I've been out of the blogland loop for a while, and I miss it. I miss all of you. I miss posting because I miss the craft of it - this has been my primary writing vehicle during the last year, and I certainly miss the act of expression. Mostly, though, I miss your stories and following you each on your arcs through them.
I do have a good reason, though, one that I'm sure you can understand. Life's just been too good, folks, too full of such incredible adventures and heart-warming moments lately for me to have any time to stop by or to knock on your doors.
Have you ever watched a disaster movie or read a post-apocalyptic novel? They all have some elements in common: the Event, (the disaster, the near end of the world as we know it, the catalyst,) closely followed by some form of Monumental Struggle for the survivors, (of varying length and quality, no doubt, but this period of scraping for continued existence is crucial, otherwise these stories would be short, gruesome and very unpopular,) and then there's a Rebuilding Period, (when societies of some sort are reformed, rules are re-established and we are made to understand who the good guys an bad guys will be,) followed by the Rebirth of the continuation of human existence, (where we learn that the good guys will find a way to build it better, stronger, even if a few of them have to die to do it,) and then there is the Great Peace. The End. Until the next time.
That last part, the final scene of episode I, that's where I've been lately, and let me just say that it's been fine. In the movies or the books, the visual would involve a softly setting sun, a flower pushing up through the ashes and opening its petals, waves lapping at the beach, new loves clasping hands and holding precious children.
In my life in the past few months, it's involved relationships, relationships, relationships and all of the attendant reward of joy, love, excitement. We've had a family vacation, several college visits, financial gain, accolades, good grades, happy outings, happy stay-inings, Spring weather, plans for a new garden and I even had a lovely birthday surrounded by people who I love and who love me and with no expectations of anything else being required. It's been normal and sweet and kind and fun.
Six years after my NFOO Event, and after having gone through unthinkable pain to crawl back out of the crater, having broken the chains that bound me, after slogging through scorched earth for miles upon miles, having weathered epic storms and fought raging battles, I've reached the shore of my Great Peace. It is full of the kind of relationships that my ties to the NFOO kept me from having. It's heaven.
I recently had an interesting conversation with my counselor, who's been with the FOC in various incarnations through all of this and was one of the primary voices of reason in the beginning of the struggle to reclaim my shattered internal landscape. We only see him once a month now, and in fact he's actually seeing my youngest DD only as she likes to know that he's available to her if she needs to talk, though she's rapidly losing interest as her life improves with both distance from the Crazymakers and the course of her maturity. So I guess he's sort of on retainer more than anything else.
I always talk to him alone for 10-15 minutes at the beginning of her session, just to keep him current on the facts of our lives. Lately there hasn't been anything worrying to say, but I had explained to him an issue that DD was having and what she and I had talked about so that he would know some of the backstory if she chose to bring it up. We'd basically already developed a resolution together and she was feeling pretty good about it at that point.
He said, "Vanci, a lot of people who have grown up in abusive homes grow up and have children and they try very hard to do better for their children, to treat their children better than they were treated and that's a good thing, that's progress. You have done that and you've taken it further. You've learned how to treat your children with respect and how to have actual relationships with them as the actual human beings that they are and that is what has stopped the cycle of abuse for all of you."
This was a key moment for me.
It strikes me that this is a key understanding to not only stopping continued abuse, but to making sure that abuse never starts in the first place. Respect for children as human beings seems like such a simple concept, but every Narc and Abuser chooses to disregard this basic human right. But now I don't, and my children don't either.
That cycle being shut down, shuttered, lit on fire, broken, buried, melted and GONE, that's been the point. And that's what I've taken with me.
The NFOO worked forever to beat me, break me, hurt me, and they were exquisitely successful in doing just that for a long time - to the point that I almost, almost sacrificed even my children to their altar of insanity.
But I didn't. And I came back, and I repaired all the damage I could find, not with some half-ass patch up job either. Over and over again I've gone back to the source of the pain in order to suck out all of the poison, even when it's meant that I had to cut away some of the living flesh in order to do so.
And the reward? For me, it's been that I've become able to truly love truly loving people.
The gravy on top? I've almost finished raising two daughters - born into the Crazymaker Clan - who are so self-assured, so smart, so present and so loved that it would be unthinkable to them to allow the fucktards of the NFOO or their non-family counterparts to treat them like I was treated for years.
Oldest DD said to me a couple of weeks ago when we happened to see one of the NFOO members from a distance and I asked, "Are you okay?" - "Oh hell yeah, Mom, why wouldn't I be? I don't need psycho people like that or their drama in my life. They're not my responsibility."
Living well, it seems, is truly the best revenge.
Love,
Vanci
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Thursday, March 21, 2013
The Kindness of A Stranger
Yesterday would have been the 85th birthday of one of my heroes, Mr. Fred Rogers.
I loved his television show, Mister Rogers Neighborhood, from a very early age, so much so that the thought of it now brings tears to my eyes. Remembering that a television character - though an iconic one, still a stranger to me - was one of the kindest influences in my world... that's just heartbreaking.
Mister Rogers told millions of children, including me, this: "I like you just the way you are."
He said it over and over again. He told me that it was okay to be me. He showed me that there were hurtful things and people that happened in the sometimes scary world, but that I was okay and that I would be okay and that I was important. He convinced me with his sweater and his sneakers and his consistency in feeding the fish that there were gentle, kind, caring people in the world... somewhere, even if there weren't any in my house.
I think back now and I realize that this man's influence on my early life was profound. The dysfunction that the Nparents created was so total that my life until school was a vortex of isolation. Even after I began to attend school, frequent moves and constant uprooting didn't allow me to establish any true connections outside of the Clan. But Mister Rogers, man, he could get in. PBS was a constant in every place we lived, thank goodness, and I remember the joy of finding out when I would be able to see Mister Rogers again after every move, at least until around the first grade.
That's about the time when the Nsiblings - possibly with the help of the Nparents, certainly without the Nparents stopping them - began to heap ridicule on me for loving Mister Rogers' show so much. GCYB was pretty young still, but even a four year old will join in on calling his older sister a baby if everyone else thinks it's funny.
Wow, you know, you really have to work to hurt a child like they hurt me. I didn't want anything from them, I didn't even ask for any of their time. I just wanted to be left alone long enough to hear a stranger in a cardigan tell me that I was valuable, that I was wanted, that he loved having me for a neighbor. I sat there by myself, cross legged on the shag carpet, holding my rag doll and talking to her like I would to a real friend, listening to a stranger telling me that I was likable, filling me up just a smidgen with the idea that I was loved. I just wanted to get on that trolley that would take me to the magical land of make believe and go live in the damn tree with King Friday and Queen Sara.
So I sit here and type this with tears streaming down my face as I think of that lost, lonely, hurting little girl that I was, and I mourn for all the abuses, all the pain, all that years of struggle that I know she's going to have to face in order to get out, get away, get better, to make her stand and to walk away from the monsters. I wish that Mister Rogers could reach through the screen and give her a hug, or that I could instead. I've read about Mr. Rogers' life, and I know that this feeling of love and safety is what he was intending to pass on to children. And he did pass that on to me.
