Hola, cyberfriends.
It's been a bit, please forgive my absence; life gets busy. There's been a lot shakin' in Vanciland; mostly good, some bad and some indifferent but shakin' nonetheless. I hope to get time to post about recent events, but it might have to wait a bit.
The Sun's been tracking lower in the sky, though, and the days have been getting shorter so I can see the hibernation (and therefore time to write,) season peeking around the corner. I hope you're all happy, healthy and free of fear.
I've been reminded lately about shame.
How it festers, where it's hatched, what nourishes it and how it destroys.
You know about shame, too, right?
If you have a Abuser in your life - past or present - you know about shame.
I had a whole bushel of Abusers in my life. Hell, Abusers were my life for most of it. I know about shame.
I've carried it, eaten it, drunk it, watched it, heard it, felt it, slept with it, split a piece of bacon with it. (Shame took the larger piece, too, the greedy bitch.)
I've also shaken it off, buried it, turned a blind eye to it, ignored it, acted it out and - at times - beaten it.
But I think it's one of those feelings, one of those gifts from the Abusers, that's... well, it's sticky. Hard to walk away from. It follows me, damn it. And sometimes I inadvertently pick it back up and carry it around with me for awhile. Shame is a shadow. Always just there... right in the corner of my sight... but I can't quite grasp it.
I know where it came from. It was given to me. The Nparents always were shitty gift-givers; I'm not surprised that this was one of their most generous and graciously given gifts. They sewed it into the very essence of my being early on, like infancy, and they made sure it stuck with me.
They used shame throughout my childhood - when I was abused, whether it was physical, mental, emotional, verbal, sexual, they knew they could get away with it. They knew I wouldn't tell. Of course I wasn't going to tell, and here's how they made sure of it - they made me believe that it was my fault. If I told, wouldn't I really just be telling whomever I told that I was bad, I was wrong? Furthermore, they made me believed that all the bad feelings I had, all of the pain and hurt that they caused me - that I deserved it.
This continued to work when I was an adolescent, but not as well. I revolted, I told. I felt momentary freedom. But I was outgunned, because they responded with increased shame, monumental amounts of shame. They used it to break me so thoroughly that it was actually easier for me to lie, to recant, to swallow my hurt and pride and future and protect my Abusers than it would have been to stand by what I'd told and continue to live (with them, under pressure, in the special hell that they created for me.) They made their dirty, nasty, stinking rotten treatment of me my fault yet again, and they made me pay for ever telling in the first place. They made me pay for years. And eventually they worked me back around to believing what they told me - that I deserved the shame that they intentionally made me feel.
So, I did the only thing within my power to do. I hurt the only person that I was allowed to hurt.
Me.
My self destructive behavior was on a Titan scale. I almost didn't make it. So they blamed me for that too. As recently as three years ago, in my very last meeting with my Abusive Mother and Abusive, sick, twisted fuck of a pervert Father (and my counselor,) Abusive Mother threw out that I was "such a difficult teenager." Ha fucking ha. Who wouldn't be, carrying around all that shame? But she was still trying to make it my fault, my burden, my cross to carry well into my thirties.
I pulled out of my death spiral when I had my oldest daughter, as much as I could anyway.
I think back to the amount of responsibility that rested squarely on my shoulders when I was eighteen years old, and I can't even fathom how I took even a single step toward wellness. And were they there to help me? In some ways, yes. I had no idea at the time just how costly their 'help' would be. I stumbled along the best I could, though, and I just kept trying to move forward. One. Painful. Step. At. A. Time.
I'll never forget how hard my Abusive Mother worked to get me to marry my first husband. He didn't even propose to me - she simply hijacked a conversation one day and asked him when we were going to get married. She pressed until he threw out a date. He of the crack pipe, who would leave me with bruises and scars of all kinds, with debts and with fatherless children. He was my Abusive Mother's choice for me. She even made me feel ashamed that I hadn't been with him for a while before (when he'd broken up with me,) and used to talk to any other guy who showed interest in me - some of them actually nice - about this other guy who was the 'love of my life.' At 18. Who fucking has a love of their life at 18? Isn't every one of them the love of your life at 18? What kind of mother does that? But she shamed me into getting back together with him, and then she shamed us both into getting married.
When it went bad, as it was bound to do, she blamed me for staying with him. She discounted the fact that I live in a joint custody state, and that if I'd filed for divorce at the time, he would have automatically been granted half-time with my girls. It took ten months for him to finally be caught by the police - aggravated assault against me, which I testified against him for, which he then spent four years in prison for - and then, and only then would the state grant me sole custody. But that wasn't good enough, I hadn't left soon enough, I wasn't good enough, according to dear old Abusive Mother. (Note that this was also the time frame that I needed the most help. I've found out now that this was also the time frame in which my daughters were being abused by my dear old Abusive Dad, and dear old Abusive Mother knew about it and covered it up.)
When I did leave, when I finally got it worked out, Abusive Mother had a heyday with trying to make me feel ashamed for the way that I raised my kids. They'd help, sure, on their terms. Never when I needed it most. And then I was made to feel guilty, awful, shamed for not spending enough time with my children. Here was my schedule for a year and half:
6 am - work first job. Work second job. Change diapers. Feed the kids dinner (none for me, though, I didn't have enough money for that.) Put them to bed. Go BACK to work at third job. Home at 2 am. Sleep until 4- 4:30. Lather, rinse, repeat. I made about, oh, $13,000 per year.
