Can’t make this up…. I was thinking of Dirty Dancing this morning and boundaries. Right this second I can’t even recall the exact thought (because a lot goes on up here), but Hungry Eyes just came on as soon as I opened this post.
So story time? Maybe. First, I put on a shirt this morning. I felt like looking human because I felt like it, and because admittedly I have new clients coming in today. That’s right I’m going to do some couples work and I’m a little nervous about it. So silly considering my confidence in my gift. However the events of the past couple years could explain my lack of confidence in that arena. But I just never forget that’s in my personal life not my professional one. I never was much of a compartmentalizer, in fact I hardly believe in it.
Anyway I put on a shirt that’s kind of feminine thinking that I wanted to look nice in a way I’m used to viewing as nice, and the shirt is nice. How it looks on the hanger and at the store and how it feels on turn out to be different and if that isn’t a metaphor for everything and life itself. See what I did there 😉
I’m not looking to ask someone else if they like it or not I now know if I want to wear it or not and am going to let it go because it’s not me. And it’s a nice shirt. I’d like it to fit or some external validation to help me to like it. But try as I might (and why would I, that is a million dollar question right now), it doesn’t feel right.
Also a top my to do list is to get some bras that don’t make me want to lose my will to live. That feel comfortable but also I feel good about my figure in. What a challenge already anyway. But how I feel in it has become more important than how I look to someone else because I can’t concentrate on anything if I don’t feel right in my own skin and clothing, and if I’m not who I am.
Getting to know me is starting to become enjoyable rather than a burden, exhausting, impossible, etc. I’m starting to enjoy getting to know me and I just smiled ear to ear as I wrote this so I know it’s true. what a relief. Deep sigh.
The blog post that was brewing this morning was other aspects of who I am and how desperately I want someone who knows that to show up and stay, without me having to do anything besides be me and work on me. And I will hold out for that.
Lately I’ve been sharing this as part of client work, helping them understand when their standards raise as their self love does, that it’s normal to be lonely when you aren’t accepting just anything, and how that’s actually a good thing. I tell myself as I tell them. It’s part of the magic.
I am coming to life, living. It’s been so hard to let go of this old self and the people who have been on the journey who began this, but in letting go I am free to live. I experience freedom. I can’t fix or change anyone or anything but me, and I can enjoy rather than being overwhelmed or daunted by that process.
Anxiety was running so much of my life, and I thought I was through with all of it, but really I was just at another opportunity to level up. This is me. Here I am.
Earlier in a session someone was mentioning how we would rather stick with a terrible president for example than venture into the unknown, because it could be worse and it was making me think of some emotional blackmail I’ve witnessed that connects with this. It’s so sad to me, how people won’t let themselves grow and change in the name of fear and anxiety. It’s brutal. And then I bring myself back to letting go of those feelings because it’s not mine. My work is right here.
Hey spaghetti arms this is my dance space and this is yours….oh hey I wrote my way to it. Boundaries. A dance and no one stepping on anyone’s toes or standing on someone’s feet being whisked around the dance floor. No matter how romantic that may seem. One step two step, and how follow through and self trust are the lessons of this season in my life, and how I’ll never compromise that again. There are plenty of mistakes but that particular lesson is laid down.
Lately in therapy I am confronting my damaged programming and my broken attachment system. It’s humbling and gorgeous and I’m the most me I’ve ever been, and I am enchanted by the work and that infects the rest of my life.
I have my voice in tact now rather than waiting for decisions to be made for me.
I watch my fellow co dependent travelers who would romanticize death if it meant they would permit themselves to relax, or who hope for a car accident to prevent them from having to go into work, rather than feeling the ability to choose and handle the outcome of their choices.
It makes me grateful for my healing to be privileged to witness the space they are currently in. I smile because now I know it isn’t a forever sentence, just a stop along the way.
It’s blog o’clock, my favorite time of the day. I am writing from Provincetown. P-town. Wafting through the memories and thoughts old and new. I’m listening to Feels like Home by Chantal Kreviazuk, vacillating between that version and Bryan Adams and Diana Krall. Sometimes a song just feels like home and if you have to listen to it repeatedly. If you’re me that sometimes happens often.
So far today I’ve watched the sunrise from a new place, gone out to breakfast, and done a ton of walking. My next steps I believe are a shower and to rock my hard earned hairstyle (two years of perfecting that art), and to head for some sunshine on my skin. I think I’ll try to read almost the entire book of Another Day in the Every Day series. I have no need to rush, but allowing myself to get lost in something for as long as I want without judging it, is something I’m working on.
I think of the self conscious version of me I once was in this place. The version who was so uncomfortable in her skin and any semblance of belonging that she got black out drunk and embarrassed herself, and her own chaos was so off putting and she knew it. When all along she carried inside this true self that anyone could and would have enjoyed. So hidden. And I think of the song Creep by RadioHead and how both of those songs came into my awareness. How another fellow co-dependent (narc food) human being, her greatness lost to herself, how we crossed paths and how chaotic that was. The Human Magnet Syndrome by Ross Rosenberg explains this. Two people of this magnetization repel one another, sadly because in truth they would be a really good match. But unhealed selves rarely can be still with their feelings long enough to know that. So here we are.
I think of how she would love this place. Anyone longing to express themselves resonates here I believe. In this case perhaps not even knowing there’s a longing…. that would be too painful to admit, and the waves of pain are intolerable without “a why”. Pain without meaning is simply suffering.
I think of how in the shop window I saw this morning at the HRC store mugs that say established in 1980 and how those also fit the date of births of two greats, and how I’ll shall have to procure a few for my home office to show some pride, perhaps the colors of the rainbow.
I think of how yesterday was National Coming out Day, and how much that process has shaped my brave. I didn’t begin brave, rarely if ever is that some natural thing I don’t think. I think like gene expressions it must be turned on out of necessity. And that is why I can’t hate my story, and also why I strive so hard to get it straight. I think of how I joke forward never straight, when telling directions, and how people tease me about it. And in this moment I think about how not wrong I am in that, with any direction in life. You can go forward without traveling in a straight direction. I just don’t recommend going in circles, as I found the last year of my life, you’ll get dizzy and sick chasing your tail. I said this to a client the other day, that they were chasing their tail and it has stayed in my mind thinking about it. Trapped in a cycle is nowhere fun to be, but sometimes it can be a necessary stepping stone. I guess you have to get tired enough of being angry and dizzy.