As sad as it is that my frame of reference means that one of the kindest people I knew in my formative years was a television character, I'm also so happy to have had even those bread crumbs of kindness, gentle acceptance, love.
I held onto them over the years, you see. I used them to find my way home. I pass them on every day, to my daughters, to other people in my life - adults and children alike. Mister Rogers said,
"The greatest gift you give is the gift of your honest self."
And that is one of the greatest lessons of my life, despite the monstrous efforts of the vile abusers of my NFOO. I am my honest self, which just so happens to be a pretty decent self after all.
I bet you would like to have a neighbor just like me.
Mister Rogers gets more credit for my goodness, my kindness, my generosity, my compassion, my empathy and my love of my neighbors than anyone else from my childhood. He's certainly more deserving.
Love,
Vanci
I loved his television show, Mister Rogers Neighborhood, from a very early age, so much so that the thought of it now brings tears to my eyes. Remembering that a television character - though an iconic one, still a stranger to me - was one of the kindest influences in my world... that's just heartbreaking.
Mister Rogers told millions of children, including me, this: "I like you just the way you are."
He said it over and over again. He told me that it was okay to be me. He showed me that there were hurtful things and people that happened in the sometimes scary world, but that I was okay and that I would be okay and that I was important. He convinced me with his sweater and his sneakers and his consistency in feeding the fish that there were gentle, kind, caring people in the world... somewhere, even if there weren't any in my house.
I think back now and I realize that this man's influence on my early life was profound. The dysfunction that the Nparents created was so total that my life until school was a vortex of isolation. Even after I began to attend school, frequent moves and constant uprooting didn't allow me to establish any true connections outside of the Clan. But Mister Rogers, man, he could get in. PBS was a constant in every place we lived, thank goodness, and I remember the joy of finding out when I would be able to see Mister Rogers again after every move, at least until around the first grade.
That's about the time when the Nsiblings - possibly with the help of the Nparents, certainly without the Nparents stopping them - began to heap ridicule on me for loving Mister Rogers' show so much. GCYB was pretty young still, but even a four year old will join in on calling his older sister a baby if everyone else thinks it's funny.
Wow, you know, you really have to work to hurt a child like they hurt me. I didn't want anything from them, I didn't even ask for any of their time. I just wanted to be left alone long enough to hear a stranger in a cardigan tell me that I was valuable, that I was wanted, that he loved having me for a neighbor. I sat there by myself, cross legged on the shag carpet, holding my rag doll and talking to her like I would to a real friend, listening to a stranger telling me that I was likable, filling me up just a smidgen with the idea that I was loved. I just wanted to get on that trolley that would take me to the magical land of make believe and go live in the damn tree with King Friday and Queen Sara.
So I sit here and type this with tears streaming down my face as I think of that lost, lonely, hurting little girl that I was, and I mourn for all the abuses, all the pain, all that years of struggle that I know she's going to have to face in order to get out, get away, get better, to make her stand and to walk away from the monsters. I wish that Mister Rogers could reach through the screen and give her a hug, or that I could instead. I've read about Mr. Rogers' life, and I know that this feeling of love and safety is what he was intending to pass on to children. And he did pass that on to me.
As sad as it is that my frame of reference means that one of the kindest people I knew in my formative years was a television character, I'm also so happy to have had even those bread crumbs of kindness, gentle acceptance, love.
I held onto them over the years, you see. I used them to find my way home. I pass them on every day, to my daughters, to other people in my life - adults and children alike. Mister Rogers said,
"The greatest gift you give is the gift of your honest self."
And that is one of the greatest lessons of my life, despite the monstrous efforts of the vile abusers of my NFOO. I am my honest self, which just so happens to be a pretty decent self after all.
I bet you would like to have a neighbor just like me.
Mister Rogers gets more credit for my goodness, my kindness, my generosity, my compassion, my empathy and my love of my neighbors than anyone else from my childhood. He's certainly more deserving.
Love,
Vanci
Monday, March 18, 2013
Overcoming Trauma
I'm a pattern seeker. I always have been. My brain has always been wired for puzzles, and they've consequently always been fun and relatively easy for me. My upbringing fine-tuned my ability to pick up clues to patterns as well, creating that intuitive sense that all survivors of abuse and trauma seem to develop on some level, just in order to see the crazy train bearing down the tracks at us. Seeing patterns intuitively is partly based in the ability to anticipate, I think, which is also grounded in sensitive observation skills.
In a childhood world where a slammed door means something far, far greater (and often more ominous,) than a gusting wind, we learn to pick up supersonic behavioral clues and subtle hints about the direction of the atmosphere. I see how this has translated into my adult life; I'm always on the hunt for answers, usually before a question has even been posed. In moderation, this serves me well, as I can often see a pattern - whether of data or behavior - forming long before my peers or colleagues see it.
Lately, I've noticed a pattern in the conversations that I'm having with the people around me - from my daughters to my bosses, from newcomers to my alcoholism recovery support groups to the distant coworker that I recently sat next to on the plane, from friends of friends to co-workers grabbing a coffee in the break room. Everyone's asking me this on some level,
"What's the secret to overcoming trauma?"
Dalai Lama, Yoda-type I ain't.
But I know a little something about how to move on from pain.
So here it is, straight from me to you, the best trick I know to overcome trauma...
It takes ACTION.
Unfortunately, the first action that anyone has to take in order to overcome trauma, I believe, is to face the trauma. I'm not a big fan of pop-psych ways to do this. I believe that I would bodily harm anyone who tried to wrap me in a warm and fuzzy blanket to simulate the womb. I don't think that setting the stage to re-live a trauma is necessary, but it does have to be remembered, acknowledged, brought forth into the light.
It's ugly, it's painful, it's shameful, it's embarrassing and it goes against our very natures, but I believe that this action of exposure has to happen. How, after all, can one overcome something that is fuzzy around the edges? How can I overcome fear if I'm not entirely sure what it is that I'm afraid of.
I used to think that I was afraid of the dark.
It was a vague, faceless, anonymous fear.
I looked at it and I thought about it and I wrote down specifics and I touched it and I danced with it and I examined it and analyzed it.
Guess what? I'm not afraid of the dark.
I'm afraid of the abuse that happened to me in the dark.
Ahhhhh...
What's the antidote to that fear? Well, there's a whole list of ways that I can keep myself safe from that very specific fear, starting (and often ending too,) with this: don't allow the people who abused me in the dark into my life, house or head. And if that doesn't work? Turn on a night-light, know my surroundings and the people in it, have a plan (turning on the light in the room I'm entering before I turn off the light in the room I just left,) and a contingency plan (flashlight on the nightstand,) and I could go on and on and on.
I can take action to at best banish, at worst delay that fear. Either way, I'm progressing - taking action.
I used to spend a lot of time reading self-help books. Some of them were pretty good, especially the ones that made me stop my ingrained thought cycle and attempt to re-think it. I can't honestly say that I learned anything I didn't already know, but the process of attempting to seek self-improvement DID get me out of my own thinking long enough to look at myself and my behavior from a different angle. And that is an action.
