TheBanyanTree: every last drop

[tobie at shpilchas.net]

Monique my dear,


Your husband is wrong.  Well, he’s wrong about this person being pushed away.

	I would dispute your characterization that you’re not so smart.  All anyone has to do is read a sentence of yours and it’s obvious that your intelligence is the kind that doesn’t get measured in a linear fashion.  That whole idea, The Stanford Binet I.Q. test, is a blot on people’s lives.  Intelligence is not linear.  And yours, my dear, is all over the place. Your intelligence can seep into crevices and rise up walls. It can loosen heads that were screwed on too tight and open hearts that were shut long ago when the whole heart forest petrified.

	As for sensitive. From what you describe, it’s clear that like most things, sensitivity is relative.  And your relatives come in a variety of flavors, colors, depths and shapes don’t they.

	I would not base my judgment of sensitivity on someone who wants you to laugh about your childhood sexual abuse.  I know.  More people know than one would ever imagine.

	Life is what it is, yes.  We are set down here, spun off the double helix as it rotated swiftly following the mitosis dance.  A jumble of chromosomes, built in characteristics and then comes the soft wiring. Which can save or damn you, both.  My best friend in the world grew up with a paranoid schizophrenic mother. She was always being farmed out to friends or relatives who would take her when her mom was in the hospital. They were poor. When we walked home from school (I’ve known her that long) she’d have to go in and see if her mom was all right. She might be. She might not be. There was no stability. She had a step father of sorts who saw her as a divisive influence and blamed her for her mother’s mental issues.  My friend grew up smelling like a rose, kind and generous, wise and silly and plays the violin like an angel.  I know other people who had no trouble at all. Came from stable families who were supportive, no grand dysfunction. And they grew up twisted, mean and vengeful, broken.

	This sensitivity thing is systemic.  I’ve heard and read about how people on the autistic spectrum don’t pick up social cues, don’t have interest in others, can’t form attachments, and are generally insensitive socially.  I’m not going begging to differ. They are fracking wrong. I think it’s the opposite. I’ve watched Meyshe grow up and his sensitivity is pervasive. He cannot compartmentalize like the rest of the world seems to do so easily. He can’t know that there is suffering near or far and still say, "Well, yes I know there is suffering, but right now, I really do have to eat lunch." He feels everything so deeply that it’s too much.  With that kind of sensitivity, the only defense sometimes is shutting down completely. I’ve seen him do it.

	I’m interested in Russ’s little "observation thing".  We all have our own take on our too much of something. And I’d like to read his (I’m actually talking to you now, Russ).

	And ………….. you could always be a carrot.


