A Degree of Difficulty is something about you that deviates from the norm, in a way that makes certain aspects of your life more challenging than they seem to others.
Most of us have internalized a value judgment on either the trait itself, our coping methods, or whatever the normative expectation is that we work a bit harder to reach.
Example: I think less of myself when my house isn't as clean as I think it should be.
Effect: Feeling like I'm failing at such a mundane expectation undermines my self-confidence, and self esteem, and the energy drain caused by that is akin to dialing up the gravity on Planet Me.
I can spend my day doing wonderful, positive things- caring for my son and being present with him, cleaning or improving parts of my home, writing, thinking, making art, and generally making progress towards the life I want for my family, but the last thing I see when I go to bed at night is a mountain of laundry, and I always kick myself for it.
The interior monologue goes something like this:
WTF is the matter with me that I let it get this bad? Why don't I ever just follow through and finish this? All those shelves, the spacious closet, 2 dressers, and my clothes live in piles on the floor?
Now I'm pissed at myself for failing in an expectation. Which usually means I either
• stubbornly keep ignoring problem, because I'm too tired and frustrated to solve it now, or
•keep kicking myself until I sulk over to pile and find a few clean things to put away, realize I lack the energy/focus to complete task in one sitting or to my standards, so I quit after 10 minutes, and put it on mental list for tomorrow, blaming myself in advance for failing at it tomorrow too (self-fulfilling prophecy in its purest form)
•notice that some of hubby's clothes or clutter have been added to pile, and redirect my frustration onto him, mostly because I'm so sick of always blaming myself for this shit! Now he feels attacked and defensive, and I've introduced a source of friction into our limited time together.
.............................
But if I take a step back and look at myself with compassion, the way I do for my children and friends, I can acknowledge that keeping up with laundry is more work when you have a busy family, and people with ADD have a harder time sustaining focus on things that don't provide a certain level of stimulation, and so on. I can acknowledge that this seemingly simple task is more complicated for me, for reasons that aren't just character defects.
My laundry space is tiny, inefficient, and occupies main path to garage, a very high-traffic, clutter-prone spot in my house.
It's rather ugly, and because I don't foresee having time and energy to change that, I resist being in the room at all.
My primary living space usually has toddler and two large dogs in all day, making folding of laundry during that time impractical, yadda yadda yadda.
Point being, there are a lot of invisible obstacles between me and a smoothly running laundry system. Some are large, some are small, some can be changed, reduced, or eliminated entirely, others may be immutable for now. I can squander my energy by getting sucked into a cycle of self-blame and resistance. Accepting the negative self-judgement adds weight to a task I'm already challenged by, and resisting/rejecting the judgement uses mental and emotional energy as well.
And here's where the self defeating cycle creeps back in. Other people's judgements speak up from the peanut gallery of my brain, telling me my so-called reasons are really just excuses. If I listen, I'm pretty much doomed. Feeling defeated, inadequate, like I'm the only one who can't hack this basic adult life skill, an internal chorus begins:
You should just take a load down every morning and keep up with it on a daily basis. Why do you always let it go until it's a goddamn ordeal. You should pay more attention to where you put your clothes when you take them off, that's why you end up re-washing clean clothes, you put the dirty ones on top and they all got mixed together. You always do that, why are you still doing that, you're a goddamn adult, for crying out loud! Is it really that hard to keep a dedicated dirty clothes hamper?
You forgot to change the cat litter again too, what's the matter with you? That's just gross, are you really that lazy?
And what happened to that healthy dinner you started planning for tonight? It's too late to thaw the roast now, much less get it in the crockpot. You have to do that first thing, you know? God, you're a piece of work! What was the point kf planning something nice if youre not going to follow through?
That's always been your problem, you know?
Do you even have something quick and easy to throw together to get your family fed at a reasonable dinnertime?
Some people manage to serve dinner on a predictable schedule, why can't you manage that?
(Pause to assess dinner options, find some barely nutritious convenience food that could technically pass for dinner, start "cooking".)
Think about how much sodium/preservatives/fat etc are in these kinds of meals, worry that I'm not doing my best for my family, think about everything I know about politics of food supply and public health, judge myself deficient for not making better choices for my family.
Notice dishes in sink, feel guilty for that. Remind myself that cooking is easier and more pleasurable in a clean kitchen.
•get irritated with other family members for not doing more, or feeling more obligation. Wonder how they manage to ignore the dirt and chaos
•lash out at household members, introducing friction and hurt feelings while demanding more help
•remember that they are busy and working hard too, and cut them some slack
•start cleaning kitchen to make space to cook, realize I've forgotten to eat today, wonder why I do this to myself, grab something to hold off nausea/lightheadedness, try to remember what step of dinner plan I was on, derail back onto dishes before completing final step, bounce back and forth between cleaning and cooking, wondering why the hell I haven't finished either of them.
Get lost in thought or distracted by entirely unrelated task (hey why don't I switch the laundry over now, and launch that new resolution of folding the clothes promptly?)