Maybe I don't know how to act or react. Maybe my training as an abused child and as a scapegoat prevented me from learning how to handle myself, sure. Survivors of trauma often don't know how they should move on, we just know that we don't want the pain that we've already had anymore. But I always have a baseline, and that ground zero is this: I know definitively how NOT to act. I know what causes pain to others and to myself, so I know what I don't want.
Holding on to that negative has been a crux of action that I've returned to over and over again; "Well, I won't do that," has been the jumping off point for me so many times of trying... well, anything BUT that. I've gone full pendulum swing to the opposite ends of the earth before in an attempt to get my emotional bearings in the world post-abuser, and I've tried everything on the spectrum in between. Sometimes it's worked and sometimes not, but I've learned more and more about how to act and react appropriately (and non-abusively,) every single time. So that, too, has been action.
So I've taken the actions to identify the trauma, I've taken the action to rethink the trauma and how it affects my life today, and I've taken the action to determine how I will avoid the trauma in the future and how I will act differently. Doing this over and over and over again has helped me to face, overcome and move on from trauma.
Lastly, and this is my favorite action, I make it a point to attempt to do something good every single day. I find at least one moment each and every day in which I can take some action that pleases me, or that I can enjoy, or that makes me smile or laugh - often this involves kindness and humor to another living soul. This is an annuity based action. I get a moment of pleasure today, AND I've just set myself up for success down the road. Six months from now, when I have that moment of relived trauma that pops up out of nowhere and attempts to side-swipe me, I will also have a well of good moments to draw from to counterbalance that painful memory. I create good future memories every day partly so that I will have them in the future when I need them -but mostly because it feels good to do good.
When the memory of NM telling me that I'm the most selfish person on the face of the planet surfaces and attempts to derail me, I'm going to remember, too, that I just gave a homeless veteran every single cash money bill in my wallet, and that when he looked at me like he was going to cry and said, "How can I repay you?" my honest, authentic and sincere answer to him was, "You already have sir, thank you for your service." Is that the action of a selfish person? I think not. But it is action.
These are all great tools, and I can honestly say that these principles are some of the main reasons that I'm still ambulatory and have made it through so much trauma with my sanity - relatively - intact.
But the greatest action I've taken and that I continue to take in order to overcome trauma is this:
I stay the fuck away from the people and places that cause me trauma in the first place.
Love,
Vanci
In a childhood world where a slammed door means something far, far greater (and often more ominous,) than a gusting wind, we learn to pick up supersonic behavioral clues and subtle hints about the direction of the atmosphere. I see how this has translated into my adult life; I'm always on the hunt for answers, usually before a question has even been posed. In moderation, this serves me well, as I can often see a pattern - whether of data or behavior - forming long before my peers or colleagues see it.
Lately, I've noticed a pattern in the conversations that I'm having with the people around me - from my daughters to my bosses, from newcomers to my alcoholism recovery support groups to the distant coworker that I recently sat next to on the plane, from friends of friends to co-workers grabbing a coffee in the break room. Everyone's asking me this on some level,
"What's the secret to overcoming trauma?"
Dalai Lama, Yoda-type I ain't.
But I know a little something about how to move on from pain.
So here it is, straight from me to you, the best trick I know to overcome trauma...
It takes ACTION.
Unfortunately, the first action that anyone has to take in order to overcome trauma, I believe, is to face the trauma. I'm not a big fan of pop-psych ways to do this. I believe that I would bodily harm anyone who tried to wrap me in a warm and fuzzy blanket to simulate the womb. I don't think that setting the stage to re-live a trauma is necessary, but it does have to be remembered, acknowledged, brought forth into the light.
It's ugly, it's painful, it's shameful, it's embarrassing and it goes against our very natures, but I believe that this action of exposure has to happen. How, after all, can one overcome something that is fuzzy around the edges? How can I overcome fear if I'm not entirely sure what it is that I'm afraid of.
I used to think that I was afraid of the dark.
It was a vague, faceless, anonymous fear.
I looked at it and I thought about it and I wrote down specifics and I touched it and I danced with it and I examined it and analyzed it.
Guess what? I'm not afraid of the dark.
I'm afraid of the abuse that happened to me in the dark.
Ahhhhh...
What's the antidote to that fear? Well, there's a whole list of ways that I can keep myself safe from that very specific fear, starting (and often ending too,) with this: don't allow the people who abused me in the dark into my life, house or head. And if that doesn't work? Turn on a night-light, know my surroundings and the people in it, have a plan (turning on the light in the room I'm entering before I turn off the light in the room I just left,) and a contingency plan (flashlight on the nightstand,) and I could go on and on and on.
I can take action to at best banish, at worst delay that fear. Either way, I'm progressing - taking action.
I used to spend a lot of time reading self-help books. Some of them were pretty good, especially the ones that made me stop my ingrained thought cycle and attempt to re-think it. I can't honestly say that I learned anything I didn't already know, but the process of attempting to seek self-improvement DID get me out of my own thinking long enough to look at myself and my behavior from a different angle. And that is an action.
Maybe I don't know how to act or react. Maybe my training as an abused child and as a scapegoat prevented me from learning how to handle myself, sure. Survivors of trauma often don't know how they should move on, we just know that we don't want the pain that we've already had anymore. But I always have a baseline, and that ground zero is this: I know definitively how NOT to act. I know what causes pain to others and to myself, so I know what I don't want.
Holding on to that negative has been a crux of action that I've returned to over and over again; "Well, I won't do that," has been the jumping off point for me so many times of trying... well, anything BUT that. I've gone full pendulum swing to the opposite ends of the earth before in an attempt to get my emotional bearings in the world post-abuser, and I've tried everything on the spectrum in between. Sometimes it's worked and sometimes not, but I've learned more and more about how to act and react appropriately (and non-abusively,) every single time. So that, too, has been action.
So I've taken the actions to identify the trauma, I've taken the action to rethink the trauma and how it affects my life today, and I've taken the action to determine how I will avoid the trauma in the future and how I will act differently. Doing this over and over and over again has helped me to face, overcome and move on from trauma.
Lastly, and this is my favorite action, I make it a point to attempt to do something good every single day. I find at least one moment each and every day in which I can take some action that pleases me, or that I can enjoy, or that makes me smile or laugh - often this involves kindness and humor to another living soul. This is an annuity based action. I get a moment of pleasure today, AND I've just set myself up for success down the road. Six months from now, when I have that moment of relived trauma that pops up out of nowhere and attempts to side-swipe me, I will also have a well of good moments to draw from to counterbalance that painful memory. I create good future memories every day partly so that I will have them in the future when I need them -but mostly because it feels good to do good.
When the memory of NM telling me that I'm the most selfish person on the face of the planet surfaces and attempts to derail me, I'm going to remember, too, that I just gave a homeless veteran every single cash money bill in my wallet, and that when he looked at me like he was going to cry and said, "How can I repay you?" my honest, authentic and sincere answer to him was, "You already have sir, thank you for your service." Is that the action of a selfish person? I think not. But it is action.
These are all great tools, and I can honestly say that these principles are some of the main reasons that I'm still ambulatory and have made it through so much trauma with my sanity - relatively - intact.