Love,


Tobie

> On Feb 23, 2021, at 1:39 PM, Monique Colve <monique.colver at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Ignore me. My husband says I'm pushing people away, which is what I do. 
> 
> Monique
> Sent from my iPad
> 
>> On Feb 23, 2021, at 12:24 PM, Monique Colve <monique.colver at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Well, I am not all that smart, but I am too sensitive. I do not come from brilliant stock, nor do we pride ourselves on our stunning intellect, though maybe my brothers do. I don't know because they're so smart they won't even speak to me. I have a half sister who doesn't think I'm sensitive enough, and another half who thinks Qanon has a point. A stepsister who thinks I'm too sensitive because I don't get a big laugh about my childhood sexual abuse. She can get a big laugh out of it, so why can't I? 
>> 
>> I am sensitive because I trust no one and prior experience has taught me that I'm being set up. For what, I don't know. None of this has to do with intelligence. It has to do with experience and a touch of mental illness, and that I do have. I feel for everyone but I can hear about everyone's tragedies without becoming so immersed I fall apart. I read a lot and the world is full of tragedy but I also find a lot that makes me happy. Life is what it is, right?
>> 
>> I have no one to talk to about these things. I will talk here, but that's usually met with silence. I can stop a conversation like no one else. 
>> 
>> Since I've been writing this, my iPad has informed me six times that Tiger Woods has been extracted using the jaws of life and has leg injuries. Are we supposed to care that much? To me he's just a person, just as important as people dying from Covid, or people freezing to death in their own homes, and no doubt with medical insurance.
>> 
>> Back to work. I have to go see my dermatologist too, which will be all the excitement I can handle. 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Monique
>> Sent from my iPad
>> 
>>> On Feb 23, 2021, at 11:31 AM, Russ Doden <russ.doden at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> This thread has been of great interest to me.  I'm one of those "sensitive"
>>> people.  It's a pain in the neck about 2 feet lower.  I talk to a lot of
>>> people at the metaphysical bookstore where I work that are also on this
>>> spectrum someplace.  I started calling us "Intuitive Empaths" and helping
>>> people understand why we perceive things differently.  I didn't have any
>>> reference materials, so I started writing a short 4 page thing I could hand
>>> to people, the first two pages were just general information and the last
>>> two were a lot of characteristics! I have since found a short 1 hour and 3
>>> minute film on Amazon Prime called Sensitive - the untold story.  It is
>>> based on a book The Highly Sensitive Person - The Untold Story by Elaine
>>> Aron PhD.  Wow, it validated everything I've been telling people and then
>>> some.  So Tobie, thank you for starting this thread and sharing it because
>>> while I've been dealing with being sensitive all my life, I'm always
>>> learning more.  If you'd like Tobie (or anyone else), I'll gladly send you
>>> my little observation thing I put together to help people I talk to here.
>>> 
>>> Peace,
>>> Russ
>>> 
>>>>> On Tue, Feb 23, 2021 at 12:08 PM <tobie at shpilchas.net> wrote:
>>>> oh yes the burden of being too sensitive and too intelligent and too
>>>> talented.  The top of the bell curve like those people as much as they like
>>>> idiots, clods, the "ugly", the "off" and the slightly different.
>>>>     My mom used to tell me a story about her own trials with too smart
>>>> and too sensitive. She went to her aunt (the one she worshipped, the one
>>>> who sailed to China and lived there for 9 years, the one who mentored her
>>>> and awakened her to feminism (yes in the 1930s) and worldly concerns) My
>>>> mom complained, "What’s the use of being smart and sensitive? When you see
>>>> things and they hurt you, it just makes life harder."  And Aunt Anne said
>>>> to her:
>>>>     Well, you could always be a carrot.
>>>>     I heard about that interchange frequently and it was nice to know
>>>> that wisdom often comes with humor. The lesson goes deeper.
>>>> I’ve read all your words and love that you’re out there being who you are
>>>> and that you heard me ……… what did I do?  squawk? yelp? yip? moan?
>>>> Thank you
>>>> Really so much,
>>>> Tobie
>>>>>> On Feb 22, 2021, at 3:04 PM, LL DeMerle <twigllet at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> There have been many conversations with my own "too" sensitive son, who
>>>> came from a "too" sensitive mom. At some point, middle school, I think, he
>>>> was talking about what a burden it was to be sensitive. I said, Yes, of
>>>> course, until you learn how to manage it and close the world out, like
>>>> putting up automatic windows in a car, but it actually is a gift if you
>>>> tweak the lens. The other thing is that life is not all about loss. Yes,
>>>> some of us feel things deeply, much more so than others, it's true. The
>>>> trick is to learn to sidestep the steamroller before it flattens us.
>>>>> There is so much to fret about and I hate how it perverts my mind, so I
>>>> don't read much news. I browse headlines and pick interesting things to
>>>> read. I guess what I am saying is that Meyshe needs to learn, as you know,
>>>> or take responsibility? If that's possible? As to what he allows to
>>>> ricochet off of the walls of his cranium or he sure will be depressed, a
>>>> lot. It's unavoidable.
>>>>> Sending love and mojo and stuff to help a plan flutter down.
