I am listening to Ruelle radio. I heard a song by her I loved in a movie last night. Wildflower I think the movie was called.
My chest has been heavy lately. Only partially the bad cold I just had. I’ve had anxiety. Which is interesting because in the zoom out, big picture of it all things are going really well. Me doing the work is going really well.
I’m being and becoming more consistent and grounded. I’m in my body more than I’m not. It’s a disconcerting sensation attaching inside a body after years of compensating in a variety of ways and adapting to disconnection.
I am nothing if not adaptable. It’ll be on my headstone. She adapted. It’s not the strongest of the species, but those that can adapt that survive. What was necessary became a lifestyle. What is no longer necessary leaves room for what is essential.
Insert a quote about a prince and his lesson….
Belmont street beckons always. Woodmont is busy today. Normally that would bother me but I’m making time and space for myself anywhere these days.
Today I recognized I’d been too long without the oxygen that being alone provides. Despite all the events being good ones including Elizabeth Gilbert and Rob Bell, it’s a major non negotiable of mine to be alone often and for spans of time. I crave it.
As today I was craving my smoothie water drive and park and meander, through the world and my mind equally.
One day I will look up and…. I lost my train of thought. It went off the tracks. Just like that.
One day maybe I’ll have one of these houses that faces here, because this space is sacred to me. There’s not an explanation. I’m just called to it always and feel at home here.
Hearts are like that too. Inexplicable. Finicky. Unpredictable. I’ve learned a lot about that during my life.
I miss writing here. There’s always so much to say I don’t get to, it pains me.
Life around me is moving fast, and inside me it’s much more still. Thank god.
My nest is nearly empty and yet absolutely full.
My triggers subsiding. Fingers gliding across your surface.
My poet and my scribe and my novelist are all scrambling for front and center lol, no surprise there.
Found twin B her first car. Milestone moment. Able to help and have her do some in her own, the epitome of success as a parent, in my opinion anyway.
I appreciate it all now. Every moment I can get. Yes, even when it’s difficult. Even with a thousand triggers. I’ll take a thousand and one deep breaths. I don’t wanna miss a thing.
She’s leaving for her first year in college. Florida. Bless her. I hate Florida. Hate the humidity and one or two other things. But I’ll love to visit her and hear about what that’s like for her.
The Little Prince has his first apartment with roommates and it’s very close to the house. He’s taking care of himself and learning life.
Twin A is going to finish her second year of college and then head off to UCONN.
In one years time ish unless one comes home I’ll have none of my children living under my roof.
I’m just sitting here facing my beloved water and thinking about this. My life is vast, and full. I’ve lived every inch of it, every corner. And yet there are lifetimes more. How exciting.
My chronic pain is profound. It is not trivial. But I learn to cope a little better every day and it no longer makes me anxious the way it used to. I just learn what I need and how to love and talk to me better. How to listen better.
Heart opening, softening, thawing. Mercy, Grace.
My goal is relaxation and creation. No more hustle and grind. An early retirement of sorts, a peace treaty of the mind.
Man or a monster Sam Tinnesz et Al.
I am proud. That’s what I am. I show up. I stay. I’m steadfast and strong and loving and everything I never came from. And I am finally, finally, not kept out of my own warmth. No more gaslighting. No more making myself small. No accepting less …..
I can’t believe how much cold, hard, estrangement and desolation I lived with inside of me. That breaks my heart.
Monsters by Ruelle. Some kind of theme here :p. I feel endless possibilities at this juncture.
I’m Christina Jenkins now. I’ve never had a last name that felt like home. Now I do. It’s extra ironic and pleasant that was my notebook name of practicing when I dreamt of marrying my first love. And guess what I still love him. A wholesome heartfelt relationship that has lasted our whole lives with a family who loves me as a bonus.
I love my name. Who knew getting married wasn’t the only way to have a name you love or a family for that matter. Now I have many.
An abundance of belonging. And an abundance of tender affections for me.
All my love,
C
Ps it’s a beautiful Saturday. I’m not working. I just saw a Frenchie. I am loved. My needs are met and I now allow my whole story and every inch of my memories and emotions regarding that to exist.
“You can do something now to live the life you want to live.”
Grrr this was written the other day. And now I’m on a different one but just noticed this didn’t post.
Running book title: Understanding me.
If I wrote a book now that might be what it would be entitled right now. That’s what I’m working at each day.
Now that I’m not desperately trying to understand the actions of someone else (most of the time ;)), I am figuring out what I want, need, etc. Go figure. And also for me, easier said than done.
So today I find myself in the Storrs Library just over the CT state line. I’m here for my insert number here energy healing. I wonder how many that’s a good question.
I went to look it up on Venmo because I’m me, and the internet here inside the library has not lived up to my patience threshold. I crack myself up. So maybe something to get a statistic on later, if I remember. Slim chance.
So I’m sitting in the library with Things That Matter by Joshua Becker on my lap. Knew nothing about this book before I opened it. So far it begs you to ask the question of what you would regret about not finishing in your life. It speaks of a person’s work with the dung and their shared regrets and those commonalities.