But the greatest action I've taken and that I continue to take in order to overcome trauma is this:
I stay the fuck away from the people and places that cause me trauma in the first place.
Love,
Vanci
Friday, March 8, 2013
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
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
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Bullies Are Talking Turds
My youngest DD has been having a tough time, and it's resulted in some ongoing stomach issues due to stress. She has a life-long auto-immune disease that is controlled through her diet and excludes a major food group, so that makes her different from her peers. She's sensitive enough physically that she cannot eat out - anywhere- safely, which is a tough nut for a teen girl. So many social events revolve around fast food and/or coffee-like drinks, and when it comes to those mighty bastions of American grubbery, she's -quite simply- shit out of luck. She sometimes ends up feeling unique (a dirty word for girls between the ages of about 11 and 17ish, if they're lucky.)
DD is a tough, scrappy, take-no-crapola kind of young lady. She was abused in much the same way that I was, though thankfully to a lesser extent, by members of the Crazymaker Clan, which is something that I didn't know until years after NC. We've worked through a lot of it, and we still work through it every day. I've been super proud of her for being so willing to tackle the abuse and the residual effects head-on, and she's made great progress, not least of which is that she is absolutely willing to defend herself.
Part of her significant progress has been that she is a relative rarity for a 15 year old girl: she knows exactly who she is and exactly what that means and she is steadfast in her determination to remain herself regardless of external pressures. This is an absolute joy to me as a mother, that she is so fiercely aware and independent. It's amazing to see your children develop their own character. I'm constantly amazed by the depth that both the DD's possess, and I'm fascinated by their choices, their physical and emotional autonomy. If they weren't my daughters, I'd meet them as strangers and want to know more about them. They're just that cool. Unfortunately, high school is a whole mess of crabs in a pot of boiling water, and that mob of crabs doesn't like to let any of the more independent ones escape unscathed.
And... youngest DD started high school last fall. Oy. I'm sorry if you're one of them, I mean no offense, but I can't imagine what kind of experience anyone could have in high school that would make them reminisce fondly for those 'glory days.' I've yet to meet any well-adjusted and balanced adult who actually enjoyed the hell that is high school. High school sucks ass, especially when you're a bottom of the barrel first year freshman swimming in a sea of more seasoned than you sharks.
She's had some trouble adjusting and it's begun to manifest physically in her stomach aches, so we trooped off to the family doctor today to get it checked out. I'm a master of controlling my control-ables, so though I had a suspicion that the tummy problems were stress-induced and that stress was largely related to the not-so-happyfuntimes experience of high school, I needed to check off the list of physical concerns in order to exclude them. So, that done, we got down to brass tacks and had a frank conversation about the causes and results of the issues.
Poor kids: a recovered ACoN and alkie for a mom means that we always get it down to a conversation about the causes and results at some point. Sometimes I'm sure they'd like it if I just blew a problem off or yelled about it and grounded them for a week. Alas, that's not how I'm built.
It was a good convo, though, especially after DD got real and started talking about some of the bullying that she's been subject to and how it's weighing on her.
It's funny, we hear talk about bullying all the time. It's a bad word in our society. Bullying is bad. Bullying will not be tolerated. We have a zero tolerance for bullying. But what I've noticed is that it's a very narrow scope of definition that we're willing to accept when we talk about bullying.
We have no problem pointing to the oversized 10 year old boy who's pulling cute little Janie's blonde ponytail on the playground and saying, "Yes! He's a BULLY!" And then we send him to the principal's office to pay for that. Maybe sign him up for a sensitivity course or have him wash some walls.
We watch The Breakfast Club and just can't believe that anyone didn't stand up and say "Stop it!" when those butt-cheeks met the duct tape. "He's a bully!" we say.
We read about Queen Bees and everyone immediately knows who the bullies are, and we want to point at them and scream, "Bully!" Maybe do a little capital letter B embroidering on somebody's new Hollister shirt.
We want to point out that No means No and that our private places are private and that strangers are dangerous and that yelling "fire!" will get you faster action than screaming "rape!" and we want so desperately to believe that these coloring-book safety tips will protect our children from the world.
But their peers? How does one protect a child from the asshole sitting next to her in Math who makes snide comments to the rest of the teens in the class about her breast size? He didn't touch her, after all, he didn't call her a racial epithet and he wasn't even directly speaking to her . What's punishable there?
How does one protect a child from the little twit who makes it a point to invite an entire established circle of friends to a party but excludes her? And then talks about said shindig at length and within intentional earshot? It's not as if a police report can be filed for Willful Exclusion from a Private Social Function with Aggravated Flaunting.
I think (hope) that schools for younger kids have a little bit more control and say. It seems to be addressed more and more at younger ages. (Even then, though, I have doubts about the way it's handled - I can't tell you how many times I've heard a parent/teacher/counselor of a child say, "Bullies are hurting inside and that's why they're acting this way toward you." As if that matters? I mean, seriously, who gives a fuck? Serial killers are traumatized too, am I supposed to accept that they have a low self esteem and it's really not about me if I run into one of those? Maybe ask them if they want to talk about it before they sharpen the knife?)
In high school, though, which is an overcrowded and understaffed sinking cruise ship with a bad case of e. coli and no radar signal if I've ever seen one, this type of verbal/emotional bullying is de rigeur and so low on the list of administrative priorities as to not exist. Somebody's getting knocked up in the parking lot, breaking into a locker, smuggling in a joint. Those are the things the alleged people in charge at the alleged institute of learning are allegedly dealing with. That and attendance as it directly relates to funding. So, no help there. The attitude is generally, "Let us know when blood gets drawn."
It's all so familiar; all the triangulating, rank forming, gaslighting, passive-aggressiveness, crazymaking. Every time I hear about this shite, I just can't help but compare it to the NFOO. What is the NFOO really? A gang of adolescent hoodlums. A bunch of limp-dicked power grubbing bullies getting off on their little game of Who Can Be the Meanest.
So, DD and I talked about it. And we came back around to what we always come back around to when dealing with idiots and assholes. You Browncoats out there, this is for you, "Are we caring about this?"
I mean, seriously, let's just lay this out. A bully is a POS. A bully is someone not smart enough to find their own happiness. A bully is a person who can't process well enough to connect with the world around them. A bully is someone who's too stupid to know how to entertain themselves. A bully is a person who's not likable enough to have people like them for anything other than the vicarious jerk-off high of making someone else look bad. A bully is too ineffectual to do anything of value on their own, so they choose to tear down the accomplishments of others instead.
Basically, a bully has the attractiveness of turd on a sidewalk.
So, again, regarding what a bully has to say, "Are we caring about this?" Honestly, caring is too strong a word. Are we even listening to a word that comes out of a turd's mouth? Even if it can talk, it's still just a turd. Nothing more. Nothing less.
You know what I do when I see a turd on a sidewalk? Nothing. I don't touch it, I don't talk to it, I don't ask it how it feels or if it's lashing out at me because it's hurting inside, I don't wonder why it's a turd or who caused it to be a turd on the sidewalk. I get away from it, glad I didn't step in it. It's a turd. It's beneath me.