Some people never do. That thought makes me sad. The concept of lost souls makes me sad, I still can’t believe it, but it is healthy to accept it when one must, because otherwise suffering.
Ok it’s time for the Bryan Adams version, right after I pee. Also I literally can’t wait to put my feet in the ocean….. EEEEE. I’m very glad I have my Mad Rabbit Tattoo sunscreen, gotta protect my art. My therapist called it a coping mechanism (my tattoos) and I almost judged myself. That was enough to make me pause and think why am I doing this? Should I be? Do I even like them?
Sometimes I find for me that it takes awhile for my feelings to register, making it even more scary to make a huge and permanent decision. I remember years ago a psychic (the real deal yes there is that kind), saying to me that if I want to help people go feed them at a soup kitchen don’t move them into my home. I laugh thinking at this now, for so many reasons. I think don’t marry them until you fully know them would have been sufficient. I didn’t make a mistake in marrying anyone, those all led me to where I am now. I made a mistake in not being committed to myself enough to embody any set of vows. I stated them whilst not being in my body, and despite how I argued to myself over and over how different it was each time, it was NOT. I was not in my body. I was lost somewhere inside my painful mind and a powerful set of coping mechanisms that ran my life.
“We get into the habit of living before we develop the habit of thinking.” Excerpt from the Myth of Sysiphus as learned in philosophy at Gateway Community College, and read along with the Little Prince, a book that would change the direction of my life so entirely. A book that would begin the journey home to myself. So I can be in my body next time I make any vows. For now I just write a lot of them to me, and then break them over and over so I can learn what works and what doesn’t on this path of creativity during this thing we call living.
A created human becomes a creative human, despite the fact that all of that had a forced shutdown, a system override, those many years ago. I am told if that happens in childhood to that degree that the chance of change around certain things is quite literally a miracle. Watch me work. My life IS a miracle, the excavation of this self IS a miracle even when I don’t have the words for it, and occasionally being seen in a more complete way has become many a guidepost to getting me “home”. Feels like home.
I’ll make a home out of me yet, so I can make a home with someone else because I’ll always be a hopeful romantic.
This has derailed and changed shape often throughout the process. Isn’t that always the way. I have an idea, but the writing has a mind of it’s own. As we sync into alignment the words come. They have always been there, and they will always come.
Here in Ptown I am wafting through past selves, outdated versions of me. I weep for that girl who was so lost inside her pain. I weep for that shattered mind, and for the pain that is inevitable in a human experience. I wonder about the luck of the draw and about destiny and about the enormity….
This is what magic today has brought so far, which jogs my memory about time, how I always felt it was running out, how there was never enough, and the pace I moved as a result of being stuck in that speed. Being stuck implies a passivity that is not characteristic of me, so in this case I shall clarify to it took a long time for me to become aware I was a walking talking coping mechanism. It would take a life changing connection that unleashed a lifetime of wounding to rise to the surface.
The perfect drug, the perfect storm…… the perfect ending is that there is no end, only transitions….
If there was a tragedy or disaster you probably wouldn’t know what I was feeling by reaction. Similarly if a really good thing happens it takes me a bit to register how I do feel about it. I have to wait and check my feelings for safety, and what is real, and then decide on a reaction. I have to peek out of the foxhole of myself for awhile first. And this process can easily be misunderstood for something else. It’s a difficult aspect of me that I never asked for.
I’m quite aware you’re just supposed to naturally feel what you feel. That safe process that most don’t know as a privilege was never a part of my wiring. And I always feared it meant something was wrong with me until I could get the knowledge and information to share about myself. Until I could believe I could be loved with all of this. I didn’t even see me how could anyone else.
And that’s the last thing on my mind these days I’ve never been more alone in my life, and somehow that’s not killing me. My phone barely dings and it’s never that high inducing looking forward to it being someone special. And for me after all these years there is a peace in this simplification of living. At first it was boring and meant I wasn’t special etc, but every road I went down led to less me, and that wasn’t an option.
So here I am becoming a solid self. Not rigid but solid. There’s a difference. Solid in that say what you mean and mean what you say kind of way.
I am reading Another Day, the second book in the Every Day series. It’s from the girl he is in love withs perspective, and boy it’s impossible to refute that the right books at the right time cross our paths. I won’t get judgy on myself about this being in high school, because really I have rebirthed and am now reparenting the younger parts of me, so we can all amalgamate into one big happy family.
I got Halloween pillow covers that say Dead and Breakfast, the black flame candle co, and a few others. I like them. One piece at a time this house will become a home, not the way I thought it would, but nevertheless.
I have finally snapped into gear with the administrative tasks of my life. I finally requested a rate increase from Cigna, fixed a billing issue with BCBS that has many claims in the ether. It’s ok one big pay day when you have to play hunt and find w your money. It’s like a fun game :p I mean I’ve never liked easy right?
These days I value peace of mind above all else. Peaceful inside usually peaceful outside. With the exception of the never ending battle w my first born over his bedroom. Battle of the wills and struggling to balance relationship that is healthy between us also. All as one person.
I can get better only a little at a time and I need to be ok with that.
Friendships ebb and flow as people navigate their own lives, but they are solid and stable.
I am on the brink of having “adult” relationships with my children. That change is not easy. They are no longer children and not yet adults. They are in between and I am in the meantime. In my meantime things are so quiet that life is expanded to all the delicious simple pleasures, like the home smelling good and feeding loved ones. I have settled down into the value of that without needing to force something that felt unnatural for so long.
Give me a home cooked meal, the chatter of my children and loved ones (at a dull roar of course;)) a cozy set of slippers, blanket, and mug of hot something. A fire crackling perhaps. …. Bliss.
Last year I could not crack a box to decorate or breathe oxygen and my children yelled at me and I heard it as personal. I didn’t hear I miss you. I heard you’re not doing your job well and I saw red.
This year I’m going to enjoy every little moment.
This year I’m imagining what kind of parent I want to be as they age in terms of being involved if they want me to. I imagine what kind of grandma I’ll be, and how consistent and what role I’ll have and I am excited.
