Praise From Caesar

I received a formal accolade at work today; a written statement of appreciation for my skills and effort accompanied by some financial recompense.  The praise came from a high level and was echoed by several other layers of management as well as my peers.  I actually have five (yes, count them; five) bosses, and this honor was wholeheartedly endorsed by all of them.  For all of them to agree on anything is a minor miracle; for all of them to agree on something that effects the bottom line is damn near unthinkable.  So, it was somewhat unexpected and I was a bit taken aback by my pleased reaction.  In my opinion, I haven't done anything above and beyond the call of my position; I've only tried to consistently do the best I can with what I have, or to find a way to make what I have better or easier to work with.

Of course, I didn't turn away from it or send it back.  I accepted both the compliments and addition to my income with - hopefully - grace and gratitude, and celebration.  It's nice to be recognized, nice to be compensated and oh so nice to be appreciated.

In thinking it over this evening, it brings to mind the very human need for validation.  I believe that all people need - at different times in life and to varying degrees, sure - for the human mirrors surrounding us to reflect back to us that we are ___________ (good, kind, worthy, cared for, important, loved, beautiful, smart, pick your needed adjective.)  Maturity and experience teach us to self-validate whenever possible, but we're social animals and it is still necessary to have someone(s) in our life to fill in that necessary care where we are unable to do so.

This is the opposite of what I was taught by my Nparents and siblings in my childhood 'family.'  I was taught that no matter what I did, how hard I tried, how much I sacrificed, I would NEVER be good enough.  I was forced to learn by action and speech that my role was to strive for an endless and amorphous goal that was completely within the control of cruel masters who would quickly yank it from within my grasp should I ever come within reaching distance.

An example: I was a perfect student in school.  Every report card that I ever brought home was A's from top to bottom, until my second year high school, when the Clan finally broke me.  For eleven years, though, academic and behavior marks were always the highest possible grades and there was always a nice comment from my teachers to go along with my excellent marks.  I actually skipped a grade, too.  Remember, all this was happening while my family moved so often that I didn't attend the same school two years in a row until I was in high school (and by then it was much too late.)  I was taught - as I think most ACoNs are in some form - that it was my job to be perfect, and I did my damnest to be so.

But... (isn't there always at least one?)
I distinctly remember bringing home one of those practically-perfect-in-every-way report cards and showing it to the Nparents.  They told me I'd done a good job and that they were very proud.  (And they were; not so much of me but of having a piece of paper that they could hold up to the world if necessary and proclaim, "See!  How could we be bad parents or scary monsters when we've produced this!")  It was a great moment for me; I'd finally succeeded in being good!  I didn't expect or need any further compensation.  Being GOOD, finally, was a great feeling.

Until they paid NSis and GCYB for their grades.  Right in front of me. Right in front of me.  I received nothing for my straight A's.  But NSis and GCYB were paid for each A they'd received (something like a dollar) and half that for each B they'd received.  My reward?  I was told that they weren't going to pay me for my straight A's because - a direct quote here as I remember it vividly, "A's are easy for you.  They had to work for their A's and B's."

I remember thinking, "So how am I supposed to do better?  Am I supposed to pretend to be stupid so that A's will seem hard?  How can I do better than perfect high scores?"  How cripplingly sad.  I could write about so many other examples of this mistreatment, but I'm sure you get the drift.  It was always like this.  What does the sadist do if the donkey's neck grows long enough to reach the carrot?  Get a longer stick, of course.

So I spent a lot of my life looking for praise and validation from sources that enjoyed twisting the rules of reality in order to deny me that basic human need.

I'm thinking about the flipside of that perpetual lose-lose tonight.

At some point in my process of getting away from the fucktards who raised me and growing into my own skin, I have learned how to stop seeking praise from those who won't give it or who would use it to hurt me.  I have stopped living or dying by the opinion of the crowd and I have learned how to - mostly, I'm no saint - do the right thing for the sake of the thing's rightness.

