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Misunderstandings: “Just Like Me”

I started out this morning wanting to talk about my little girl. Not either of my daughter’s but my own little girl inside of me, the one I have carefully preserved, and along with her all of the gifts that are meant to reach the world. In many ways she is just waking up now.

However for now I am sidetracked by an important conversation I had this evening. So the theme of this post is misunderstandings.

If you follow my blog you may recall an old post entitled “The angry ex club”. I have spent most of my life feeling judged by and tremendously guilty towards my ex husband, whom I left on account of being not only young and stupid, but also gay. Neither of those things would have led to a life of nuptial bliss with him.

These feelings caused me to project all sorts of unsavory things onto him. In seeking his acceptance I was completely disagreeable, unable to ever hear his valid opinion on things, and a whole variety of things. We lashed out on one another over the years each in our own ways.

So much to my surprise after an almost two hour conversation this evening would you believe once things are laid on the table and revealed, the things in our soft under bellies, we are more alike than we are different.

Spoiler alert. We are all more alike than we are different. 

He is hard on himself too. He wants to belong and be accepted too. He just wants to be a good parent, and is afraid at times he isn’t, just like me. We were both just trying to get through this world as best we could and for so many years we made the other an adversary, when that was never necessary.

Truly you must walk a mile in someone’s shoes before holding them in contempt and having rage inside towards them. What a mind bleep when you realize you never even had to use all that energy all that time like that. I could have been doing so many productive things, if I just knew what I know now. But at least I get to know it now. So many people go their whole lives without this.

I am encouraged that we will attend things for our children the rest of our lives and be able to give one another a real genuine hug, and not an awkward strained thing masking our distaste. That will we now be able to show up for one another. I was able to tell him how much I appreciated him always showing up financially for our children. Rather than criticizing him from my own guilt of why he stayed in a career he is unhappy with (this felt like my fault). He stayed because he believed the benefits and health insurance was the best thing. And truly I have the career and the life I am able to have because he made that commitment. Who’s to say what is right or wrong here, but I am sure him being able to hear how grateful I am for where I’m at in my life, and that is largely due to his support of the kids over the years. I never had room to say those things to him before. I never had the sight.

The truth is it’s incredibly difficult when you “fail” at a relationship, particularly a marriage. There is so much pain involved, it spreads like shrapnel throughout. Failure was not an option. You have failed your children, each other, yourselves, the world at large. Just another statistic. It’s brutal.

You can come out on the other side with more reasons, like any human needs more, to feel unworthy and not love yourself. I am finding we all feel insanely unworthy and wonder why we are not chosen for this or for that. In love, for the position, for so many things. When really as I see it I think life (destiny if you will) has plans for us, and there is divine intervention all along the way. But we are so cynical. The world/society has done a number on our souls. The living breathing spirit inside of us that has enthusiasm about things. And then those of us that are lucky enough to find ours just go around touting it so the rest of the world can feel like they are missing something.

To be able to help someone find theirs. Now that is a life worth living. I hope to always be that for others and to remember how and when to give to myself. I am working on that now.

Which speaking of that leads me to my next point which either will unfold in here (trauma brain) or in an entire other post. It deserves its own post, but it’s the other main thing on my mind today.

How often I become that little girl who is just wanting to be acknowledged. When I love I sit and wait. It reminds me of Secret Life of Pets actually. Max waiting for Katie. In love I am like that. Lately I am re-writing the script and rather than looking at the door all day long loyally (while not a bad concept), I am not waiting. I am enjoying my own light and love and slowly figuring out what that looks like.

So last night was mostly sleepless, my life is going through lots of changes right now. I had so many epiphanies and I can’t imagine that I did not energetically invite the interaction with my children’s father and myself, by doing my work. I did not expect this, it wasn’t the thing I was looking for, but I was able to pay attention to its significance and to sit in the feeling of it all.

So often lately I am able to sit with and actually feel things. Most of my life has been in survival mode, something I am only able to truly acknowledge now, and to fully grasp what impact it has had. I am beginning to not feel like my body is crawling in snakes about it though. This has been replaced with a slow spreading smile across my face when I remember that imaginative little girl and all her dreams, and the fact she never gives up on them, no matter how tough it gets. I am developing an appreciation and a respect for myself, which are great foundations for love.

There are foundations being demolished and foundations being built, the most important one I continue to come back to is the one I always have the power to change at anytime, and my one true constant, my own.

The little girl and I are becoming acquainted. The memories of her are not just huddled in a stairwell seeing things she should not see and hearing things she should not hear. I am remembering the other parts of her as well. Rainbow Brite boots and catching butterflies, journals and note pads, and countless trips to the library with grandma. Who would record herself with a small old fashioned tape recorder. The original audiobook. I remember those stories and stacks of library books, it was one of my safest and my fond childhood memories. It created a love for language and reading that have become a cornerstone of who I am.

The light shines out of the darkness. We are resilient creatures capable of still becoming all we were meant to be, no matter what our circumstances. During this time of immense uncertainty it is very cathartic for me to keep this in mind.

I just did five years worth of therapy in a day, haha. It’s time to plan a vacation soon. It’s time to play.

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Lost Back in 2016

Is there anything better really than clean sheets and a freshly made bed?

I’m still sleeping on an eighth of it, but nothing lasts forever.

I watched Stuck in Love with the girls tonight. It’s a very full circle kind of thing. Very! I was watching this movie on repeat spring into fall of 2016. When I was taking my next steps into finding my writer self. Rescuing her out of the rubble. That was a year of discovery for sure. And of Jeeps and french bulldogs, oh my.