But according to Abusive Mother, I was making 'bad parenting choices.'
Choices? What fucking choices?
When I finally found a full time job, when I (out of the blue) met a decent guy who wanted me and wanted to be a part of my daughters' lives, according to Abusive Mother, I was being selfish. I wasn't putting my children first. And when decent guy stuck by me, when he adopted my daughters, when we bought our first house, when I was promoted at work... when I was successful, Abusive Mother said nothing. Abusive Father showed up and asked to borrow money, or my truck. The money wasn't usually repaid. The truck was always returned with the gas gauge on E.
When I spent all of my time ignoring that decent guy (I'll never know why he stuck it out the way he did, but I'm grateful,) and allowing the bad influences of the Abusers to affect my daughters, I was supposed to be ashamed then too. Because I had at least some happiness in my life, or at least I thought I did. And they didn't like that at all. I'll never forget the day before my wedding to decent guy (who actually proposed to me, who then spent the next six years telling me that my family was awful to me,) and I was at the Clan Compound trying to get things ready. Abusive Mother said, at one point when I was trying to dig through my check register and find the last couple of necessary dollars to pull off the wedding, "Gee, Vanci, I wish we had something to give you! It just always seems like when it comes to you there's nothing left!"
NSis had been married the year before, an event that I took a full week off of work to help pull off and that my Nparents sent me to her house with a $2,000 check to give her for wedding expenses. Why send me with that check when they were en route the following day? Shame, methinks.
And when I finally took a stand, Abusive Father said to me, "I just want you to know that I will NEVER forget the way that you have hurt us all, but I'm going to work on forgiving you."
At least at that point I was able to reply, "I'm not looking for your forgiveness. Forgiveness is only necessary when a person has done something wrong, which I haven't."
Shame is a weapon. Shame kills.
So, how to counteract it?
I know of only one way.
Tell.
Tell the truth, always.
Tell it loudly and stick by it.
Drag the dirty secrets out into the light, kicking and screaming, and blast them with the brightest sun you can stand.
Ever notice how you don't have a shadow at noon?
And now, they've popped back up again. They think they'll be able to use their Weapons of Shame to sway the DD's to their 'side.' I'm ready, you abusive fucks. Bring it on.
Love,
Vanci
Showing posts with label being used. Show all posts
Showing posts with label being used. Show all posts
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Friday, November 30, 2012
Choosing Not to Play the Crooked Game
An old question asked of the washed-up cowboy who's lost all his coin in the saloon's game of cards as he laments that he knew the deck was stacked and he shouldn't have played:
"If you knew the game was crooked, hoss, why'd you play?"
To which the cowboy answers,
"Pardner, it was the only game in town."
I played my part in the NFOO Crazymaker game for thirty years; seventeen by the conscription of my minor status and thirteen more out of varying degrees of guilt, shame, obligation, fear and myriad other dark, compelling, binding chains of emotion. Did I know it was crooked? Did I know it was a fool's exercise as I ran and ran and ran myself to death on the giant hamster wheel of the parameters of my service to the needs, wants, desires and whims of the Clan's members? Did I know that the end result, the payout, the promised reward of acceptance for my one and only self as a full-fledged member of the group was a hollow, rotten promise with less than zero chance of ever being fulfilled?
I can answer this completely honestly by saying: not usually. I'm not sure that anyone with a normal background, that a non-abused or non-neglected person or non-ACoN person, could really understand that answer. It seems that we either know something or we don't; that harm vs. non-harm is a rather black and white area with a firm dividing line down the middle. At least it should be.
But for me, it's a complicated question. I was well trained to doubt my own senses. I was told from day one by master manipulators that what I thought was pain wasn't; that it was actually love. That denying myself basic needs wasn't a bad thing; it was selfless giving and that my desire for reciprocation of that giving was nothing more than sinful and dirty selfishness. That having expectations that I be treated with basic respect was wrong. That my logical thoughts didn't really make any sense at all. That what I said or heard or saw didn't actually happen, even when I knew it did, unless they said it did.
In a million different ways, they taught me that I was worthless, and that everything good about myself - anything that I could take even the slightest amount of pride in - would be used against me, over and over again, to cause me pain until I grew to hate those once good things about myself.
So, did I know the game was crooked? No. I just believed that I was crooked instead, just like I'd been told.
But I did find out, eventually. I pushed back from the table, took the pittance of my wealth that was left and attempted to exit the game. Shit got hairy then, let me tell you!
I persisted, though, because I had seen. I knew. Once I saw that they were dealing from the bottom of the deck and had aces stuffed up their sleeves, well, I couldn't unsee. I couldn't unknow anymore. So I had to fight my out, and I sustained some heavy injuries in the process, but I made it.
It wasn't until I'd gotten clear that I stopped to evaluate the people that I'd been sitting around that table with in the first place. That's been an education.
I saw ENF most clearly first, as his crimes were the most dramatic, had that hint of flair that really made them stand out in memory. Then I had to look at NM as she was the other complicit adult. I looked deep enough to begin to understand that she was guilty of her own crimes as well, and though they were more under the radar and subtle than ENF's, they were just as if not more heinous.