It’s talking about how to live focusing (my fear kicks in with self knowledge here, my arch nemesis), on how to achieve the focus necessary to live according to your priorities.
Living in a way that makes a difference and not “wasting” that.
If you were to die today, what one thing (or few things) would you be most disappointed that you weren’t capable to complete.
Let’s see if I can work through mine here. There is the obvious sharing of my story and writing a book, the two may not be mutually exclusive. I’m still figuring out that.
I would regret not having fully apologized to those I’ve loved, where appropriate, based on the understanding I now have of myself.
Perhaps I would regret not giving enough attention to develop a counseling theory or movement based on the knowledge I have.
And not having a healthier relationship with myself, how I treat myself etc.
So I suppose reading this it’s pretty clear I’m on the path. That’s comforting. Seriously.
I just read make it a point to read books from different centuries because it will come from a different perspective and will challenge your thinking in new ways! That’s why East of Eden! Woooo! I’m ahead of the game.
So these are the five regrets people cited…
💜
And our time together today in this blog is almost at a close. I certainly do not regret making this post.
What I learned today is how close I am to living my life in a way that leaves few regrets and I could have lost all of that by obsessing over some of my mistakes and getting lost in them.
Stop it! I say to myself… stop it and carry on.
Onward! (Thanks Liz) and now I can truly embody and feel that message and how you got to it.
All my love, all of it!
C
Ps lately my thoughts are highly influenced by Soul Friends and exploring the connection that have most deeply impacted me, trauma work, understanding what triggers my symptoms and how that affects my life. Also the reading of Come as You Are, as well as Letting Go. Energy healings, movement, nature, self discovery, reflections, and the places that shows or songs or moving or reading take me.
It’s a gorgeous Sunday. I feel beautiful. Clear and peaceful and calm. Whole. Myself.
I no longer feel I’m outside of my body watching my life, or that I don’t deserve things coming my way today, or any other. Now I say this, but there are moments. The pain is not gone, my trauma is not gone.
I’ve just found a lot more peace in living, created a lot more.
I do however want to write more. I went to Kripalu and that was such an experience and I want to capture it. I made new and dear writer friends. I read bravely, shaking and crying even, but without hesitation and without shame.
I showed up!
I wrote pieces I didn’t know I had in me, many fragments of my life.
Sea glass.
I found myself in others there and vice versa.
I found out I’m a poet, a lyricist, that there’s a rhythm to my writing, and that I’m all in. I knew that. But I don’t mind finding out over and over.
I’m all in. With my whole heart.
This day feels beautiful. It doesn’t just look it. I’m no longer invisible or trying to make myself that way. So much unworthiness is being shedded.
I feel loved. I feel seen.
And I feel felt.
My home is full of loving people and music and food and joy. When I observe from the outside this is what I see and hear. People feel welcome and loved here.
I have new piano lessons that are so much better than the other. And I was able to realize that I didn’t lose any of what I learned (we never do). Once it’s in there it’s in there.
I got paperwork Friday to move forward with changing my name. Yes, I am being adopted at 42 years old, and no I don’t mind the administrative nightmare that ensues. I had been avoiding because of that.
I had a hospital trip last week, and a nurse said my last name and it felt weird. I don’t think I’ve ever felt I belonged to a last name. Sadly even those I share with my children, and is also the name of my business. It would be so easy to go back to that one. And also has the bonus of sharing it with my kids.
I need to belong to myself, and I also want to belong to a family that has known young me, that has shaped me, and that showed up.
I’ve spent long and hard thinking about this and even though I had acceptance and love from a family I kept it at arm’s length because of fear. They will write that on my grave perhaps. I was too afraid to lose it and that they were just being nice and every other fear you can imagine. Judging myself left and right. Analytical to a fault.
I’m done with that. It is with an open heart only, and still some better senses about me, that I choose to embark on the rest of my life.
How did you do it?! Not lose your heart….. it wasn’t easy.
So I am going to be Christina Nicole Jenkins soon.
When I think of love and being loved it’s them that I think of when it comes to family. Them that have known and loved me all the years of my life unconditionally and without expectation or becoming upset with me for the choices I’ve made.
When I think of how I love. How I include my daughter’s boyfriend as he’s one of the family, and holidays, it is them I have modeled the most after. How I have loved friends as my own, my desire to make anyone in my area feel like family. That’s me. That’s my own. It always was.
My first love Michael Jenkins and I… we are still in love. Not the romantic be together kind, but the kind who experienced first love together. I always did wish to marry him, so the last name will do. 😉 I feel warm and safe and seen and felt all these years later with him, and the family who loved me naturally. With him or not. They love me for me.
They just lost a daughter recently. My heart hurts for them. I’m sorry.
So I’m just realizing more recently a lot more about love. What it is. Who I am in its arms. How it’s shaped my life. Whether it was the having of it or the lacking of it. Whether it was lightning bolt love that jolts you awake to so many things, slow love that is learned, love of a friend, love of self, passion, vocation, nature.
What is love is my writing prompt from Melissa. And even if I do know a lot more about what it’s not, I am an eager student.