We even had a Stuck in Love themed Thanksgiving. That was actually really fun.

That was the year I got my first office that was all my own. The year I got Sigmund Freud, the fantastic Frenchie. The year I began morning pages. It was my four year pages anniversary this April. The first time I ever dated dated. Oh the perils of that, lol. I have some crazy stories. The first time I took three solo getaways by myself. The year I learned one could romance themselves, and that I didn’t need to be with someone to justify a nice restaurant or lavish evening.

The year I got my Et Lux Entenebris Lucet (the light shines out of the darkness) tattoo. My first real adult job that I ended up hating. This helped me learn to trust myself, being able to walk away, and hang my own shingle.

I was so much more naive and innocent then. I’ve grown backwards in so many ways.

I can’t even remember that girl.

I asked my therapist tonight how come some people seem to have it so much easier. Being wanted, chosen, things coming more easily to them. While others no matter how hard they work or try, things seem not to work out for.

There isn’t an exact answer I can share, other than dynamics and human behavior. I personally think it’s a privilege to be calm and grounded. One not afforded by everyone. You have to have had a certain kind of life, things you could depend on consistently for that wiring. I envy those people. Not enough to not be grateful for my exact path, but I do.

Lily Collins is absolutely gorgeous. Gahhh

Rian has my hands. My daughter has my hands. Right down to the lines on the inside of our palms. I don’t think I’ve ever stood still long enough to notice.

Have I really been running my whole life?

What does slowing down look like ? I don’t know but I liked my moments with her this evening. And teaching the girls how to drive and getting ice cream at the Sundae House.

I felt them. These things.

It’s staggering sometimes to realize how much of my own life I’ve been a guest star in. Never fully Inhabiting my body. My own ghost, and haunting.

I can get everyone to love me, but me.

What a cruel trick.

I’ll find myself between my own pages in my own story.

Or maybe in Tuscany or anywhere else.

I am going to busy myself planning a vacation soon. The idea of being all on my own with nothing to do or be responsible for is entirely appealing. Just quiet and calm.

My eyes are getting heavy….. it’s time to rest.

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Where is Virgil When you Need Him…

I can say with great confidence that becoming a mother has been my greatest privilege…..

“I make no apologies for how I try to fix what you broke” – with regard to my path all these years with love.

I barely stood a chance with this hand and I have played the hell out of it. Hurt people do hurt people and I am no exception.

Holidays are tough for me. No secret there. Those closest to me know my battle intimately and I’m so grateful for the ones who do. I’m invited and wrapped warmly in a variety of ways with other family’s and have had the privilege to know and learn so much from so many.

This Mother’s Day is particularly difficult for me. I have a broken heart and as a result of being consumed am being hard on myself on who I’ve been lately as a Mom. Guilt about disappointing them again.

Feeling lost does not really go very well with owning the place you deserve in the world. I know there is a discrepancy here, but right now I don’t have the energy to sort it.

This morning I have waded through the options on what to write about. As thoughts of my own experience with a mother bring a fresh bout of tears I think of writing that, perhaps it will come later.

My beautiful friend is visiting. She’s sharing some of her wounds with me. It eases my own. Her particular survival has involved her accepting love way less than worthy of her efforts, her self and needs not even in the equation, as she shares with me about how she hasn’t been held in twelve years, and that she needs that.

Twelve years. My God twelve days is excruciating for me. I know how healing the power of touch and connection can be, and how devastating as well.

People who do the best they can are a thing of beauty. Be careful with people you never know when someone is doing the best they can. That often looks like things that could easily be judged. When wounds are invisible healing is so much more challenging. When there is no story for what’s happening that makes sense.

People need their story to make sense and to be tailored and fair to the wounds they carry. Unfortunately that’s uncommon. It’s one of the things I have the privilege to do for others, and am finding I need to include myself. It’s no longer enough to heal others, I need to feel worthy of healing too.

My mind goes to not having anyone to help the kids do something special for me for Mother’s Day, and I get sad before I think about people I know whose Mothers still demand unreasonable things of them or punish them for their own wounds. I am grateful I’ve healed enough to not do that.

Those feelings pass and I return to gratitude hanging onto all the nice things people do for me, or even a text of those I’ve helped on their journey through life. Appreciation for me, and I warm back up. It’s not really grand gestures on a single day that makes the difference it’s the showing up. And this past few weeks so many people have shown up for me, random flowers, help with my lawn, texts, encouraging that I am seen. And that always has to be bigger than the pain and loss. But since love is very different for me this isn’t always the case.

Lately I haven’t shown up very well for my kids, and I’ll be careful to be kind to myself about this. I’ve had a lot of loss recently, and so have they. I have an idea of the mother I want to be, but lately I feel as if all the air has been taken right out of me. And it’s all I can take it to get out of bed.

My priories are all out of whack and originally that was in the name of love, but now as I watch everyone else make sure their priorities are in tact, I simply will learn from them. I need to do that too. And I’m all my kids have their everything. And this my own doing. It’s unfortunate all too often I feel too guilty and unworthy of that space so I stay isolated. I want closeness with them but I don’t know how with that other safe adult buffer to make sure nothing happens.

In my life something bad could happen at any moment. And another safe adult around makes that feeling less. It’s just always been my truth. I wish I could be one of those moms that isn’t like that. It’s how I learned to survive, finding a space that felt safe, which was never inside of me, because outside of me was never safe. My whole childhood.

Not only was it physically dangerous but it was a mental game of manipulation and terror.