I never knew how much I could love being a mom because I never had or stood a chance, and I’ve done the unthinkable and rewritten my stars and their very histories. All of our lives could have looked so different. There were so many forks I could have taken that would have led to less for them.
And I’m just getting started, really just beginning in so many ways.
For now I’m going to read my books, I can make my goal on the Good Reads app, love that thing. I’m 10 behind for the year so I’m thinking the everyday series and then the wrinkle in time series and actually finish it, and then East of Eden and perhaps I’ll finish The Midnight Garden on audiobook on my upcoming vacation.
I’m still vacillating between don’t leave me alone with me that long and sheer and utter bliss thinking how hard I pushed for that alone time even when I was stable and loved. The grass IS greener where you water it. For now there’s plenty of my own lawn to do that with. My writer self needs tending to, to coax her out of her dormancy. Writers are sensitive creatures, creativity flits like a fickle butterfly. It alights where and when it wants to and the energy guides it.
You have to make the conditions, make an environment that is suitable and welcoming to the work. Trying to force it has never worked. You have to listen and adjust, listen and adjust course again and again. If you can listen…. You will hear your knowing. But nothing can ever be forced in the realm of authenticity.
I recognize now I always had to force myself to even be ok… and I got so used to that way of being. It felt impossible for things to be different, but from this side I can assure you it is anything but.
My faith wires were crossed with control and terror. Rewiring is not for the faint of heart
It comes together and it falls apart. Life. The self however I don’t think should come together and fall apart so often, that’s supposed to be stable I would imagine.
I’m reading the book Everyday and it’s so staggeringly relatable I’m not sure what to do with it. It’s about a person who wakes up in a different body everyday. The person finds a feeling for a person and begins to break all of their own rules for this feeling. The person (who is genderless, their name is “A”) calls it the enormity, which I interpret to mean something beyond themselves.
A finds understanding of others through their experiencing of someone and describes concepts like depression and also many family dynamics. One day they wake up in the body of Rhiannon the person they love. To me that’s exquisite to imagine. It is unfathomable. And as a person who has always wanted the most full experience possible to get as close as possible that would be a dream.
In fact I think that’s the question I always asked as a child, what is it like to be that person. What’s it like to have a penis as I don’t know that. What’s it like to be adored by parents. What’s it like to be a star athlete. What’s it like to be stunning. What’s it like to be controlled by a wanting that supersedes all else whether that be a chemical substance or a human. What’s it like to be popular.
I don’t have to wonder about things like what’s it like to feel awkward and not belonging. What’s it like to be terrified. What’s it like to feel not only unwanted but also “bad”. What’s it like to be a product of and then bathed in fear.
In the book A ends up in a body that he doesn’t get home in time and so the boy wakes up on the side of the highway in the morning having no idea he got there. A tries to cause the least amount of disruption in the lives of others and has a code of sorts for himself to achieve this. He abandoned this to see his love, and as a result the boy ends up harmed.
Normally A clears his browser history of an email he uses to try and keep some memories of the self inside the bodies. He forgets in haste this time and Nathan writes him that he knows who he is and believes he’s been possessed by the devil. He spreads this all over and believes it so entirely that it consumes him and separates him from others.
To cling to a belief system for the security of whatever is secure about that robs him of so many moments and connecting with others. He’s angry and damaged by something since he can’t make sense of it, he comes up with something.
It’s an interesting part of the plot.
It’s no wonder I always wanted to like books, was attracted to them, even if I could be still enough to hardly ever read one. I’m working on that now and they are portals into human experiences that don’t cause harm. A safe resting place for a weary yet still curious heart. Calm and safe yes still being adventurous.
Why would I want someone else’s adventure. I always wanted to create my own. That was always my story. But I think there needed to be down time in between where I spent time with carving out what I wanted and needed. How does one do that with only a set of survival mechanisms and no stable set of traditions etc. without a system what is a self?
What parts are created and what parts are the enormity, the things beyond us that speak to us and pull us. To answer those calls and why or why not. The big questions that the great philosophers and the lowly authors have always tried to tackle.
A life lived in my own way not on anyone else’s terms has always felt important to me, but the how was a much more difficult aspect. Like a car without fuel. How can one exist in this manner without the fuel that is love, affection, belonging, and that from someone somewhere some form of that is unconditional.
I can’t change or want to change any of my path. But maybe I just need to believe it’s for a reason because that comforts me and there really isn’t any reason at all. That Pink Floyd has it right when he says “all you’ll touch and all you’ll see is all your life will ever be.”
I can’t have all the lives. I’ve almost had them really. But the one I never had is the one that looks the finest in the eyes of society. A long and consistent marriage that is celebrated… and I could go on… but I won’t at this moment, because I always wanted that one person you go through everything with and they are a constant. I made that a dream about love, but it’s fairly obvious that’s supposed to be a parent.
In the absence of certain core things I believe we can spend our life frantically searching or eternally unhappy no matter what, and the only thing that soothes is the story. I’m not willing to manipulate myself to feel better over finding the truth.
But finding my truth was always more important. This excavation process of finding pieces of me, and simultaneously trying to do that through relating because we see ourselves more clearly in relation to others. But that relation also changes us as we go.
The self evolves rapidly I find, or it can if that is the desire. Most people it seems are terrified of evolution, I suppose I’m not separate of that, but my enthusiasm always outweighs my fear. That is a piece of myself that is consistent. Would you look at that.
How do you get excited about being brave when sometimes being brave causes harm. The self versus the system. I’ll always be someone who has to know. Now I’m working at what do I want to know and why and being more responsible with myself first. To and for myself having a loyalty I didn’t have before.
If there’s no loyalty to the self there can be no loyalty to another because there’s no stable ground under the feet. You can circumvent this by religious beliefs and or adopting a set of family values, but what cost to a soul and why?
What I do know is I won’t regret chasing my dream. I know who I am. I know when I’m sorry I mean it and a swift change follows. I know once I know that I’ll enact change. I know my heart.
I didn’t know or trust those things before.
I know pain causes massive transformation if you sit with it and stay….