I used to just go blank when Melissa would ask me anything about me.
So on this Mother’s Day I have a mother and I am a mother, and there’s no internal conflict or pit of pain and despair to be found.
My life is “good enough”, not longing for anything else. Always that burning longing…. a purgatory my childhood years left me to resolve and I’ve turned pain into art.
The art of life itself.
And I love living.
So I’m sitting here pondering the consistent stable things I’ve created this past two years.
I am consistent and committed to my healing. Which includes routines I crave and love. They include exercise, nature, connection, writing, touch, learning, reading, and play. In no particular order because writing would be first, though play in last does track.
And little by little the hyper vigilant guard let’s down my walls and I swim in a sea of love without drowning or jumping out. I’m finding ways to navigate the waters. Ways into and out of myself that are constructive rather than destructive.
It’s not perfect. I’m still doing a lot of grieving. My heart is still heavy in ways that are felt in daily life, especially on holidays, and milestones. There are aches of what was, and what never was. Phantom limbs that tingle. Vivid moments.
I still do grief rituals. Deep moments of allowing. No blocking.
Those are part of life now, and I don’t worry that they will bitter the sweet. They are the product of a life well lived of pursuing that which sets my heart on fire and there’s no shame in that.
I have nothing to be ashamed of or regret, only to peacefully sort my way through gently, ever so gentle with my heart.
Tread softly on me. I have a lot of scars.
I deal with a lot of pain physically and emotionally daily. That’s normal for me. My normal. When I get too down about it life gets harder. When I have some story like I’m meant to be this suffering thing. That’s ridiculous.
I just take things one day at a time and get better at coping with those difficulties and at being at home inside my body and with my wide open heart.
This is where I am 💜
It’s the first Mother’s Day I’ve truly let go and forgiven myself for not being able to stay where I was being harmed. Not wondering if I would attend a funeral for someone who died for me a long time ago. For someone who didn’t consider my well being.
How can a mother ever be that way with a child. I’m not perfect, not near to it, but I’d never give up becoming a mother.
I never give up, and I am loyal when safely connected and seen and felt.
I would have stayed loving her if it wasn’t burning me alive.
She never became a mother.
And thankfully I did and am.
It’s hard to not regret how long it’s taken me to get here. To give without resentment and that edge I always had. It creeps up like bile crawling up my throat. I now know where to put it, and life is much easier.
I want to give now. I’m not as exhausted all the time now.
I want to be a mother and someday a grandmother who my loved ones feel felt by. That I am able to pay attention to them without getting overstimulated, freezing, isolating, fawning, covered in panic.
Separated off in my mind in some terrible intrusion.
So I do the work, walk the line, show up.
I’m emotional often now. Like a raw exposed nerve. Like a burn victim. No longer reacting at every touch. I can lean in to connection and learn.
It’s humbling and rewarding and I am present and accountable.
All my love…
Mom
Ps: oh and the entire reason I began writing was to write about my schedule adjustment, and how that feels, but this feels complete. So next post…. My writing has a mind of it’s own and takes me on the ride.
Because to take away a man’s freedom of choice, even his freedom to make the wrong choice, is to manipulate him as though he were a puppet and not a person. Madeline L’Engle
It’s so interesting I’m reading East of Eden right now. Nothing is an accident ever.
Years of generational trauma are coming to a head in my little family. We are all facing our stuff.
I had a dream ……
I think of the beginning of Mama Mia, how many times I watched that movie thinking I just liked Abba. Ha. It took years to click that a movie about a girl who has three father’s that show up all wanting her, was obviously going to tickle my fantasy.
I remember my own father (during a short reconnecting I initiated, it was not a warm reception) mocked me for liking such a corny production. Oh the irony there. He was a smart man from the little I knew him, but severely lacking in emotional intelligence and empathy. Or maybe that’s just because he never continued his connection with me. I most likely will never know. It matters less in this present time. Not as much of a gaping wound.
Mama Mia is an intelligent play with a brilliant cast. You’ll never make me think differently.
I also dreamed of being a good mother, a dream that often felt out of reach. People would try to encourage me, and I would make sure they knew they just didn’t know what lurked inside of me well enough.
But as it turns out if you’re courageous and you don’t give up, you can absolutely attain what you desire.
As a generational curse breaker it was never going to be easy. I couldn’t have imagined it would be this hard, or this worth it.
I stand with the misunderstood and the misunderstanding in their pain, and now I also stand with myself.
My children are strong and beautiful and all heart, at times to their detriment, but that’s normal.
They are kind to others.
My children are kind to others, not perfect. They are kind.
They too are learning to turn their pain into power.
We have been in family therapy for going on three years now. We have all wanted to give up I’d imagine. We have been through therapist’s, and harmed by them at times. Others have helped.
We show up.
It’s often a slow hard slog through painful sludge. At times it’s excruciatingly like being burned alive.
Most of the time I’ve doubted it’s the right thing, as it’s not the popular way. Just let them be kids leave them alone, and do it in a more acceptable way. Make things look better don’t introspect it’s dangerous. I feel the opposite, it’s dangerous to people when you don’t/can’t/ won’t.
