I've often said that my friendship pool doesn't have a shallow end.
I'd like to add to that: My life doesn't have a shallow end.
I've been learning this gradually over my lifetime but somewhat painfully as of last August, so effectively about a year.
For one year, I have been afraid to blog, to put myself back out in the cybersphere/blogosphere for fear of being crushed by sick people with harmful intentions. I blog about my personal journey mainly and I've never been (up until recently) even shy about it. In my life, I learn from many things. Otto Von Bismark is quoted as saying "Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. A wise man learns from the mistakes of others." Since I am more adventurous than most, I put everything out there for the sake of myself (journaling is healing) and for others (as a valiant example or a terrible warning). I have definitely heeded some of the big warning signs I've seen by watching others as I have taken people's courage, their undaunted will to get back up and unfortunately, I've taken some people's fears on as my own and let it seep into me and censor me. In the words of Twisted Sister, I am "not gonna take it anymore". Or at least, that's the intention fueled by endless gallons of hope.
I am an adult victim of child abuse. I am a survivor of child abuse. I am in recovery from child abuse.
No, none of those "I am" statements seem to fit. They feel too much like labels and not ones I want to make permanent or even temporary. I want to be the author of my own journey. While my past adds some nice color and flavor, that which is not serving to make my adventure a delicious buffet, needs to be quickly released so all "I am" isn't left with a sour after taste.
So how can I better describe this position in which I currently sit?
Maybe I can't right now come up with a fitting "I am" statement. Maybe it's better to leave the openness of "I am _____" and let life fill in the blanks for me. Better yet, if I can just sit with it, perhaps, I'll enjoy the space. That's exactly what I feel like I haven't had for a year or longer. I haven't had space. To make matters worse, my last blog which I have hidden now after some very serious threats were made to me and my family had I left it up, left me in a less trusting place than ever, one in which space (somewhere I used to confidently dance) became terrifying to stick my toe in much less my entire identity.
So, all of this has been stated somewhat out of context up until now which I hate: lots of feely stuff but without actual experience to tie the room together like an area rug. So let me lay the rug out for you and you can see how this all fits in.
I was a victim of child abuse.
That part was true.
I suffered at the hands of a loving but very unhealthy mother who was also wicked smart and extremely manipulative. I don't love labels but many might classify this particular situation of having the helpless, hopeless and endless overtones of borderline personality disorder. For those who aren't familiar, it's a condition with many hallmarks, the primary of which is called "splitting". By splitting, I do not mean disassociating although that could be true in a certain context. I'll explain. Typically a person diagnosed with BPD (borderline, not bipolar, although the latter could be a condition or symptom of the former in some cases) splits everything in life down the middle to fit a narrative of good versus evil, dark versus light, saints or heroes versus villains or monsters, victims versus predators and in the case of their children generally, and unfortunately, the good kid and/or-versus the bad kid. So, in my case, my sister and I never really had a chance to identify ourselves or to see each other outside of this narrative until we were much older. In the case of my sister, who may have inherited traits from our mother, appears to have not been able to see past the insanity even still. The script was written for her and she continues to play the part.
What does that look like exactly?
The exorcist. No, just kidding. It's pretty sad actually. It looks like the little sister I protected from our mother, for whom I played the villain countless times to redirect the rage and abuse to myself (something I felt more adept at receiving) has spent her entire life secretly resenting every time something good happened to me. She resented it because it appeared to her that life was proving over and over again that good things happen to bad people. It's possible that my mother's experience watching this play out in her own narrative had reached a similar conclusion. The complication of all of it is that I'm just a human being and they both "love" me in their own way of being sympathetic and supportive (but validated) when bad things happen to me. The other complication is that I see the "disease" of the false narrative and I see them trapped in it and love them and I want them to love and see me, but they can't.
The limitation that I struggle with is never being seen as good and spending my life trying to convince everyone of my inherent goodness, not because I played a good guy on TV but because of my unique, authentic humanity. It's something I intentionally share widely and with random strangers. I know not everyone will see it, get it or appreciate it. For the most part, I love when people say "That's not for me" and go on their merry way as much as I love when people stop and say "Oh my God! You're my jam!" I feel like at least one of my goals in life is to spend as much time as I can with people who get me and as little time as I can wasted on those who don't. While a lot of people would call me an over-sharer or warn of keeping my authenticity sacred or suggest I hold something back, it really conflicts with my purpose, several of them actually, not to be extremely obvious, blunt and upfront.
OK so last year's blog... I was drowning. I'm not sure if you've been there but it was like life was telling me to learn to live without air. That's as good as I can put it. The mermaid thing wasn't happening. My sense of humor was lost beyond even my imagination which was fried. I lived between choruses of my oldest autistic child screaming in the misery and pain of (what I now understand was) digestive distress and detox or healing crisis symptoms and my youngest who was struggling to make sure he got the attention a very little person should get in spite of having a brother with special needs who needed ongoing special attention. Anyway, I put my head down and ultimately, I cooked my way out of it.
