As you walk deeper into the shadows of your self work sometimes you feel lost. Sometimes you are shaken by what you find. This is the place where the moving pictures of the past reside. It is time to look past hilight reel. Do you dare? Do you dare peek at the out takes?
Sometimes with healing there is no choice.
Things I am learning, rather, finally harshly acknowledging.
The need I have to connect, to love and be loved, the need to be considered is just a gooey shell wrapped around a dark centre of anger. The anger I desperately want to say others are completely responsible for, is actually the razor weapon I have carried since childhood- but it too is a kind of a facade. Look deeper- yes this will cut but the core must be found. The atomic destruction weapon at the very centre is shame.
As a child I was raised in shame. Raised in varying forms of hiding. We hid what was happening in our house. We hid from the monsters in our house. I was shamed for how I looked. I was shamed for my needs. I was shamed for what my father was. I was shamed for having no mother.
I turned that shame into anger, drive- I would be better, I could make myself worthy, even if I didn’t start there. What is the term- making a silk purse out of a sows ear? I would build a shell over top of the putrid thing I am.
I will give everything, time, kindness, love, – please don’t look too hard or breathe too deep, you may smell the festering wounds. I will accept all, as I know what it feels to not be acceptable. I will listen to your story and brush aside my own with no more than an anecdote. I will deeply invest in you- who ever you are. I will forgive you infinitely. I welcome you to with a smile and a hope that I will be enough. I will do anything to ease your mind and your path. I will outwardly ask for nothing while inwardly begging you for everything I do not possess.
This worked, sort of, for a very long time. Even I believed it. I believed I had achieved a place where I was loved, admired, wanted, needed. That I had healed myself, hidden the rot. I believed I was worthy of turning a light on to me. Surely after decades this was acceptable.
The disruption this caused, the hurt, the confusion- this was not the game I had created, these were not the rules I had made. The first sign of push back and the fetid began to show. They figured it out. I wasn’t worthy. More shame. Shame for what had happened. Shame for trying. Shame for being the cause of anger, hurt. Anger, at first for not being worthy of encouragement, then anger for not even finding myself support worthy.
Retreat, the defence up- you think what you have done can hurt me? I will destroy myself a thousand times before you get another shot in. I did not see it at the time, I retreated to what I believed was more acceptable to some around me, to make it better- to go back to being loved, needed, belonging. But I was wrong. I felt sick, I hid the wounds under layers of more destructive behaviour, food, drink, disassociation…….
I have been so angry. At first it was all outward. All about the recent, not really wanting to see how it was the same ride in so many ways. Shadows of the same cycle I was born into. So angry at the others- why? Why so much hurt? Was I not what you wanted? Did I not create the proper being to be loved? How did I get it all so wrong? Was the truth that I was not meant in this life to be unfiltered, raw and a little wild. Was I not to have a me- just the thing that fit you best? In the darkest moments the monsters that the anger and shame have fed grew, the razors slowly turning inward.
Yet I know I can not totally go down with out a fight. My children deserve a better Mother. Not something to be ashamed of or to hide from. I will not be my parents and I sure as hell would not wish my children to be me.
Standing Still at the Speed of Light 