The Giver

"I like the feeling of love," [Jonas] confessed. "I wish we still had that," he whispered. "Of course," he added quickly, "I do understand that it wouldn't work very well. And that it's much better to be organized the way we are now. I can see that it was a dangerous way to live..."

The community of Sameness in The Giver is one that I can identify with, and I'm realizing I've lived most of my life longing for Sameness. This isn't to say I don't enjoy change. If I didn't enjoy change, I wouldn't have gone away to college, studied abroad, or gotten married. But I draw from this inner repertoire of fear...and I think I decide to test out the waters of Change, using my fear as the guinea pig to make sure it's going to be safe. It is an exhausting way to live, I assure you.

One of the ways I see this is through babysitting. When I babysit, I am so concerned with how happy I can make the kids and feel completely inadequate when I can't do it. As a kid, I was afraid of babysitters because sometimes I could tell they didn't like me. I would beg my mom not to call this or that person to babysit, and it occurs to me now that maybe I am that person to other kids. I know they aren't always supposed to be cooing and happy, but when they aren't, I don't know what to do. Something I've realized as I've gone over and over in my mind wondering where in the hell my maternal chromosome went is that a close relative to my general fears is my fear of failure. A baby starts crying, I've failed. Their crying feels like a boss yelling in my ear that I am not good enough and I might as well give up. I look at upset babies like I did pre-algebra. No matter how many times I tried to figure out the problem, it was NEVER EVER the same answer the book wanted. Now perhaps this was due to the fact that I was home schooled and didn't have an actual algebra teacher. The thing is, I DO have good teachers for how to deal with babies. I have two sisters who adore their kids, and their kids adore them. My mom and dad were crazy about me and assured of that on the reg. I'm pretty sure Jesus loves me because the Bible tells me so...so now why can't I pour all of that out on little people without fear of rejection...?

I could go on and on about the ways this fear of change manifests itself in my life...ahem, all my friends leaving me, and me about to leave all my friends for D.C....but the big one right now is my job.

Here's the real issue. I am not a Giver by nature. I'm a Receiver. And the big changes in my life all require that I be a Giver. It's super uncomfortable and is breaking me into pieces, and I'm not adjusting well. I don't know how to love people, and I rely too much on my feelings. If I feel frustrated, I assume it's in my nature to be an angry person and that I'm not supposed to feel angry, which makes me more angry. Me, me, me, me, me, me. That Toby Keith song comes to mind, but I dare not sing it.

I'm really just going to have to let somebody else take care of it just like the rest of my issues, because this is too heavy. And I do and will keep failing if it's up to me. Which, most of the time, I make it up to me because I don't exactly know how to give it all up. I mean, with loving being so dangerous, this definitely feels the safest way to live my life in fear fear fear fear.

But I don't think it's healthiest.