care conscience

as long as i can think i always thought i care.
respecting friends, family - well - more or less.
helping, yes, call it weakness, but i can't say 'no' easily.

is is easier to compromise if you want to be liked?
is 'liked' equal to 'respected'?

if i look back i only remember being taken advantage of.
which seems like a negative experience, although i helped from my heart.
i also remember being happy helping.

and when i asked for help myself, and it was refused i thought to myself:
why? don't they want to feel happy too?
i couldn't understand, or see their point of view, why they'd refuse.
i realized, helping me, wasn't really in their interest.
there was no gain or benefit in doing so.

maybe they didn't care about being liked?
or i wasn't worth it?
anyway, getting worked up about it didn't make it any different.
i wondered why i had that feeling of being happy to help.
maybe i felt useful.
and they didn't need to feel useful or needed.
i liked feeling useful and needed.
making life easier for someone, made me feel wanted.

having been criticized half my life, being given opportunities
to help others gave me some sense of purpose.
something i could do 'right' for once - helping.

taking care of things or people, it slowly became my purpose.
if you are never good at anything when you're young, at least
if someone makes you feel that way, you start thinking
that there is no purpose for you.

you feel not needed or useful to be. or live.
those thoughts were scary. what am i there for?
and your head spins round not finding any answers.

later you meet friends, a partner.
they all tell you the opposite, but somehow you don't believe.

i took me long, but understanding my purpose now,
helps me to simply get on with doing what i can do best:
help others, well - more or less.

understanding why i like to help, why i seek to be useful,
i have now - finally - come to the conclusion, that
without being treated the way i was, i would have become the
way i am.

my better half asked me - just this week - what i would do,
if i would meet my mother, that instant, would i be able to give her a hug?
my first thought was - ignore her! hug? never! she never did!
having given me so much pain through the years,
why should i spend a single moment even looking at her?

he than said that feeling was brought up entirely by my emotions.
i thought, i had been over 'her'.
so i wouldn't care anymore whether she is here or not, just like she
never cared about how i felt when she criticized my every actions.

i think i will just have to accept that i still care.
is it in my nature?
or it developed by wanting to be loved?

i always thought i tried my best, and that in her eyes it was never good enough.
and there were times i was simply to scared to do anything.
am i still scared?

should i still be scared?
if i look at my mother from a different point of view, i can't see why i should be scared at all.
when i think of the bliss she missed out on all those years, i get sad.
then i feel like i want to hug her, not for me, but because she needs a hug.
she should feel the peace and love i felt every time my nice ran up to me and gave me a hug
every day when i got back home from working the whole day.

thinking like that makes me feel sorry for her.
she never had that love from her mother, so she might not know how good it feels.
maybe now, if i would meet my mother - today. i would give her a hug.
it will be what she needs - as a woman -, even if she might not see it that way.

so, all the pain wasn't meant as an authoritative control mechanism.
she might have been more scared than me.
and that was the only way she knew how to deal with it.
every time she got cross, was she victim of her emotions?

when i think of my nice, i don't think i was ever scared.
maybe comprehensive at start, as i had never looked after
anything younger than me!
but it felt right in my heart, to help her grow up.
she had just been 1 year old when we first met,
and the most inquisitive person i had ever met!
and i loved it to tell her and show her everything she was interested in.

yes, i had to be strict sometimes, but it was never unreasonable.
authoritative strictness never brought any peace, wherever you look.
you have simple rules for everybody to stick to.
and to me, personally, punishment never made any sense.

cleaning the kitchen, for bad grades or an untidy room,
didn't teach me to keep my room tidy or how to improve my grades at school.
or being banned from watching the TV.
that didn't even teach me to clean the kitchen properly,
or see any reason why the kitchen should be clean.

it only made me to think - every time i clean the kitchen now -
of that horrible feeling of being disliked or hated.
that time i thought of it as being hated.

or if my handwriting was untidy, it couldn't have really been improved
be getting the pages torn out or books hit around my head.
i never thought i would be capable of feeling so much anger at that age.
that anger is still with me today. i can cope - most of the time - but it can
be a real pain having to deal with it every step of your way.

but there again i feel now, you can't have sunshine without the rain.
bad or difficult times makes you really appreciate the good times.

so next time - if ever! - i see my mother, and i give her a hug,
she might maybe just be able to appreciate how good it can feel, if you just let it!

so, on that note - go on! - hug somebody today!
thanks for reading...to the end!
goodnight!