Thoughts provoked

[hearthstone]

Yesterday shetawymuti posted a quotation by Jim Morrison, which I'm going to pass along:

A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself— and especially to feel. Or not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment is fine with them. That's what real love amounts to— letting a person be what he really is....Most people love you for who you pretend to be....To keep their love, you keep pretending— performing. You get to love your pretense....It's true, we're locked in an image, an act— and the sad thing is, people get so used to their image— they grow attached to their masks. They love their chains. They forget all about who they really are. And if you try to remind them, they hate you for it— they feel like you're trying to steal their most precious possession. - Jim Morrison

Just because I've been meditating on it off and on.

Comments

[ladyoceanstar.livejournal.com]

That's really beautiful. Gives me a lot to think about.

[smithing-chick.livejournal.com]

That gets right to the heart of the problems I have with most of my friends at themoment, & have had over the last few years to be honest.

I can't talk about the bad stuff. They don't want to know or can't handle hearing about it. It breaks their comfort levels to know that I'm in pain & they'd rather ignore it.

I had a friend yell at me for being depressed. I told I'd try to schedule my next depressive episode so that it fit better into her schedule.

[shellsong.livejournal.com]

Mind if I give you a *hug*? That's really awful, when supposed friends would rather pretend your pain isn't there than support you. But maybe--and I don't know anything about your situation, so I hope you'll forgive me if I'm way off--they're angry with *themselves*, out of frustration because they think they should be able to "fix" things, but can't? I've felt that way about a lot of people I really care about.

[smithing-chick.livejournal.com]

I'm all for getting hugs. :)

There's a bunch of different reasons for how they react. For one thing, I'm bi-polar so the pain I'm discussing is extreme but not physical. Some people just don't know how to react to it. Some people think "it's all in your head. Just suck it up" (When's the last time someone said that to a diabetic?). And a lot of people just don't understand being in pain, let alone psychological pain.

[shellsong.livejournal.com]

"people get so used to their image— they grow attached to their masks. They love their chains. They forget all about who they really are. And if you try to remind them, they hate you for it— they feel like you're trying to steal their most precious possession."

Once again, I'm reminded of the theory that Morrison was an avatar of Dionysos. ;)