I am here with me…. Holding me, figuring out what comforts me. When I hear lines in this book about skin on skin and the enormity that exists between two people the tears start to slide immediately: I cannot change this looming winter into a permanent fall and spring, nor can I change the seasons of my existing.
I can only seek meaning from the experiences now that I’m not controlling them with every fiber of my being in one way or another. I’m being in control of myself and accessing my knowing and that’s the still I will stay in and the faith comes in believing I’ll have another season where I can connect this self with another self in a safe, healthy, equitable, and most importantly fulfilling way.
For now friends and love can be found everywhere as I’m willing to look. Rather than trying to change a season with my will surrendering to faith.
“It’s never too late to be who you should have been”
The pain has woken me up. Or maybe it’s the words that woke me up. Or did the pain wake me up to the words.
Until the events of the past couple of years I never realized how much pain I was in all the time. I wouldn’t have realized anymore because I fashioned a soothing and capable self for others as a means of survival. I must have found it made the pain stop.
I had an epiphany as I was awoken at 4 am out of a dead sleep that as I only had myself to rely on I decided to make her so attuned and soothing to others because that also made me feel safe. As I soothed another I was soothed, and I recognized they were comforted, but I couldn’t recognize myself.
I’ve lived my whole life trying to make the pain stop in what I thought of as a healthy way. And perhaps it’s a lot healthier than where I could be. I’m driven intensely almost all the time to find ways of existing that make the pain stop. The anxious thoughts, the many physical symptoms I deal with regularly. The fact I can’t concentrate to save my life and my mind feels broken.
I found ways around the shattered self that lives inside to the point I was afraid I was a sociopath. Because I carefully select an emotion based on practicality before I’ll let myself feel it. I need to know if it’s safe and acceptable to others. If it will bring me belonging or desertion, warmth or isolation.
Are there others like me? Where are the other people who raised themselves, lived through terror constantly, and made a strong self in the outside and spent their life afraid they were bad or wrong? Where are the other people that coped the way I have ?
The things I found to make the pain stop weren’t numbing, they were the opposite, tuning in not tuning out. I wanted to make my mother’s torment stop. I knew that. And my aunts and my grandparents , and my little brother’s, and all the other chaos that swirled around me. I was determined. I am nothing if not determined. I clamp down like steel, my iron will and my nostrils flaring. I was years before they ever did so in a calm primal manner that meant anything but terror.
The problem with fashioning a self out of many trial and error tries, to make sure you don’t become what you’re from, is that your true self is lost. Many people don’t have their true selves in tact for one reason or another. I’m far from alone in the pain of being pathologically lonely.
The problem with all of this above is you can never really trust what’s real and what isn’t. And you’re vulnerable to the same fantastical thinking that probably took you to a safer place. See how I slip out of first person when it gets close to the wound?
My beautiful writer and dreamer mind, the childlike one preserved on ice betrayed me a couple of years ago. Is this real is the first thing I asked my therapist in the first session. The one where I would ask if I had to choose between passion and safety and what each of those things meant. What I was referring to was a feeling that shook the tectonic plates of my world.
The feeling was as real as you and me. What meaning I attached to the feeling and why was the ultimate betrayal. Escapism at its finest. Why couldn’t I just be a gamer at this point. That wouldn’t have cost me my sanity. Or maybe even an alcoholic. The jury is still out on if that would have.
I think I was trying to recover a sense of faith in something along the way, and I really clung to spirituality. Everything happens for a reason I bought into that when it came to this. And as it turned out it did, but the reason I was so very wrong about. And once you’ve felt so very wrong so many times and for so long, the joy, the manufactured joy, begins to get further and further away.
The only thing that brought me relief in childhood was being brought into other families and feeling seen, and the possibility of belonging. I became childlike and wide eyed. So when I attended a couple of family events and felt I belonged there, with someone telling me also that I did, and they wanted and saw me, I became attached to that notion and all of the players involved.
The intoxicating mixture of the words expressed and the want coupled with the family gatherings at the right time of loneliness and the hook was set, and the story was laid down, and I wanted to believe that magic more than anything.
As it turns out when you set out to find what to believe in, and it’s never in who you are, you’re in for a lot of pain. No foundation for me knowing who I was got laid down. So I’ve flitted from here to there trying to make the pain stop.
The thing that does that the most for me is touch. Touch forces me to be reminded I exist and I’m less likely to float away in my mind. It grounds and comforts. It is something I spent a long time not understanding why I didn’t care for it when I longed so much. These days I can be touched by kindness, even a smile and it gets me through.
And once I did figure that out nothing was going to prevent me from that joy. I was determined and racing through life because I wanted a story book story. The years together, the wedding where I am celebrated. I am never celebrated anywhere. It was the opposite. So when the attention is on me in that capacity I wriggle with discomfort, but also desperately want that, with the wanting of a child.
Whenever I started to get serious with someone and attempted to piece together some of my memories to explain to them my life it always felt unreal. Like a lie. I felt like I had made it up. I know I didn’t, but even the telling feels like that can’t be a thing. It must have made it up it must be me. I felt like snakes were crawling all over my body and I was going to vomit. And desperately I wondered if they were going to want to choose me once they knew. so I stopped trying. It’s too dark and I know instinctively people don’t want to believe things like that exist. Conceal don’t feel… don’t let it show. A child knows who the world (parent) needs them to be. We are much more attuned.
I never even got to know that because I moved things along so quickly out of panicky desperation every single time, all the while looking exactly the opposite on the outside so sure. Is it any wonder I can’t trust myself.
Part child, part adult…. My own personal science experiment. Let’s try this or that and see how it feels. But I don’t know how I feel. Let me look at how other people seem to feel is that how I find out?
Why am I so different from other people? I’d imagine the answering of this question will be a part of my work. I feel like my therapist would say Christina you know why, and I’d stare blankly that way I do when my brain runs out of knowledge and explanations and I long to just feel.
I very much veered off of the poetic musings about pain that my mind made me wake up for. That post would have been beautiful. It split immediately off into my thinking mind grappling to explain it make sense of it, and left the feeling.
I’ve lived my whole life trying to make the pain stop while also “being a good person”. Or feeling like I needed to feel like one. As it turns out I’m all too human to be a good person all the time. I’m a person who feels the feelings of others when I’m at a comfortable distance. As it turns out once I’m up close the stakes are too high on that and I can camp down immediately and be completely blank, and therefore banish myself from my own graces as a result, rather than trying to understand. U
nless of course I can be soothing to that person, then it’s the perfect drug for the both of us.
