The sacred spiral that is life.
In so many ways we want to believe that it is linear, being able to plot each date and event. A constant trajectory forward. What ever was in the past should and can stay there.
I have been committed to working on my shadow side. Not to bring it all to light, but to also learn how to make friends and build compassion and understanding with some of the things that lurk there.
There is a lot to choose from. Some traumas fold in on others, a majority having taken place in childhood until my early 20s. There is a a linear trajectory in how the following story takes place, but the fall out, the scars and ticks are embedded in the infinite spiral.
As a small child I was told the fairy tale of my origins. My parents met and fell in love and I was the result of said fairy tale.
That story did not hold up for long. I don’t recall my parents ever being affectionate. About the age of 8 I became aware that my father wasn’t the shining hero I had assumed he was. He was an alcoholic, who often threatened suicide. He would disappear for days, make threats and was verbally abusive. This became apparent in a slow steady drip to me. There are things here that will be fodder for another time. But this is not the part of the story I want to tell.
From here it will be disjointed, I am going to tell the story of how I came to be, the way I have learned it.
My mother had told me when I was young that her and my dad had gotten married in 1971, I was born in 1973. When I was 10 my parents slipped up when they had mentioned it was also 10 years that they were married. My mother then changed the story to tell me that they has married the August before my March birth. It still made the myth a believable that they married for love as she would have been newly pregnant. Not long after, I came across their marriage certificate, they had indeed been married in August of 1973, I was 5 months old.
By the time I had discovered this, the cancer that was eating at my mother had begun to take hold, my fathers drinking and mental illness had gone off the rails with no reprieve.
Not long before my mother died, on a day when she was still decently lucid but bed ridden I had crawled into bed to snuggle with her. This had been our habit when she was not in hospital, as long as I was gentle I could climb in carefully and wrap myself into her frail body.
On this particular day she stroked my hair and leaned into me.
‘There is something I want to tell you’ What followed ate at me for years. ‘I love you my little doll. But I never wanted you. I never wanted to leave you in this, you know your dad is not a well man. This was not how this was supposed to be. I am sorry that you will have to do this when I am gone.’ That was the last live conversation I ever had with her.
She passed not long after.
I had not been particularly close with my mothers two daughters from her first marriage. They are 9 and 11 years yeas older than I am. I don’t recall the older one living with us all the time.
They had promised my mother that they would look after me when she was gone. There is a lot to unpack her for another time, but the over view is that along with not feeling particularly close I also had the distinct feeling that they did not much care for me. The hate they had for my father was well known ( more the older than the younger), and somewhere deep I knew they held resentment towards me because of this. It was rarely direct, but I never felt really connected or seen.
Little things would get said/revealed in anger or rare unguarded moments. By my mid 20s I really began to understand that they were also processing the loss of their mother too. I also recognized that they held their own weight of trauma.
Until I was 20 I tried very hard to maintain a relationship with my father, he was the only parent I still had. I felt it my duty to make it work. Again there is a lot to specifically unpack here but that is for another examination. I just want to note that it is through this that I also was told my fathers version of things, mostly in drunken laments, but once in a while a dry conversation would happen and I would be given pieces of the disfunction picture.
I carried around a lot of odds and ends from my childhood. fragments of a fragmented life. One of my treasures was a cassette tape. On this ancient recording was a moment frozen in time of me at the sweet age of about 4 and my mother. We were discussing my dog at time. I never played it because the tape itself was twisted.
A few years ago I asked a friend who is an audio specialist if he could fix it for me. With great care he did, and also transferred it to digital. When he gave me the recordings back he informed me there was more on there than I thought.
My mother had told the story of the night I was born. I have written of this before. My father had not really been in attendance, he was trying to out run the police. He had been at the at the hospital, but obnoxiously drunk. They did not catch him.
This is the platform of where my understanding about some of my family dynamics came from.