I get up every day and I do my best, in my work just as I do in my life, because I am satisfied by the internal knowledge that I've done what I can to be ethical, to stay right-sized, to help those around me, to participate, to contribute, to create goodness.  A large part of my motivation to just be a good damn person every day comes from my desire to NOT be like the members of the NFOO.  A bigger part of my motivation to seek and spread joy is just its own self-fulfilling prophecy.  I'm out of the hell I was kept in for so long, I'm alive, I can breathe the air and it smells sweet - why not enjoy it?

Receiving praise was wonderful, and I'll take it.  I'll enjoy it.  I'll savor it.
But I don't need it anymore.

Love,
Vanci

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.

What Changes?

I've had a couple of people ask me lately the same basic question, though phrased differently and in different contexts from each other.  I'm open about my background and as transparent as I can appropriately be about what I've experienced in my life, how I've overcome abuses I've suffered and how I think/feel/live, so I get a lot of these types of questions.  I have a fairly large capacity for self-inspection, which is certainly not something that I try to hide, and my openness about my emotional journey attracts all sorts of folks who are seeking something in their own lives.  

The question I've been getting is something along the lines of: How do you decide to change?  

How do we get away from abusive people?  Declare boundaries and hold them firm?  Determine what is appropriate treatment and what is abuse?  How do we decide that or when enough is enough and most importantly, how do we know when and that we can take definitive action? 

We talk a lot in these communities about the steps that we take once action is determined to be necessary, and that is of IMMENSE value.  In leaving an abusive family system or relationship(s), we're sailing off blind into uncharted (at least by us so far in life) waters.  Thar be monsters thar, matey.  The experience of others who've been before us or are journeying with us is incredibly important to have.  But, before we rig up the sails and leave port, we've made a decision to do so.  What dictates that timing, I wonder?

It's different for everyone, I'm sure.  I read a lot of our stories that seem to have a jumping off point that's the result of cumulative abuse over years, lifetimes.  We've been fed, as DH puts it, little spoonfuls of shit for long enough to be tired of eating shit.  (Bless that man for his colorful descriptions!)

Often there's no MAJOR ORDEAL that is the final atrocious act that pushes us into action, it's just yet another Everyday Abuse or Narc Attack or Crazymaker Tactic.  Often it's no different from the way that we've been treated daily... forever.  But it's the last time, it's the metaphorical straw across our backs and we snap, we've had enough, we spit the shit out of our mouths, we create a wall or a boundary and this time we stick by it, we fortify our defense and we take a stand.

Sometimes there is a major event that pushes us over the line from passive Scapegoat to Defender of Self (or FOC.)  But, for ACoNs, I can almost guarantee that whatever that big final event is, we've dealt with it or something like it before.  So why do we finally wake up and choose to act or react differently than we always have before? 

The Narcs don't change, the abusers don't change, I honestly believe that they are only as capable of change as they are willing to look within and that they are as a whole, completely unwilling to do so.  So, they keep trying to destroy us in the same what that they always have.
Therefore, it's logical to conclude that WE are what changes.  Something in us changes at the end and we become capable and willing to change the game, even if it means - as it almost always does - turning our entire worlds upside down and dealing with the full-blown rage and power of the Narc and Minion Crazymaking Machine.

It was a long time coming, for me, and I don't remember having an Aha moment where everything suddenly became clear.  It was a process to get to the point of willingness, and the fear of loss I had in stepping out of the NFOO's expectations of me was very real.  They'd always been able to express to me clearly that if I stopped towing the company line, I'd be exiled, ostracized, thrown out, worthless to them.  For most of my life, they had the power to erase me as I believed that without them I wouldn't be worthy of existence.  

But, there was some thin wire of steel that found its way into my heart and mind, and I finally had the strength to make a stand.  I wasn't expecting the World War III that my stand cracked open.  It took me by surprise and I was seriously shell-shocked... but.  Something new happened after that final confrontation.  I continued to stand.  That was a first.  

