Hi, Perfection,

It really can hurt when we want the approval of people who really matter to us, and we do not get it. Parents and children can hurt us much more deeply than just about anyone. I heard a saying once: Your parents can really push your buttons, because they installed them! Yep, nobody can get under our skin like our Moms and Dads. Kids come close, but it seems to me that (at least in my case) my kids expect me to be perfect, and I am not. So they get hurt if I am not "there" for them when they want me to be.

CalonLan really covered the psychology of this really well, so I will not repeat that here. I can only share my experience, strength, and hope with you. My experience is that I have found that I am not going to get 100% approval from anyone. People are not perfect. We are all imperfect to a degree.

I once tried to talk with my Dad about our relationship. I wanted him to understand that we were too close emotionally, and that closeness messed with my head. Dad went home to my Mom, and told her that I accused him of raping me in front of "his grandchildren". This was patently untrue. My mother called me on the phone, and said really horrible things to me- I mean really horrible! I did not speak to them for nearly three years, because of my Father's lies and what my Mother said about me. It was a real eye-opener. I did not speak to them for three years. What brought about reconciliation is that my father developed some aneurysms in his aorta, and nearly died from the three surgeries that they had to perform. I told my Mom that I was going to set aside everything, and come to support her. His brush with death helped me to see what a waste of those three years was. My feelings got hurt. I was really mad, wanted an apology, but I did not ever get it. My Mom gave me a roll of Santa-printed toilet paper that Christmas, which also hurt, but in the end, looking back, it all seems so petty now. I should have never tried to talk with my father. That is because he was incapable of relating to my position. I misjudged badly his ability to think clearly about his and my relationship.

Dad dropped dead quite suddenly July 27, 2006. He was only 71.

I miss him terribly.

This taught me that time is fleeting, and that we are all "imperfectly perfect." It also taught me that people are going to judge me no matter what, despite the fact that I wish that they saw me better, and understood me better. It is fruitless to try and get that 100% approval from anyone.

What I have tried since is to learn to get my approval from myself. It has been very hard! Nobody is as hard on me as I am. I am one of those people that expects too much of myself all the time. If I get a "B" in a class, I feel like I flunked it. I am learning, though, that it is okay to get a "B" in life.

Try to really understand what CalonLan wrote, as it was good advice. But know that I know how your heart is bleeding inside. This is a good place to vent and you know that we love you here. I feel for you. But do not make the mistake of being so upset that you waste your time being mad at your parents. I found out that that is just a total waste of time. You will not have them forever.

I wish you peace,

Jaianniah

You make the choice to be hurt by someone else or not. See the following excerpt from "Illusions! Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah" by Richard Bach. You may see an answer. Dialog bewteen Richard (Bach) and Donald Shimoda.

“We are all free to do whatever we want to do,” he said that night. “Isn’t that simple and clean and clear? Isn’t that a great way to run a universe?”

“Almost. You forgot a pretty important part,” I said.

“Oh?”

“We are all free to do what we want to do, as long as we don’t hurt somebody else,” I chided. “I know you meant that, but you ought to say what you mean.”

There was a sudden shambling sound in the dark, and I looked at him quickly.

“Did you hear that?”

“Yeah. Sounds like there’s somebody...” He got up, walked into the dark. He laughed suddenly, said a name I couldn’t catch. “It’s OK,” I heard him say “No, we’d be glad to have you.… no need you standing around ... come on, you’re welcome, really...”

The voice was heavily accented, not quite Russian, nor Czech, more Transylvanian. “Thank you. I do not wish to impose myself upon your evening ...”

The man he brought with him to the firelight was, well, he was unusual to find in a midwest night. A small lean wolflike fellow, frightening to the eye, dressed in evening clothes, a black cape lined in red satin, he was uncomfortable in the light. “I was passing by,” he said. “The field is a shortcut to my house ...”

“Is it?” Shimoda did not believe the man, knew he was lying, and at the same time did all he could to keep from laughing out loud.

I hoped to understand before long.“Make yourself comfortable,” I said . “Can we help you at all?” I really didn’t feel that helpful, but he was so shrinking, I did want him to be at ease, if he could.

He looked on me with a desperate smile that turned me to ice.

“Yes, you can help me. I need this very much or I would not ask. May I drink your blood? Just some? It is my food, I need human blood ... “

Maybe it was the accent, he didn’t know English that well or I didn’t understand his words, but I was on my feet quicker than I had been in many a month, hay flying into the fire from my quickness.

The man stepped back. I am generally harmless, but I am not a small person and I could have looked threatening. He turned his head away.

“Sir, I am sorry! I am sorry! Please forget that I said anything about blood! But you see ...”

“What are you saying?” I was the more fierce because I was scared. “What in the hell are you saying, mister? I don’t know what you are, are you some kind of VAM ?”

