In the meantime, I've been thinking about safety and what it means to be safe. I had such a skewed definition of safety in my childhood, adolescence and younger adult life under the omnipresent cloud of my FOO. Safety meant, in that clan context, that I had to stay within the lines that they drew for me. Step out of the family mandate and WHAM! pay the price. From small things - choosing a different political view than the FOO, even a weak one, to large - revealing the sexual abuse perpetrated by my father, I was taught early on that any time I acted outside of the 'best interests' of The Family, I would suffer for it.
It was logical - if I kept doing what they told me to do, kept being who they said that I was, they didn't lash out. Sure, they attacked me in subtle ways and eroded my sense of self on a daily basis, but as long as I didn't take a real stand against them, they didn't excercise that ultimate of dysfunctional family WMDs: banishment. Safety became defined by this framework for me. It was all about what they said was good for me, what they said I could or couldn't do, even who they said I was.
I was told repeatedly as a child that I was 'clumsy.' So I was. In the last four years of NC, I've noticed that I hardly ever drop anything, fall down or run into walls anymore. I was told as a teenager that I would 'always be heavy,' and I became very large indeed. As a young lady and after the birth of my first daughter I worked all the time to support her and became thin. They told me that I 'looked sick.' And I was. Amazing what our minds can turn into beliefs and how our bodies translate that into reality.
So, safety became a misconceived perception for me. It meant the ultimate maintainance of the status quo and sacrifice of anything (and sometimes everything) in order to simply keep my role in the family. I could only be loved by them when I stayed in the mold that they'd cast for me. If I needed any further proof of this, well, look what happened when I did finally make a stand; violence and eventually ostracization ensued.
Fast forward four years. I've maintained healthy boundaries and learned how to protect myself and my FOC. I've not only learned a true definition of safety; I've learned how to create safety. I'm happy.
In April, I took a rare, rare, rare day off from work. DH and the DD's were in work and school and I had some of that most precious commodity - time. Enjoying my day at home, I received a phone call from a number that I didn't recognize, but it wasn't local, so I didn't think to screen it. It was one of the Minions of NM, her brother, my uncle. Here's the last communciation that I received from him, almost four years ago, prior to the April phone call:
Vanci,
When I talked with (your brother) last week and found out that you had not called or gone by to see (your mother), I was extremely upset. She was in such pain, and she needed you, and you let her down.
No hurt you could possibly have suffered from any family member can justify the unhappiness you have brought to everyone's life. You have deprived (your husband) of (your brother and brother in law's)friendship, you have deprived (your nephew) of (your daughters') company and them of his, you have alienated a sister that could have been a life-long support, and you have removed from your girls' young lives the guiding and love your parents can offer. And you have done so much damage to yourself in creating all this misery that I doubt you will ever be able to atone for it.
But most of all, you have behaved toward your mother without conscience, and I will never forgive you for that. She remains the best person I have ever known, and you have quite literally shortened her life.
I honestly believe you are seriously disturbed mentally-- so much so, in fact, that I don't think you are even capable of realizing it.
I loved you specially, and it hurts me to lose you, but I consider it done.
Uncle MinionWhen I received this email - almost four years ago - I didn't respond. It seemed pretty clear that responding would be akin to finding a brick wall and beating my forehead against it. (A little background - NM had just had surgery on her knee, Uncle called me to say I should go see her - I told him I'd think about it and took a week to try to figure out how I could visit her and say, "Hey, get better, but don't violate my boundary and contact me even though I'm violating that same boundary right now..." and then I opened my email in box and saw this.)
Needless to say, I was very shocked when I answered the phone and it was Uncle Minion. He was calling to tell me that NM was in ICU in the hospital with double pneumonia and failing kidneys and that she probably wasn't going to make it. I'll leave the discussion of what fourteen years of narcotic painkiller abuse does to one's kidneys for another day, and just say that it was apparent that her condition was grave.
I talked to DH and did some soul searching, and ultimately decided that it would by in my best interests to make the effort to go visit her. I didn't want to leave a stone unturned that I would regret later on. We made it as safe as possible; DH went with me and we visited very late in the evening ("thinning out the herd," was what DH called that tactic,) and stayed only a short while. Ultimately I felt good about having done what I felt was the right thing. She recovered, and other events have taken place since, but I told you all that so that I could tell you this for now.
On the day we were planning to make the trek to ICU and confront possible, probable, crazyness, my counselor asked me this question: "Vanci, what are the safe places in your life now?"
I immediately started rattling off the list; my home, my work, my friends, my DH, my DD's, my in-laws... every relationship that I have. Every place that I willingly spend time. Every repose I have is restful and safe. None of those people or places choose to intentionally try to hurt me on any kind of regular basis, none of them want me to be anything other than the Vanci that I am.
What a shift, eh? With that new and improved and true definition of safety tucked in my heart, I was able to saddle up and take myself into - and out of - a potentially dangerous situation. Unscathed. Why? Because I had all those safe little loving memories and pieces of joy with me all the time.
I am truly blessed. And safe!
Love,
Vanci