So, we have a new phrase in the Casa de Vanci. Bullies are talking turds. DD tells me that she's going to be picturing a very large, very stinky (and hopefully soon to be left behind to lie for eternity on their sidewalk) talking turd if she has one of these encounters again.
Kind of takes away their power, now, doesn't it?
We laughed and laughed and talked for hours about how she can get herself re-centered and all of the good things/people/activities/love she has in her life, and she's going to be fine. Eventually, once she's herself again, I might even have to have a little pity for the bullies, cause DD's a firecracker; her powder just got wet for a minute. Eventually, somebody's going to lose a finger.
Nah, I'll never feel sorry for bullies. I know who they grow up to be.
Love,
Vanci
DD is a tough, scrappy, take-no-crapola kind of young lady. She was abused in much the same way that I was, though thankfully to a lesser extent, by members of the Crazymaker Clan, which is something that I didn't know until years after NC. We've worked through a lot of it, and we still work through it every day. I've been super proud of her for being so willing to tackle the abuse and the residual effects head-on, and she's made great progress, not least of which is that she is absolutely willing to defend herself.
Part of her significant progress has been that she is a relative rarity for a 15 year old girl: she knows exactly who she is and exactly what that means and she is steadfast in her determination to remain herself regardless of external pressures. This is an absolute joy to me as a mother, that she is so fiercely aware and independent. It's amazing to see your children develop their own character. I'm constantly amazed by the depth that both the DD's possess, and I'm fascinated by their choices, their physical and emotional autonomy. If they weren't my daughters, I'd meet them as strangers and want to know more about them. They're just that cool. Unfortunately, high school is a whole mess of crabs in a pot of boiling water, and that mob of crabs doesn't like to let any of the more independent ones escape unscathed.
And... youngest DD started high school last fall. Oy. I'm sorry if you're one of them, I mean no offense, but I can't imagine what kind of experience anyone could have in high school that would make them reminisce fondly for those 'glory days.' I've yet to meet any well-adjusted and balanced adult who actually enjoyed the hell that is high school. High school sucks ass, especially when you're a bottom of the barrel first year freshman swimming in a sea of more seasoned than you sharks.
She's had some trouble adjusting and it's begun to manifest physically in her stomach aches, so we trooped off to the family doctor today to get it checked out. I'm a master of controlling my control-ables, so though I had a suspicion that the tummy problems were stress-induced and that stress was largely related to the not-so-happyfuntimes experience of high school, I needed to check off the list of physical concerns in order to exclude them. So, that done, we got down to brass tacks and had a frank conversation about the causes and results of the issues.
Poor kids: a recovered ACoN and alkie for a mom means that we always get it down to a conversation about the causes and results at some point. Sometimes I'm sure they'd like it if I just blew a problem off or yelled about it and grounded them for a week. Alas, that's not how I'm built.
It was a good convo, though, especially after DD got real and started talking about some of the bullying that she's been subject to and how it's weighing on her.
It's funny, we hear talk about bullying all the time. It's a bad word in our society. Bullying is bad. Bullying will not be tolerated. We have a zero tolerance for bullying. But what I've noticed is that it's a very narrow scope of definition that we're willing to accept when we talk about bullying.
We have no problem pointing to the oversized 10 year old boy who's pulling cute little Janie's blonde ponytail on the playground and saying, "Yes! He's a BULLY!" And then we send him to the principal's office to pay for that. Maybe sign him up for a sensitivity course or have him wash some walls.
We watch The Breakfast Club and just can't believe that anyone didn't stand up and say "Stop it!" when those butt-cheeks met the duct tape. "He's a bully!" we say.
We read about Queen Bees and everyone immediately knows who the bullies are, and we want to point at them and scream, "Bully!" Maybe do a little capital letter B embroidering on somebody's new Hollister shirt.
We want to point out that No means No and that our private places are private and that strangers are dangerous and that yelling "fire!" will get you faster action than screaming "rape!" and we want so desperately to believe that these coloring-book safety tips will protect our children from the world.
But their peers? How does one protect a child from the asshole sitting next to her in Math who makes snide comments to the rest of the teens in the class about her breast size? He didn't touch her, after all, he didn't call her a racial epithet and he wasn't even directly speaking to her . What's punishable there?
How does one protect a child from the little twit who makes it a point to invite an entire established circle of friends to a party but excludes her? And then talks about said shindig at length and within intentional earshot? It's not as if a police report can be filed for Willful Exclusion from a Private Social Function with Aggravated Flaunting.
I think (hope) that schools for younger kids have a little bit more control and say. It seems to be addressed more and more at younger ages. (Even then, though, I have doubts about the way it's handled - I can't tell you how many times I've heard a parent/teacher/counselor of a child say, "Bullies are hurting inside and that's why they're acting this way toward you." As if that matters? I mean, seriously, who gives a fuck? Serial killers are traumatized too, am I supposed to accept that they have a low self esteem and it's really not about me if I run into one of those? Maybe ask them if they want to talk about it before they sharpen the knife?)
In high school, though, which is an overcrowded and understaffed sinking cruise ship with a bad case of e. coli and no radar signal if I've ever seen one, this type of verbal/emotional bullying is de rigeur and so low on the list of administrative priorities as to not exist. Somebody's getting knocked up in the parking lot, breaking into a locker, smuggling in a joint. Those are the things the alleged people in charge at the alleged institute of learning are allegedly dealing with. That and attendance as it directly relates to funding. So, no help there. The attitude is generally, "Let us know when blood gets drawn."
It's all so familiar; all the triangulating, rank forming, gaslighting, passive-aggressiveness, crazymaking. Every time I hear about this shite, I just can't help but compare it to the NFOO. What is the NFOO really? A gang of adolescent hoodlums. A bunch of limp-dicked power grubbing bullies getting off on their little game of Who Can Be the Meanest.
So, DD and I talked about it. And we came back around to what we always come back around to when dealing with idiots and assholes. You Browncoats out there, this is for you, "Are we caring about this?"
I mean, seriously, let's just lay this out. A bully is a POS. A bully is someone not smart enough to find their own happiness. A bully is a person who can't process well enough to connect with the world around them. A bully is someone who's too stupid to know how to entertain themselves. A bully is a person who's not likable enough to have people like them for anything other than the vicarious jerk-off high of making someone else look bad. A bully is too ineffectual to do anything of value on their own, so they choose to tear down the accomplishments of others instead.
Basically, a bully has the attractiveness of turd on a sidewalk.
So, again, regarding what a bully has to say, "Are we caring about this?" Honestly, caring is too strong a word. Are we even listening to a word that comes out of a turd's mouth? Even if it can talk, it's still just a turd. Nothing more. Nothing less.
You know what I do when I see a turd on a sidewalk? Nothing. I don't touch it, I don't talk to it, I don't ask it how it feels or if it's lashing out at me because it's hurting inside, I don't wonder why it's a turd or who caused it to be a turd on the sidewalk. I get away from it, glad I didn't step in it. It's a turd. It's beneath me.