The only people left to examine were my siblings; NSis, who is four years older than me and GCYB, two years my junior. These were by far the hardest relationships for me to deconstruct.
They were my cohorts in childhood, my sometimes life-rafts in surviving the fucked up tsunami tidal wave of crazy (h/t Lisa) that was my 'family.' We fought together in some of the same gunfights, you know? We were comrades and friends and I thought that we would always have each other.
I remember saying, "They had to live through the same things that I did, so I think we have strong bonds and we'll find a way back to each other." So I was a little bit naive.
I couldn't quite figure out where to put the sibling relationships for a long time, because I couldn't get past the fact that NSis and GCYB were victimized by the Nparents too. I didn't want to compare our battle scars, afraid that my knowledge that I'd been the favorite whipping girl and scapegoat would be confirmed, but I knew that we'd been on the same side at the very least, right? I kept getting stuck in the loop of knowing that they were abused too, and I didn't want to write them off because I just knew that if they could just see what I'd seen - if they could just know the truth - they'd be able to get out too.
It took a long time and a lot of hurt for me to understand that they weren't ever going to get out, that my notion that I'd blazed a trail that could be easily followed out of the dysfunction and that they'd follow just as soon as they could was false based on one idea and one idea only.
I slowly realized that they would never follow me out of the NFOO because they didn't want to leave the NFOO. They have stayed within the drama-filled, hate-fueled crooked game in which the House will always take ALL because that is where they choose to be. They're not like me.
I saw the truth.
I had to act.
They saw the truth.
They slammed the door on it and held a confab to determine who was to blame for letting the truth out of it's god-damned box in the first place. (Guess who that was, come on, just guess.) Then they set about trapping it and burying it again.
That's a fundamental difference, boys and girls, a philosophic deal breaker of epic proportions.
I used to wish that they could find their way out.
Now I understand that they see the exit plainly, but they're choosing to stay in the game.
If I live to be two hundred, I'm not going to understand it (anymore than I can understand how a normal drinker leaves half a beer on the table because it got warm or flat or why it's so hard to get sharks with little frickin' laser beams mounted on their heads or any other ridiculous thing.) I do, however, understand that their choices are theirs and I am not responsible for either of those things.
I'm just glad that when I was presented with a choice, I chose to leave.
Love,
Vanci
PS: Thanks to all the bloggers out there who've been dealing with sibling issues and posting about them; your struggles always help me to define my own.
"If you knew the game was crooked, hoss, why'd you play?"
To which the cowboy answers,
"Pardner, it was the only game in town."
I played my part in the NFOO Crazymaker game for thirty years; seventeen by the conscription of my minor status and thirteen more out of varying degrees of guilt, shame, obligation, fear and myriad other dark, compelling, binding chains of emotion. Did I know it was crooked? Did I know it was a fool's exercise as I ran and ran and ran myself to death on the giant hamster wheel of the parameters of my service to the needs, wants, desires and whims of the Clan's members? Did I know that the end result, the payout, the promised reward of acceptance for my one and only self as a full-fledged member of the group was a hollow, rotten promise with less than zero chance of ever being fulfilled?
I can answer this completely honestly by saying: not usually. I'm not sure that anyone with a normal background, that a non-abused or non-neglected person or non-ACoN person, could really understand that answer. It seems that we either know something or we don't; that harm vs. non-harm is a rather black and white area with a firm dividing line down the middle. At least it should be.
But for me, it's a complicated question. I was well trained to doubt my own senses. I was told from day one by master manipulators that what I thought was pain wasn't; that it was actually love. That denying myself basic needs wasn't a bad thing; it was selfless giving and that my desire for reciprocation of that giving was nothing more than sinful and dirty selfishness. That having expectations that I be treated with basic respect was wrong. That my logical thoughts didn't really make any sense at all. That what I said or heard or saw didn't actually happen, even when I knew it did, unless they said it did.
In a million different ways, they taught me that I was worthless, and that everything good about myself - anything that I could take even the slightest amount of pride in - would be used against me, over and over again, to cause me pain until I grew to hate those once good things about myself.
So, did I know the game was crooked? No. I just believed that I was crooked instead, just like I'd been told.
But I did find out, eventually. I pushed back from the table, took the pittance of my wealth that was left and attempted to exit the game. Shit got hairy then, let me tell you!
I persisted, though, because I had seen. I knew. Once I saw that they were dealing from the bottom of the deck and had aces stuffed up their sleeves, well, I couldn't unsee. I couldn't unknow anymore. So I had to fight my out, and I sustained some heavy injuries in the process, but I made it.
It wasn't until I'd gotten clear that I stopped to evaluate the people that I'd been sitting around that table with in the first place. That's been an education.
I saw ENF most clearly first, as his crimes were the most dramatic, had that hint of flair that really made them stand out in memory. Then I had to look at NM as she was the other complicit adult. I looked deep enough to begin to understand that she was guilty of her own crimes as well, and though they were more under the radar and subtle than ENF's, they were just as if not more heinous.
