taking an assesment of what's important

I have a sound file of dubya speech where he says, twice, "in fact what the terrorists have done is caused us to take an assesment of what's important." I'm taking an assesment too.

I think I must have thought that the slogan "think gloaball, act locally" had an extra clause of "and indoctorinate your friends and family." I tend to get involved in cult-y movements to improve the world, like veganism or Esperanto. things that would work if a critical mass of people started doing it. So I'd try to convinve other people around me of what a good idea it was, to help reach this critical mass.

Christi makes the most awesome Quiches and Dutch Baby pancakes. We used to have a dutch baby every weekend. She would get up and start making one. I would slice strawberries and roast coffee. Often our neighbors came over and shared with us. But I read Fast Food Nation and became more militant about my diet and quit eating eggs and milk. I was making a sacrifice for the good of the planet. But I was also sacrificing Christi's amazing cooking skills. Does that really help the planet, or does that just alienate loved ones? How is the world in any shape a better place because I haven't had one of christi's great dutch babies in years?

I was getting more and more inflexible and more militant. Christi likes/d to make cookies. Her favorite cookie recipie calls for brown sugar. Brown sugar is the most processed food on earth. Some processes use animal products. I told her that she had to use the raw sugar stuff I was buying from the hippie grocery store. We had poor boundaries. We didn't know how to talk things through. We argued. I won. How fucking important could brown sugar possibly be? Why on earth would I argue with her abut her great cookies? What was I thinking??

Then my mom got sick and died and I wanted to compartmentalize that. I would go see her five or six days a week and when I wasn't seeing her, I was going to live a normal life. I was going to put the pain behind me and carry on. I was going to supress all negativity and look at other things and I was not going to ask for help or talk to anybody about it. this combination is somehwat explosive. All this stuff about moral purity in consumption seemed really important. but what good is moral purity if it chases off people you love?

In short, I've recently been shaken to the core. All the stuff that I thought mattered didn't. All my "radical" ideas are for naught. They're stupid. I bought brown sugar the other day to make cookies for Christi.

I know that Christi doesn't want me back. The last few years have been hard. I might hurt her again. And maybe she thinks if she took me back, she's have to throw away her brown sugar. but I think having boundaries means that (as long as it's not hurting me), she can do whatever she wants.

We were poorly individuated. We got together when we were 18. We had virtually no boundaries. We grew together like two trees that have been planted too close. this is not healthy for the trees. It wasn't healthy for us.

I look at these ideas that I had and wonder how I could have been so stupid. I know that I need to learn from them and go on. and part of learning from them means forgiving myself. why did i do it? youth. foolishness. a misguided desire to avoid pain. because i didn't like myself. according to feeling good, dichotomous thinking (aka: binary oppositions) is a thought pattern that depressed people fall into. i wanted all-or-nothing moral purity because i was somewhat depressed and because i was mourning in a destructive way. and this is why i need to forgive myself, so i can like myself and stop acting like an angry, bitter, untreated depressed person.

So I'm telling myself that I like myself. I'm smart and funny and creative and cute and kind of charming. I've made terrible mistakes, but so have most people at some time in their lives. I'm doing my best.