In my life time bridging the gaps of understanding for others split off from themselves or their loved ones…. It stops the pain. When someone outside of you sees you with the most generous perspective and truly understands, it lets the pain out. The pain of not being understood. I put the words together to help the person understand how their coping has been shaped and how their trauma changed their stars, and how to find meaning in that, that at bare minimum can lessen the pain.
The scarcity I’ve lived with is trying to get the pain to stop, and the irony is to become connected to myself so I can have a foundation I’ve been tasked with being directly in it until I become real.
Until I become visible to myself, and develop my own consistency outside of anyone else and my own self. Not develop that’s what I did before. Uncover what was already there. “It’s never too late to be who you should have been.”
Pain itself has changed and shaped me in so many ways, as well as the things I tried to do to get the pain to stop.
I have learned if you get or are in enough pain for too long you’ll do almost anything to make it stop. There’s no calm reasoning and then you lose faith in yourself to be consistent and dependable and it’s just a cycle of pure hell.
I’m in so much pain it’s like being burned alive, and you’d never even know if you looked at me, although I’m quite sure I look different now, that now it’s beginning to show in the lines of my face and in my weary bones.
It wakes me up and memories float in and out without my consent. I can only sift through the ashes, as the tears make them stick to my face. I toss and turn all night some nights and others I sleep soundly and it is the day that is the nightmare. A gauntlet full of memories that pull me back to a place that harms and I have to start all the way over.
One little fragment at a time I recover myself from all of this, all the while having no idea who I’ll be and rather than the idea of having a solid foundation being exciting, I just get to be viciously aware it should not be happening at this time in my life. That I’m all out of order, because I get to live seeing that confusion and loneliness on my children’s faces. They’ve had to fashion selves too, in the absence of me.
What’s normal and what isn’t during this time ? How do I relate? What’s safe and what isn’t? What’s right and what’s wrong? Chaos and anxiety.
These days my strategy is finding calm and soothing from inside myself. Finding the impossible.
All the intellectualizing falls away and only I emerge. A singular woman with simple details and a complex set of coping strategies.
Life is simple right now. I sit on my couch and marvel at how on fire my mind was and how on edge all of my senses were a mere year ago today.
Today I watched Bourne Identity, with my son, after clients. I ate comforting fall type food. I stayed comfortable, and I napped hard. Hard deep sleep. I browsed hotels for the girls and I since the air bnb cancelled, annoying, but not life altering. Something better must be out there.
I sift and waft through memories, but no longer do I feel the battles and emotions of life and death. What is this variety of living. This might be my heaven, even in the absence of all I thought I wanted.
Utter groundlessness. Only moments of impact. I am just calm. There is nothing else. When I’m not calm, I’m really not calm. I’m a triggered frantic wild primal animal. Thankfully I am rarely that anymore. Life doesn’t burn as bright either, however it’s settling into something real, something spherical, no jagged edges. Something wholesome and good.
An assassin of the senses who is finally allowed to retire. “It’s over”. What is it? Possibility? Is that dead? No! But all possibilities thats are not healthy and transparent and what you see is what you get. All of that is over.
I’m also reading, because of course I am, a book called Every day. And a part I just read inspired this post. “I have to decide the importance of each and every memory. I only remember a handful of people, and in order to do that, I have to hold tight, because the only repetition available- the only way I am going to see them again – is if I conjure them in my mind. “
“I choose what to remember, and I am choosing Rhiannon. Again and again, I am choosing her, I am conjuring her, because to let go for an instant will allow her to disappear. The same song that we heard in Justin’s car comes on – and if only I could, I’d make a deal with God….”
“I feel the universe is telling me something. And it doesn’t even matter if it’s true or not. What matters is that I feel it, and believe it. The enormity rises within me. The universe nods along to the songs.”
In some ways I feel like I’m office space that I have been hypnotized. I just walk around dazed wondering what to do next. Unable to get extremely stressed about details, and also unable to feel intensely good either.
I look out over the landscape of my life, At everything I’ve conquered, every possible ending beginning and everything in between.
I live in the present now, which means I live in moments rather than in stories. I look around most of the time and can’t even believe the possibilities or that this is my home and I have the means to make any decisions. I forget that when I become instinctively overwhelmed from old programming. When I forget that I have stability and options.
I’m working on refinancing this home: I can do that now. I’m looking at the possibilities more than the devastation and somehow that doesn’t feel real. I must be missing something. This is all mine. I created it and it’s stable. If I need a new refrigerator I can pay for it in full. I don’t need to take out a line of credit and wonder how I’ll pay the bill.
I must be missing something. I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it probably will, it just won’t be what I think. It won’t be what’s on the radar and that’s scary.
Deep breath, and one at a time.
What unforeseen thing will happen that is unimaginable. It isn’t possible that fairy tales exist, only moments, and I’ve already had so many. Could things actually get good beyond my wildest dreams, as I do.
If you had seen what I came from. I never imagined I’d have all these adult choices to make, or that I’d even live this long. Now my overwhelm is from abundance and not scarcity.
Now I can what if over all the choices and no one to bounce it off of. Why is it so impossible to believe I’ll do a great job, beyond great even.
I’m getting sleepy now. I didn’t expect that because I napped. I’m so tired lately. I do need to move my body and get some energy, that’s highly out of whack right now, but I will.
I have this beautiful home, these beautiful children, and this whole world, and life says that could change at any time. I can’t be too fragile for difficult circumstances, however I can also still believe in dreams.
I think of the things people regret, and I’m listening to that in the Midnight Library, and of course it’s having me take inventory. I realize in my life there’s very little to regret. I was so lost in all of that. I’ve made mistakes, I have issues yes, but nothing so much worse than anyone else.
In my 40 years I’ve become a mother, on that first day, those first days, and every day after. I didn’t wait for perfect conditions. And for better or for worse I’ve left a legacy. I’d like to think better. I’ve gone after a meaningful career and found my way to something I love doing, and it’s in no way over. I can still do so much with it. And love I’ve worked as hard as any human ever has to crack that code, with all my attachment wounds.
