I was at Starbucks on Pico and Robertson Blvds this morning around 11 a.m., when this old drunk black man came in and started bothering customers. So the female manager came out and asked him to leave. The man got belligerent and threatening but the woman stood her ground. Police were called. Eventually, the man left and got on his bike.
There are lots of black and white crazy homeless around 90035 but I don’t see any asian or hispanic panhandlers. I wonder why?
Seeing the old man get kicked out reminded me of the one time I was kicked out of a business.
In 1983, when I was 16, I went to a movie theater on Highway 49 and when the movie (Spring Break) was over, it was the first time I’d been to a theater alone (and only my second time to a theater, I’d seen Raiders of the Lost Ark a few weeks before with a friend, going to movies was a sin in my Seventh-Day Adventist upbringing), I went to the bathroom, hung out there for five minutes, and then slipped into the next theater to see a movie for free. The manager marched down the aisle, hauled me out of my chair, threw me out of the theater and said, “It would be a good idea if you didn’t come back for a long time.”
I was so ashamed because I knew I had been caught stealing. My friend had led me into doing this last time we were at the theater and we didn’t get caught. I hate it when I got caught doing something wrong. I have a big tendency to do whatever I can get away with.
I wonder if I keep putting myself on vulnerable states so I can manipulate people into giving me love? I hate being vulnerable. I’d much rather be strong. I feel much more comfortable being strong. I strive to be strong but life hasn’t worked out in a way that leaves me in a position of strength at age 46.
Wherever I am in life, I can always strive for mastery, a form of strength.
I remember in 1990, I went to stay with my girlfriend at her parents’ home in Ipswich, QLD. She felt like we weren’t going to last so she distanced herself. She brought me to her home for two weeks but she’d take off all day and leave me alone.
I remember one evening she came home and looked in at me in my room and I’d been sick and had a down day and I just lay there looking pathetic and gazing up at her in my needy way and she said, “Awww” and she felt bad for leaving me alone all day and showered me with love.
Where in my life have I acted out of the adult part of myself and where have I acted out of my needy child? (Therapist) In most of my life, I act like an adult, except when my feelings get triggered through abuse, abandonment, or some other strong stimuli, and then my four-year-old inside comes lunging out, often to my horror. I’ve tried to lock this kid up in the attic.