The only people left to examine were my siblings; NSis, who is four years older than me and GCYB, two years my junior. These were by far the hardest relationships for me to deconstruct.
They were my cohorts in childhood, my sometimes life-rafts in surviving the fucked up tsunami tidal wave of crazy (h/t Lisa) that was my 'family.' We fought together in some of the same gunfights, you know? We were comrades and friends and I thought that we would always have each other.
I remember saying, "They had to live through the same things that I did, so I think we have strong bonds and we'll find a way back to each other." So I was a little bit naive.
I couldn't quite figure out where to put the sibling relationships for a long time, because I couldn't get past the fact that NSis and GCYB were victimized by the Nparents too. I didn't want to compare our battle scars, afraid that my knowledge that I'd been the favorite whipping girl and scapegoat would be confirmed, but I knew that we'd been on the same side at the very least, right? I kept getting stuck in the loop of knowing that they were abused too, and I didn't want to write them off because I just knew that if they could just see what I'd seen - if they could just know the truth - they'd be able to get out too.
It took a long time and a lot of hurt for me to understand that they weren't ever going to get out, that my notion that I'd blazed a trail that could be easily followed out of the dysfunction and that they'd follow just as soon as they could was false based on one idea and one idea only.
I slowly realized that they would never follow me out of the NFOO because they didn't want to leave the NFOO. They have stayed within the drama-filled, hate-fueled crooked game in which the House will always take ALL because that is where they choose to be. They're not like me.
I saw the truth.
I had to act.
They saw the truth.
They slammed the door on it and held a confab to determine who was to blame for letting the truth out of it's god-damned box in the first place. (Guess who that was, come on, just guess.) Then they set about trapping it and burying it again.
That's a fundamental difference, boys and girls, a philosophic deal breaker of epic proportions.
I used to wish that they could find their way out.
Now I understand that they see the exit plainly, but they're choosing to stay in the game.
If I live to be two hundred, I'm not going to understand it (anymore than I can understand how a normal drinker leaves half a beer on the table because it got warm or flat or why it's so hard to get sharks with little frickin' laser beams mounted on their heads or any other ridiculous thing.) I do, however, understand that their choices are theirs and I am not responsible for either of those things.
I'm just glad that when I was presented with a choice, I chose to leave.
Love,
Vanci
PS: Thanks to all the bloggers out there who've been dealing with sibling issues and posting about them; your struggles always help me to define my own.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Heartbreak and Freedom
In my Help a Sister Out post, KFL5 asked some pertinent and difficult questions, and you wonderful readers really stepped up to the plate to share your experience and hope with her. Thank you, thank you, thank you. My finger's all healed now and I can type again, yay!, so I wanted to add a few of my minimal cents.
The question, "Anyone else deal with the heartbreaking feeling of abandonment when you are finally able to set some emotional boundaries?" was the one that really resonated with me; the one I keep going back to.
Oh, ouchie, I remember this feeling. I had to dredge a bit to get back to it, combing through memories that feel like ancient history but are really just a few short years ago. I want to start by saying that I don't feel this anymore. Feeling abandoned required that I had ever felt like I belonged in the first place. For some time, I DID feel this. I'd always had the NFOO in my life and they did an excellent job of filling up my every waking moment with their demands and needs and convincing me that my worth was directly related to their happiness, so at first, absolutely, I was stranded on a metaphorical deserted island all by myself, or at least that's how it seemed.
Circumstances and force of will kept me in that lonely place, even when I was tempted to just give in and jump back into my previously allotted role within the fucked up painful system that was all I'd known as 'family.' It felt, a lot of the time, like the wind was just whistling through the gaping hole in the middle of my soul. Even the horrible something that we've known can be more comfortable to have than the emptiness of uncertainty. I feared the void, but not quite enough to want to fill it back up with the awfulness that was the NFOO. Almost, but not quite.
Still, I was shocked and wounded that these people who'd claimed to 'love' me could turn on me so easily, so quickly, so thoroughly. Even worse, their abandonment was made worse in that it proved to me that the feeling I'd always had that I would be dropped like a hot rock if I didn't do exactly what they told me to do was fact. I couldn't chalk up my insecurities to my own overactive imagination anymore (and after all they'd trained me so well to do so.) Their abandonment of me made me realize what was true; they really didn't love me and I was just their scapegoat, object, pawn - not even a person, just something to be used at their convenience and to their ends.
The isolation that they imposed after my stand was nothing short of what they'd always threatened. They refused to speak to me rationally, they refused to be civil, they made it a point to reach out to every single person that we knew mutually and rally as many of those people as they could against me. Effectively, I said, "This is what I need to feel safe, this is the space that's acceptable to me, this is the way I'd like to communicate."
And they replied with attacks on my character, attacks on my mental health, attacks by proxy through my children, attacks on me behind my back and to my face and to anyone with half a minute and the ability to hear the attacks they manufactured against me. Attack, attack, attack. I asked for space and they launched the armada.
It was awful. It was heartbreaking.
But, the last thing that I had in common with the NFOO was this: we both underestimated my strength of character.