I don't know, still, why I knew that I could remain standing, take it, move on, grow, learn and be better without them that time.  But, I do know for a fact that the final stand was the first time that I reacted to their assault with further resistance.  I made mistakes, sure, and allowed too much discourse, false conversation and wish I'd known how to shut the door completely and immediately.  But, even with my occasional back-sliding and mis-stepping, I still kept moving forward, away from them and their (increasingly easy to spot and avoid) craziness.  

And I know this, too; the longer I stood, the clearer it became that I was making the best possible choice.  

Now, with the perfect clarity of retrospect, I can see it exactly as it progressed.  I know what I did right and I know what I did wrong and I know that I am better off without them than I ever even could have had the possibility of being with them.  

I still don't remember everything; some abuses still lay dormant in me and occasionally one will bubble up as further proof of my rightness in defending myself and discontinuing my relationship with these awful people who called themselves my family.  But, I remember enough to know that the source of my strength in breaking the cycle came from within me.  I'm the one who changed, and I'm ever so glad that I did. 

Love,

Vanci

Change and Crustaceans

I've been thinking about myself - not in a weird self-centered mirror, mirror on the wall type of way - more along the lines of end of the year reflection upon who I am these days and what I like about me and what I'd like to change.

At this busy, busy time of year and with these thoughts rattling around between my ears, it occurs to me; change is hard work.  I mean really hard.  Over the last four years I feel like I've become the emotional equivalent of a marathon runner.  I've worked so hard to reclaim my inner Vanci, and whether that's meant recognizing that alcohol was killing me instead of my problems and therefore drying out or going trough the painful steps in tearing away the wrong-taught NFOO family system that I was starting to duplicate in my FOC and replacing it with a better way, I have trudged the road.

Have I arrived at my destination?  Nah.  But I'm a lot further on the road to freedom and happiness than I'd have ever thought I could be.  That progress, that hard-won and fought for progress is a direct result of me changing me.  Regardless of why I needed to change or how I did it, man oh man alive, it's been worth it.

And that willingness, I think, is the key that has unlocked so many previously forbidden and hidden doors.  My desire to be better has in so many ways translated into my ability to do and be so.  It occurs to me that my desire and willingness is what separates me from the Narcs.

They've proven to me over and over again that what they want is not to make themselves better.  They don't want to make their relationships with me or anyone else better.  What they want is to keep me on their level, to get me back into functioning in the role that they assigned me and that I chose to assume for so long because it makes them feel better, no matter the cost to me.  I've wanted to change me for the better, and they've wanted me to change back to what they think is better for them.  Not only is their desire implausible, it just doesn't create any good results.

DH has told a truly insightful story to our DDs on many occasions - to eye-rolls every time - of the Crabs in the Pot.  Usually he tells it when we are discussing some friend or group of friends that the DDs are having trouble with or who are having trouble themselves.  It goes like this:
If you put a bunch of crabs in a pot of water and slowly bring it to a boil, they'll all die.  In that space of time where the water is starting to heat, they should all be able to crawl out, but they don't.  Why?  Because as soon as one crab gets above the fray and heads for the top, the other crabs in the pot grab onto it with their crabby little claws and pull the potential survivor back in.  And they all die together.

*Insert melodramatic teenage eye-roll here*

He's right, though, and I love that the moral of the story when he tells it is this; to survive the other crabs in the pot, you have to NOT GET IN THE POT in the first place.  You have to change the entire scenario.  You have to change.  You have to be willing to be separate, apart from, isolated, lonely, cast out, even if it means you're shivering in the cold for a while while the rest of the crabs are riding out that apparent bubble bath.
The result of that change is different for everyone, I assume.  But I know that for me, it's meant freedom.  Joy.  Peace.  Laughter.  Looking in the mirror and liking what I see.  Having genuine relationships and being an authentic person.  What fantastic rewards have come to me just for being willing to change!

I'm still open and willing to healthy change that leads me in a better direction, and they're not.  Sad as that may be for them, I think I'll stay out of the pot nevertheless.  Indefinitely.

Love,
Vanci

P.S.  No crabs were hurt in the writing of this post.

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