Defiance

Open resistance; bold disobedience.

Pretty much describes my life...

Why?

Why have I been so openly resistant and boldly disobedient?

I am not sure.

I just know I have.

And I have come to see it in a new way recently. I am pushing, pushing, pushing all the time. Head strong and resistant to management by anyone else but me...not even really sure I have a clue what I am doing. I think I have just been tilting at windmills for so long now, I don’t even see that I am doing it anymore.

I have heard that extreme self reliance is usually a trauma response. Perhaps maybe so is defiance. Perhaps raising a middle finger to the world could also be seen as a cry for help? Perhaps the attitude of “I-don’t-need-you/I-have-got-this” is really sending the same message?

I am going to have think about this.

When I put the lens of trauma survival over this type of behavior I see myself and others in a different light. I see them as survivors. This does not exempt them, or me, from the consequences of their behavior (it matters little to the people they hurt, why they hurt them) but it does provide an explanation and in that explanation, perhaps there is an ability to change course.

I believe in the human spirit. I believe that we are all basically good. I believe that we as a species really do care about each other, want to be good people. But we make decisions based on self that cause us to hurt others....and ourselves.

Every stupidshit thing I have done in my life, I have known it was a stupidshit thing at the time I was doing it. I wasn’t like “this is a GREAT idea...” Then become completely shocked when it ended up in a horrific dumpster fire. No, I knew...even if I couldn’t admit that knowledge to you.

It is this return to self will that always causes me problems. When I take the wheel and think I know stuff. I had a discussion the other day and was called out for being...and I quote “horrifically defiant”. Those were the words used...I wanted to object but I knew she was right. I knew that I was nailed to the spot...the spot where I can’t escape my own crap.

DAMMIT.

FUCK!

AGAIN?

Yes. Again...

So it seems that the only thing that I can do is to look at this trait of mine...examine how it is impacting my life. How it is hurting me. How it is holding me back. How it is hurting others. How it is maladaptive...

Today, I don’t have any answers really...just a new vantage point to see where I have been a selfish ass...again...all while thinking that I knew something that I didn’t. All while thinking that I was doing God’s will. And one more time, being led to the place where I can see that I was doing my own. I didn’t even do that great of a job dressing it up to even look like God’s will...like I am really capable of even doing that.

So I begin again to review and see where this behavior has caused me to hurt myself and others. And to make changes so that I do not do that again...to anyone.

And that I take this defining characteristic of hostile defiance and do my best to turn it at least towards kind benevolence to a will other than my own in an effort to be less selfish, self centered and dishonest. Do my best to attempt to surrender...again, still.