I'm certain that they are still, five years later, baffled that I haven't come crawling back to them. When I met with NM in my counselor's office in June, she let her expectations of my behavior slip out between the lines of her carefully crafted speech when she stated (talking about NSis) that "some people in our family are more willing to forgive than others." She - and therefore they, let's not forget that the NFOO follows the whimsy of NM, always - can't understand a Vanci outside of her own framework. In her mind, I am wrong and it's only a matter of time before I seek her absolution for my sins. The twisted logic and warped mind behind that particular curtain is fucking mind boggling. Incidentally, when I called her on this bullshit, the conversation went South FAST.
I underestimated myself, too. In truth, it was their actions that pushed me further and further in my resolve to stop the abuse and break the cycle. The crazier they got in their need to control me, attack me, win at all cost, the clearer I became in my boundaries. Every time they crossed a line, I drew a firmer, bolder, tighter circle around myself and the FOC. Bet they never saw that coming! (And I didn't really either until I did it!)
So, that deserted and abandoned feeling abated in direct proportion to what became my choice to live a life apart from them. It is, after all, impossible to feel abandoned by something that one's chosen to leave. And the longer I stayed away, the more difficult it's become for me to see how the hell I ever stayed there in the first place. There's truth to the saying, "Once known, a thing cannot be unknown." Sometimes I think they're like a black hole; get too close to the vortex and it'll suck you in; try to get away and you'll discover that it takes an awful lot of power to get out of proximity. The best plan once you've got a little distance is to lay on the warp drive and never look back.
And that's what I feel now. Not abandonment, not heartbreak, not even sadness most of the time. I feel... free. I feel like I took a lot of bullets but somehow managed to dodge the widow maker that had my name on it. I feel like a hungry shark swam into my legs and then got distracted by something in the opposite direction. I feel like I missed the launch of the Titanic and got left on the dock with my ticket in hand. I feel like I somehow, someway, got a pass and a chance at a whole new life, one that is only possible without the Crazymakers in it.
Cause this life I've lived without them? It's so, so, so much better than it ever was with them. I had to get some road behind me to see that, to feel that, to be able to embrace that, but it's the truth. I had to go through those awful feelings of loneliness and heartbreak and abandonment to come out the other side with the innate, deep-seated knowledge that people who love me don't seek to make me feel those things.
And once I had that under my belt, it became easy to look around and see the large group of people that were by my side all along rooting for me and holding their arms out to me in genuine concern and care and love for me just the way I am. Now that's freedom, baby.
I'll close with this:
It gets better.
It gets so much better.
Love,
Vanci
The question, "Anyone else deal with the heartbreaking feeling of abandonment when you are finally able to set some emotional boundaries?" was the one that really resonated with me; the one I keep going back to.
Oh, ouchie, I remember this feeling. I had to dredge a bit to get back to it, combing through memories that feel like ancient history but are really just a few short years ago. I want to start by saying that I don't feel this anymore. Feeling abandoned required that I had ever felt like I belonged in the first place. For some time, I DID feel this. I'd always had the NFOO in my life and they did an excellent job of filling up my every waking moment with their demands and needs and convincing me that my worth was directly related to their happiness, so at first, absolutely, I was stranded on a metaphorical deserted island all by myself, or at least that's how it seemed.
Circumstances and force of will kept me in that lonely place, even when I was tempted to just give in and jump back into my previously allotted role within the fucked up painful system that was all I'd known as 'family.' It felt, a lot of the time, like the wind was just whistling through the gaping hole in the middle of my soul. Even the horrible something that we've known can be more comfortable to have than the emptiness of uncertainty. I feared the void, but not quite enough to want to fill it back up with the awfulness that was the NFOO. Almost, but not quite.
Still, I was shocked and wounded that these people who'd claimed to 'love' me could turn on me so easily, so quickly, so thoroughly. Even worse, their abandonment was made worse in that it proved to me that the feeling I'd always had that I would be dropped like a hot rock if I didn't do exactly what they told me to do was fact. I couldn't chalk up my insecurities to my own overactive imagination anymore (and after all they'd trained me so well to do so.) Their abandonment of me made me realize what was true; they really didn't love me and I was just their scapegoat, object, pawn - not even a person, just something to be used at their convenience and to their ends.
The isolation that they imposed after my stand was nothing short of what they'd always threatened. They refused to speak to me rationally, they refused to be civil, they made it a point to reach out to every single person that we knew mutually and rally as many of those people as they could against me. Effectively, I said, "This is what I need to feel safe, this is the space that's acceptable to me, this is the way I'd like to communicate."
And they replied with attacks on my character, attacks on my mental health, attacks by proxy through my children, attacks on me behind my back and to my face and to anyone with half a minute and the ability to hear the attacks they manufactured against me. Attack, attack, attack. I asked for space and they launched the armada.
It was awful. It was heartbreaking.
But, the last thing that I had in common with the NFOO was this: we both underestimated my strength of character.
I'm certain that they are still, five years later, baffled that I haven't come crawling back to them. When I met with NM in my counselor's office in June, she let her expectations of my behavior slip out between the lines of her carefully crafted speech when she stated (talking about NSis) that "some people in our family are more willing to forgive than others." She - and therefore they, let's not forget that the NFOO follows the whimsy of NM, always - can't understand a Vanci outside of her own framework. In her mind, I am wrong and it's only a matter of time before I seek her absolution for my sins. The twisted logic and warped mind behind that particular curtain is fucking mind boggling. Incidentally, when I called her on this bullshit, the conversation went South FAST.