>>>>> Love,
>>>>> Linda
>>>>> It’s Friday (again!), February 19, 2021
>>>>> So hello folks,
>>>>>   I wrote this last Monday and have been mulling over it ever since.
>>>> It may speak more to me than it does to you since, thank God for you,
>>>> you’ve never seen the Brodofsky gene in action. The thing skipped a
>>>> generation with me so I worry like the rest of you, hurting, suppressed
>>>> adrenalin until relief comes in the form of closure, information or
>>>> forgiveness. My mother who is resting her soul had the worry gene and
>>>> sensitivity that was never honored in her family.  I know the sensitivity
>>>> thing. And I used to believe them when sensitive was always pronounced
>>>> along  with its inseparable modifier, "too". "You’re too sensitive."
>>>> That’s advice from those who think they are wise when they tell you to
>>>> toughen up.  Can everyone do that? Toughen up?  But what does it do to your
>>>> soul?
>>>>>   I wonder about Meyshe. Is it the genetic inheritance or is it
>>>> autism or some combination, or is it the circumstances of his life made so
>>>> much more difficult by being a pariah through no fault of his own and then
>>>> there’s this pandemic which has bloomed and loomed then twisted us, stuck
>>>> in here to grieve after my mom died in October, not able to go out and see
>>>> a world that still exists in spite of our indoor cloistered implosion.
>>>>>   We were sitting at the kitchen table with our cups of tea —
>>>> Meyshe’s plain, mine always with honey. I’d called Meyshe out of his
>>>> sanctum sanctorum where he’d been meditating, or what his version of
>>>> meditation is, which frequently amounts to a two hour nap. He had the sleep
>>>> aid sound generator on to, "babbling brook," and perhaps he’d added frogs,
>>>> crickets, song birds.  It took a while to rouse him, but I wasn’t feeling
>>>> guilty about interrupting him. He’d gotten up at 10:00 a.m. long enough to
>>>> say Kaddish with me — which required him to put clothes on and try not to
>>>> scratch his belly during the prayer. After the last, "Amen," he’d turned
>>>> round and went directly back into his room, fired up the babbling brook
>>>> again.
>>>>>   It was well past 1:00 P when I called him. It was Presidents’ Day
>>>> so there was no Zooming Art class at 1:00 and though I knew that eventually
>>>> he would get up, if only to go to the kitchen and have lunch, (Example of
>>>> typical Meyshe lunch: one carrot, washed not peeled, one large apple or
>>>> pear, ten minutes at the roasted salted peanuts in the shell trough — OR:
>>>> enormous pile of cold leftover rice, pasta and/or vegetables straight from
>>>> the refrigerator storage container upended on a plate and inadequately
>>>> heated in the microwave — not unheard of to be scarfed cold.)   I knew he
>>>> wouldn’t sleep all day, but too close for me to refrain from analysis, and
>>>> then concern.  Yes, we’re in the endless middle of a pandemic that we are
>>>> told is expanding, much like the universe — as in: we know because we are
>>>> informed of its expansion but we cannot see or feel it since in the case of
>>>> the universe, we are bound by gravity to the earth spinning sweetly round
>>>> and round our sun which is a tiny dot among trillions floating or rushing
>>>> or shuddering or pin balling in vast space and we insignificant life forms
>>>> swarming, gravity bound, on our bouncing baby ball, can only, but just
>>>> barely, fathom an expanding universe on a strictly cognitive level as
>>>> proofs in fields full of equations, but we certainly can't know of this
>>>> expansion with any sensory validation.  And in the case of the endless
>>>> expanding pandemic, we are bound by government order, by even a rudimentary
>>>> grasp of epidemiological principles and by a respectable gob of fear to
>>>> shelter in place, so the world outside this house is almost an abstraction.
>>>>>   Since my mother’s passing in October we have watched no
>>>> television, let the subscription to the (snickerable) Chronicle lapse and
>>>> have thus successfully removed ourselves from the nauseous tides of too
>>>> much information, so we’ve been existing in our shielded state of too
>>>> little information which has proven for our peace of mind alone to be the
>>>> just right state of no information at all. Given our entrenched isolation,
>>>> the absence of newly minted outside stimuli, I can understand why Meyshe
>>>> might resort to applied unconsciousness via sleep, oversleep, meditation,
>>>> "meditation" in quotes, whatever vehicle can carry him off, carry him away
>>>> to suspended animation, neither sensory overload nor sensory deprivation.
>>>> But though I can understand it, even (and unfortunately) sympathize with
>>>> the allure of large time consuming splashes of anesthetized living (great
>>>> advertisement for an assisted living facility!), it looks like, it feels
>>>> like, it carries itself like clinical depression. I am too familiar with
>>>> depression having moved in together with it after a romantic courtship back
>>>> when romance like that mattered so much to me. Now I’m Mom, and though
>>>> Meyshe’s 33, not a kid anymore, he’s not like the neuro normals, so I’m his
>>>> guide, his mentor, his best friend and confidant, his resident wise woman
>>>> and the first hit from a search for, "Personal Jewish shaman near me".
>>>>>   We sat at the kitchen table with our cups of tea and we played a
>>>> game of Rutabaga, then an ex tempora story telling game using the deck of
>>>> cards:
>>>>> Five of Spades, my turn:  There was a family of five.
>>>>> Two of Hearts: His turn: And then twins were born.
