Perfect Vision

We have a seasonal creek on our property that's fed primarily by snowmelt.  When the water's found a happy medium between torrential and trickling, I like to watch it; the calm flow of snow melt filtered through mountain rocks has a luminescent quality.  The cold pools magnify and enchance the smooth pebbles on the stream bed to the point that every striation, ever color in the rocks can be seen.  The light that filters through the creekside birch and cedar trees to reflect off the mirror surfaces has that special soft glow that I associate with ocean horizons at sunrise. 

The clear, pure water - for that brief window of time between the rock jumping currents and the dry mossy bed - provides a perfect lens.  I like that.

I've spent so much of my life struggling for clarity.  Trying to understand.  Wanting to be what I thought I was supposed to.  I used to wonder if there was an instruction manual that somebody forgot to give me.  Everybody around me - mostly Narcs - seemed to have a better idea, better direction than I did.  Conditioned from the start to mistrust my own self and judgment, to concede always to others' obviously far superior intellect, experience, wants, wills, I felt... Lost.  Ashamed.  Small.  Unworthy.  Unlovable.  Dirty.  Gross.  Ugly.  Repellant.

So I did what they wanted me to, what they demanded.  In my desperation to be something to somebody, I tolerated abuse on all fronts and gave little pieces of myself away as cheap party favors.  I sacrificed my time, my financial security, my outside relationships, my stability, my sanity to the ever changing demands that NM, EF and eventually OS and YB made of me.  By the end, I'd gotten so good at meeting their needs that they barely had to ask me to at all.  I intuitively knew that it was my job to fix NM's addictions, hide EF's abuse, cover for OS's rage, support YB's failures by pretending they were successes.  No one can live in truth while bearing the responsibility for so many others' illnesses, especially when the Narc's reaction to a Scapegoat's job well done is to point out the flaws and demand more attention to detail next time...which is of course right  around the corner.

Eventually I broke, and then I started learning how to break the cycle.  But I was so confused a lot of the time, because I just hadn't ever had the opportunity to learn how to be anything other than what they'd made me.  It took a lot of stop and starts to gain any traction, and it's been a journey of exhausting introspection.

Now, though, I feel like I can see myself through that crystal clear stream.  I'm a pebble on the river bed, and all my colors shine bright and proud for the entire world to see.  I'm beautiful, kind, and strong as a rock, baby. 

Clarity feels like such a gift.  I spent so long in the muddied up eddys before, boy is it nice to see me, be me and feel absolutely okay with me.

Who'd have thunk it?
Love,
Vanci