Like I’ll hurt or damage them somehow just by breathing. If you knew what it had been like with my mother, if you knew is all I can say here.

But excuses are unacceptable when it comes to finding the worthiness to accept their love enough to show up near them. It is non-negotiable.

I have always kept another adult present as much as possible just in case I somehow morphed into my mother, in case too many bad things still lingered on me. To breathe enough life back into me by holding me at night, so I could face the next day. And this last time I chose one of the best humans I’ve ever met.

And then my own emptiness inside led me to destroy that. Trying to fill empty holes when there is no end to the holes, so nothing can collect. Nuclear sized craters all around. I am amidst the sheer devastation of myself and I don’t want them down with me.

So I hide at the bottom of the hole curled up hoping for some light. And then I dig and I build and a rush for relief and it’s momentary, never stable. Leave the healthy people alone my dark thoughts scathe. Leave well enough alone.

Momentary fixes to long standing issues only create craters. This post apocalyptic hell is inside and all around me right now.

When you’re in survival mode you don’t see anything clearly until later. I’m permanently wired in survival mode, doing the best I can. That will always be the truth of the matter.

I’m an adult in survival mode that can be so incredibly healing to others, but for herself, she is lost.

I am lost, and I need to find myself….

I don’t need to be seen or found or loved anymore. I’ve been loved well and I rush right around life looking for a chaos that feels like home. If I wanted to be loved well I would have stayed right where I was.

I’ve had plenty of brave batters step up to that plate. I’ve never felt worthy enough to be still enough to see what happens outside of the scary, or boring period that inevitably comes. I bail one way or another before I can lose anything. You can’t lose anything you never let sink in.

I need to be able to see the person in the mirror that other people see. My long standing people who stay in my life, seek my wisdom, provide warmth and love…. they see me. So I am not unseen.

Most of my life I spend afraid everything I love will be taken, or worse damaged by me….. and then I create exactly that.

So when you’ve found yourself in a self fulfilling prophecy that’s come full circle, and you’re all alone with yourself, the only thing to do is slowly form a relationship with her. And hope that you’ve traveled far enough that this time it’s a healthy one.

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The Arena

So lately I’m sitting in my stuff. It’s been a long time since I’ve been intimate on here because of shame. Isn’t that always why we withdraw?

I have been battling shame. A lifetime of it. For how I’ve needed to live to survive. I’ll shame myself. Because how I’ve lived to survive has impacted others along the way, in sometimes very painful ways.

I am trying to tow the line of taking accountability for that and also realizing that we don’t grow and change without pain, and have that be a universal truth and not a justification.

I will say in my battle of shame that I have never in my life purposely misled anyone. I have primarily not even known myself, and I look like someone who knows a lot. Sound like someone who knows a lot. I have a lot of information.

However having integrated that information into creating a whole person. I’m not even close. I’m as scattered as my adhd and c-ptsd ridden mind. That is true.

It is deeply painful for me. That is also true. And becoming involved with me on an idea of who I am without knowing the depths of what is in here can be very painful for others. And for me!

Only took me until (almost) 40 years old

To figure that out.

But what each person does with their pain is their own responsibility.

My pain is no one else’s responsibility as it’s filled with my interpretation of the world and what is just and what isn’t. I’m the only one who can save me.

So many Bruce Almighty moments. “Smite me mighty smiter.”

I’m the girl who tried to figure out human connection from 80’s movies. That’s probably why I’m so good at cheesy romance 😉 and then like the ending of a 90 minute movie there’s another broken heart.

But my heart breaks too. I experience another loss I never wanted too. And when I lose someone I lose everything. My family. My identity. My safety. My pain reliever. My grounding force. Because that’s what another human being always had to be: everything.

That’s what happens when you begin with nothing. Forced co-dependence. You never stood a chance against it, without an entire RE-wiring.

An idea of who I am as a human being. Trying on lives trying to find something that fits. It’s the most exhausting clothing room try on. The lights are fluorescent and they burn.

They burn.

So I am going to burn for awhile into ashes. I think rising as a Phoenix at this point is a tall aspiration. I think I need to stay ashes for a bit.

Like an addict recovering I think I’ll try to keep a house plant alive for awhile. You have to walk before you can run. I flew before I could breathe. I was an adult before I was a child.

I’m all out of order.

The chronology of me is a painful thing.

It’s created one hell of a ride.

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Courage Under Fire

Every person in a relationship experiences a different version of the person they are with. Two people together are an alchemy.

They create an energy.

I remember being around twenty four years old, in a house provided by the military, in Connecticut. I had three young children and a husband. I remember feeling very dissatisfied with my life and I couldn’t figure out why.

Later I would find there were so many facets to this untangling it is unimaginable. I am still doing that work to this day.

The first facet was being gay, and having not even realized it or having any indication and then finding myself with a husband and three young children. I did that to survive. Created that family to have one. Having no idea how to be a mother or a wife. Just that I needed a family.

I needed a family. Expansion: I needed a safe family.

As I well know now this is not why you create a family. I wouldn’t have known any better then, and I’m aware that many people begin in this way. And that who they become from the experience is the most important part.

I remember looking for my answers on the Internet. It ran much slower back then. Not quite the days of dial-up and you’ve got mail, but not very far out of that time either.

My seeking made me feel selfish at the time. I was supposed to be a mom and a wife forsaking all others. But I wasn’t even anyone to myself yet. I was an outer design with a burning inner emptiness and suffering.