I underestimated myself, too. In truth, it was their actions that pushed me further and further in my resolve to stop the abuse and break the cycle. The crazier they got in their need to control me, attack me, win at all cost, the clearer I became in my boundaries. Every time they crossed a line, I drew a firmer, bolder, tighter circle around myself and the FOC. Bet they never saw that coming! (And I didn't really either until I did it!)
So, that deserted and abandoned feeling abated in direct proportion to what became my choice to live a life apart from them. It is, after all, impossible to feel abandoned by something that one's chosen to leave. And the longer I stayed away, the more difficult it's become for me to see how the hell I ever stayed there in the first place. There's truth to the saying, "Once known, a thing cannot be unknown." Sometimes I think they're like a black hole; get too close to the vortex and it'll suck you in; try to get away and you'll discover that it takes an awful lot of power to get out of proximity. The best plan once you've got a little distance is to lay on the warp drive and never look back.
And that's what I feel now. Not abandonment, not heartbreak, not even sadness most of the time. I feel... free. I feel like I took a lot of bullets but somehow managed to dodge the widow maker that had my name on it. I feel like a hungry shark swam into my legs and then got distracted by something in the opposite direction. I feel like I missed the launch of the Titanic and got left on the dock with my ticket in hand. I feel like I somehow, someway, got a pass and a chance at a whole new life, one that is only possible without the Crazymakers in it.
Cause this life I've lived without them? It's so, so, so much better than it ever was with them. I had to get some road behind me to see that, to feel that, to be able to embrace that, but it's the truth. I had to go through those awful feelings of loneliness and heartbreak and abandonment to come out the other side with the innate, deep-seated knowledge that people who love me don't seek to make me feel those things.
And once I had that under my belt, it became easy to look around and see the large group of people that were by my side all along rooting for me and holding their arms out to me in genuine concern and care and love for me just the way I am. Now that's freedom, baby.
I'll close with this:
It gets better.
It gets so much better.
Love,
Vanci
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Surrendering the Outcome
I've been meditating a lot lately on the concept of 'surrender.' In recovery, this is a word that I hear thrown around a lot - one of those omnipresent buzzwords that enters into conversation through many different doors.
I hear people talk about surrendering to a higher power, surrendering their faults (or character defects if one prefers to church it up,) surrendering a drink or a pill or a joint and surrendering their will. That last is, in my mind, both overused and terrifying; to surrender one's will is to give up, as I see it, and to embrace powerlessness as a state of being rather than a spritual or emotional pain point that can result in growth.
Twelve-step programs are rife with amateur phraseology, and I think that most of it can be helpful. It's never caused me pain to think an action through all the way to the outcome, which is what is the action that the old-school slogan 'Think, Think, Think,' is intended to prompt. 'One day at a time,' another cue that's been around seemingly forever, reminds me that I don't have to spend today wallowing in the unchangeable past or stuck on the scary possibilities of tomorrow.
HALT - an acronym for Hungry? Angry? Lonely? Tired? means to me that when I find myself in a particularly sour frame of mind - or with an overwhelming desire to escape my life with a mind-altering dose of self-medication - I have the ability to pause and to take this quick needs assesment. It's simple. Hungry? Eat something. Angry? Find out why and do some work on the root cause of the feeling in order to acknowledge the truth of why I'm feeling this feeling. Lonely? Call someone. Tired? Take a nap. All of these pauses take me out of my head and into the real world of nourishment, tangibility, interaction, rest. Often, the pause provides me with as much course correction as the ensuing self-care action does.
So, to use another common phrase, we 'take what's good and leave the rest.' The word surrender triggered a hot-button reaction from me for a long time, because I could only understand the definition of it as one of retreat, giving up, giving in and throwing in the proverbial towel. Eventually I talked to enough people and gained enough experience in my internal bullshit-o-meter to hear with my heart the best definition of true surrender that I know:
"Surrender doesn't mean that we quit trying to do anything, Vanci. It just means that we decide to continue to take the right actions in our life while giving up control of the outcome of those actions."
Wow. This gem was handed to me by a good friend who happens to give off these powerful Zen calm, peaceful vibes. When he walks into the room, I think... Ahhhhhhhh. So, naturally, I want what he has, which means that when he talks, I listen.
In the context of my Crazymaking FOO, this concept of surrender was a tough one for me to apply. My experience with all of them has been, to varying degrees, that what they do when they don't get exactly what they want from me is to apply massive pressure from any angle they can find.
As an example, several years ago, OS and YB lived elsewhere from the town that I lived in. NM and EF lived about 15 miles from me. The parents decided to take a trip to visit my siblings, and it was expected that I would watch their three dogs. No one asked, mind you, they simply told me when they would be gone and told me that they'd leave the house unlocked. It was spring, which meant that their extremely rural driveway was impassable. My two daughers were in 2nd and 4th grades, and school was in session. DH and I both worked full time jobs. There was no way that we could pack up our entire day-to-day lives and move the 15 miles out to the clan compound for a week, and, frankly, no normal person would expect this from a busy young family such as mine was.