So, we have a new phrase in the Casa de Vanci. Bullies are talking turds. DD tells me that she's going to be picturing a very large, very stinky (and hopefully soon to be left behind to lie for eternity on their sidewalk) talking turd if she has one of these encounters again.
Kind of takes away their power, now, doesn't it?
We laughed and laughed and talked for hours about how she can get herself re-centered and all of the good things/people/activities/love she has in her life, and she's going to be fine. Eventually, once she's herself again, I might even have to have a little pity for the bullies, cause DD's a firecracker; her powder just got wet for a minute. Eventually, somebody's going to lose a finger.
Nah, I'll never feel sorry for bullies. I know who they grow up to be.
Love,
Vanci
Thursday, February 7, 2013
Being Present is a Form of Happiness
I go through phases of intense interest in and observation of the people around me. These days, it's a deviation from normal action for me. Typically, no matter the group I'm in, I am the de facto greeter, rememberer of names, conversation starter and overall general participater. I wouldn't say that I seek the spotlight, and I'm not a compulsive joiner, but I've worked very hard for a long time to be able to enjoy whatever the present moment that I'm living in happens to be, and I'm interested in being a part of those moments. In business meetings, as a result of that desire for sincerity and authenticity, when everyone else is Chest Puffing or doing the Big Boy and Girl Dance of Uber-Professional Talk, I'm often the only person asking questions of others like, "How's your family? Your daughter must be in junior high school by now, right? How's that going?" In other words, I talk about life, and that always lightens the mood.
But lately I've been in a more subdued mood, probably because I'm still very physically tired and because it's February. Gawd, I hate this month. Gray, cold, holidays spent, taxes almost due, let's just hope that Spring gets here before June, February. DH calls it my Speculative Mood; I have a tendency to isolate a feeling, thought, pattern of behavior and just track it, watch it, ponder it. I learn a lot about people through this process.
I was recently at a meeting with a large group of coworkers, both those that I share office space with and several from other parts of my geographical region. There is a young lady from another office who is, er, um, well, she's rather off-putting. She's difficult to talk to. She gives very little in conversation; her primary contributions seem to involve making sure that all listening understand that she's, of course, right and oh so very smart. About everything. It's not malicious, it's more of a low self-esteem projection that comes off as, okay, well, maybe more than a little bitchy. A conversation with her can feel like a midnight stroll through a sanctimony-ridden land-mine field.
Having survived a lifetime in the B-I-N-G-O spinning ball of twisted conversation and pretentious aggrandizing that was my NFOO, I just shake it off. She's not central to my continued existence - not my boss, in other words - and I have only the most tenuous of ties to her, so I just let her be right when I find myself in conversation with her, which I noticed at this last outing was quite often. She chose at several different venues to seek out a seat next to me. When she gets all Sister Mary Francis on the soapbox, I just listen until I'm bored and then I make a joke. Most of the serious wanna-be professor types don't particularly care for my blase take on life in general, and tend to gravitate away from me rather quickly. To which I say, Coolsville Daddio, you go on over there and extol the virtues of contract negotiations and quality assurance systems and I'll be over here enjoying my tea and taking mental bets against myself about which of the coworkers is going to try to hit on the waitress. But this girl still seeks me out, after four years of contact in which I've maintained my same attitude, which when concerning business often can be summed up with a shoulder shrug and a, "Well-what-are-you-gonna-do-that's-life." or "Well-they-keep-paying-me-so-I-keep-showing-up." That one really stumps the suits and the ladder climbers.
So, later on, I had a conversation with one of my coworkers whom I actually consider a good friend and she, too, had noticed the way that Ms. Difficult follows me around. "I just don't understand why she likes me so much," I said. "I'm not particularly nice to her, but she seems to really want to be around me, I don't get it." This caused my friend to laugh, which threw me for a loop. "What's so funny?" I asked.
To which she replied, "Vanci, everybody likes you. You're the only one that everybody likes. You're like everybody's best friend. You're the only one who cares about everybody else. You're the only real person in the room!" Huh.
So let me get this straight. Everybody else is acting? I'm the only one capable of or willing to be real, to be present? How sad! All I can think is that there is so much, so much of value, going on in every moment - I feel like I learn something from every single interaction that I have with individuals or the world at large. How can anyone not be interested in that?
I think that it's a gift to be able to live in the moment, to be present. I know that I have a lot more fun at those meetings than anyone else does. Apparently that's because I'm the only one really there!
I spent so much of my childhood, adolescence and early adulthood afraid, just terrified of what horror was lurking around the next corner. I was always planning, and drawing up alternate plans, and making contingency plans. Hypervigilance is a fear based, trauma induced defense mechanism, and that's where I lived for so long, just trying to keep everything under wraps, the hatches battened down, the details routinely organized, everything and everyone under control.
I don't have to do that anymore, and there's such freedom for me in just being able to - forgive the overused phrase - stop and smell the roses. I'm so grateful that I can just be present in my life these days.
So, a Vanci-ku for you, in honor of the joy of living in the moment:
Fears of the future
Rob you of today's moments
Why steal from yourself?
Love,
Vanci
But lately I've been in a more subdued mood, probably because I'm still very physically tired and because it's February. Gawd, I hate this month. Gray, cold, holidays spent, taxes almost due, let's just hope that Spring gets here before June, February. DH calls it my Speculative Mood; I have a tendency to isolate a feeling, thought, pattern of behavior and just track it, watch it, ponder it. I learn a lot about people through this process.
I was recently at a meeting with a large group of coworkers, both those that I share office space with and several from other parts of my geographical region. There is a young lady from another office who is, er, um, well, she's rather off-putting. She's difficult to talk to. She gives very little in conversation; her primary contributions seem to involve making sure that all listening understand that she's, of course, right and oh so very smart. About everything. It's not malicious, it's more of a low self-esteem projection that comes off as, okay, well, maybe more than a little bitchy. A conversation with her can feel like a midnight stroll through a sanctimony-ridden land-mine field.
Having survived a lifetime in the B-I-N-G-O spinning ball of twisted conversation and pretentious aggrandizing that was my NFOO, I just shake it off. She's not central to my continued existence - not my boss, in other words - and I have only the most tenuous of ties to her, so I just let her be right when I find myself in conversation with her, which I noticed at this last outing was quite often. She chose at several different venues to seek out a seat next to me. When she gets all Sister Mary Francis on the soapbox, I just listen until I'm bored and then I make a joke. Most of the serious wanna-be professor types don't particularly care for my blase take on life in general, and tend to gravitate away from me rather quickly. To which I say, Coolsville Daddio, you go on over there and extol the virtues of contract negotiations and quality assurance systems and I'll be over here enjoying my tea and taking mental bets against myself about which of the coworkers is going to try to hit on the waitress. But this girl still seeks me out, after four years of contact in which I've maintained my same attitude, which when concerning business often can be summed up with a shoulder shrug and a, "Well-what-are-you-gonna-do-that's-life." or "Well-they-keep-paying-me-so-I-keep-showing-up." That one really stumps the suits and the ladder climbers.