I’ve done therapy. I’ve lived in many different states. I’ve met people. I’ve taken risks. I’ve tried and failed at many things, and succeeded as well. If I were to get that phone call tomorrow, no portion of my live is unlived. Nothing has stopped me:
The rest of this is literally just getting to choose what I want and having that choice and being capable to make it for the right reasons and in the right ways.
Everyone is all strapped in tightly together and come what may….
Come what may.
There isn’t a single stone of my soul unturned. I am not afraid. I have comforts. I am not dying any longer burning alive in fear alone in this over sized bed. I can go to bed at night and be comfortable. Don’t get my wrong it’s not my preference, but I also don’t need to abandon any parts of my soul to go after what I want.
Empowering.
I went back and got all my childhood pieces and United them, and I don’t need anyone to understand this journey, because the right people already do.
Watch me live now…. My life is beautiful. I burn off insecurity by the second. There is nothing left to fear but fear itself, which sucks the joy out of life.
I had a post brewing earlier but now my brain is mush. I’m sitting under the horrific fluorescent lights, for the last time, waiting for movers. Seems silly at this point to even have them after the already trips but I digress. I was going to just sell the furniture but as I’m sitting in here and on it, I’m realizing the love I have for it. I love this couch and chair, they are very comfortable and it’s been with me a long time in many capacities. What memories exist in here, on here.
Anyway…. Today was exhausting. My fabulous Fridays off have not been such lately. They have been filled to the brim with admin and tasks. I filed some important paperwork today, there are some hiccups, but it will get ironed out.
Mostly I am just trying to rest in between triggers. That’s my life lately. I’m grateful I’m aware of them and learning me. It helps me stay humble and connected and both of those things are fine by me.
I’ll be taking the girls to look at a college in Rhode Island this weekend. We are staying at an air bnb and so that’s not something that happens often. I’m really excited to have this time with them. My therapist reminds me these are things I never did, and so I also get to have these experiences. It’s a good thing. Light hearted and having some fun.
Winter is approaching, we are taking the last of the window units out, that just gave me a flashback to a very cold closely proximal window unit with memories attached. I thought I’d die one way or another 😉 ha. It’s time to winterize. Each year I grow wiser about home things, this home. I have almost 1000 coming back to me from Hoffman energy, as they had my budget plan too high. So I’m going to see how far I can stretch that this year into cash oil deliveries strategically planned based on the market. I’m getting pretty good about learning money things and this home. That’s a good feeling.
It’s the simple things. Funny I listened to the piano version of Teddy Swims version this morning. So comforting. Right now everything is about comfort and calm and just being still. I feel bad most of the time in one way or another. Nausea, loneliness, sad….and a whole slew of other things. But there is a calm about all of it that’s simply irreplaceable. If the rest of my life was comfort, books, walks, nature, and enjoying my children, that would be a beautiful life.
I already have a beautiful life. I always did. I just didn’t know it. Makes me think of She’s Having a Baby. Emdr has been very intense lately, my therapist is pushing me. Themes of being enough and being misunderstood. Always working so frantically to be seen, wounds and all, and truly accepting those that don’t, and that sometimes I don’t see things as they are. It’s humbling.
These guys should be here any minute. More nausea. I’m listening to The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. It was tough capturing my attention in the beginning, but now it’s getting very interesting.
Other simple things that feel good lately, watching my girls play soccer and bonding w a set of kindred parents. Getting to know my neighbor and enjoying her puppy and story respectively. Walking and cuddling with Henri. Getting to know me. Love and support from friends. And the little gifts that keep arriving from a big fan. How I got one of those who knows. Little Etsy gifts that are tailored to me. Creature comforts, and very much something I’m not used to. I feel special and loved.
I think the movers are here. I can’t wait to be curled up in bed: in the absence of truly everything comfort is found in the simple things. I just for the first time in 8 or 9 years bought new LL bean slippers. I Got black ones, with credit card points from buying all of my kids a pair this past Christmas. My old red ones were so lived in nothing will replace them, but all the fluff and comfort were gone. So I’m very much looking forward to these…
And to the next time my hand is in someone’s who genuinely is loving towards me…. Things to look forward to someday. For now I’ll get really good at comforting myself and appreciating every moment I get 💜
I saw my energy healer Julie in her new home yesterday. The drive was nice other than the nausea that has been plaguing me. My crohns is not wonderful right now. In October we shall get an inside look on that. My favorite. Colonoscopy number six. Is that like mambo number five? Honestly I’m so much more surrendered to navigating this disease and able to honor my path with it.
I loved the old healing space so it was pleasant to not even notice, now that I’m thinking about it, the difference, because it truly is about the person and the work. I’m less about the space although it’s nice to make it homey. The work happens through the person.
I am reflecting on my first energy healing and how rabid and wild running my mind was. I could barely sit still and when my body was, my mind was racing. A mine field of disaster ridden and frantically paced thinking. Brain in overdrive. I am so very grateful to be healing and have it be so different now.
It’s nice to find myself ahead of my own game. I had shared with her some older wounds I had really already worked through, but I was afraid as always I hadn’t. It was so lovely for that to be reflected in the table work. Holy shit I can relax now and I can receive. I went to be loved and nurtured and I could not ask for more support. We find our tribe. Whether or not we start out with them, we can find them. It takes a courageous and pure heart though. At least in my experience.
The most important thing Julie said to me was that I am committed. How do I not see this about myself, just as my piano teacher said I was consistent (until I wasn’t). I haven’t been able to touch the piano, I was so lost in the darkness. But I’m ready soon to keep going with that.
I am thinking now of the past four years in the bath recovering my self from the depths. How that’s what it took to access me, that much quiet, warmth, security, etc. 4-5 years in the tub rebirthing myself. My baths are much less frequent because they are now a joy, then they were a necessity. Should I not be lost in the depths of my own suffering.
Over the past year my therapist reminds me that I’m all in…. Dedicated to my work and clients. When I’m afraid all the time I’m doing something wrong or I’ll do something bad. No, bad things happened to me repeatedly most of my life, and I’ve taken those and used them to become my most authentic self.