I was absorbed inside myself. While I watched my husband play with our young children with complete envy. I envied the children for being played with. And I envied the husband for being able and knowing how to play.

I envied anyone who looked like they knew how to live, I merely knew how to survive. But I didn’t know that then.

I sat there lost inside myself having no idea what was wrong with me, because that was always the question of the first… Well actually it’s still the question, only with a little bit further along on the self-love journey.

So I focused more on my selfishness that I could notice, then the things that had happened to me to make me so lost. So I ordered about seven different books on narcissism. I became a narcissist scholar if you will. Malignant Self Love. The Narcissistic Family…. and so on…

Here’s the rub. I had to become so self-focused to figure out how to even be, that it was a self fulfilling prophecy. And I’m startled to find myself back at square one with myself again in this place. That is the most humbling recognition I could ever have.

I thought it was just figuring out my sexuality, the reality is this pattern would continue over and over until my untended self and my created self could reunite.

I’m about to be forty years old folks. A well respected clinician, a like-able gal, a mostly good mom most of the time. And my wounds, they still haunt me. And they still effect anyone who dares love me.

Back to my story.

Narcissism (24 years old)

The first recognition of this tumbled me into complete and utter acceptance of my fatal diagnosis. I was a monster. There was no hope for me.

And I became very depressed.

This depression led me into the office of my very first therapist. Who said a few words to me that have changed my life forever. He was the first person to ever recognize or say something to me like “I’m surprised that you’re alive.” I looked around for who he might be talking to, because it couldn’t possibly be me. I was fine just look at me. Strong friendly outgoing energetic attractive.

Sidenote; this therapist having only seen me about one year in total, upon me calling him and telling him I was graduating with my masters degree, attended my graduation ceremony. He was the only parent type figure that was there. My therapist. He had asked me at one point during a session what I thought I might like to do for a career. At this time I hadn’t finished through the 10th grade of high school and I had my GED. I had looked right at him and said I think I’d like to do what you do. And here I am.

So now I know where to begin my memoir and what I am going to write about. I will continue to figure out how to keep my thinking not frenzied and chaotic, and how to stay grounded within myself.

What I will say for now is that even with all of that work studying and knowing these dynamics, when you are wired with intense terror Over a significant period of your life and abuse and manipulation, your life will look entirely different in One way or another because of it.

People deal with this in a variety of ways. Each of their ways is never a thing that should be judged. For nobody, not even them sometimes, is able to see or realize what they had to do to survive emotionally.

Where do the emotions go when they are unwelcome by our safest sources?

They become internalized in one way or the other. Either a frighteningly low self-esteem, being incredibly hard on oneself, A variety of addictions, assorted masks, I could go on for a very long time.

The person is left to deal with their emotions by themselves, and when we are little we have absolutely no idea how to do that. So we develop coping mechanisms subconsciously that will play out our entire lives. In who we are attracted to, how we handle that. Our ability to delay gratification for being responsible. Etc.

Is it any wonder that these survivors on top of already living through hell in their childhood, end up having very short fuses, lots of irritability, a sense of dissatisfaction that can’t even put their finger on, and they need to go in wild cycles of hating themselves, and then doing impulsive things just to try to make themselves feel better in an immediate moment.

This is the land I live in. No matter how far I’ve traveled it takes constant awareness and effort just to exist in the world in a loving way.

Being able to connect to someone else’s emotions and to be kind to them, and to listen, and to take accountability for my actions. Instead of being so fragile that I become an entirely different person. One who doesn’t fight fair. Unrecognizable to myself and no one that I would want to be around.

I read this vampire series by Linda Leal Miller when I was a tween, in the final of the series the vampire and a human who had fell in love make a baby. I wonder if twilight stole from this. Haha

She’s a half breed. And so am I.. ….half narcissist by absorption, half empath by effort. Finding knowledge and cultivating awareness to sew up my wounds so I don’t cut others with my sharp tongue, with every ounce of pain I’ve been carrying.

A brilliant tortured sad lonely beautiful mind.

Capable of warm connection when all the right conditions are present, and also capable of cutting off from emotion like a switch. And then terribly aware of what that feels like for the other person and the damage that has been caused, but unable to correct it until later.

Frozen. Seemingly unfeeling, but very much the opposite.

The child the adult the child the adult the child the adult. Is it any wonder how confusing it all is?

Until she can connect to herself with the written word. A survival tactic. At least this one is a favorable one to balance out the others.

Until she can fully reconnect with herself ….

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Trauma and my Heroes

What no one tells you is that trauma is a lifelong sentence, you didn’t commit the crime for. An invisible dark passenger that makes living and loving an entirely different thing. No matter how hard you try love will never feel like it does for those wired with it.

They just seem to be able to manage better. They don’t need to live going over and over every detail of something looking for threat for a crumb of safety. To add insult to injury the sufferer worries they are crazy, less than, and can be hijacked at any time.

And with trauma comes the many addictions and vulnerabilities the person will blame themselves for: unhealthy love, food, sex, substance, work, busy, isolation, television, scrolling, and on and on.

More evidence to prove their fatal flaw.

Jail is peaceful compared to the bars and cell of your own mind. Your own worst enemy is your constant companion. And everyone expects that you’re a free man.

To all my survivors right now during the Covoid-19 Pandemic. We will be ok. You are not alone. I am right here with you. Never has there been a more triggered time for us my loves. In the words of Glennon Doyle, “We can do hard things”, and we don’t have to do them alone.

