-kinda' continued from yesterday's "Grey"...

Sometimes I fear that I’m just running around in circles. I know a lot of people in my family, and maybe even some of my friends think or wish that I would/could just let it all go, just forget the past and all the hurt and be happy. I know when I was about to go into therapy my mom said “Y’know, there’s this new kind of therapy where you just start from today and go forward, you just forget the past!” Then, when I’d been diagnosed and was about to enter River Oaks for treatment (following a breakdown I had on the trip home from my last visit to her house, “strangely” enough), she said, “It’s just a vitamin deficiency!” God, save me from that kind of guilt and desperation. If only our (humans’) faith and will was as strong as our denial sometimes…
Another family member told me fairly recently (last fall, I think) that my mom has “erased” me; that she says I don’t exist anymore. I know that the experiences that caused me so much pain and left permanent scars on my psyche, my body and my life don’t exist to her. She insists that those things never happened, that my memory is faulty, or that I am just lying to hurt her, and she is able to maintain that “truth” no matter what. In a way, I envy her the ability to make the things that hurt her and me just go away – including myself. I just have a hard time believing that it’s really possible. These things are such an intrinsic part of our lives. Whether we like it or not, they are a big part of what makes us who we are. I don’t know. Maybe she’s just stronger than me. Somehow though, that doesn’t ring true either. It may just be my perception – though I know that my friends, some of my family, the volunteers I lecture to at Steps to Hope, and the mental health professionals I’ve dealt with over the years say that I am the strong one, because I am brave enough to face the pain, the past and the truth. I think that when you don’t deal with the past, new pain comes from those old, untreated wounds. As much as the memories of the past hurt, none of that hurts as much as being a motherless child, or knowing that your mother says you don’t exist. That’s an injury that is new every day. Seeing my siblings struggling for sanity and healing in their own ways, knowing that they’ll be having their own struggles for the rest of their lives, and knowing that the damage our families did to us will always be an obstacle to our being a real family in our own rights. I struggle to be peaceful, and to try to wish people – even the people who hurt me – nothing but good, but I am who I am, and I think there will always be a part of me who wishes that I could just have one good go at beating my mother’s ass until I’m too tired to go on, and then when I’ve rested, resurrecting dad, grandpa and grandma and having a go at each of them until I feel better too. Yes, I know that it’s some pretty bad anger when you want to bring your loved ones back from the dead just to beat their asses, but hey, I’ve thought worse.

I can’t help but wonder what mom thinks about all of this. Can she really have forgotten everything that happened? Does she ever have dreams about it? Do everyday things ever trigger her memories of those times? Does she have panic attacks for “no reason”? Does she need “drugs” (prescribed or otherwise – the internet, reading, etc) to give her a cushion from the past? And I wonder about dad too. Did he feel guilt over the terrible things he did? He never hurt us, but he left us with people who did. He neglected us, let us slip through the cracks. For years, my feelings toward dad were untouchable. He was the good one, and that was that. But time and truth – and talking to my siblings about their feelings – told the real story. He could have done so much more for us. He could have taken us out of the hell that was our life with mother, and he could have taken better care of us when he had us. Sometimes I think that he chose death as just one more easy way out of his responsibility to us and to his mistakes in the past. One significant difference between him and mom is that I believe that dad loved us all. I think mom only ever cared for my oldest brother. In a way though, that almost hurts worse, because it’s easier to understand how someone who never loved you could hurt you. I’m sure mom believes that I think she’s the only villain in this sordid tale, but nothing could be further from the truth. As much as it hurts, I’m glad that I have a more realistic view of my other family members than I did when I was younger. I’d rather have pain and the truth than a false sense of happiness based on lies – and other people’s pain – any day (who’s the stronger one?). And it probably seems odd, but I can identify with mom’s perspective more than I can with any other adult (not siblings and cousins, I mean) in the family. I am more like her than I am any of the others, and I have spent more time thinking about the “why’s” and “how’s” of my relationship with her than any of the others. In a strange way, I feel more sympathy for her than for any of our other “grown-ups”. It’s sad and sickeningly ironic that none of this will ever matter.

