I Own My Experience, You Own Yours

I'm not very good at being quiet.
I spent an enitre childhood, adolescence and young adulthood being quiet and nice and covering everybody elses' ass.  That silence hurt me.  That silence damn near killed me.

So now, in the real world, I have a teeeeensy bit of a reputation, and here's what it is:  Only ask Vanci if you want the truth. Hopefully, that comes through in my writing here and you can take a look at my past posts and get a fairly good idea of the platform of honesty on which I stand (and sometimes fall flat on my face on.) 

I've also survived tremendously horrific events and attacks in my life; almost exclusively these attacks have been executed by the abusive members of the NFOO or the abusive people just like the NFOO that I've at times invited into my life.  They kept me bound and gagged about this for a long time, preventing me from seeking help.  Yet I survived, and I started healing when I determined that I would never be muzzled again.  I try to be diplomatic - Q and Jonsi, how'm I doin'? - but I will say what I need to say.  My mental health depends on it.

I know how it helps me to tell the truth, to speak up about my life.  I hope that my voice can help you, too.  I try to follow the 12-step model in communicating about my ACoN-ness (is that right?  Should it be my ACoN Essence maybe?  We could bulid an ACoN brand to be marketed by shiny happy ladies in smart skirt suits, going from door to door and ringing the bell to say... "ACoN calling!"  Maybe?  Although, the Essence d'ACoN might not be such an attractive smell, now that I think about it.  We'd have to have Eau d'Fear, Essence of Shame, Come-Uppance Cologne, Invisibility Spray.  Hmmm.  I might have to rethink that.)  But I digress.

My point is this: when speaking here in ACoN land, I try to, in AA speak, share my experience, strength and hope.  Sometimes, in order to share those moments of what happened, what it was like and how it is now, I have to hang out some dirty undies on the line.  I don't like it, you might not like it but it's real and I've found that, for me, in order to heal, I have to speak the truth out loud.  I talk to counselors and real world friends and family of choice about this stuff, but let's face it, the only people who can truly understand that terror of growing up in a Narc family are... well, us.  You.  So I talk to you about it and I try to put a little flag at the top of a post if I know that I'm talking about a specific common trigger, but I assume that you, on your journey to heal, will make choices about what you can and can't take in at that moment in time.

I know that I selectively edit when I read your blogs.  I've had to stop reading mid-blog post many times because something you had to say was making me uncomfortable or was bringing up old, awful feelings for me.  Sometimes I am enlightened enough to realize that your trigger triggered me because I have some more cleaning to do in my heart-house.  Sometimes I just have to move past that issue on that day full of the knowledge that it will come up again and hopeful that I'll be ready to tackle it next time.  Sometimes when I'm reading your truths, as much as I appreciate what you're saying, I just can't process it right then and there.  And do you know what?  That's okay here.  It's fine by me and it should be fine by all of the other 'members' of this community, because any of us interested in healing knows that we all have to walk our own paths in our own time.

Your experience, strength and hope has helped me in many, many ways, and I hope that mine helps you.  It's so valuable to us all to have different perspectives, different takes on things; it's how we learn, you know?

Now, on the flip side of the coin.  You've been through what you've been through and I've been through what I've been through and we have to accept that as fact, or we don't; we're welcome to leave here anytime, after all.  I have no right to bash your experience and you have no right to target and shoot down mine. 

That, for me, is the line that cannot be crossed.  I can say what I think and you can say what you think, but I have no right to judge you and you have no right to judge me.  If I do that or if you do that, we make this community unsafe, and that's the problem with the Kerfuffle over on Upsi's blog. 

Charity didn't speak her truth, she didn't have something uncomfortable to say, she didn't have an idea that was unpopular.  All of these things, in my sometimes not so humble opinion, would have been accepted and just fine.  I've seen it happen before, had it happen on my own blog that someone disagrees with the prevailing sentiment and we have a nice conversation about differing views.  ACoNs in recovery are, if anything, overly polite.  After all, we are nothing if not mannerly.  We had to be, right?

But that is not what Charity did.  Charity pulled out a heat seeking missle and targeted Upsi with the intention to wound.  And that is not okay, should never be acceptable.  Lest you think I'm a self-righteous, unyielding, hard ass, here's the comment that I made on the original post before we all knew it was Charity.

upsi dear,
I think I'm healed, because this letter made me laugh out loud before I made it through the first paragraph. All I could think was, Nee ner nee ner nee ner. Can that phrase actually be a literary tone, I wonder? Such tripe, such bull, can only be written by one of two types: Your mother's type or a truly victimized person who's lashing out at you because her own refusal to heal keeps her from lashing out at the true perpetrators of abuse.

On the small, small possiblity that the writer is the latter, I'd say this: Skip on over to my dormant blog for some 'true' abuse stories, writer, if you need abuse street creds and then hear me when I say this: Your pain will never,ever be diminished even slightly by your act of diminishing somone else's. Fix yourself, start your own blog and then say what you think you have to say. Showing up here anonymously is either proof that you're damaged beyond repair (i.e. a narc thyself) or that you're just out for more of the same type of negative attention that you were taught to think of as love (and this, in turn, is a cry for help.)

The problem with acting that out is that you're only vilifying yourself.
Abuse is abuse, after all - just as you've just abused upsi.

Seek help, anon, save yourself or remain unsaved.

Upsi, as always,
Love,
Vanci

So, yes, I have compassion for anyone twisted enough to attack in the way that Anon/Charity did.  Absolutely, I know that this letter writer is not a well person.  And that's okay in this community so long as your intention in being here is to get better, feel better, be better or to help others.

Anything else, in my opinion, is a sick person looking to make the people around her sicker so that she can feel better about not being well herself.  And that, dear friends, is sick and deserves to be quieted.  It's not productive, it's not condusive to healing and it scares people.  It's like showing up at a barn dance with a torch.  You're going to get a strong reaction.

My advice to new bloggers who are hesitant to hang it all out after watching Charity be shot down is this: Blog about yourself and focus on your story, not someone elses'.  No true ACoN in this community will hurt you, no true ACoN will kick you out for having a different opinion.  If Charity had stuck around and talked about who she really was, why she really cared and what she really did, she would have been well supported on her path to recovery.  But she chose to go, so we all send out pixie dust and happy thoughts in hope that she will get help, because she's obviously a hurtin' unit.  We empathize because we know what it is to hurt, but that empathy doesn't mean that she gets to paint targets on anyone else's back in this community and we will defend ourselves against attacks.  We have to.  Our mental health depends on it.

I try to take all this with a grain of salt, because we are, after all, all trying to get well.  That doesn't mean we are all well.  So we should have some levity and (to use my AA platitudes again,) take what's good and leave the rest.

We're here to and for help, not to and for hurt.  If we wanted more painful attacks in our lives, we could just call up our NParents or siblings, after all. 

Love,
Vanci