Taking What's Good

Oh, my heart broke a little bit today.

I was all sorts of wrapped up yesterday in my real world life and its little quirks.  I was dealing with a lot of anger at the NFOO working up inside of me to a nearly unbearable level.  So I stayed up late and I came here and I wrote it out.  I told the truth about what was happening and what I was feeling and I did it with no fear of judgment or reprisal because I don't have fear that any of you are going to stop me in the grocery store when I am unprepared to face the reality of the abuses that I've overcome and ask me about it.

Really, that's why I blog.  I need to say this stuff to people who can understand and empathize but who are not so close to my life that they're going to make the concert I'll be attending to hear my DD's sing about my survival of the NFOO when I need for it to be about listening to my daughters sing.  I tell it on a more personal level to the people in my chosen real world family and circle of friends, but there are some things that I need to talk about that I can't or don't have the opportunity to say face to face.

Does it help other people, my writing it out here?  I don't know.  I hope so, because I hope that my writing these experiences doesn't create indifference and I can't stomach the thought that my writing would hurt anyone looking for help .  If it does help, I'm glad.  If it doesn't, I'm sorry.  But really, I'm here for me.  I'm here because I have words to use and it's been a big lesson in my experience that Shrek was right; "Better out than in."

I operate - as I think all mothers and fathers and those responsible for children should - within a web of responsibilities.  My oldest DD came home today and told me about a discussion that her sociology class had concerning the role of mothers and how they came to the conclusion that mothers seem to always end up with at least two full time jobs; work at work and more work at home.  It was cute and funny that she and her classmates felt as if they'd discovered an absolute truth all on their own.  (Cause, yeah, I wasn't aware of that. LOL.)  So, I'm busy and I spend a relatively tiny fraction of my life online.  An hour a day, basically, tops.

I miss a lot.  And I totally missed all of the hash slinging, divisive shit going down on some of the blogs on my reading list and some of the other blogs I visit until just a few hours ago.
Can I just tell you that so much of what I saw, well, it just hurt my heart.  I've stayed as far out of the fight as I can, and here's why.  I have no quarrel with anyone looking to heal from abuse, unless they become an abuser themselves, which is in turn, proof that someone's not really looking to heal from abuse at this very moment.  We're all in different places in recovery and our own experiences before and during our journeys determine how we act, react, respond, behave and speak.  That's cool by me.  I believe that we all get to a jumping off point of healing by different paths, and it doesn't matter to me how we get there: it matters to me that we DO get there.  That's the place that I dig, that waking up to a healing path place and the paths that we choose after that moment.  That's what charges my batteries, the story of how we heal.

 As part of my path, this blog is the place that I come to work it out and speak unhindered, this is my spitballing arena, ladies and gentlemen, where I get to just... fucking... spit it out.  And then I see what I learn.

That's how I approach your blogs, too.  I observe, contribute if I think I can, and I gauge my reactions and responses and determine what I like about them, what I don't and then I come up with a plan as to how I'm going to move forward.  In my writing, in my recovery, in my life.  I come here to bounce myself off of your ideas and experience and to put mine out there if you'd like to do the same, and then I take it all down to my heart and I use all that power of introspection and character I've developed to work on me.  Or I don't, if I don't like what you have to say then I pass or I stop and I examine why it's making me uncomfortable and I determine if I need to change myself. If I start thinking that I need to change you, then I'm taking myself off of the path of recovery and healing and I stop.  Turn myself around.  Back to the beginning of the hokey pokey.

Cause I want to be better than I am, you know?
I've become a much, much better person than I was ever allowed by the evil people in my life to believe that I could be.  And I've done it by spending hours of my life looking into my own soul and deciding to shore up this support or patch up that crack in the interior drywall.  You've helped me to do that.  If I've helped you too, I'm honored that voicing my experience could do that for you.  If it hasn't and you've read my blog and said, "Meh, not for me," and moved on along, I'm cool with that, too.  I'm not perfect and I wouldn't want to be, nor do I think that such a thing even exists.  But I'm making progress, and that - for me - is the attainment of a goal.

I've made friends here, and I like that.  I've been a friend here and I like that too.  It's nice to talk to people who've had similar experiences and to hear their take.  I've even avoided a couple of mistakes regarding the N's in my life because I've listened to you talk about yours and I've been able to learn from you.  I believe that knowledge is ALWAYS a good thing.  Bottom line; if you've walked down any part of a path that's similar to mine and have something to say about it, I'll listen.