One of the hardest things that I am going to have to learn to accept is that, ultimately, none of this will ever matter. With dad dead, and myself dead to mom, I have no choice but to try to stop wondering about their thoughts, feelings, reasons and deeds, and just accept that they were – and are – only able to love themselves and us so much. The end. As selfish as it may seem, I have no choice but to focus on my own raisons d’etre and try to heal without their help. That’s definitely nothing new, but that doesn’t change the fact that I will always miss them, or at least the dream of them. It would be so much easier if we could help each other, those of us who are left, but I know that’s no more than a dream either. It’s time to face up to the fact that I have been alone in this since I was born, and though my siblings suffered too, they were alone in their own way as well, and that, to some extent, we always will be. Chris loves me, his family loves me, and I love them, but there will always be a kind of wall. I won’t walk away from new friends and “family” because of this – that would be stupid, and that’s one thing I’m not – but I have to learn to love myself enough to fill in the empty spaces, because the fact of the matter is that no one else will ever be able to.

So many things are affected by the shadows of my past. The way I watch movies and listen to music; the reason I love the clothes and art and landscapes that I do; my dreams, my beliefs, and the way I judge people. I have noticed that I am harder on any of my friends who are parents than anyone in our circle. I am very quick to anger when I feel that a friend is being a neglectful parent, even if only in thought if not deed. I know that I have huge obstacles to overcome if I am ever going to be the person I want to be, and that makes me angry too. These days, it seems that it all comes down to a whole lot of anger. That sucks – but it still beats hopelessness. I just wish that I could make people see these things about me, so that they can understand my judgmental nature*, my temper, my “moodiness” and obsession with the past, and be patient with me while I am trying to grow and change.
God, I feel like THE eternal teenager. Ugh. :)
At the very least, I can lay my head down each night, knowing that I am not hiding from the pain and the truth (which, unfortunately, are the same thing sometimes), that I am trying to become a better person and hopefully make the world a better place in the meanwhile, and that I am not passing this madness on to another generation. I may be sad, I may be impossible to live with sometimes, impossible to love at others – and to quote Miss Celie: “I’m pore, I’m black, I may be ugly and can’t cook… But I’m here." – I’m here. And to quote the author, Ms. Walker: “Don't wait around for other people to be happy for you. Any happiness you get you've got to make yourself.” Amen!

I’ll leave you all with some more incredibly relevant quotes from this favorite author of mine, and a promise of more ponderings when I can handle it.

“Being happy is not the only happiness.”

“And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see -- or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read.”

“How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers names.”

“No person is your friend (or kin) who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow and be perceived as fully blossomed as you were intended.”

“I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.”

“The most important question in the world is, ‘Why is the child crying?’”

“For in the end, freedom is a personal and lonely battle; and one faces down fears of today so that those of tomorrow might be engaged.”

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.”

“What the mind doesn't understand, it worships or fears.”

“Nobody is as powerful as we make them out to be.”

“Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.”

“Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it.” :) [Amen, sistah!]

“I try to teach my heart not to want things it can't have.”

“Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise.”

Much love – and some peaches,
-s


*the tarot card for my birthday is in fact Judgement. Its’ meaning is:
“It is time for the seeker to look back and evaluate his or her life or a phase in life. [weee-eee-ee-ooooo!] This card represents closure and a sense of summing up what he or she has achieved during the phase that is ending. It is a card of powerful transformative energy [huzzah!]. It also signifies a time of rebirth, a cleansing of burdens and past mistakes, before moving on [!!!]. This is also the card of Karma – of reaping what we sow. One should be aware of how their actions effect others. To a great extent, it can represent awakening to the call of your destiny or an effort to understand your higher purpose. [whoah!] It also represents a judgment in a legal matter.
Reverse - Phobias, obsessions. Denying the truth of the matter. Procrastination. Using obstacles as an excuse for not changing. Stagnation. Divorce. Vain attempts to recapture youth or the past. Letting life pass you by. Failure to face facts. (freaky, eh?)