Shimoda cut me off before I could say the word. “Richard, our guest was talking, and you interrupted. Please go ahead, sir; my friend is a little hasty.”

“Donald,” I said, “this guy... “

“Be quiet!”

That surprised me so much that I was quiet, and looked a sort of terrified question at the man, caught from his native darkness into our firelight.

“Please to understand. I did not choose to be born vampire. It is unfortunate. I do not have many friends. But I must have a certain small amount of fresh blood every night or I writhe in terrible pain, longer than that without it and I cannot live! Please, I will be deeply hurt - I will die - if you do not allow me to suck your blood ... just a small amount, more than a pint I do not need.”

He advanced a step toward me, licking his lips, thinking that Shimoda somehow controlled me and would make me submit.

“One more step and there will be blood, all right. Mister, you touch me and you die ...”

I wouldn’t have killed him, but I did want to tie him up, at least, before we talked much more. He must have believed me, for he stopped and sighed. He turned to Shimoda.

“You have made your point?”

“I think so. Thank you.”

The vampire looked up at me and smiled, completely at ease, enjoying himself hugely an actor on stage when the show is over.

“I won’t drink your blood, Richard,” he said in perfect friendly English, no accent at all. As I watched he faded as though he was turning out his own light ... in five seconds he had disappeared.

Shimoda sat down again by the fire .

“Am I ever glad you don’t mean what you say!”

I was still trembling with adrenalin, ready for my fight with a monster. “Don, I’m not sure I’m built for this. Maybe you’d better tell me what’s going on. Like, for instance, what. ... was that?”

“Dot was a wompire from ‘Tronsylwania,” he said in words thicker than the creature’s own. “Or to be more precise, Dot was a thought form of a wompire from Tronsylwania. If you ever want to make a point, you think somebody isn’t listening, whip’em up a little thought-form to demonstrate what you mean.

Do you think I overdid him, with the cape and the fangs and the accent like that? Was he too scary for you?”

“The cape was first class, Don. But that was the most stereotyped, outlandish ... I wasn’t scared at all.”

He sighed. “Oh well. But you got the point, at least, and that’s what matters.”

“What point?”

“Richard, in being so fierce toward my vampire, you were doing what you wanted to do, even though you thought it was going to hurt somebody else. He even told you he’d be hurt if...”

“He was going to suck my blood!”

“Which is what we do to anyone when we say we’ll be hurt if they don’t live our way”

I was quiet for a long time, thinking about that. I had always believed that we are free to do as we please only if we don’t hurt another, and this didn’t fit. There was something missing.

“The thing that puzzles you,” he said, “is an accepted saying that happens to be impossible. The phrase is hurt somebody else. We choose, ourselves, to be hurt or not to be hurt, no matter what. Us who decide. Nobody else.

My vampire told you he’d be hurt if you didn’t let him? That’s his decision to be hurt, that’s his choice. What you do about it is your decision, your choice: give him blood; ignore him; tie him up; drive a stake of holly through his heart.

If he doesn’t want the holly stake, he’s free to resist, in whatever way he wants. It goes on and on, choices, choices.”

“When you look at it that way...”

“Listen,” he said, “it’s important.

We are all. Free. To do. Whatever. We want. To do.”

After reading this fully I realized you mean emotionally hurt, not physically hurt.

This reminds me of myself vs my brother. My brother and I respond to emotional harm in two different ways. My brother lets these emotional attacks eat away at him and feels unloved and unwanted. I receive as well emotional attacks all the time but my response is not the same. I don't pay attention to what I don't want to pay attention to and the harm thrown at me seems to miss me and fall short landing on the floor never reaching me actually.

This I believe is some kind of automatic shield of protection I put around me that I learned to create when I was younger. Instead of taking anything to heart that is negative I don't listen to it like it is not worth my time. I come from Italian back ground and there is a saying used not so sparingly it is simply when you don't want to hear anymore you say "Ahhh... You don't know what you're talking about." It is not yelled but more like I'm done with this I am going to do something else.

Because of my respect for my parents I don't say it like it has been said to me but I think it. The moment I think it, it is like any value of harm on me that whatever was being said had is now null and void. How could someone hurt me emotionally if that person doesn't know what he is talking about? I have effectively removed the sting from the words because words that come from another that does not understand are words that have no basis to the situation.

They are words formed against us through faulty logic based on incomplete information and a refusal to work at understanding vs being right, in other words ego vs understanding. Something shot at me from ego is clearly something someone doesn't know what they are talking about, thus it has no value to me. This is why to my Jaianniah she says to me later after dinner something about what my dad said to me and I am confused and have to think hard to remember what she is even talking about, because I don't hold on to what is valueless to me. It is forgotten as soon as I think this is going nowhere, forget about it.