Back to the chorus of screams, it was hours sometimes of my youngest (who I unashamedly nicknamed "Guantanamo") sounding like a screaming panther being stabbed or ripped in half combined with my oldest who sounded and often looked like, well, Satan was trying to come out of him. He'd wake in the middle of the night screaming and go for a good two hours or so in which I would be moving furniture and him out of the way of him knocking himself unconscious as he writhed around, flopping on the floor and laying on his back he'd be arched on the floor like a rainbow yelling and screaming in these guttural tones. My youngest wanted to nurse like a newborn, every hour and he did this for his first two years, sleep be damned. I was a wreck. My adrenals were gone. I contracted severe thyroiditis without ever having contracted a virus trigger. Our house was mold contaminated. I had no family or friends nearby to help me with the kids. Our financial situation was bleak. My husband's job was about to expire and he couldn't imagine what to do next because we were both just too tired. The only way out was these baby steps of cooking everything from scratch, very labor intensive and not at all what I was accustomed to. I had to learn a lot of new recipes and new ways of doing things which pulled me away from my kids who needed me most. They would scream out in anger of abandonment. They would hurt each other. Potty training my oldest was a theory based on a bad model and way beyond my resources at the time. As a parent who spent years filling my head with philosophies of non violent (non spanking) parenting literature and support groups, I was resource-less and empty. In a time of feeling nothing was working, I resorted to spanking and welcomed the new found shame of being (in my mind) an abuser, watching the cycle of abuse NOT end with me. I felt as low and hopeless as I ever have. Suicide wasn't an option. My oldest son would never recover from autism if I didn't "cook" him out of it. On one hand I felt like I was supermom and on the other, super monster. Not seeing myself objectively may have been a product of that "splitting" but more I think it was lack of sleep and endless misery.
But there came a point of reckoning and at that point I blogged all my feelings in a fairly hidden location, not invisible. I shared it with my FB "friends", recall my friendship pool doesn't have a shallow end. It was raw and brutal, self shaming but desperately hopeful and it was every attempt I had left to reclaim my sense of humor during a dark time. The only FB friend who was actually blood related was my dad. He read it and voiced his concern to me personally. This is where it got tricky. Apparently, he was harboring some deep resentment toward my mother who he divorced over 25 years prior and I think a possibly subconscious guilt for not doing ANYTHING about the abuse on me that took place in his own home right in front of his face. I don't say this with any anger. I just have no better explanation of how someone like my sweet, sentimental dad could carry on with his life for over a quarter of a century, happily remarry, have children he's completely involved with who fill his life with utter joy and reading my blog cause him to spin so far off the rails that this deep dark hatred for my mother (which punished me severely in the process when I was at an all time low) started seeping out of him as if no time had passed. Since this, he's been kind of stuck there and I'm not the only person who has noticed and been disturbed by it.
Long story longer, he decided to share it with my sister in order to in his words "hopefully she'd show it to your mother-evil so she could see what she's responsible for and take some responsibility for it, that she sees you've turned out just like her and so she sees that all that can come from her is evil". Scary and creepy, right? My only family member at the time whom I trusted talking like that.
In turn, my sister, the sad one whom at the time I hadn't spoken with in over a year and had intentionally, consciously and vocally shut out of my life, shared it with my mom as suggested but my sister is "the hero". She was groomed for it. So in order to (possibly redeem herself for being the silent witness to all the abuse against me for most of my childhood on some subconscious level) play her part in this ongoing false narrative, decided to take it upon herself to call me at midnight with no hint as to why and then attempt to "save" me from CPS by ultimately threatening to call CPS herself if I didn't remove this blog which so happened to incriminate our mother "the victim" of my honest words. I never wanted my mom to read it. It was my own therapy for me. At that point, I still didn't know why my dad shared it with my sister or that my mother had read it.
So, my little tiny string of a lifeline to sanity, my creative writing, my blog was going to get my children taken away from me. This is not because these people are anti spanking, ironically. It's quite the opposite. These are staunch supporters of not only spanking but all the beating that happened to me as a child, at least on paper. I don't believe they understood what they were reading and that's fair. If someone you believe to be bad to their core says a bunch of things about feeling shame, it probably seemed natural for them to conclude that it was warranted shame.
It came out much later that my mom had read it. This was after my mom and I had grown close for the first time ever in our lives. We were talking daily. It bled out like an uncauterized wound. Of course, it all came down to everyone wanting me to return to my position of family scapegoat and accept the blame for what felt to me like everyone kicking me while I was down. Ultimately, coming out of this dark place and into a much better one, I only have enough energy to bend into the roll I play for my children and anything that pulls away from what reserves I have for parenting two very high maintenance boys has to be seriously good (not metaphorically or allegorically), like a building block to an even better future for my kids, my husband and I. I'll spend my energy apart from them coking nutritious food to strengthen and heal them and learning how to feed my soul as well.
So this is not going to be my apology tour although I'm sad that my mom read my blog. It was never intended for her. I'm sad that I found out that my familial identity wasn't just created by my mom and held by my sister, but that my father who is a really super sweet guy holds on to pieces of this "creature", too.
I guess as an introduction to Steemit, this is pretty deep but as promised. Hopefully, based on who and what I "ain't" can help you get a vibe for who I am. I think this is a good starting places for like minded souls to find me and discover ourselves in the process. Also, feel free to, like the wise man, learn from what seems totally tragic here. I wouldn't want it repeated. I'm back to blogging officially so this healing journey and ultimately flourishing journey can get back underway. It feels right that the blog that saved me was the blog that killed me and I should be brought to life again by yet another blog.
The groove goes on.
Photo "Maria 4" by Backpacker01 on Flickr