The tragedy truly was never seeing the reflection of what this life has created. Which is a loving human being who is always spreading knowledge and love. Generous with knowledge and love. I could never see myself at all really, let alone well, and in that dark and triggered space is where true hell exists.
It isn’t the battle of good and evil outside of us that needs contending with, it’s the inside one. What we will believe about our character and capabilities, the reason for things, and the security of our gifts within the world.
Heaven or hell truly is a state of mind, not a state of being. This however is no easy task to reconcile with. But how how the lost will ask. I am the lost too, so I know.
Heaven for me is a moment when I connect with my children, a moment when I see the beauty in these things and in myself. Heaven is the food that has been made with love, and or shared with loved ones.
Hell is being exiled from the beauty of oneself, by a shattered perception, a lost identity or sense of meaning. Hell is judgment, fear, misunderstanding, hate…. Hell is a separation from our divinity. Divine purpose.
I am the fallen and the risen. I am me and I am you. We are all one.
Heaven is a pot of warm soup, the house smelling nice. Making someone’s cold feel warm again. Heaven is being held by someone who loves you, and being held can be so many things. Being listened to, understood, shown up for, loved consistently with great care. And even to be fought with, if both parties are fighting to understand the other and fairly.
Heaven is watching my kids learn the world in a way that isn’t filled with terror. Belinda Carlisle has it right 😉 oooo heaven is a place on earth.
Heaven is the trees in my backyard in bloom, it is my cozy office where people show me the parts of them that are hurting, and also share their successes as well.
I have created heaven on earth in the form of my life. I’m fortunate enough to have crawled my way out of hell enough times to be able to appreciate it, and that makes all the difference.
I know I will not occupy this space for long. The wide open expanse of this peacefulness. Not because I can’t, but because my mission is learning. I enjoy it. Now don’t get me wrong suffering does not need to be inherent in that process, however realistic expectations are important. That natural ebb and flows of the tides of a life where the emotions are in tact and have not been abandoned.
I’m excited to see what work is able to open up in me as a result of my commitment. My studying and perseverance, and even more excited to tackle the rest of this living securely attached to my true self.
I am so far from the deep pathological loneliness that has plagued me most of my life. I desperately wanted to cling to my suffering story to validate my existence. What I learn from Julie is I don’t need to validate something in that way.
I am already divine.
I vow to commit to joy in my life rather than suffering and I understand the undertaking that this is.
Unhealthy love claims lives, healthy love saves them…..
I have always believed in the power of love, and this portion of my life has been learning the limits of it, and of my capacity for enduring what should never be endured.
This lesson has been one of the hardest and one of the greatest. Coming to terms with myself in a fair and balanced way while also understanding what happened to me in the past and in the present.
I am coming to believe our psyches literally prevent us from accepting the existence of certain things. Perhaps that is what mythology has derived from, the human yearning to make sense of an experience.
Knowledge is power. It eventually can put the pieces back together of something broken. If that broken thing is a story, then we can see either the devastation or the transformation of a human being.
So what makes the difference?! The intention behind it. The true intention not the stated one. Someone once told me we judge other people on their actions and ourselves on our intentions. The very definition of manipulation I suppose.
To simplify the complexity: does the person care about the well being of another, and to what extent and under what circumstances…. Wait see even I’m doing it. No Christina. Does the person care about the well being of another ?
We care as much as we are capable of based on what we have been taught, our values, and a complicated elixir of our innate temperament mixed in.
Where things can go really really poorly is when it’s obvious the impact you’re having is negative and not only do you keep doing, but you’re gaining supply from it all while continuing to shout poor you.
This is the lowest of the low. And when a person high in empathy consistently identifies emotionally with that persons wounded parts (because of their own), and forgets the ways they are different, the troubles arise.
One exploits with no genuine desire to follow through correcting their behavior so it no longer harms. The other painfully devoid of support and resources keeps trying to get out of the issue by using the same thinking that started it and failing.
The victor is the person who stays in the fire of their own mistakes long enough for it to change them.
My programming is immense. My coping mechanisms are survivalist in so many ways, however I can finally be able to see who I actually am, from seeing who I am not.
I’m thinking of Stephen King a lot lately and wondering what motivated him to attempt to capture the dark sides of humanity and also the hope, in his landscapes and characters. What happened to that man? Who was he really ? He sublimated and I’m attempting to do the same.
I tried to protect my kids from anything I could become from scarcity and survival instincts by keeping them with family systems that felt safe, however my self was not able to develop. It was frozen somewhere on ice. And now I’m so out of chronological order and so aware, that shame threatens my forever separation from others.
So hyper sensitive to threat and criticism and then feeling awkward and lonely, the perfect food for a predator. And who looks crazy?! The victim that’s who. Driven to the point of insanity purposely. The victim looks crazy.
I’ve never been able to accept what happened to me then or now, because it makes me feel like it’s me. That is what abuse does. People incapable of loving in a healthy manner perpetuate suffering that is almost incomprehensible to the human psyche.
We, including doctors, counselors, people in privilege and power, don’t want to believe it when it’s right in front of our face.
Abuse
So we tell stories. And we learn about character and behavior through story that we hope a man sets forward in motion those qualities in him that are protective and virtuous in nature.
If anything I’m so protective that sometimes ends up harmful because I’m easily triggered and who to protect in what way or moment can become very overwhelming for me, and as a result of that overwhelm I act out of character and then doubt myself.
This whole process is clearing. Along with it the digestive issues, headaches, tight muscles, nausea and nauseating levels of self doubt and low self worth.
The not enough of it all. That season in my life is over. There will always be scars, but never again will I abandon my own knowing to feel loved in a moment, while not even being known let alone loved.
I didn’t think it could happen to me again….. I didn’t think it actually did the first time, the abuse.
I sound crazy right ?!
I assure you that I am not and I am. A lifetime of neglect and poisonous manipulation will make anyone crazy.
Google the symptoms of complex ptsd for a very good description of what it feels like to be “crazy”.
Do you know what crazy actually is to me? Someone who doesn’t listen to someone they love when the person says “this is hurting me”.
I vow to always listen to myself. I wanted marriage vows to save me from myself and the life I had. That security of belonging. Instead I just keep becoming visible to myself in a realistic light. My light and my dark, and I assure you all of it is enough and that I’ve had enough abuse for a lifetime.