Most of my life I’ve doubted the good in me. I’ve spent it separated from myself. That is excruciating. It is torture.
Then I became tortured.
I didn’t want to breathe anymore I was so lost. All of the truths I thought I knew shattered and an even worse view of myself to climb out of.
I stayed the course.
I still have plenty of healing to do. We still have plenty of healing to do. But the heaviness is lifting, and in this new freedom we all attempt to connect naturally as best we can, with no force involved.
No having to constantly control my own emotions or attempting to control anyone else’s so I can have an illusion of safety.
Just a free fall into the clouds. This blissful peace that warms my sore bones.
I feel at times like I’ve been hypnotized or am in an alternate universe. That’s how far away good has felt for me. If something is good it feels like it’s in a dream, foggy ethereal, surreal.
And certainly not mine…..
I remember driving to my office in Fairfield and just asking over and over if this was really my life. I actually was aware how dissociative I was, but I stayed right near me until it was safe enough to embody my body.
As it turns out that can be the most painful “surgery” you may ever endure. Once inside you feel everything via the body.
“And now that you don’t have to be perfect you can be good.” Steinbeck
I’m listening to a Codependent Mind, Brian and Stephanie talking about trauma and shame from a unique perspective.
I’m reading East of Eden. Sometimes novels are a lifetime of therapy all in one story depending on what you bring to it.
I’m working a Course in Miracle’s, albeit very small bites at a time and lots of reflection. See my tendency to explain my ability to produce. Would ya look at that 😉
Atonement. Atunenent. To self and other.
Slowing. Staying with me.
“Am I practicing what I preach” is my usual alignment question. Or preaching more than I practice. Preaching is easier, less vulnerable. Vulnerable is the heart opener: it must be exercised over and over.
A typical refrain lately is “it’s a practice not a perfect.” Annoying counselor isms for 500 please Alex.
Double or nothing.
I have returned from the shore. Restful bliss. How did I go so many years without? That is the question of the hour, the day, the week, the year, and my life in so many ways.
Along with how did I learn how to cope, and how has that impacted the trajectory of my fate.
Amor Fati
I’m on episode 7 of the first season of the co dependent mind and they are talking about how emotions become cut off and compartmentalization. Yep I’m in the right place.
I love the rainy ness of the day. I never understand why people don’t like the rain. I love how it feels on my skin just as much as the sun. Both are necessary.
The green is here and so also is the sounds of lawnmowers and gardeners alike. My hair is doing that wavy thing it does with moisture.
Plumbing work on the house. The deck is in finishing stages (finally, I hope). The pool will be opened soon.
A house continues to become a home: as does my heart. Parallel lines in my universe.
I’m here just swimming daily inside the depths of myself, and coming up more often for air than I have in the past.
I love that for me.
Long time coming.
If I’m a poet I’m a poet.
If I’m a song I’m a song .
Less obsessive thoughts about what’s right or wrong.
Where did that come from anyway….
You know
A story for another day.
For now all I have to do is walk.
I was finally ready, and chose a new piano teacher. The scar is more brown than pink now. So despite the argument of my nervous system best to get back on the horse and all of that.
Tally Ho !
I’m making some schedule changes I’m anxious and excited about. I’ll have significant more time for myself, and my god does that challenge all the programming cable car pathways.
I commandeer my own vehicle these days. Any mistakes are mine, and all victories large and small as well.
I’m no longer agonizing in so many of the ways I was, as if every step could be a land mine.
What life is this I often say.
Heaven really is a place on earth and make me a believer baby.
I am
It’s evening Christina. After six clients Christina. Walking again. Taking in the spring sights and smells. As the day winds down.
I just used foresight of regret as a motivation for change with a client and it’s giving me pause to contemplate my own. Because of course it is.
The trees are aglow. The clouds highlighted in the same.
I don’t have what I thought I did in the tank for writing. Only being for me this evening.
Good thing I got a little down during less wiped out Christina time.
I plan on writing here more. My follow through and consistency has improved in so many other areas, it’s time for it to be so in my relationship with me.
Oh but before I go a random but probably not thread. My piano teacher is the mother of the boyfriend of a favorite bartender at the place formerly known as Crave. She introduced me to East of Eden. She (my new teacher) just finished it.
I remember the day I sat at the bar with my books and drink exactly. She has quotes from the book tattooed and I was excited even to be in the presence of another lover of the written word and thought whatever makes a person feel so passionate to preserve this art on their body…. I want to read that.
And several years later here I am, with her boyfriend’s mother as my piano teacher.
I’m grieving my impulsivity, which I previously regarded as all things passion and therefore true.
Quick connections, assumptions….. firing squad quick. Life or death. Ride or die. I wasn’t wrong many times, but it wasn’t right for me either. It was always the one in my story. I was always so sure so fast. What I didn’t bargain on was how this was wired into me, and how little control I really had over it.
I have since learned to practice action over feeling. Actions tell the reality of any situations. And one foot in front of the other you can lay down stability and security with only your own, no need to scream about mistreatment, to panic, to drop to your knees.
