyond me and yet it seems if I can be open, as I am trying to be here, this seems to let the acceptance flow within. This acceptance seems to let the opposites create and when I accept this seems to give me enough emotional balance to be touched and transformed by the small events of my life. Even this negative, powerlessness and hopelessness, can maybe, after all, can be turned into something positive and peace can be found. Acceptance, where every experience is transformed into something worthwhile and valuable, maybe can be the sharp otherness of everything.
You are not alone, as you communicate in your writings and maybe alone in your individual consciousness, but the unique otherness of you is your ability to offer tremendous support to all of us.
