The voice screaming about submission

[vostoklake]

I could never understand those people who are "natural rebels" - whose instant response to being told to do something is to do the opposite. The way I survived my entire life was to do what I was told - in public, at least. I would never want to be bad where anyone else could see - punishment and disapproval was the worst thing that could happen. But I could gratify my desires in private, in hiding, in shame and self-hatred.

In his autobiography, Malcolm X said that the hardest part about becoming a Muslim was going down on his knees in prayer, after a lifetime showing everyone he couldn't be pushed around. That could never have been a problem for me. I would go down on my knees in front of Joe Stalin if I thought I could get personal advantage out of it. I've spent a lifetime learning to be a hypocrite and a people-pleaser, because it meant that "the real me" could continue to exist in an internal closet, unseen and unmolested.

Even into adulthood - and in my political activism - I let myself be pushed around and used by the kind of political operators who use keen, devoted young radicals as fuel for their personal schemes. I have so wanted to be good all my life, to find some arena where I could be the "teacher's pet" (or the priests', or the General Secretary's). This is why people join cults, of course. I've never been in a cult but I have ended up trading my personal integrity to dominant personalities, many a time, in return for a feeling that I was "being good".

The underlying theory behind this behaviour pattern is that I could only get what I wanted by the grace of some Big Parent figure who would reward me with all my secret desires, in return for obedience. I had a horrible childhood of wanting to be good but never managing it. Can you understand that? Wanting to be good but having something "bad" inside me which always sabotaged things.

Well, a lifetime of trying to be good so someone else would tell me that I was allowed to continue to exist hasn't worked. Perhaps I'm just going to have to own my own desires and be myself - even if it does mean that other people will despise and try to destroy me. Perhaps I could even learn to protect myself.

Comments

Wow, yeah, I am totally the opposite

[solarbird]

Hi! I'm your opposite number on the defiance scale, apparently! It's not purely reactionary, tho' - I have always had very definite ideas about who and what I am, and have also always had people working very hard, often violently, to change me into something else, and my reaction has always been FUCK YOU.

(Insofar as being as long as I can remember.)

That said, I'm not completely stupid about it. I moved out at 15, but I did end up back with one of them a couple of times, and always my move was to GTFO as quickly as possible again, and have as little to do with them as possible until I could.

It isn't all good, tho'. I've been betrayed or abused so many times that I have serious, serious trust issues, and to a fair degree, I assume on various semi- and sub-conscious levels that friendly overtures are intended entirely as opportunistic. It's saved me several times, actually, because I have a long history of being right. And It's difficult for me to get past these at all, but I do try.

Sometimes.

Interestingly, this is also the way I survived. So there's the commonality, I suppose.