Though when you do need to please allow yourself. There is beauty in the breakdown.
I’d need to know me to figure that out, not just how to present a presentable human to the outside world.
Shortcuts do not make for a whole person or experience.
All in Christina, one day at a time, crystal clear boundaries, let them figure it out.
Let go
You never had control anyway, all you ever had was anxiety.
My impulsivity has led me into more lies, more unsafe situations, and on and on, than are imaginable.
Let’s better understand what my history means my impulsivity truly is. Constant and desperately seeking feeling loveable, wanted, loved, desired, and as if I had the capacity to provide those things.
As if….
And to be able to feel it before I better understood my trauma it often, if not always needed to be intense.
To confuse feeling intensely wanted with being loved can lead to the stuff of nightmares I can tell you that.
Often in recovery people struggle with boredom and destructive thought patterns. I find it helpful to walk and to read and to keep things as simple as possible.
Total and utter presence with only the tasks at hand.
I now know you don’t have to respond to every battle you’re invited to, and I preached it long before I was able to practice it.
For me it helps to learn to divide my focus between the many important pillars of my life. Rather than getting caught in story traps, and painful regrettable all or nothing states.
I’m halfway through my second mile, it’s beginning to rain. I’ve been listening to Matthew Perry’s memoir, which my thoughts often trail to how I’d write my own.
A plan like many before them has taken shape as a way to organize. List every single influential character in my story and write as many sentences describing those experiences as comes naturally to me. No more or no less and see what weaves together just from that.
Lost in the rush but I pray you don’t hurt too much …..
How many years was I going to spend in an irritable disconnected state even after I’d done so much work to choose differently. Stuck in that state. It’s like the new software never uploaded, and I was the last to know.
I needed a reflection that wasn’t distorted, to be able to understand my true self differently.
I’m always trapped inside my fucking head on and on and on….
Last night I had to tell the Little Prince he needs to find his own place by 30 days time. Excruciating. Everyone says it’s the right thing. My heart says of course it’s not.
No man left behind. And I never have, not really. I can see now that if I was met even halfway with effort it would have gotten figured out. I’ve only ever left people who weren’t able to show up for themselves, and I never stopped loving them.
One of the most egregious of my self misunderstandings. That I wasn’t loving or lovable.
Devastating. It has harmed so many years of my life.
Saving myself was never anything to do with love.
We all need our stories until we are ready to confront them.
As in many dysfunctional family systems no man is left behind. Blood is thicker than water. I have to separate this from the cord cutting I’ve done with toxic situations and place it in the healthy boundaries category. That’s not easy.
What’s the difference anyway? There is one, and I can almost feel it now. Can you feel it?!
I’m listening to Lewis Capaldi today, he was a frequent during one of the darkest times of my life. His voice goes straight to my bones, like Pink, lady Gaga, Adele, and so many others. Straight to my core. Comfort.
Emotional identification and then manipulation of self and other ensues. You must be able to separate and look at things objectively too. A step outside, some rationality included. Who knew? No one taught me that.
So I learned to teach myself. No victim stories, only tales of survival becoming thriving.
A vibrant life!
I can step back now and the obfuscation dwindles. What a difference. You wouldn’t even recognize it. You couldn’t unless you’ve learned it. Less splitting, integration. Integrity.
Even the dust of emotional manipulation, the residue makes me ill on contact. It’s a way of life untangling my own. That’s what I was trying to do.
I thought that’s what you wanted too.
I was wrong.
I’ve been wrong so many times, but I no longer sweat that the same.
Mistakes are the portals to discovery.
I’m finally taking all the scraps and quilting. Threads to the tapestry.
At least I had the courage to make them, or the naïve dissociation, I guess probably both.
So before you go…. Was there something…..it kills me how your mind can make you feel so worthless. I was the storm to weather.
It has subsided to pure presence. So many less triggers. I can breathe now. It’s a different life again, and there’s no fault in it.
This morning I had an intrusive thought. We got these crazy sharp and expensive cutco knives from a friend of the girls selling them. It’s a cute and funny memory. But one slip of one of those suckers and like butter your finger will be gone.
My kids like me, can be ultra sensitive about things. It’s a product of trauma and also innate. A double whammy if you will. Anyhow she understood me as laughing at her for the way she was cutting an apple and got angry, just a little compared to before family therapy. I knew if I said anything about how to cut differently I’d be met with an anger that shrivels my soul immediately and makes me want to run for cover.
The only threat present here is misunderstanding, and being misunderstood. It’s the biggest threat present in our family. And finally with a healthier clinician than in the past, the tangles are becoming a little bit undone.
I’ve been hungry to write, but also overwhelmed about gathering and organizing my thoughts. The story of my life. It will be on my headstone. Many years later of course which I now might actually be able to believe. Instead of the story about the shooting star lifespan, bright and gone as quickly as it came.
We all are most likely shooting stars in the scheme of things.
I’ve been having clarity and connection and moments which are all part of a natural ebb and a flow I never thought I’d have a part in. My triggers and coping mechanisms felt as if they swept me up and gave me little choice in the matter.