My father was a sick man. Not only with alcoholism, but all of the unaddressed trauma and mental health issues he had.
My sisters and I did not connect, I was under the assumption they did not like me, mostly for who my father was. There were snippets of stories, whispers of things may father may have done. Never confirmed.
I had learned early on in life to be self reliant. To succeed on my own, to never anticipate active support. Deep things rooted and rotted in me. I would never be worthy, of love, of compassion, of empathy and of validation, no matter how hard I worked. I would never fully out run the shadow of the monster of my father.
I would try sometimes to connect with my sisters. I tried to not be a bother. I stopped asking for help from either of them because I was a burden, I felt the frustration and aggravation when I needed something. Eventually I stopped inviting them in to my inner space. This happened in pieces, starting not long after my mom had died. By the time I was married with my own child I had a ‘couple times a year’ kind of relationship with them. I had all but given up trying to feel respected and valued by them.
I made sure that I built relationships with my nieces and nephews. I adore each one of those kids. It was and still is important that they know I love them deeply, no matter the relationships that I have with their moms.
I learned long ago to let go of the malice and anger I felt towards them. I recognized we had all come from trauma, we all had our own version of that trauma. I know that they did the best that they could at the time. While I may have been only 12, my sisters had just entered their 20s. They took on what they had promised but none of us were really prepared or supported as much as we should have been.
It has been almost 37 years since my mother died. It has been 28 years since I have set eyes on my father. I have occasional visits with my sisters, one lives across country now, so those are even more infrequent. I am included in the odd text. But I don’t think that we often cross each other’s minds. The disconnect has gone on so long.
This past Christmas we were going to have a small family gathering. This Covid world we live in making big parties non existent. It was to be my older sister, her son, and my little trio and my other sisters kids who live here. But due to possible exposures to Covid only my sister came. My daughter then decided to squirrel away into her room and my husband decided to make himself scarce.
We began to talk. It is a conversation that was not planned, yet in looking back it followed a very specific path.
I will never tell my sisters stories, not the details, it is their’s, not for me to share publicly. There are aspects of their stories that do affect me, and it is those affects that are mine to share.
We discussed the bland day to day of work and life in a pandemic. It started down the road of mental health, then more specifically the mental health history of our family. I had let it be known that I have been actively working on my mental health for the last couple of years. She also offered up the fact that she had been engaging in the work of understanding the burdens she’s been carrying and how to make them more manageable.
It really was a gift of a conversation. 48 years in the making. I am very proud of her. I really am, she is working with her own shadow to step out of the family curses.
When I really began to look at where my mental demons were born, I could see so many childhood events that were the germination. Because two of the main people are no longer here to answer questions, and I never felt connected or comfortable enough to ask questions of those who still could clarify, I chose to base some of my self work around what I assumed to be true.
There were many dangerous and damaging interactions I had with my father. I had always assumed he was capable of far worse. I witnessed things he did to my mother, I saw how it escalated as the level of alcohol increased.
I have worked hard to step out of the guilt, shame, fear and anger I have felt towards him. The disgust has softened, compassion had moved into the space that was occupied by rage. But much of the information I used as my platform for healing was assumed.
That gift of a conversation turned some of those assumptions to truth.
It took me 3 days before I spoke of the conversation. In those 3 days I could feel that truth moving through every cell, I believed I had moved away from this. I could feel an awakening of emotion I had not felt in years. Emotion I had run from, masked, medicated from. Emotion I thought I had worked through.
I had begun to realize that the work I had done around my father had indeed mostly been a practice run. As soon as I tried to speak of it, I saw a pattern so clearly, one of denial appear almost instantly. So easy to shut down because I know it can make others uncomfortable. So easy to say just the facts, but not even come close to touching the emotion that festered deep below.
