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From: aeq@pucc-h (Jeff Sargent)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Re: pedestalization
Message-ID: <778@pucc-h>
Date: Tue, 19-Jun-84 10:17:31 EDT
Article-I.D.: pucc-h.778
Posted: Tue Jun 19 10:17:31 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 21-Jun-84 06:28:53 EDT
References: <2082@mit-vax.UUCP>
Organization: Purdue University Computing Center
Lines: 50

From Joy @ MIT :

> Jeffie, Jeffie, Jeffie.....  

"Jeffie"????  I've once been called "Sarge" (despite my escaping the draft
when Nixon killed it 8 days after I turned 18), but never "Jeffie".  Am I
really that immature?  (I know, the answer to that is obvious....)

> Heck, I know I'm not perfect.
> But I think enough of myself to know that I'm not pond slime either....

The trouble is, sometimes I can feel pretty good about myself; but then I
watch how I behave under stress, and how angry and unoriginally foul-mouthed
I get, and I realize there's still a LOT wrong with me.  Much as I asked in a
previous article (to which I haven't read the followups yet), how can a woman
who is -- I like the word "undamaged" -- understand me?

> I am not sure, as Sophie suggests, that all those who pedestalize don't
> ever want to change their self-image.  I've met some who genuinely do and
> some who don't.  I hope you are one of the former, Jeff.  Pooh has a
> very good point:  did you ever think that some woman might be looking at
> you and dwelling only upon her not-so-attractive traits?

Inasmuch as I've spent a lot of time in the last several years working on
improving the person I am (some of this has been chronicled here), I'd say
I am one of the former.  Actually, there may well be one or two (or more?)
women of my acquaintance who are doing exactly as you say.

I think a lot of my problem comes down to this:  Having spent my early years
in an age when the traditional nuclear family was considered the norm and the
ideal, I tend to assume that a person who was raised in a nice family with
very loving parents and didn't make a lot of interstate (or even inter-school)
moves (thus had the opportunity to establish long-term friendships), and who
thus has turned out to be a nice, pleasant, loving person
[her,him]self, cannot understand the depths of darkness within me, and would
thus find me rather repulsive (you wouldn't care to know some of the horribly
sadistic & masochistic fantasies I've had, for instance).  I've only begun to
get away from the worst of me, and I haven't gotten very far toward becoming
the best possible me; I'm one of the least loving persons I know.  Anyway:

1.  Is there such a thing as an "undamaged" person, i.e. one who made it
    through childhood without getting mangled?
2.  If so, could such a person possibly learn to understand and love one who
    has been as sick as I, and who is still so far from full recovery?


-- 
-- Jeff Sargent
{allegra|decvax|harpo|ihnp4|seismo|ucbvax}!pur-ee!pucc-h:aeq
"...got to find my corner of the sky."