What heals is holding myself accountable to listening and being gentle with those I love and continuing to invest in healing and believing in myself.
Enough. I am enough and I’ve had enough ….. enough ..
I’ve been hiding and it’s time I come out. I’ve been hiding how pain I’ve been in and how hard my life has been for me from everyone, because I thought if I did that I’d have a better chance at being loved.
People don’t want someone who is set so far back with themselves, people want people who are strong and confident and ENOUGH, which was the theme of my EMDR this morning.
I’ve proved every thought or fear I’ve had wrong about myself over and over, and yet I never get to benefit from my own warmth and love. I’m kept out in the cold from me. Always pressing my nose on the glass peering in at the warm family events.
And ironically enough my devastation would begin at one such an event. The complicating elixir of feeling like I could belong and hold my head high without being numb or shaking with anxiety. Dear Evan Hansen. We will get to that later. I was excited to be out in the world belonging, but where and to whom did I belong and why?
This is the level of lost I’ve been at for going on three years now. And I committed to the unthinkable which has been staying with and in my pain to dig myself out. Even writing those words I begin to cry hard. A hard guttural wild animal cry with frantic panicky eyes.
The things Evan Hansen did to try to become visible. Does anybody see me or hear me? And the answer was no. I became so effective at being seen as I needed to be to obtain love and affection. And my God if I never shame myself again for how I’ve needed to save myself.
This is the commitment I need to become fierce about. To repairing this constant demon of not enough (or worse bad and toxic) that is so deeply entrenched in my programming it’s threatening to squeeze the life out of me. I’m stripped to the bare bones of just who I am to lean on, and not what I do. What I do to fix it, what I do to understand.
I’ll get a breath and then get dragged back down to the bottom of the ocean with an anvil on my foot and drowning over and over again. Sputtering fighting for oxygen, every day of my life unless I became part of someone else’s family which always temporarily numbed the pain and made me feel safe and loved. But that could never be sustained because I was empty of myself. There was no self left that I could see. There were too many words inside my head that conflicted and too many emotions flashbacks.
I can’t get any oxygen. Help me.
I’ve been saying help me so often now, and it brings up shame every single time and more waves of unworthiness. Will this battle ever come to an end, or will these memories, thoughts, and genuine body harm and tired take my life along with my soul.
I’ve been battling for my life and the worst part about that is I don’t look like someone who is battling for their life. There are no scars that can be seen, no marks. This is why we teach visibility by example and why we protect.
Dear Evan Hansen…. I am you. That scared lonely child, who still tried to fight to be seen and then felt bad about that too. For shouting or crying because I learned to gaslight myself out of my own reality to try and survive with my mental faculties.
I think of Viktor Frankl here and why I connected so much with that paper on his book in grad school, and why I have my tattoo and why it means so much to me. He kept his by having meaning, and that meaning was the love he derived from his partner, that’s what he held onto, it was love.
The only meaning I could get in my childhood was acts of service, doing. That’s the only way I got attention of any variety and usually that was to obtain more of what I had to offer. It was not to protect, invest, and be interested in me just for the sake of being so, for the joy.
The purgatory I’ve been has been wanting to be the parent I didn’t have and to be able to do that for my children and trying every way known to man to achieve that. I knew I felt the most alive in the things I’d been so deprived of. So I tried for love.
And then I felt selfish and was told as much and became my mother who also wanted love, but she didn’t give it either, and I do. I am not my mother.
I am not her.
Most days I don’t think I’ll come out of this alive, that is my truth right now. Most days it feels like too much work to breathe. This trauma work while having no love needs met or secure family system and feeling horrible I’m not only not offering that to my children, but I’m not able to access it in myself well going through this. I’m all locked down and sick.
This illness of being lost to oneself and not having much in the way of relief is deadly. It’s a deadly game. I can’t digest food and my head feels as if it will explode. For so long the things I did to comfort were also harmful and I’m aware. I’m viciously aware. I can’t get out I’m trapped in here help me.
The more I say help me and the more I allow myself to be loved only in the safe ways I need to be that the universe constantly puts in my path, healing tries to take hold. And my nasty worn out mind tries to swat it away, and I crumble.
I can only hope that this experience leaves me in such a heap that I never forget I don’t know what someone else is going through and I become kind by design even though life has not handled me gently. The warrior of the light.
All of the ways I was responsible and disciplined long before I ever should have been eroded the very thing I would need in adulthood to sustain the love I so badly desired and deserved.
And this latest period watching my children shout at me to figure it out mom, we need you, except they don’t say that as teens, they say I hate you and you’re going to end up cold and alone because you’re so difficult to deal with. What I’ve been dealing with has been unbearably difficult and I’ve been primarily alone in it. Too ashamed to get any help or even visibility because I chose this right ?
Every time its my fault. Wired for abuse return to abuse. Every time its my fault. And the tape begins you’re selfish, you’re your mother, you’re….. and it breaks my spirit, soul, and heart. Never mind that happening from the outside I’m adept at always doing it from the inside. I could really go for a good coma right now. Yes Moira.
And then when the person that you love tells you in so many ways this is your fault, that’s a rock bottom that knows no bounds. And when you identify with their wounds, but miss all the differences, and you are betrayed and betray yourself and internalize more shame, it’s easy to get a full understanding on how people get to the point where they take their lives.
That will never be my path because it just is not. Not because I’m better than anyone who has. I am not. No more or less just different. If I don’t continue to make meaning out of this suffering by learning my story and then sharing it so others can get the words to heal, that being the healing, it will have been for nothing.
It’s not in me to give up, and I hope I passed that along to my children. I just need to figure out right now how to keep myself full of love and safe, and stay away from anything that is not that.
For my beginning today I reached out to my energy healer and my first step is to go see her, and what I will say is I need your love and support. I have no thinking left. I’m not there to think w her or come up with solutions. The solution is love. And I’m going to be it, and ask for it, and work on recovering.
This is what it looks like to grieve a childhood you never had, and both parents, and a broken and confused reality and scattered mind you have to live with. To grieve all the potential of who you could or would have been with the right ingredients.
This is messy, grimy, slippery, dirty, painful grief. I am going through these things, but I am not these things.
