From: [email protected]
Subject: Nurse Jones on being yourself
Date: 16 Dec 91 17:05
From Nurse Jones,
Who wants to know: is it so terrible to become the kind of person your
lover wants in order to keep him?
Someone a few days ago mentioned that some talk show mentioned a woman
who was killed by her sick husband. At one point it came out that she
had been putting up with his S/M tendencies in order to keep him. She
was afraid he would dump her if she put her foot down and refused him.
And I had earlier gotten an e-mail from someone who said they had been
nauseated by my attitude when they read the List. I got into bondage
through fantasizing about it first, but once we started and I
discovered that I could easily find within myself this person Jay was
looking for, that I could in fact become that kind of person, I also
realized that it would be very difficult for Jay to find anyone else
like that. Like me. I saw it as a way of binding him to me. Not tying
him down, but getting inside him. A major motivation for me is the
desire for closeness between us. To get inside each other so we don't
even know where one stops and the other begins.
We both do that now. That was/is the whole point of the hypnosis. He's
letting me change him, too.
But the murdered woman probably had the same motivation.
I understand the difference between me and the murdered woman: I was
intrigued, curious, and excited by the prospect of changing. She was
doing it despite herself.
But we both changed ourselves to suit a man. I was lucky, she came up
snake eyes.
It wasn't _changing_ that killed her, it was _not_leaving_him_ that
killed her. It was her _husband_ that killed her.
Is there more to it? Is it so bad to be willing to change yourself to
become someone else's ideal woman? Does that make me a Barbie Doll?
I'm not sure there IS a "real me" unto which I must be true. There is
no person inside me that feels she must remain impervious to change,
be defended at all costs. I do what I want, pretty much, and I don't
have the feeling that I will fly apart into my constituent molecules
if I don't keep up a constant effort to "be myself."
I always thought I liked changing myself, my body, my makeup, my
dress, my behaviour patterns because I either (a) LIKE change, or (b)
I didn't like the way I was and wanted to be different. Now option (c)
rears it's ugly head: there IS no "me" and I'm trying to find one.
Oh Gawd. I thought "finding yourself" went out in the '70's. My
grandmother got royally pissed when I once told her I was trying to
find myself. She said, "Why the hell do you have to 'find yourself?'
Why don't you just resemble someone? You'd be much better off."
Maybe my whole family is abnormal. And I thought Grams and I were the
only ones.
Nurse Jones,
beginning to think
the only normal people
are the ones you don't know
very
well.
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