So, later on, I had a conversation with one of my coworkers whom I actually consider a good friend and she, too, had noticed the way that Ms. Difficult follows me around. "I just don't understand why she likes me so much," I said. "I'm not particularly nice to her, but she seems to really want to be around me, I don't get it." This caused my friend to laugh, which threw me for a loop. "What's so funny?" I asked.
To which she replied, "Vanci, everybody likes you. You're the only one that everybody likes. You're like everybody's best friend. You're the only one who cares about everybody else. You're the only real person in the room!" Huh.
So let me get this straight. Everybody else is acting? I'm the only one capable of or willing to be real, to be present? How sad! All I can think is that there is so much, so much of value, going on in every moment - I feel like I learn something from every single interaction that I have with individuals or the world at large. How can anyone not be interested in that?
I think that it's a gift to be able to live in the moment, to be present. I know that I have a lot more fun at those meetings than anyone else does. Apparently that's because I'm the only one really there!
I spent so much of my childhood, adolescence and early adulthood afraid, just terrified of what horror was lurking around the next corner. I was always planning, and drawing up alternate plans, and making contingency plans. Hypervigilance is a fear based, trauma induced defense mechanism, and that's where I lived for so long, just trying to keep everything under wraps, the hatches battened down, the details routinely organized, everything and everyone under control.
I don't have to do that anymore, and there's such freedom for me in just being able to - forgive the overused phrase - stop and smell the roses. I'm so grateful that I can just be present in my life these days.
So, a Vanci-ku for you, in honor of the joy of living in the moment:
Fears of the future
Rob you of today's moments
Why steal from yourself?
Love,
Vanci
Sunday, February 3, 2013
The Only Way Out is Through the Center
"Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding." On Pain - Kahlil Gibran
It's been just over six years since what I think of as Vanci's Last Stand. You can read about that here, if you'd like. I've been thinking that I should do a post to commemorate the passage of another year of NC, but the reality is that the only tangible difference in my feelings about the NFOO now as compared to a year ago is that I have a far greater level of indifference to their existence than I've ever had before. In regard to my real (and quite wonderful) every day life, I've written about it all year long, and can only say that my overall feeling about the last year is that I am one lucky and grateful lady.
Much of my peace is attributable to the fact that I've got one more year of distance from the Crazymaker Clan under my belt, and that is a good thing, no, it's a great thing. Maybe even in the All Time Top Five List of Best Things. There's really not much to say beyond that.
But I've been thinking back to those crazy and painful times of six years ago, and I've been trying to ask and answer of myself some of the questions that I hear newly distanced, LC'd and NC'd peeps asking about how to make it through those rough and tumble, earth shaking, business end of the barrel times. I've been trying to do what I do best, which is basically to boil a complex issue down into a simplified reduction, examine the facts that hold true and then develop a formula. It's my process, and one that's served me well, both when I lived every day in survival mode and when I was starting to heal and now that I'm...well, I think the only way to describe where I am now is to say that I am content.
I spend very little time these days thinking about the members of the Clan, if I spend any at all. I carry my scars and they are certainly reminders of all the negative feelings and horrible memories and terrors that I've survived, sure. But they are also reminders of the fact that I broke those chains and won't be passing the bad juju down the line. I live every day in the midst of so many reminders of the good, calm, loving, helpful, graceful, classy, joyful relationships and people and life that I have now, and if I charted a graph that showed my happiness in relation to the length of time I have NC, well, I'm sure that the trend would look like a dot-com stock's value in the early nineties. Up, up and away.
I remember, though, what it felt like in Early No Contact. It felt so awful, so wrong to be separated from my 'family.' I was so tortured, so guilty for creating that heretofore unknown silence, for breaking something that I knew was wrong but that I'd been taught my whole life to accept as right. I would have done almost anything to make things better, different, even the way that they used to be. If you've read this blog at all, you'll know that every single person in my family of origin was abusive toward me in some degree. The things that I've written about here - which are the tip of the iceberg, dearies, just a smidge of the reality of the abuse that I was dealt by the fuckers - are so horrific that they could be the plot-lines of a serial killer-hunting drama on television. They're the types of things that people see or read about and think, "Surely this can't really happen in the real world." Horror, pure and simple.
But in Early NC, I was still loathe to see it for what it was, to see them for the monsters that they really are. I still held out hope that I could somehow, some way, if I was good enough or smart enough or worked hard enough or expressed myself more clearly or drew different boundaries or drank less or changed the way that I reacted or asked different questions, that I could find a way to repair my relationship with the Clan. I didn't want to even contemplate NC forever in the early days; it would have been too much for my fragile world to take. I felt like I would just shatter like a woman made of glass. Thin glass. Every. Single. Day.
I think of that now and I'd like to deny it. I'd like to say that woke up one day and I was strong, that I was instantly okay, that I always knew what to do or how to act or react, but the truth is that it was a process of "the breaking of the shell of my understanding." There's truth in the idea that a thing, once known, cannot be unknown. As soon as I allowed myself to SEE the truth behind the false perceptions of the NFOO, I couldn't UNSEE that truth. I didn't really want to accept it, but I couldn't unlearn it, I couldn't unknow and I couldn't avoid finding a way to deal with it. Living every day with the pain of this process of knowing wasn't an option, so I had to find a way to move forward.
So I had to go through it.
Some days I put my head down and I charged through it angry. I think of bulls in a run when I think of those days: incited to a near murderous anger and then unleashed in a narrow corridor to chase down a crowd of tormentors. Some days I was like that, and those were the good days.
Most days I was lost, sad, unfocused and seriously fucking depressed. In retrospect, it's all fine and good to say that I don't miss them in my life, and it's true beyond true that these days it's a ludicrous concept to me to even think about missing them. I miss them these days about as much as I'd miss a hot poker to the eye. But then, Early NC, I missed them like crazy. They had been my constants, you see? No matter how fucked up they were, no matter how abusive they were, no matter how much of my life, my family of choice, my very soul I'd had to sacrifice to the altar of the Crazymaker Clan, they had been MY CLAN. And then they weren't anymore, and that was a loss.
Loss is loss, and all loss leaves a void. It hurt to cut off contact with them, it hurt like hell.
But, there's a reason that we recovering alkies talk about working a program and staying sober One Day at a Time and it's this: we understand that the only way to get the time to stack up is to do one of them at a time, moment to moment. And that's what got me through the loss; doing just one more day upon one more day.
Eventually, I promise, the days got easier to do. And that's when I decided to look into it further, to go beyond just accepting it and to start to try to figure out what the hell it really was, what it had really been in the first place and how it had changed.
Once I started to dig into core issues, I began to see a clearer picture of what, exactly, it was that I had lost. The space and time that I created by just staying away and putting one day on top of another wasn't my plan, no, but it was instrumental in getting me clear enough from the leashes and muzzles of the NFOO to help me to see them (and to see me,) in the cold, clear light of reality.
That's when it started to get better. That's when the FOG began to lift for me. That's when I began to allow my defenses - so carefully constructed to block out a lifetime of abuse - to work for me instead of against me. That's when I began to look at myself and really see who I was, to understand that I was broken because they'd broken me, but also that I was not beyond repair.
