These journal entries were written in March 1996
[I had a gush of pain while Dr. Tatone, chiropractor, worked on me]
It was a little disappointing, because I had felt so well this morning, felt like a human being for the first time in a very long time, and then to be so badly thrown by practical demands. But I think it was because I never had time to process that gush of pain — I think it was a sort of flashback, I think it is part of the emotional knot that’s tied up my upper back. … So here’s this dull misery that’s not quite in focus.
Does it have a color or shape? It’s rounded, dull, perhaps fading purples and pinks, tarnished like those flowers I found so wonderful a long time ago. A feeling of trying to love someone who doesn’t want to be loved, who isn’t worthy of being loved. I cringe at saying “not worthy” since I know that in a sense everyone is worthy of love, or at least compassion, even the most hardened sinner. But there’s a sense of trying to give a gift, a lovely, precious, rich but subtly colored gift to someone who can’t see its value and throws it away, someone who wants a gaudy trinket, and I’m not capable of producing a gaudy trinket. That’s what it feels like. The misery of offering one’s gifts and having them repudiated, trashed, in favor of something more obvious and less valuable. But I don’t know that, and so I decide that my gifts, in their subtlety and depth, are worthless.
There’s another gush of the misery that I’ve identified as having the gifts I bring easily and naturally be ignored and rejected and having things always demanded that are not easy and natural, that feel false, against the grain, like having to say I like something when I don’t, having to clean my room to prove that I love someone instead of having my love be seen and accepted for itself.
This is a pretty clear attempt at describing my experience growing up, where my family, especially my mother and her mother, did not appreciate — could not even see — the gifts I had to offer. They contained subtle beauty, deep intelligence, that could not be appreciated by people whose values were entirely conventional. It suddenly occurs to me that there is also the possibility that Mother could see the beauty and the depth and was threatened by it. She used to say, over and over, “Don’t think you’re so great,” and I learned to do my best to shrink and hide my worthless self.
I find it very interesting that I say, of the feeling I’m trying to get a handle on, first it is a feeling of trying to love someone who doesn’t want to be loved, but then it becomes a gift I’m trying to give to someone who can’t appreciate it. Very different.