I know better now.
How to find the delicious sweet spot of acknowledgment of symptoms and experiences and also the compelling why driven reasons to keep moving forward.
You, my loved ones, will always be my why.
I am emotional and open and atoning.
“Everyone is the narcissist but you Christina” plays and re-plays, until I shake it clear of my head and remember the hurt that propels such statements and how deeply misunderstanding I was of myself, which invited energies that would misunderstand me.
I am too aware and too motivated for change to consistently employ such a defense mechanism. Do I have layers of protection that can emit projection and all the other beautiful aspects of control and hiding that that involves.? Absolutely I do.
I am committed to breaking generational curses. Yours, mine, and ours. It is my steadfast promise. I become steady, courageous, accepting, gentle, open, and loving.
It is possible.
I am de programming myself. Shaking off all of the abuse replaying, mine, as well as my transgressions. Enough internal secure ground laid to face the heat of the truth.
The truth has legs. All the things she said playing in my head. All the things I said and did. How outlandish and ridiculous I sounded when I was a walking, talking, coping mechanism. How sad the pain that can be inflicted.
And it’s not over unless life is. I will still make mistakes, and have misunderstandings. But I am here and I show up and I am sturdy and proud of the life I have lived, and the one I’m creating now.
I watched the Glass Castle the other night. Wow. Poignant. Devastating. Relevant. Just incredible.
I watched it through a lens of seeing my transgressions. The worst is the freeze. It’s worse than screwing up. Because I couldn’t be loving either. I admire the fucked up families that stay I always have. Would the children have been better off or not?!
I held back so much, held myself so carefully so I couldn’t be damaging from my damage until I better learned, that for a time I barely existed at all. I couldn’t be fun or playful and I now think rather than only how hard for them, how hard also that was for me. I couldn’t express. No wonder writing felt so important. I had to find some way.
Now I get the privilege of becoming who I’ve always been, and being able to feel it and be connected to it. I am awestruck at this possibility and genuinely compassionate as the suffering involved from my almost entire separation from myself and purely external functionality for enough years I could have become a pillar of stone.
Now I try not to look back lest I become a pillar of salt.
I want to enjoy being a pillar of stability and wisdom and love for my loved ones. It is my daily prayer and mission no longer impossible.
I can say unequivocally that my departure from my own was necessary. I’ve since stopped watching others grief process and wronging myself.
It’s been so exhausting weighing every movement I make, and anyone near me, for good or bad, right or wrong, safe or unsafe. It has been one of my greatest burdens and taken up so much space. But it has also made a conscientious and grateful human being who appreciates even a crumb.
I no longer desperately subsist on scrambling for them, but a little glimmer never hurt anyone. The words often rise. All that glitters is not gold. That memory is sharp, pungent. Control. It worked.
Life is a treasure. It no longer matters.
I was so tired of being misunderstood even before that began. All I needed was to be understanding of myself. I am that now. Soft when I can be, as often as I can be because that’s my preference.
I love Sundays. I love walks. I love reading. I love writing. I love learning. I love connecting. I love warm hearted open people, the ones who mean well and do things ultimately for the right reasons to the best of their ability, according to their awareness at the time.
I believe whole heartedly in no man left behind and I never have, they live on in my mind.
Love is not an emotion, it doesn’t behave as emotions do, it is steadfast promise. Karen McLaren. The language of emotions. It exists whether it is present and practiced or not. In memories, in moments. In the wonderful Brutiful trap that is the mind. The door is open you may come and go as you please.
I am at peace.
Oh and also I’ll be attending a getaway at Omega again finally. Haven’t been since 2015. Elizabeth Gilbert and Rob Bell. Be still my heart. Their article why do we Thank our heroes was printed and given to as many clients as possible around that same time. The first time I saw Liz in person. Those are such intimate memories.
I have more I want to write but for now I broke the silent spell and that is enough for the moment.
There is something so movie about sitting at a coffee shop and writing. I don’t know what I ever did before noise cancelling head phones. For if it were not for them I wouldn’t be accomplishing a thing right now. I’m sitting at the Barnes and Nobles in Milford on my second me date this weekend, as recommended by Melissa (my therapist). The first one was at Cafe Atlantique. I must admit it was a bit cozier, but by the time I got around to me today, it was closed.
Being a Barista and working in a book store are two jobs I would have loved and never got around to, though I had many others.
I spent family time today. Did some documentation. Walked two miles. Wow I guess it’s been not only a productive Sunday, but an enjoyable one. There is a tiny group of people here, and one of the girls has a chihuahua (I never know how to spell that word, it’s one of those words for me) in a little coat vest thing nonetheless. Stooooop it! I can’t with the cute. I didn’t realize before today how many people bring their various pets into this store.
I am calm and centered. Which can sometimes be mistaken for restless. Sometimes I am restless, just not now.
I am loving reading Demon Copperhead.
I’m trying to find my voice, amongst all of the ones that I have been before, as well as in the midst of all of the ones I appreciate. It is no easy task. I feel so many people cheering me on. I can just feel them. As if the entire universe is conspiring to help me accomplish this task. The critic is nearly banished. Can that even be real? Is anything real?