And that's when I began to understand that the loss that I felt, the grief that I was living with every day, was about my mourning the loss of something that never really existed in the first place. And that's when I started to get better.
I've been NC long enough now to have experienced several distinct validations of the correctness of my choices to get away from the NFOO and to stay away. I broke the shell of my understanding long enough ago that the pain that I felt initially and residually is largely non-existent now. Bleeding wounds became scabs and then turned into scars, which serve to remind me that I survived and that I don't want to go back, so I won't.
I had to break that shell and go through the pain of it in order to form a new understanding, one that is without manipulation or lies.
So I guess that I will let this stand as my celebration of six years: the trend in my happiness and that of my family of choice has never, not once, faltered from us getting better the farther and the longer we stay away from the Crazymakers.
So breaking that shell and going through that pain has only ever been worth it.
Love,
Vanci
It's been just over six years since what I think of as Vanci's Last Stand. You can read about that here, if you'd like. I've been thinking that I should do a post to commemorate the passage of another year of NC, but the reality is that the only tangible difference in my feelings about the NFOO now as compared to a year ago is that I have a far greater level of indifference to their existence than I've ever had before. In regard to my real (and quite wonderful) every day life, I've written about it all year long, and can only say that my overall feeling about the last year is that I am one lucky and grateful lady.
Much of my peace is attributable to the fact that I've got one more year of distance from the Crazymaker Clan under my belt, and that is a good thing, no, it's a great thing. Maybe even in the All Time Top Five List of Best Things. There's really not much to say beyond that.
But I've been thinking back to those crazy and painful times of six years ago, and I've been trying to ask and answer of myself some of the questions that I hear newly distanced, LC'd and NC'd peeps asking about how to make it through those rough and tumble, earth shaking, business end of the barrel times. I've been trying to do what I do best, which is basically to boil a complex issue down into a simplified reduction, examine the facts that hold true and then develop a formula. It's my process, and one that's served me well, both when I lived every day in survival mode and when I was starting to heal and now that I'm...well, I think the only way to describe where I am now is to say that I am content.
I spend very little time these days thinking about the members of the Clan, if I spend any at all. I carry my scars and they are certainly reminders of all the negative feelings and horrible memories and terrors that I've survived, sure. But they are also reminders of the fact that I broke those chains and won't be passing the bad juju down the line. I live every day in the midst of so many reminders of the good, calm, loving, helpful, graceful, classy, joyful relationships and people and life that I have now, and if I charted a graph that showed my happiness in relation to the length of time I have NC, well, I'm sure that the trend would look like a dot-com stock's value in the early nineties. Up, up and away.
I remember, though, what it felt like in Early No Contact. It felt so awful, so wrong to be separated from my 'family.' I was so tortured, so guilty for creating that heretofore unknown silence, for breaking something that I knew was wrong but that I'd been taught my whole life to accept as right. I would have done almost anything to make things better, different, even the way that they used to be. If you've read this blog at all, you'll know that every single person in my family of origin was abusive toward me in some degree. The things that I've written about here - which are the tip of the iceberg, dearies, just a smidge of the reality of the abuse that I was dealt by the fuckers - are so horrific that they could be the plot-lines of a serial killer-hunting drama on television. They're the types of things that people see or read about and think, "Surely this can't really happen in the real world." Horror, pure and simple.
But in Early NC, I was still loathe to see it for what it was, to see them for the monsters that they really are. I still held out hope that I could somehow, some way, if I was good enough or smart enough or worked hard enough or expressed myself more clearly or drew different boundaries or drank less or changed the way that I reacted or asked different questions, that I could find a way to repair my relationship with the Clan. I didn't want to even contemplate NC forever in the early days; it would have been too much for my fragile world to take. I felt like I would just shatter like a woman made of glass. Thin glass. Every. Single. Day.
I think of that now and I'd like to deny it. I'd like to say that woke up one day and I was strong, that I was instantly okay, that I always knew what to do or how to act or react, but the truth is that it was a process of "the breaking of the shell of my understanding." There's truth in the idea that a thing, once known, cannot be unknown. As soon as I allowed myself to SEE the truth behind the false perceptions of the NFOO, I couldn't UNSEE that truth. I didn't really want to accept it, but I couldn't unlearn it, I couldn't unknow and I couldn't avoid finding a way to deal with it. Living every day with the pain of this process of knowing wasn't an option, so I had to find a way to move forward.
So I had to go through it.
Some days I put my head down and I charged through it angry. I think of bulls in a run when I think of those days: incited to a near murderous anger and then unleashed in a narrow corridor to chase down a crowd of tormentors. Some days I was like that, and those were the good days.
Most days I was lost, sad, unfocused and seriously fucking depressed. In retrospect, it's all fine and good to say that I don't miss them in my life, and it's true beyond true that these days it's a ludicrous concept to me to even think about missing them. I miss them these days about as much as I'd miss a hot poker to the eye. But then, Early NC, I missed them like crazy. They had been my constants, you see? No matter how fucked up they were, no matter how abusive they were, no matter how much of my life, my family of choice, my very soul I'd had to sacrifice to the altar of the Crazymaker Clan, they had been MY CLAN. And then they weren't anymore, and that was a loss.
Loss is loss, and all loss leaves a void. It hurt to cut off contact with them, it hurt like hell.
But, there's a reason that we recovering alkies talk about working a program and staying sober One Day at a Time and it's this: we understand that the only way to get the time to stack up is to do one of them at a time, moment to moment. And that's what got me through the loss; doing just one more day upon one more day.
Eventually, I promise, the days got easier to do. And that's when I decided to look into it further, to go beyond just accepting it and to start to try to figure out what the hell it really was, what it had really been in the first place and how it had changed.
Once I started to dig into core issues, I began to see a clearer picture of what, exactly, it was that I had lost. The space and time that I created by just staying away and putting one day on top of another wasn't my plan, no, but it was instrumental in getting me clear enough from the leashes and muzzles of the NFOO to help me to see them (and to see me,) in the cold, clear light of reality.
That's when it started to get better. That's when the FOG began to lift for me. That's when I began to allow my defenses - so carefully constructed to block out a lifetime of abuse - to work for me instead of against me. That's when I began to look at myself and really see who I was, to understand that I was broken because they'd broken me, but also that I was not beyond repair.
And that's when I began to understand that the loss that I felt, the grief that I was living with every day, was about my mourning the loss of something that never really existed in the first place. And that's when I started to get better.
I've been NC long enough now to have experienced several distinct validations of the correctness of my choices to get away from the NFOO and to stay away. I broke the shell of my understanding long enough ago that the pain that I felt initially and residually is largely non-existent now. Bleeding wounds became scabs and then turned into scars, which serve to remind me that I survived and that I don't want to go back, so I won't.
I had to break that shell and go through the pain of it in order to form a new understanding, one that is without manipulation or lies.
So I guess that I will let this stand as my celebration of six years: the trend in my happiness and that of my family of choice has never, not once, faltered from us getting better the farther and the longer we stay away from the Crazymakers.
So breaking that shell and going through that pain has only ever been worth it.
Love,
Vanci
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