Hear timer on oven go off, decide to finish task at hand first, the box said 18-22 minutes, i only set the timer for 18, and if I don't finish this now it'll just get forgotten like everything else does... .... .... .... Almost complete task, realize I have lost track of time when minutes affect the outcome.
Briefly panic that I've ruined a meal that was barely acceptable to begin with, assess edibility.... Salvage or start over.
Notice I haven't finished dishes yet, force myself to resume task despite high resistance
Notice dogs need to go out. Remember I'm past due for poop patrol by quite a while, get annoyed with myself for slacking on yet another domestic front. Worry that dogs will track poop in house, and I'll have to drop everything to clean that...
Remind myself it's my fault if they do, not theirs.
Feel bad that I never take them for walks anymore.
How many times this week are you gonna scramble at the last minute to pull off something you should've planned out better?
Did you mail the tax bill yet? Where did you even put it? Is it in the jumble of paper piles on the dining room table or actually filed, you know in that brilliant system you devised and kept up with for what, a week!
Doesn't the dog need to go to the vet? I remember getting a card saying she was due for rabies update...
You need that for license with township, you know, not that you managed to do that, ever. Seriously, 4 years and you haven't taken care of that?
Why haven't you scheduled the vet appointment, you scatter-brained flake?
How the hell are we going to pay for that?
Speaking of which, how did you get to be 40 years old and still so damn irresponsible with money? I thought you were smarter than that!
All your little projects that should be bringing in money, why are they taking so long? You know, a great idea doesn't mean anything if you don't follow through....
•pause to review all projects currently stalled for lack of time, focus, or backup— weigh the validity of the delay, blame myself for poor time management, yell at hubby when I find one I can reasonably pin on him
—add 5-6 action items to mental to-do list, without accounting for limited time and energy resources, also known as setting myself up to fail....
•realize I've let workspace get cluttered, need to deal with that before I'll make any more progress on my real goals and business plans...
Rethink decision to become an artist, remember the stable, secure job I gave up to do this.
Decide I didn't have much say in the matter, really. I was clearly cracking up under pressure of family obligations + high stress work environment, and employer was losing patience with my devolving time management skills.
Take a moment to imagine actually making a living from something I'm passionate about, that comes naturally to me, that brings me pleasure.
Remember that simultaneous goal is managing home and family better, mentally review my performance on that front.
Realize time management skills are still necessary
Remember times when it wasn't such a struggle to be on time, most of the time.
Remember that my stress levels have been consistently off the charts for going on 3 years now, and that because time management is something I work for, not an innate skill, it diminishes under stress. Give myself temporary pass on that. For now.
Feel surge of relief and gratitude for having so much latitude with time management for now. Wish life could always be like that.
•Think of people I know whose homes always seem immaculate. Wish I could be more like them.
•realize those people don't usually seem very happy, and try to imagine what it's like to be them.
Decide I'm probably better off being me, because I really am pretty happy, deep down, and my life is both interesting and satisfying, mentally review evidence of this...
Acknowledge that although
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Triggers, Land Mines, and Things That Aren't Fair....
(**Trigger warning, for anyone with PTSD and/or issues regarding any form of abuse.)
This may be the first time I have sat down to write already in tears, touching a deeply buried well of fear and pain, and although I refuse to label this feeling self-pity, I have to put that out there just to get it out of my own head, where it's lurking in the shadows, taunting me for daring to express these feelings of "it's just not fair".... I've been minimizing the severity and duration of the sexual abuse I suffered in my childhood for so long, and genuinely unaware that so much of my lifelong battle with emotional paralysis began so early in my life that I can't distinguish the long-term effects of that abuse from what I've always considered my awkwardness.... I brush it aside, because years of therapy as a young adult helped me deal with most of the conscious issues surrounding self-blame and the 'classic' symptomology of Incest Survivor Syndrome. I felt healed, felt my ownership of my sexuality, and had many years of feeling free of the burdens of shame and unworthiness that attach so persistently to so many of us. No one ever mentioned Complex Trauma, 20+ years ago no one was talking about PTSD except a handful of veteran's advocates, and no one was connecting that symptomology to changes in the brain, or speculating about how a prolonged experience of violation and helplessness would affect a child so young that the cognitive ability to recognize one's self hadn't fully formed yet. No one knew, then. We had barely begun to acknowledge the obvious impact on behavior and self-image, the using of sex to secure love in adolescence and adulthood, the tendencies to withdraw, self-injure, the eating disorders that often become a growing girl's last-ditch attempt to control something, anything, about her body in relationship to the world and people around her.... Because even a single episode of sexual abuse or assault can produce the same perceivable psychological effects, as can sexual assault at any age, the focus of therapy in those days was consciously grappling with and releasing internalized self-blame and asserting our right to healthy self-esteem and relationships built on trust, and learning how to feel healthy, adult desire. It was about self-empowerment, mostly; how to not be a victim anymore. Self-love was supposed to naturally follow this