This little blinking cursor beckoning me to continue, forward, and ever more forward. That’s real.
Take a Picture by Filter is on. This awesome rock music from my younger days is for sure real.
The life where I have a house that feels like a home and is filled with people in it who love one another and are really amazing humans to live with. That’s real! We are getting a hot tub tomorrow. That’s exciting, and also real. I hope it helps the aching joints and muscles.
Which reminds me part of why I got on here in the first place was to update my document with my to do list for tomorrow and emailing my GI doctor is on it. I was recently put on a higher dose of my medication due to it not quite hitting the mark. But to that I say good day and no way. I felt like shit. So basically it’s every two weeks, or we are gonna have to try something else. Nope.
What I really want is to not be on this medication. Which is why I am meeting with a nutritionist this week to get things in a direction of being able to do this at least as much naturally as I can. I’m tired of being on this stuff. I am ready to eat better and live better and invest in myself in ways I have not had the peace or finances in my life to do before. Oh Is This Love by Whitesnake is on, be still my heart. I literally love this station.
Being myself. It’s time. Finding my unique voice out of the sea of others. I have everything I need to do so at this point.
I was reading Jay Shetty this morning and his Eight Rules of Love. I really like it so far and he was talking about the difference between alone and solitude. The latter being something you find joy in because it helps you connect with yourself essentially. That has been my mission for the better part of eight years now. A little hard to do with my life, family life.
So a lot of what I’m doing lately is working at finding that balance. Trial and error and usually more error than trial 😉
Anyway my bladder only has enough time left for me to pack up and get home and then I’ll see about posting this. It’s the first post I’ve written from this laptop. I could get used to this. Now I just need to see if I can add my photos, tags, and things the way I usually do it. I normally use my phone to write. Somehow it’s just less pressure or something, and I know how to use my app.
I would describe me right now full and blank. I just keep drawing blanks, especially when I try to access my feelings. I am present and with them, but putting them down, sometimes that feels like too much work? vulnerable? too much what?
I was never going to be able to write unless I got safe.
Felt safe
I was never safe with you and you made that about me not staying, when the truth is I had stayed past any logical point that any human would endure.
Any human that wasn’t wired with love being harmful, inconsistent and dangerous.
My ideas of love and my wiring are all crossed. I’m so angry about this. This is so painful.
They probably look like cords behind an entertainment stand, or underneath a computer desk did in the 80’s. Or still do for me because I tend to be old fashioned about things.
With my mom I was always responsible for her pain and not abandoning her. But the relationship was a one way street. Love was expected from me. Unconditional affection, acceptance, supply. But I was given nothing of the sort in return.
(To this day she pops up curious about my life, and ashamed because of how other people see her not having a relationship with her daughter. She and her boyfriend try and find pictures to print and display, from the internet. I do my best to shield all of us from that. To live far enough away.)
I was given terror.
Then when normal things would happen. Teenage moods being unpredictable I reacted like a feral animal, and not the steadfast parent I wanted to see myself as. Another life sentence inside my head of shame. I crawl out a little at a time now.
I am programmed for pain, when it comes to love. So now when I am loved it feels odd, suffocating sometimes, scary. I feel responsible to return it right away and scattered about how I should do that. What’s the formula.
I was rendered only able to think, never safe to feel.
So when I do feel now in real time, the moments become sealed forever to be replayed for survival. A reel of pictures in my own mind to survive off of when inevitably the same exile over and over will occur.
It’s hard to say these things, because if you say something it’s more true right?! Maybe if you just don’t acknowledge it, it will go away. Freeze and hide.
Once you say how you feel it could be a life sentence. Someone could take it out of context and once again misunderstand you so egregiously. I’ve served several of these after a desperate bought of honesty begging to be loved. And I never thought it could happen later in life after I’d worked so hard.
What I mean about a life sentence is having been so alone when it comes to relationship, you develop only an inner dialogue about what you’re doing right or wrong, and usually it’s wrong and why. And that’s your primary companion.
This companion serves the purpose of trying to make sure if you have even a shot at love, that you aren’t abandoned. So it critiques and controls your every move via your thoughts.
I was alone with all the things she said, running through my head, she was me. I was alone with how bad I was because I was the one who exploded right. The other is calm cool and collected. Yes Taylor, the problem was me.
I often pair love and food together. If I have felt love when I have eaten a meal, I have a photographic memory of that time. Every single detail and the taste I can recall. I crave that food. I try and recreate it, but it’s never the same.
I can only imagine this as a product of the scarcity of both I once had in my life.
I can finally speak about it without my inner roommate telling me I’m whiny, going to be judged, being a victim, manipulating, it wasn’t that bad Christina. You’re so dramatic. And the like…..
When I talk about my past my breath quickens to short gasps, my chest tightens, it feels like I’m choking. The fear is as if snakes were crawling all over my body. My ears get red and hot and I feel like I’m burning alive. Sometimes just for fun, this happens unprovoked when I’m just trying to live my life.
