This evening, my husband came over and began caressing me. I was busy. It annoys me to be interrupted when I'm busy. I brushed him off.
"What?" he exclaimed in a psuedo-injured tone. "I can't help it. You're so sexy. I like to caress my breasts."
"They aren't your breasts," I say.
"Our breasts, then," he capitulates.
"They aren't our breasts either," I say. "They're mine."
But are they mine? Without serious damage to me, I cannot take them off nor move them into another room nor, no matter how much I hate their drooping programming, can I smash them and throw them away. Certainly I could pay someone else to knock me out to do the deed, but I cannot force my will on them. I can't force my will on any part of me, except maybe my hair or nails, which I can cut off. But once it's clippings, it's inanimate.
I better not "try to take better care of my heart," as if I can get it tuned up or have a new one installed, like in a car. If it goes, I go. We are one. It is a part of me. Not mine. Me.
Then we take this obscene possessive noun and apply it to the individuals living with us. "My husband." As if I can force him to talk or listen to me, as if I can turn him on or off, or place him in the part of the room I find him most suitable. Or, if I don't find his picture quality satisfactory or if the sound isn't coming out right, I can't, or shouldn't even if I could, smash him up and toss him out.
The children in my house are not mine either. I cannot force them to eat their vegetables or fall asleep on my timetable or think what I want them to think.
My will cannot be forced on anyone else without harming them and it is exceedingly frustrating to try, only leading to abuse.
"Love your neighbor as yourself."
"Do unto others what you would have done to you."
If you are faithful in the small, you will gain greater responsibility.
Do I love me? Do I treat me with respect? Am I faithful in the care of the only person over whom I can actually assert my will? This is not a case of selfishness or self-spoiling, which is not self-love. This is true self-knowledge, even of the bad stuff, self-acceptance despite the knowing and self-respect. If I can't learn to love myself, if I treat me as a possession, how can I possibly know how to treat in a loving manner the man who has chosen to live with me or
the children whom I have birthed?
I won't. I will treat them the same way I treat myself: manipulating, communicating dishonestly, behaving disrespectfully. I will be unloving, possessive, as if they is mine; my objects to place and use at will.
I don't want to teach my children to be responsible and behave unselfishly. I don't want to parrot "Do unto others what you would have done to you." I want to teach my children, by example, something altogether different. I want to learn self-love and have it spill over, thereby teaching them self-love; self-protective, self-accepting, self-determining love. And their love will spill out and over. And we will love our neighbor as ourselves. And we will be perfect. As God is perfect.
At least, sometimes...
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