I told NM and EF that I wouldn't be coming to stay at their house, but that I would make the 30 mile round trip drive each day - on my dime, of course, compensation for this was never a question - to check on their dogs. The pushback began immediately.
I received a phone call from OS in which she berated me for my selfish actions. I received a phone call from NM and EF asking me why I was making it so difficult for them to go visit OS. Was I jealous? Couldn't I find the time to do as I was asked for these people who had sacrificed so much for me? YB wanted to know why, just because I couldn't understand the bond that the parents had with their dogs, couldn't I help them out just this one time. The over-riding sentiment was that if I didn't buckle, didn't 'decide' to do exactly as I was asked, either NM or EF would have to stay home. This would, of course, be my fault.
I can't remember how that particular spiral of multi-faceted abuse and pressure ceased, but I'm fairly certain that DH - ever the voice of reason and as an outsider, he was always treated by a better code of behavior than I was - intervened and calmly asserted that A) the dogs would be fine and B) the negotiations were closed and if there was further talk about the situation it would be along the lines of which kennel the dogs could go to. We ended up driving the 30 miles round trip daily and checking on the animals, who were, in the end, fine.
In retrospect, this was part of the pre-pre-pre-Vanci rebellion. For about three years before I finally took real, tangible steps onto a path of healing, I made these tiny little forays into independence. I was beaten into submission every time, but with each little step toward freedom I gained valuable knowledge. Even the half-assed compromise that I made in the Great Dog Watching Rebellion - I mean after all I did spend a good 90 minutes each day for two weeks saddling up and driving out to the boon tillies to check on the dogs - was a step forward for me. Previously under the same circumstances, I wouldn't have even questioned that I was intuitively fulfilling an inappropriate expectation. They said jump...
Those little wins didn't feel great to me, and in truth my inconsistent here-and-there small scale balking against the puppet master's strings created a lot of conflict in the short term. I knew I didn't want to be their whipping girl any more, so I tried not to be. But I didn't yet know how to be anything else; I certainly hadn't re-connected with any part of my true self yet. So all I really knew in that time was that I didn't want to be what I'd always thought I was. It was an empty and lonely time, but those baby steps were crucial as the very beginning steps in building what would eventually become a strong foundation to a new, healthier life.
As I continued to take one step and then another on the ever-widening path to mental health and freedom from fear, I learned slowly and sometimes painfully about the concept of release through surrender. As I sought out and took the right actions - over and over and over again - I built up a play list of examples that eventually helped me to identify patterns.
A problem would arise.
It was my job to fix it.
I'd do everything within my power to do the right thing.
It still wasn't good enough for them, especially of my idea of the right thing varied from their idea of what I needed to do for them.
I'd apologize and cave in to complete whatever chore they had in mind for me in the way they wanted it done.
It would still be wrong.
And then...
A problem would arise.
Lather, Rinse, Repeat. Endlessly.
At some point the pattern became clear and I stopped apologizing. I stopped giving in. I started making little stands here and there. The issues that I stood on got bigger. I got stronger. Wham-o.
Now I embrace surrender, with the understanding that comes from acknowledging that I am responsible for me. That is all. Just me. When I do the right thing, I'm freeing myself from responsibility for any one else's reactions or feelings on the matter. I'm giving it up. Sometimes even the right actions create pain, and that is when I now know that I can use that. I can look at that pain and use it as a touchstone for growth.
When I am aware enough to identify those sore spots as areas that I need to tackle, work on, strengthen, it quickly leads me to gratitude. How lucky am I that I can see and feel these sick cycles and constructs that I was given for the awful bullshit that they really are? And how lucky am I that I have the tools now to recognize those nasty people, places, things for the festering wounds that they are and take action to clean them out so that I can move on with my life?
Damn lucky, that's how much. Damn lucky.
Love,
Vanci
I hear people talk about surrendering to a higher power, surrendering their faults (or character defects if one prefers to church it up,) surrendering a drink or a pill or a joint and surrendering their will. That last is, in my mind, both overused and terrifying; to surrender one's will is to give up, as I see it, and to embrace powerlessness as a state of being rather than a spritual or emotional pain point that can result in growth.
Twelve-step programs are rife with amateur phraseology, and I think that most of it can be helpful. It's never caused me pain to think an action through all the way to the outcome, which is what is the action that the old-school slogan 'Think, Think, Think,' is intended to prompt. 'One day at a time,' another cue that's been around seemingly forever, reminds me that I don't have to spend today wallowing in the unchangeable past or stuck on the scary possibilities of tomorrow.
HALT - an acronym for Hungry? Angry? Lonely? Tired? means to me that when I find myself in a particularly sour frame of mind - or with an overwhelming desire to escape my life with a mind-altering dose of self-medication - I have the ability to pause and to take this quick needs assesment. It's simple. Hungry? Eat something. Angry? Find out why and do some work on the root cause of the feeling in order to acknowledge the truth of why I'm feeling this feeling. Lonely? Call someone. Tired? Take a nap. All of these pauses take me out of my head and into the real world of nourishment, tangibility, interaction, rest. Often, the pause provides me with as much course correction as the ensuing self-care action does.