>>>>> Nine of Diamonds, my turn: They lived in the ninth district of the
>>>> county.
>>>>> King of Clubs, his turn: The King ruled over their land.
>>>>> King of Diamonds, my turn The King in a neighboring country had a long
>>>> standing dispute with the other King over territory …..
>>>>>   You see how it worked.
>>>>>   I was putting away the cards and Meyshe said, "I hope I don’t have
>>>> to live through World War III"
>>>>>   Last night, the day before that and earlier in the day, Meyshe had
>>>> repeated several times, numerous times, that the last four years of Trump
>>>> were damaging to his psyche.  He said that in a variety of contexts and
>>>> wordings. Also, the terrible loathsome, Republican enablers and will they
>>>> prevent anything good from happening, and he hopes all the ice caps will
>>>> not melt in his lifetime. And he commented also on how corrosive his hatred
>>>> of the rich is, and, and, and.  I’d spoken with Meyshe last night about how
>>>> my mother recalled and repeated stories about how this person had slighted
>>>> her, how that "friend" had betrayed her: Sarah Hesse sneered about her "fat
>>>> little polkees" (legs), and Ruth, her sister-in-law, had organized an
>>>> evening of bridge playing,  paired everyone up in fours, sat them at card
>>>> tables, provided snacks and coffee, decks of cards. Four at a table, tables
>>>> all over the living room, spilling out into the dining room which she’d
>>>> cleared of furniture. However, she seated my mother alone on a couch, the
>>>> only person not paired up at a card table, and said to her, "I knew you
>>>> didn’t like card games."  That story, and the story about her, "best
>>>> enemy," who’d been invited to dinner with her husband and after my mother
>>>> had demonstrated some proficiency in something — who knows? I can’t recall:
>>>> cooking a lovely dinner? Solving some stubborn problem, whatever excellence
>>>> she’d exhibited — her "worst friend" commented, "Oh. So you are good for
>>>> something."  I heard each of these stories and dozens of similar ones
>>>> scores of times. And each time she told me one of these stories it was
>>>> evident that she’d exhumed the ancient incident and opened the wound
>>>> afresh. She was re experiencing each slight, each humiliation, each
>>>> infliction of psychic pain as if it had just happened. The stories were
>>>> obsessions that she never let go of. I told that to Meyshe illustrating how
>>>> we can keep pain, worry, anger, regret, hatefulness, shame alive forever if
>>>> we choose, and I didn’t want him to do that. Sure, the Trump years are
>>>> fresh, awful, but they are over now and we have a new president. At some
>>>> point those four harrowing detestable years really can fade and be put to
>>>> rest. At that point he won’t be able to call them back up to renew and
>>>> reenergize its pain, negativity, worry, unhappiness. Please. Don’t let it
>>>> keep you from living a full, loving and productive life.
>>>>>   So today, when Meyshe suddenly called up World War III and how he
>>>> hoped it wouldn’t happen in his life time, I broke down — from isolation,
>>>> pressure, circumstantial worries of course, but primarily for my son. What
>>>> can I, what must I, do to help him love life not resurrect old pain, stir
>>>> it up as fresh poison. I broke down and cried, sobbing across from him at
>>>> the table. If that moment with the third world war’s seductive trauma were
>>>> to paint a portrait of his life, what kind of a life can that be? He’d done
>>>> nothing to me but of course he took it on as something he’d caused. As I
>>>> was writing this, Meyshe came into the room, turned on the bright light and
>>>> wrote in his own journal. He told me before he left the room that he’d been
>>>> writing about my sobbing at the kitchen table.  Have I given him yet
>>>> another tale of woe he can revive endlessly, expanding like the pandemic,
>>>> like the universe?
>>>>> Love,
>>>>> it is that,
>>>>> Tobie
>>>>> "Pica: a bad cook’s dream guest" THS, 2021
>>>>> Tobie Helene Shapiro
>>>>> tobie at shpilchas.net
>>>>> Want to change your name, email address, or password? Or have you
>>>> forgotten your password? Go here:
>>>> http://lists.remsset.com/listinfo.cgi/thebanyantree-remsset.com
>>>>> Want to change your name, email address, or password? Or have you
>>>> forgotten your password? Go here:
>>>> http://lists.remsset.com/listinfo.cgi/thebanyantree-remsset.com
>>>> Variety is the spice of life.  Lack of variety is the spouse of life.   THS
>>>> Tobie Shapiro
>>>> mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net <mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net>
>>>> Want to change your name, email address, or password? Or have you
>>>> forgotten your password? Go here:
>>>> http://lists.remsset.com/listinfo.cgi/thebanyantree-remsset.com
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> -- 
>>> Enjoy Life By Living In Joy
>>> 
>>> Well Being Consultant
>>> www.rldwbc.com
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Want to change your name, email address, or password? Or have you forgotten your password? Go here: http://lists.remsset.com/listinfo.cgi/thebanyantree-remsset.com
> 
> 
> Want to change your name, email address, or password? Or have you forgotten your password? Go here: http://lists.remsset.com/listinfo.cgi/thebanyantree-remsset.com


"Leave alone de hoss!"
Great Grandpa Goodman Brodofsky (c. 1905)
"Leave alone de hoss, Pop!"
Great Uncle Max Brodofsky (c 1932)





Tobie Shapiro
mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net <mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net>