Emotion…. I can write about it. I can analyze it. I can sit with anyone while they experience their own. But I do not cry, or really reveal my emotions in front of others. I learned early on not to take up that space or to ask for it. At least that is the way it has always been. When I was a child and we were on the thin ice around my dad I learned not to show any weakness, emotion would take time I did not have if I wanted to manage the situation. I learned not to cry about my mother (your such a brave girl). I mastered not crying about the abuses and toxic situations I found myself in. I just got on with it.
At least I had mostly mastered it in front of others, unless large quantities of alcohol or drugs were involved, then I fell into the family trope of hysterical drunken rantings.
Being alone is a very different story, silent rage crying is a skill I have mastered, sobbing in the shower, waiting until I am on my own, no one around and screaming until I am hoarse. Through out the years this has also led to varying forms of self harm, some immediately visible, some not.
There are two times in the last 20 years I can recall actually leaning into another human when I broke, and I was not shamed, shut down or given platitudes. I was shocked, embarrassed and also fascinated that it seemed allowable for me to receive, not just give. At the time I did not feel judged. The break down and study of this profound event is for another time. Sufficed to say, this current situation has brought up emotion I don’t know what to do with, and no real place to lean.
I am devastated, for the young girls me and my sisters were. I am angry at both my mother and father (something I really believed I had worked through). I am horrified at what we were subjected to. I feel shame and guilt that this still takes up space in my mental and physical body after all these years. I feel shame and rage at the negative patterns (initially for survival) I have had, especially in some very important relationships. I feel shame that I allowed and facilitated these patterns.
I am acutely aware of how emotionally cut off I am. I am painfully aware of the patterns I have created in my life. I may be comfortable sitting with others during their emotional time but, I have set it up that many close to me are not comfortable holding this space. I apologize if the tears begin to fall. I don’t try to force the conversation. I will back track and brush it off, if I get the hint of discomfort. I don’t ask for the support because I feel it will not be there. Well meaning enough, but telling me ultimately this can be a good thing for me and my sister (I am also very aware of this and unsure where it will really go), invalidates the emotions that have surfaced. Very obvious not wanting to hear any details, so I default, go quiet and seek solace in the bathroom quietly screaming into a towel and fighting the urge to express the pain I feel in an unproductive way. I am hyper aware of how many people have triggers that can go off because of my story. I also witness the crushing stress current events have foisted on to everyone, and I can not ask over taxed people to hold me up with this.
I am so full of fear. I have made a few passive attempts at asking someone to listen, but I don’t want to burden anyone with such old tales. The funny thing is, I would encourage someone to tell their story, knowing the danger of carrying it alone. Yet here I am. Writing publicly about most of it. But being such a public forum, I am consciously leaving out so much of what I need to lay down, because it is not only my story and I do not have the sole right to publicly reveal it.
I asked my self why I feel safer to post? Weirdly I do find it a less risky way of connecting. Less chance of being denied or shut down. People can choose to engage but because I don’t see you, or feel the energy of being pushed away, I only get the sense of acceptance when people choose to engage. It’s a way to connect without placing demands or requests on the people I know. It is the antidote to being I am being told that I am/ or the situation is too much. There is always the hope that someone I know will read it. There are those of you who will, and just knowing that, gives that fleeting moment of being seen and acknowledged and validation.
Although I feel I have done much work. I see how much more work there is to go. It is not linear, it is a spiral. I am not the same person who faced these monsters before. I am not he young girl who lived them, I am not the young woman who tried to examine the fallout, but did not yet have to tools to make great change. I am the vital woman, knowing I am worthy of not having to carry this, I have learned some tools to make great change. There is another me waiting on the other side of this.
In this immediate now, I am tired, I am pandemic exhausted, I am trying to see how expressing these emotions feel. I am trying to find a safe space to risk that much vulnerability. I am trying to make it through the every day stresses that seem so heightened but the state of the world. I am trying to do what I do best and take care of those I can, family, friends, my community. There is just a slight difference, I finally made it to that list, I am also determined to take care of me.
Standing Still at the Speed of Light 