So in this 39th year of my life I’ve found myself with something in common with my heroes. The survivors. I’ve found myself at rock bottom. They tell me this is what happens before the ascent. If I could feel anything right now I might believe that. I can’t even feel the water on my skin.

I’m on the bathroom floor with Liz (praying….. like to God), on the Trail with Cheryl, Expecting Adam with Martha, in the Arena with Brené, underneath with Glennon, lost with Abby, and in my late father’s house lonely and facing myself each day.

Last March I attended the International Women’s Summit, a life changing experience. Elizabeth Gilbert spoke, and sometimes I wonder if our exchange, the hug she gave me, changed the talk she gave that night. If my bravery and tears inspired her. She had made a comment she decided to talk about something else.

She told the story of her late love Rayya. One of the themes of the conference was Mercy. And she described Rayya, since she had been an addict, as having mercy, but also radical boundaries.

Liz spoke of how during her cancer she vowed to take the best care of her, and then how when her stomach lining ripped and she was given pain patches that Liz was putting them on her and she wasn’t getting any relief. She sat and watched her love writhing for several days not understanding and aching herself. She was failing caring for her.

Then she realized days later she hadn’t taken off the thin film of the pain patch to adhere it. So her love had suffered because her own incompetence after vowing to do the best by her. When they realized what had happened Rayya looked at her like she wanted to rescue Liz from her own self hatred that she had done that. She gave her compassion even in all her suffering. The way she describes the look in Rayya’s eyes…. there wasn’t a dry eye in the venue. You could hear a pin drop. Everyone’s breath and their tears.

She was trying to protect Liz from her own pain and herself. Mercy. This is how Liz describes her love with Rayya.

She said she went into the bathroom and got on the floor and she cried like a baby, wracked with sobs. Then she said she thought of her friend who had not been attentive to her toddler and the child ended up injuring themselves and dying. And she thought if her friend could live through that she could forgive herself.

So she said, “I kissed my tiny hand and forgave myself.”

Mercy

She then described the rest of Rayya’s journey which included relapse after all that time clean and how Liz tried to give her what she needed and the money spent, and the drug dealers and how her beloved became lost to her to addiction again in those final days.

And how could she set boundaries, how could she abandon the monster she had created, but her life was a dumpster fire.

So she had to ask for help from Rayya’s drug dealer ex. She had to concede she couldn’t be her angel and hero. So she turned the stash and the monster over to people who had loved her previously.

Left with a crater in her home and her life. She had to move and she was decimated.

Rayya got clean again. One last time. During pancreatic cancer.

She returned to Liz and she said, love if we had time I know this would take years to heal, the pain I’ve caused you. I know who I am as an addict. I will listen to every hurt I’ve caused you. But then could you forgive me?

And they returned to love for her final days…..

And Liz had another bathroom floor moment in her life after Eat Pray Love.

She said that Rayya’s return to and from drugs again during their time together and the pain patch and lessons in mercy was how she downloaded Rayya into her forever.

This is how we keep people, by the most valuable lessons they teach us.

So Mercy on Me right now…..

I am on the bathroom floor and I need to kiss my tiny hand.

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Love In the Time of Corona

Did the love become the virus, or was the virus a manifestation of the love? Can anything truly be that powerful?

Is love helped or hindered by extreme passion?

One of the first loves I ever left was because I watched the movie Serendipity, and I realized then and there I didn’t feel like that and I wanted to. This book was a feature part of that movie. So I downloaded it on audiobook and listened while stocking produce on the shelves at Trader Joe’s all those years ago.

And here I am taking a deeper look at the meaning of this book. Everything truly does come full circle.

I’ve been thinking a lot about adapting lately. Historically when we think of this I would say we also think of evolution. They can go hand in hand. However, adapting can actually go in either direction.

You can adapt to things you would never want to.

I am adaptable nearly to the point of shape shifting. This is a sharp realization as of late. Something I used to be praised for, something I’m being praised for now. It’s labeled patience. But the changes that are happening to me. I’m not so sure.

As always some are good, and some are not so good.

The people of the world are so incredibly anxious right now. We are in the middle of being history. Not making it, but being it. Forced to adapt in ways we never asked for, and feeling rather helpless and scared.

The changes in my life that preceded this I thought I chose. Do we choose our destiny without even realizing it? Or is there truly certain components that go beyond logic and awareness?

I’m reading Untamed by Glennon Doyle Wambach. She says, “What I thought would kill me didn’t. Every time I said to myself I can’t take this anymore- I was wrong.” That she can use pain to become. “I am here to keep becoming truer, more beautiful versions of myself again and again forever. To be alive is to be in a perpetual state of revolution. And pain is the fuel of revolution.”

“Everything I need to become the woman I’m meant to be next is inside my feelings of now. Life is alchemy (uncanny given the entire premise of this blog), and emotions are the fire that turns me to gold. I will continue to become only if I resist extinguishing myself a million times a day. If I can sit in the fire of my own feelings, I will keep becoming.”

Glennon’s words, her warm and funny videos, her audiobook and the paperback, are a life raft for me right now. I found her because my spirit animal Elizabeth Gilbert shouted the praises of Love Warrior. I pre-ordered it purely on recommendation and I was not disappointed.

Some day I hope to join the ranks of these women. Actually I’m already in their ranks, my words just haven’t hit the shelves yet. Thus far mine have the most impact in 1-1 connection. I never met a dream I didn’t tackle. I can know it’s in process/progress now because I wake up with words swimming and begging. They beckon me from my slumber and demand of me.

As you can see my ability to try and intellectualize my feelings rather than boldly state them in the first person, is Olympic in its quality.

