2002-09-18 - 10:16 p.m.

I'm really glad about something that AA taught me. I've learned recently not to hear what I want to hear when people talk, but to hear what they say. For far too long I've had selective listening, focusing on the things that people say that sound like what I want to hear, and too easily ignoring things they say that I don't want to hear. It's a very insidious flaw that's going to take a long time to completely fix, but already I can understand so much better for knowing how deeply it is ingrained in my character.

As a case in point, I'm really understanding what Michelle has been telling me for the last month. Through all the conversations we had up until the fateful night that I visited her, I managed to read almost exactly what I wanted to hear out of what she said. Even when I thought I should listen carefully to her and tried to do it, I was listening only to the things I wanted to hear.

The fact of the matter is that she has been pretty confused, just like me, and hasn't known what to say a lot of the time. That has lead to her saying a lot of things, only some of which she really meant, and some of which were ambiguous enough for me to see the wrong meaning in. But now that I'm thinking in terms of listening in order to hear what the other person is really saying or thinking, I'm seeing a bigger picture of her communication to me, and really starting to understand where she is coming from.

I've been kind of surprised at some of the things I've recently come to understand, but not the kind of surprise where I don't believe she could be thinking that; the kind of surprise I feel when I miss something obvious.

Michelle doesn't want me back. She may not have said that in so many words from the very beginning, and she may only have said it clearly under pressure from me, but she said it in all the ways that count from day one, and even before that. She never initiated any conversations with me just because she wanted to talk or wanted to know how I was doing or wanted to clear things up between us. She started conversations when she absolutely needed to tell me something or when she needed something material from me. That's not the way she would have acted if she wanted me back, and that is a very clear communication that I've been purposely ignoring or explaining away.

Michelle doesn't think she's really losing much by letting me go. Sure I was a good provider and a decent dad to her kid, but once she had the space to step back and picture a life without me, she decided right away that it would be a good idea. That's not the decision she would have made if she thought I was really someone worth keeping. This communication of her feeling goes back farther than August 16th too. When I hurt her feelings by thinking she was going to tell me she slept with someone else, her first thought wasn't "Gee, this is serious and I'd better talk to Carl about it and make sure everything is ok because I really want to keep him and I would hate to lose him. Her first thought was "Gee, maybe I should leave him." That's a pretty clear communication of her feelings, and I deliberately chose to ignore it.

Michelle doesn't spend time thinking about whether or not we should get together. She hasn't told me so in so many words, but then again she didn't have to. If she spent time thinking about that, she would have questions to ask me. If she spent time thinking about me, she would have things to say to me. Instead, she's come straight out and told me she didn't know what to say to me. When I suggested I go visit her to talk she didn't understand because "there's nothing to talk about".

It's a normal thing for children to pretend that reality is different than it really is. Children do things like lie about what happened because they don't think reality necessarily applies to them. They don't like dealing with fact, preferring to imagine that things can always go their way. When you ask a child what happened when they did something wrong, they'll often tell you a version of the story that makes them sound like the victim, even if it was their fault. Or maybe they'll make it sound like they couldn't help what they did, or it wasn't their fault. As we grow up, we're supposed to learn that reality isn't something you can escape.

I haven't done a very good job at that aspect of getting more mature. I've consistenly ignored the real world and preferred to think that everything will go my way. Especially when people would tell me things I didn't want to hear, I'd feel comfortable hearing only the things that sounded right to me ears. I have a good knack of explaining away or brushing off comments that I don't think apply to me. I've known about parts of this for a long time, in different ways, but it is definitely coming together now and making more sense in respect to who I know I am. In a way I'm still resistant to change, but I know that I will be happier for only believing things that are true. By not escaping from the truth, I'll be forcing myself to live in the now and to live in the real world. By forcing myself to live in the real world, I'll stop doing things that I know are wrong, or that I know I shouldn't do, because I won't have that loophole of ignorance to fall back into.

By openly accepting responsibility for my actions, I'll learn to be more responsible. I'll learn to stop myself when I'm doing something I decided earlier I wouldn't do. At least I can imagine how I might do that. Now I have to figure out the steps to work on in order to actually be like that.

A good first step is to really start listening to what is going on around me with the intention of hearing what is really there. The world is not my plaything, to ignore when it does things or says things to me I don't like. The world is my home and ignoring any part of it is directly hurtful to myself.

In some ways I don't feel like this entry makes much sense. I know I had a definite clear picture of what I wanted to write but I strayed from it and rambled about things, half the time thinking my sentences aren't even cohesive from beginning to end, never mind from one to the other. But I think I'll look back on it and see that I was being more truthful than usual. Childish and immature, still, but a little more truthful. At least I hope so. I could be wrong about a lot of things, but in a way that doesn't matter. As long as I'm working more conscientiously towards knowing the truth, I know that in time I will get things right more often than not, and it doesn't really matter if I have everything right at this moment. It's the process that is important to keep track of and keep in line, not the goal that has to be reached at all costs.

This much AA has taught me.

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