So, to use another common phrase, we 'take what's good and leave the rest.' The word surrender triggered a hot-button reaction from me for a long time, because I could only understand the definition of it as one of retreat, giving up, giving in and throwing in the proverbial towel. Eventually I talked to enough people and gained enough experience in my internal bullshit-o-meter to hear with my heart the best definition of true surrender that I know:
"Surrender doesn't mean that we quit trying to do anything, Vanci. It just means that we decide to continue to take the right actions in our life while giving up control of the outcome of those actions."
Wow. This gem was handed to me by a good friend who happens to give off these powerful Zen calm, peaceful vibes. When he walks into the room, I think... Ahhhhhhhh. So, naturally, I want what he has, which means that when he talks, I listen.
In the context of my Crazymaking FOO, this concept of surrender was a tough one for me to apply. My experience with all of them has been, to varying degrees, that what they do when they don't get exactly what they want from me is to apply massive pressure from any angle they can find.
As an example, several years ago, OS and YB lived elsewhere from the town that I lived in. NM and EF lived about 15 miles from me. The parents decided to take a trip to visit my siblings, and it was expected that I would watch their three dogs. No one asked, mind you, they simply told me when they would be gone and told me that they'd leave the house unlocked. It was spring, which meant that their extremely rural driveway was impassable. My two daughers were in 2nd and 4th grades, and school was in session. DH and I both worked full time jobs. There was no way that we could pack up our entire day-to-day lives and move the 15 miles out to the clan compound for a week, and, frankly, no normal person would expect this from a busy young family such as mine was.
I told NM and EF that I wouldn't be coming to stay at their house, but that I would make the 30 mile round trip drive each day - on my dime, of course, compensation for this was never a question - to check on their dogs. The pushback began immediately.
I received a phone call from OS in which she berated me for my selfish actions. I received a phone call from NM and EF asking me why I was making it so difficult for them to go visit OS. Was I jealous? Couldn't I find the time to do as I was asked for these people who had sacrificed so much for me? YB wanted to know why, just because I couldn't understand the bond that the parents had with their dogs, couldn't I help them out just this one time. The over-riding sentiment was that if I didn't buckle, didn't 'decide' to do exactly as I was asked, either NM or EF would have to stay home. This would, of course, be my fault.
I can't remember how that particular spiral of multi-faceted abuse and pressure ceased, but I'm fairly certain that DH - ever the voice of reason and as an outsider, he was always treated by a better code of behavior than I was - intervened and calmly asserted that A) the dogs would be fine and B) the negotiations were closed and if there was further talk about the situation it would be along the lines of which kennel the dogs could go to. We ended up driving the 30 miles round trip daily and checking on the animals, who were, in the end, fine.
In retrospect, this was part of the pre-pre-pre-Vanci rebellion. For about three years before I finally took real, tangible steps onto a path of healing, I made these tiny little forays into independence. I was beaten into submission every time, but with each little step toward freedom I gained valuable knowledge. Even the half-assed compromise that I made in the Great Dog Watching Rebellion - I mean after all I did spend a good 90 minutes each day for two weeks saddling up and driving out to the boon tillies to check on the dogs - was a step forward for me. Previously under the same circumstances, I wouldn't have even questioned that I was intuitively fulfilling an inappropriate expectation. They said jump...
Those little wins didn't feel great to me, and in truth my inconsistent here-and-there small scale balking against the puppet master's strings created a lot of conflict in the short term. I knew I didn't want to be their whipping girl any more, so I tried not to be. But I didn't yet know how to be anything else; I certainly hadn't re-connected with any part of my true self yet. So all I really knew in that time was that I didn't want to be what I'd always thought I was. It was an empty and lonely time, but those baby steps were crucial as the very beginning steps in building what would eventually become a strong foundation to a new, healthier life.
As I continued to take one step and then another on the ever-widening path to mental health and freedom from fear, I learned slowly and sometimes painfully about the concept of release through surrender. As I sought out and took the right actions - over and over and over again - I built up a play list of examples that eventually helped me to identify patterns.
A problem would arise.
It was my job to fix it.
I'd do everything within my power to do the right thing.
It still wasn't good enough for them, especially of my idea of the right thing varied from their idea of what I needed to do for them.
I'd apologize and cave in to complete whatever chore they had in mind for me in the way they wanted it done.
It would still be wrong.
And then...
A problem would arise.
Lather, Rinse, Repeat. Endlessly.
At some point the pattern became clear and I stopped apologizing. I stopped giving in. I started making little stands here and there. The issues that I stood on got bigger. I got stronger. Wham-o.
Now I embrace surrender, with the understanding that comes from acknowledging that I am responsible for me. That is all. Just me. When I do the right thing, I'm freeing myself from responsibility for any one else's reactions or feelings on the matter. I'm giving it up. Sometimes even the right actions create pain, and that is when I now know that I can use that. I can look at that pain and use it as a touchstone for growth.
When I am aware enough to identify those sore spots as areas that I need to tackle, work on, strengthen, it quickly leads me to gratitude. How lucky am I that I can see and feel these sick cycles and constructs that I was given for the awful bullshit that they really are? And how lucky am I that I have the tools now to recognize those nasty people, places, things for the festering wounds that they are and take action to clean them out so that I can move on with my life?
Damn lucky, that's how much. Damn lucky.
Love,
Vanci
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