My entire life has been lived adapting. Surviving. I thought my word was survivor but truly it’s adapter. Because what I used to survive was to get the hell away from what was happening at home and try and find what felt/ looked healthier than what was happening. I did this by being like-able.

Even more importantly I did this by being useful. I received love in childhood only when I could be useful, never for free. No one ever just delighted in me because I was born. In fact my being born was a sin done by a sinner, and something even my grandparents couldn’t face.

I’m not sure where they went “wrong” or if that can even be put on them. That an older man (a married one I think), got their beautiful young daughter pregnant.

My mom would proudly tout a shirt that said, “good girls go to Heaven, bad girls fo everywhere.” My grandmother hated it. Mom you would be proud the jury is still out on heaven, but I have for sure been everywhere.

Funny about that I spent my entire life wondering what was the good thing, how not to be bad. I have a conscience like you’ve never seen before. Perhaps this is to do with being highly sensitive and having more mirror neurons than the average human. See article on this here: The highly sensitive brain

My good began in earnest but it required the repression of everything I was. I had to be rigid and I sensed way back then I couldn’t grow like that. So I did what Glennon says above except not having any of my resources met, add adaptability and you get a recipe for living to survive, quickly like you’re outrunning a monster (your thoughts about yourself).

Add ADHD and a component of impulsivity and you my friend have the recipe for one hell of a story. And I have 10,000 stories of all the love I have embarked on within one very sad story about a very lonely girl, who never was naturally given the ability to discover her gifts.

I have a lot of stories.

Well if Glennon’s right perhaps I haven’t had it wrong this whole time by feeling things the way that I do. I don’t feel like the humans do. I feel every second of my life in full array. If you knew what it felt like to have all your nerve endings exposed all the time.

Would life be any gentler with me? Would I want it to?

Like Glennon I will feel and I will become. I just wish I had ever been able to undertake these things without needing to keep people along the way for my safety. That I didn’t grow oddly as a product of scarce resources like those trees that grow all bent and sideways because they are reaching for the sunlight.

Nothing is safe right now, not my health, not my heart.

So for now I’m going to have to burn, and find out who I will be on the other side.

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Unexpected Journeys

The only thing you get when you fall in love with someone else when you’re married is two broken hearts.

And as a matter of fact exponentially more than two in this case.

People you used to love that you can no longer look in the eye anymore, and then you can no longer look at yourself. And you still love them, and you know if they looked at you they will want to throw up.

A total lack of trust in everything. The worst thing for someone with C-PTSD.

A desolate boneyard where dreams used to be. And you no longer have access to yourself anymore either…. that is the most crippling part. Literally, figuratively all of it.

This is what happens in the realm of fear and shame anyway. There are other options, but since most people run their lives on a healthy dose of fear and shame all the time it’s easier to join than to feel alone one more second. I’ll join anyone in any state they are in as long as I never have to be alone again. And yes yes I know I never am. I truly never am I have an amazing support system. But it’s a different kind of love I speak of.

And as someone I care for very much says you can’t un-know. But sometimes you still have to move forward with all your knowing because you just do. Because life moves forward with or without you. The seasons will change no matter what you do.

So in true Christina fashion I tried to science the shit out of it. Like Matt Damon stranded on Mars, and this is appropriate because I feel about like I’d imagine he did. Faced with imminent death, with shrapnel he had to pull out of his side and staple himself up, and then figure out how to survive. Yep, we are there. Here we are.

As it turns out, according to my extensive research, this sort of thing either happens because of destiny or unmet needs not acknowledged in the relationship until it turns blue with the need for oxygen. Then a smelling salts wake up. Sharp.

I feel exactly like him (Matt on Mars). Every small victory seemed to yield a larger set-back and he was constantly faced with giving up hope. Spoiler alert. He didn’t. And I don’t either because I’m not wired that way. But since I’m not stranded on Mars hope is not substantial food for the work I’ve done to create my life.

I’m a big girl with choices, hard ones, but I won’t subsist on crumbs. I never deserved that beginning and for sure I won’t return to there now.

If we do return to our beginnings there is always a lesson.

I wish I knew now what I will in a year or so. But why do I wish to not be in the lesson, if I always appreciate the fruit it bears. But you have to ride out the storm and the winter if you want more moments of calm and sunshine.

How did we get here you might ask. Oh a variety of things. Things so complicated it feels almost impossible to get anyone else to understand, and with all the responsibilities on top there isn’t even room to try.

So you lose all normalcy. The compass is broken.

There is no True North, only a spinning dial that matches your brain. Round and round in circles trying to grasp onto a story that creates the least possible shame and suffering all while trying to feel the feelings, and everyone else’s, and maintain.

I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy. And the doers, the ones who fell in love, they are the bad guy. The shameful, naughty, dirty thing. The immoral. The ones without values. The creep.

But in real life there is so much more to understand than what meets the eye.

My original post was about letters. I have a lot of letters, and not a single one of them makes me know any more how to be in the face of this. Because my heart is invested here. I am not an objective bystander. I try to use my objectivity to endure, and every other tool in my belt.

They have fallen short so I will sit in the decay of my broken dreams, and not be able to distract by already creating new ones.

I will be still.

My letters are AS, BS (yes that is about right), MS, NCC, LPC, ADHD, C-PTSD, PTSD, HSP, and there are probably more I’m forgetting. None of these letters have in any way shape or form prepared me for this. We can have all the education, street or in the classroom and life can still surprise us.

Life has me on my knees. It’s made me it’s you know right now. And as I believe I’ve said recently I guess I’ll need to learn to pray.