Whether you're in the middle, LC, NC, medium chill with the N in your life, I'll listen and hope to learn or to speak up and say, "Hey that happened to me, too, and here's what worked for me."  Whether you were abused by your N on an hourly or daily or monthly or semi-monthly or yearly basis and whether your N was a lone ranger or one of a Clan of Crazymakers, I'll listen.  Whether you're new here or you were the first blogger to arrive on the scene, I'll listen to what you have to say.

And I will take what's good and applicable in your story and try to learn from it, to take it to heart and to put it through my process and see if it applies to me still and maybe ask a question or two and then I will find a use for it in my life and pass it on to someone else when they maybe need it the most.  That's how we win against the army of the Narcs.  We learn how to heal and then we pass on our knowledge right down the chain of ACoNs and we build the numbers of people who were hurt by Narcs and no longer have to be.

Sometimes knowledge isn't just power, it's everything.  With knowledge, our minds, souls, hearts, brains and our voices all get stronger.  We get louder.  We tell the truth and we become steadfast in our resolve that we will continue to TELL and we will TELL over and over again and we will TELL louder and louder still the truth of what it was like, what happened, what it's like now and how we will NEVER let it happen again.  And maybe, hey, here's a thought, maybe you deserve to not let it happen either.  That's what's good here, to me.

Abraham Lincoln said (and forgive me if I get it slightly wrong because I am too damn worn out and tired to go looking for an attribution, so this is from memory,)
"America is great because she is good.  If she ceases to be good, she will also cease to be great."

I'm not talking about good in the sense of behavioral constructs and boundaries, I'm not talking about being good because we pick up our dirty laundry or abide by the rules of a family system or we always show up to appointments fifteen minutes early.

I'm talking about good in the sense of honor and justice and kindness and empathy.  Maybe a little sympathy, too, but also a call to action a la Alice Miller.  Good means, to me, putting the truth in the middle of the conversation and redirecting the conversation to it over and over again.  What's the truth of ACoNs?
Simple: we were all abused as children.
What's the solution to that?
Simple: people who abuse children should not be allowed to.

Because all of this pain we lay out, that's the result of parents (or caretakers) who hurt and of societies who allow those parents (or caretakers) to hurt.  The rest, I think, is semantics.

And that's what breaking my heart about the talk of different communities and different branches of cliques or governments in ACoN blogland.  We're all in the same boat.  Maybe we got here different ways and maybe some of us are booked into steerage and some of are working the dining room, but none of us are riding in style in the first class Penthouse, even if we did have to pay that passage.  Because the cruise line director probably put the sneaky damn Narcs in there.  They're the ones hanging out over at the dailystrength forums watching this shit go down.  (I wonder what they're doing with all that information?)

The only result that I have seen so far in this entire seemingly forever-long battle of the blogs is this;
your voices don't seem as true to me as they used to, it's harder to follow you on the path that you're on because I keep getting confused about what you're saying.  I'm hearing mean.  I'm hearing spite.  I'm hearing unbreakable vows and absolutes of correctness.  I'm hearing forced authoritarianism and retaliation.  I'm hearing moral superiority.  I'm hearing revisionism.  I'm hearing gaslighting.  I'm hearing "I know you are but what am I's" and "Nee ner nee ner nee ners."  I'm hearing justifications.  I'm hearing attacks.  I'm hearing accusations.  I'm hearing blindsiding and traps being set.  I'm hearing teams being picked by order of loyalty and conceived popularity for a game that, to my knowledge, isn't even scheduled to be played.

What I'm not hearing is a whole lot of people talking about the pain of being raised by Narcs and the freedom in learning about how to overcome that.

And that is breaking my fucking heart.

I'll end my post with the same word I've ended every post and comment that I've ever put out here with: love.  I do love you all.  I want you all to know that you're lovable, and I want to know that I am capable of love.  Love is the antithesis to the hell of my life that the Narcs created.  And the opposite of that hell, man, that's where I want to stay.

Love,
Vanci

PS - I didn't name names for lots of reasons, but this is the primary one:  It's been my experience that if I think someone is talking about or to me, it's likely that they are.  And it's been a huge part of my path of recovery to take that as a reason that I should look at my own actions.