I felt this way the last time my mother touched me, which ironically was over my grandfather’s deathbed. Talk about confusing.
The words released were always an act of treason, my truth always caused me trouble. No where to turn but inward.
Like my love with my grandfather wasn’t complicated already. A harsh authoritarian constantly telling me I’d be a slut like my mother if I preferred the company of boys, at the ripe age somewhere between 10 and 12. Constantly commenting on my body, those long legs Chris you have to fill them up. Always comments on my body.
I was a Tom boy. I preferred the company of boys and their clothes and that was wrong and bad for so many reasons in that household. So was talking too much, and being enthusiastic, and taking up too much space.
I wore strange clothing because grandmother always tried to find things on sale. One year my wardrobe consisted of those Mc hammer workout pants popular with muscly work out men in California. They were cheap so I got every pair of a different design. Neon black and yellow lightning patterns, t shirts with kittens on them and Fanny packs.
I never stood a chance.
I was a walking target of weird. Including the bargain haircuts my aunt gave me while she was in beauty school. Nails were her gift. Not hair. My haircuts looked like a Lego man hair cap.
I’m terribly lucky I got braces. One of the only things that turned around how I felt about myself later was having nice teeth.
And paying for things for my moms bastard child came under hot scrutiny and loud verbal opinions by my aunt, and others. The welfare bitches welp is taking my inheritance again.
Every time I got a gift or something uniquely for me, it caused a terrible fight between my mom and my aunt. Every time I received I was punished. See anything familiar here.
Not a thought about how the child felt in the scenario. I heard all of it.
I tried again and again to shrink to fit, but my humanity ending up bursting forth in the form of behavioral outbursts and undesirable traits at school. Begging to be loved and seen as something good or at all, at all the inappropriate times.
My desk was always next to the teacher. I picked physical fights with boys. I was always rescuing the hurt and drawn to staying so close to them. I’ll never leave you. I know it’s unsafe at home. For me too it is, but yours is probably worse and definitely more legitimate.
You have a family. One of those unicorn things.
So anytime I was welcomed into a family circle, inside, the experience is always powerfully compelling and at the same time repelling. Terror and confusion, mixed with beginning to feel loved and seen.
Spoiler alert: it’s only a matter of time until you see how bad I am. This will always be in there, the pain of it, even if the cognition can be expelled via emdr.
Dance with the humans you belong. In childhood dancing was a sign of sexual wrongdoing. You did not do it it was dirty in every sense of the word.
Which makes sense the strong attachment I felt to my childhood best friend whose family while also Seventh Day Adventist, was a “little more progressive” and I learned so many things I loved.
She had older brothers with cool cars, and bad habits and it was so exciting, like being at the zoo seeing how other families functioned. Those real ones with moms and dads and siblings where things were not so incredibly fucked up (but still were).
I borrowed dirty dancing and faked sick from school the next day. I paused all the sexy parts and felt dirty and shameful and alive. To this day I could probably quote the whole movie by heart, and also never need to watch it again because I see it in my mind.
You could have thought it would be Footloose, but no it was dirty dancing. I probably related a lot more to Jennifer gray, her mousiness and child like demeanor, good girl persona.
Good bad good bad. Pick a side like the movies and it will play out like a movie. There is no real life. Only the one in my head.
I wanted to be good and do good, but I also craved to be cool so I would be…. You guessed it loveable.
So I could be loved.
Who knew that later in life the pairing of the offering of a family that wasn’t real, or theirs to offer, and …. I lost my thought. So painful when this happens, this is what happens when you write in communal space, and have teens lol, sigh.
I only ever could dance with alcohol and the sting of the comments by people when I looked awkward doing it, nearly too much to bear.
So that day when I danced sober with a family and a young child I loved, was magical for me.
I was only there because of something else that felt magical for me.
When something feels magical and then turns to immense suffering because I couldn’t even trust my own mind….
Not being able to trust your own mind is a special kind of hell.
My own mind is so often all there was. I was so alone with my own mind sometimes I thought I would never emerge a person.
It was the beginning of the end.
A soul death.
I am here in recovery trying to balance closing up the wounds and moving forward with my life in a way that for the first time can feel whole.
It is a gargantuan undertaking.
Recovery can be brutal and is also beautiful. Brutiful Glennon would call it. Make no mistake it’s a full time job and anyone who has to spend most of their life recovering from their childhood should be compensated appropriately so they can live out the rest of their days in peace.
If ever I am in a position to do so I would use funds to make this a thing.
I thank God, the windows, and the walls for the enthusiasm I was blessed with, that has me never giving up. Because it has hurt enough to make anyone want to.
I have more peace than enthusiasm these days and sometimes that is painful, it’s temping to feel less alive in it.
One should not have to come to great harm to feel alive or to feel love.
💜
I’ve outdone myself this Sunday. It ripped wide open. Just the beginning….
There are whole schools of thought around whether this type of introspection is helpful or not. Let alone sharing it. Allowing myself permission to exist as I am with all my parts and all my thoughts is cathartic. This is my vehicle.