But to who? Goddess ? The Universe ? The great philosophers ? To myself? To Buddha, the Genie…..

Praying is so passive. It implies faith in another versus faith in self. I believe you do need both. Because if you’re going to ask for help, you need to know what you’re asking for and why. And where you want to go?

You need to know what you want and where you want to go. Otherwise any work is empty.

You will always need to know these things on a journey. If you don’t know them you aren’t on the journey.

What journey do I want to be on??

I know I want to be on a journey and not a ride that’s for sure.

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All by myself

“This far away look. She is somewhere else. In another time and space, one devoid of any warmth and comfort. Who would ever venture back to that to collect themselves ? Isn’t it unnecessary ? If you want healthy love, you must be able to bring your whole self to the table. If you want healthy love the way I do anyway.”

It’s been a day. I’m just sitting here thinking about the difference between transparency and vulnerability.

I realized today I’ve been going through life preaching all about vulnerability, and I’ve never truly been vulnerable. I utilized transparency to battle the narcissist dynamics from whence I came. But true vulnerability is much more terrifying. I thought what I was doing was being vulnerable. It’s more than startling to realize that isn’t the case.

I spoke it but I wasn’t living it.

So I’m sitting with that. I’m sitting with lots of things right now. But they aren’t on top of me any longer. I can sift through them while safety is in place. Pick one thing up as I’m ready, turn it over in my hands, and put it down when I need. There’s no overwhelming frenzy. I am no longer held at gun point. Who will I be when I’m no longer there?

The unknown whispers at me, again no longer screams, only gentle whispers. And my software is trying to catch up.

When did the screaming stop? When did I stop being afraid?

I think the real answer is I didn’t. Wow, and that line brought more tears. It never stopped because it has all been locked up inside of me and carried along the whole time. I have never unpacked it with anyone truly, and I’m always surprised when people don’t put it together themselves by looking at me. It’s such a disconnect.

So recently I’ve been taking several journeys into vulnerability. I am doing EMDR with a therapist, I am seeing a trainer so I can simultaneously strengthen the house I live in while going through this hell, and I am RE-examining every inch of love. The way I love, why I love, what I need, who I am in my relationships.

The view in the mirror is interesting. It’s standing with all sorts of scars and imperfections and not cringing, walking away, but also not picking apart every flaw. I am looking at me lovingly as is: and it’s waves and waves of feelings. They crash over me and I try not to do anything with them, but feel them.

That’s vulnerability.

To feel something but not do anything with it is vulnerability. No flight, no freeze, no fawn, no fight. No intellectualizing. I’m on a battlefield and I’ve been stripped of all my weapons and armor. Now is when I close my eyes and see if the terrain was an illusion all along, and I’ll open them and the war will have been over so long, and I won’t have realized.

My song for my trauma All by myself

Because this is what I found while trying to describe my childhood. The loneliness was more profound than the chaos. I thought all this time it was the many fearful things having the deepest effect on me. But I think it was the loneliness.

And currently I’ve manifested a similar situation to simulate this while doing EMDR. So I am all by myself in this. I have support, lots of it actually. Genuine people who love me. But no one sits in those flames with me and currently there is no comfort after either.

There’s a kaleidoscope image of all the people who have ever held me and believed in who I am that scrolls through my mind, that gets me through lately. The good morning text that is consistent from a father like figure who I was blessed with. Whether I respond or not. That love is unconditional. I am hoping to cultivate it for myself and the experiences I have been through that no one else can see with me.

Right now however I have two new players who are my safest places. They are my therapist and my trainer. I knew during my session yesterday that my therapist would have to feel every inch of what she watched me re-experience and what emotions that opened in me. It did in fact work. I thought it wouldn’t work on me, but of course I did.

And by the time I got to my trainer for the day I was already shaking. I had to stop twice for nausea. Yesterday was injection day. And she was so warm and so kind to me. Every single one of these people fill the holes that parent roles never did. I just keep patching them up. It has felt like it will never amount to anything at times, all my work. But this time I have visions of the vessel staying afloat, and not being lost at sea.

It’s the rawest thing I have ever been through. “We cannot ask clients to travel further than we have ourselves”

I am on my knees and maybe now I’ll learn how to pray, and find something to believe in that isn’t just my capabilities. Ironic as the story my trauma left me was that I had none, that anyone else must be more capable than me; where is that adult that will show or tell me how to do this thing, but all I’ve been my whole life is more than capable of finding ways to meet my needs.

I’d like more from here on out. I’d like a clear picture of what my needs and wants are. And I’m not even sure how to find those things out.

For now it looks like 50 “I am” statements, weekly therapy, and facing the body I have avoided and neglected that I just expect to keep carrying me through.

For now it’s one day at a time in the fire….

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Addicted to Love

“Whoa, you like to think that you’re immune to the stuff, oh yeah
It’s closer to the truth to say you can’t get enough
You know you’re gonna have to face it, you’re addicted to love” – Robert Palmer

Hi my name is Christina and I’m an addict.

I didn’t realize this until recently as a matter of fact, because it seems natural to be allowed to pursue love. Look at how many articles, books, workshops, movies. So this isn’t a strange affliction unless you look a little closer at how I do love.

Recently I’ve been going to therapy. I finally found a therapist who is seeing me well, or I was finally ready to receive the lessons and my defense mechanisms didn’t block it, however you want to look at it. So I’ve been talking about the woman who brought me into this world.

She drove a 68 Pontiac Firebird. I still remember the window crank handles, silver and polished. The vinyl black interior that my long tan legs stuck to in the summer. The unsticking sound and painful sensation when I got up after a long drive (which was rare). At that time I thought my mother was so cool. She smoked, swore, dressed cool, listened to rock music, and she was beautiful. Blond hair, blue eyes and a smattering of brown freckles across her nose that were more in summer.

I still remember how many times we listened to Robert Palmer addicted to love in her car. What a foreshadowing that was for my life. Funny of the few memories that one stands out so much and those lyrics. It would be a huge part of my whole life. And very few from the outside will understand it. Only those who take the time and effort to truly ask because they care, not just to be in the know.

Having been primarily raised by her very fundamentalist Christian parents, even the fact she would take me out to eat meat was a novelty, and the good music was probably my main draw. I wouldn’t discover til later why Melissa Etheridge caught my spirits so much. My mom was a fan too I wonder what that means 😉

My Mom was addicted to love too. She was addicted to the exciting kind. The kind with bad men. So my addiction became mixed with not wanting to be like her, so mine was to find “a good person”. Why I thought a good person would be the answer to all of whatever it was I’m not quite sure. But what I didn’t know at the time this all started is how love should have been for me, and how much of a deficit I had.

I was so deficient in love that as an adult it became a larger focus than anything, especially knowing about who I am and what I want. Do you know I’m 39 years old and I still don’t know a lot about that?

I’m a lot of things that have identifiers. I’m a counselor, I’m a mother, a friend, a lover. I have lots of things I can perform and do those well. I can be caring of my friends, considerate of the world. I recycle :p But when it comes down to investing time into me, just for me, I freeze or fly.

My immediate reaction is to quickly get near another adult so nothing bad happens. I’m 39 years old and I’m still running scenarios all the time of what bad thing could happen. I’ll live with that forever because no one protected me. So I’m protective almost to a fault, because I don’t realize that I’m lovable. It doesn’t even register someone could love me. So I need more and different and to keep on moving.

I achieve. I learned I could gain acceptance, confidence, etc by facing the many anxieties that became me, but were never my natural self. I’ve had many re-births, college saved and changed me. My children the same thing. And every relationship I’ve ever embarked on has yielded a new self, because we grow the most in relation to others. It shows us to ourselves.

But being loved for free never felt like a thing. I’ve always had to earn it. To dance around begging to be seen. I’ve had to work my way out of a thousand behaviors I had from my trauma to even have a shot at healthy love. I keep trying for it, but I was missing a few things. And every time I think I figure it out I end up back at square one, with an even greater sense of being broken and a failure, as if love is the only measurement of my success as a person, the fact I’m breathing is a success.

I didn’t know until now how much I desire love with my children that is more than utilitarian. I was both parents and roles for so long I got stuck in the working, flight, fight, freeze mode of it all. I think I thought if I could crack the code with an adult I would ensure that I would always be a safe parent. I came from such a lack of safety it was a fear my whole life.

Do you know all they ever wanted was just a second of my attention and it was so often somewhere else. I’ve been stuck inside my head trying to stay safe, be safe, keep them safe, and the result has been a distance I never imagined. And I’ve been distanced from myself, and romantic love didn’t fix that.

What I wouldn’t give to have known that. Known they loved me for free, and that love was easier than I was ever taught, but it’s hard to accept when you’ve never seen how to love yourself. I had no model. I tried to learn from so many scattered sources, movies, friends parents. I tried to learn love intellectually, but feeling love that’s another matter entirely.

I could tell all kinds of stories and say I needed the high of new love. I would be accused of that I’m quite sure by my critics. But it’s not that either….

I’m a seeker by nature, but I wouldn’t even know how to feel it when I found it because the unmet needs were so varied and so great.

Recently I came across something “I’ve never felt before”, my favorite line of course. But it wasn’t the love of another, it was the seeing of myself that naturally came in their presence. It was the recognition I love differently now, and I can’t tell you the immense sadness that I never saw this beauty in the strength of my journey before.

People have told me all the time, but I couldn’t see it. That’s the saddest story. I’m still thawing, becoming, coming out of this waging war I’ve had with myself my whole life of whether I’m a good person or not. Without needing to make sure I’m with someone that validates that all the time.

Who am I outside of this addiction?

Outside the storm I see so many things I didn’t before. I had another rebirth recently and I’ve questioned the windows, the walls, the cosmos’s, the gurus, if this makes me a bad person. Squared up with my yucky stuff again. But the finding is that this question can no longer stand. And since it can’t I have room to see other things.

I have room to see what my relationship with myself looks like. I thought I’d already done this, checked it off the list, like it isn’t an ongoing process constantly in flux. Like all relationships, we have to re up our connection, and my connection with me will always be the trickiest. And if we aren’t connected to ourselves all our other relationships have crossed wires and don’t go so smoothly.

So now I’m having moments with my children I’ve never had in this way before. I get to be the other parent too. The fun one, the nurturing one, the playful one. The one that takes them driving instead of finding someone else to do it because if anything ever happened to them it’s unthinkable. So now I am giving myself a trust I always deserved.

Coming out of the million anxieties I was blessed with and the many health issues it’s caused and the fear it will all swallow me.

I’m coming out again and I’m a newborn right now. There are so many amazing things about being one. You see the world as magical, you’re not ashamed to show your emotions or ask for your needs to be met. You delight in small things.

I’m battling my addiction and learning healthy love…. and that is bringing me moments of joy I can actually feel and not just know.

It’s been quite the ride…..