self-empowerment process. "I am not a victim, I am a survivor." That was the mantra, the manifesto, the emblem that announced to the world that while you may have been weak and helpless in the past, you were claiming and asserting your strength from here on out. It seemed so obvious then. Clear-cut, once we summoned the courage to speak of our pain, share details of specific episodes with each other, because telling was important, supporting fellow survivors as we fought shame and fear to speak of our experience. I remember joining an incest survivors' group on campus my sophomore year, not realizing that confronting these buried demons would make concentrating on classes nearly impossible. Individual therapy was required to participate in the group, thank goodness- the staff in charge had the foresight to realize we would be stirring up intense, potentially incapacitating repressed emotions and would need one-to-one support to help us through the healing process. We all bought a copy of The Courage to Heal, the incest/sexual abuse/rape survivor's bible. I remember how dog-eared and highlighted mine became, I remember the chapter devoted to partners trying to understand the roller coaster of emotions and confusion they had been drafted into, and all the tips for honoring their own sexual needs without pressuring their healing partner into unwanted sexual activity. Partners were strongly advised to find their own support network, as the healing survivor would not be able to prioritize her needs over her partner's in a healthy way for some time. I remember feeling a lot of resistance to telling my story, we met weekly and took turns, cautioned not to compare our pain with each other's; that we weren't supposed to minimize our own suffering because someone else's abuse lasted longer, or was more violent, or minimize their pain if the reverse were true. Abuse is abuse, they said, and we believed them. I still do- and I don't want my story to be used to minimize anyone else's, truly. Violation of the body and will is traumatic, period. At any age, by anyone. When someone shares the story of their violation, it's to free themselves from the burden of the secret, not to diminish the experience of anyone else. It's to give the amorphous cloud of shame and yuck inside them some kind of finite dimensions, to regain some sense of control, to own the memories they were told to keep to themselves forever. It's part of allowing yourself to believe it really happened, that you aren't crazy, that you didn't die from it and you're not in some hazy delusional coma. In a way, it's a rite of passage. The transition from victim to survivor, from powerless to empowered. If you can stand to tell your story, and others can stand to hear it, you gather around each other and hug and cry and feel enormous relief at believing yourself enough to speak of it, and being believed, often for the first time. [-So very awkward later, seeing each other on campus in unrelated venues- and profoundly unsettling, if you'd managed to NOT think about it for a brief time. None of us knew each other socially, and we weren't supposed to mention group as where we met each other-- revealing someone's past abuse FOR them is understandably forbidden, a betrayal of confidence of unimaginable magnitude, yet another violation of one's will. It makes me queasy to even think about it.] One by one we told our stories, dutifully cautioned not to compare or minimize, we were each here to assert our own truth and be validated.... I remember a girl, painfully thin, still struggling with a teenage eating disorder, her father a powerful man, a judge if I recall correctly, and one of the only stories I've ever heard in which the abuse had not ceased at some point, for some reason, at the very least during the high school years. And now he was holding her tuition over her head as blackmail to make sure she still came home for holidays. I was sickened by her story, for her, and infuriated- I wanted to protect her, expose him, kill him if he wouldn't stop, even if it meant flying to a distant city and learning to skulk in the shadows until the right opportunity presented itself. Getting angry for her helped me get angry for me too, which is yet another reason why we tell.... Knowing with certainty that she was not to blame, that the shame she felt was an additional unfair burden on one already suffering- helped me to grasp that the same was true for me. Feeling empathy and compassion for her helped me connect to those feelings for myself, finally. Hearing her story helped me understanding that telling is not about 'confessing our sins' though it may feel that way at times... It's more like jamming a finger down your throat to puke all that sickness and shame back onto the perpetrator, where it belongs. Unpleasant, but necessary. It sucks, but it helps. There's no prize or anything, and the damage doesn't just evaporate, but when you speak the unspeakable, it loses power. When you tell The Big Ugly Secret, it becomes the ugly truth. Still ugly, but not so scary. Plus, when you break the "don't ever tell" rule, you see how flimsy the other rules were (maybe are, for some, still)..... Don't resist. Don't complain. Be a good girl. Do as I say. Don't say no. Don't cry. Don't look so sad. Don't look so scared. Tell me you liked it. There's power in telling, at least when you tell the right people, and they hear you, and validate your words, and your right to speak them. There's power in hearing each other's stories too, hearing for the first time possibly, at least in person, that you are not the only one. Not the only one this happened to, not the only one who feels this way, not the only one with this seemingly impossible task of healing such devastating wounds... But really, you are still the only one your story happened to, and the only one who can tell it, own it, and honor yourself as the victim of an unspeakable crime. It's terrifying, even knowing in advance that you'll be believed, and supported. I can't even imagine the additional layers of trauma added for those who have told, and suffered consequences: disbelief, reinforcement of shame and guilt, ridicule, anger, punishment, and continued or intensified abuse. To tell the truth, and be called a liar, or worse. To ask for help and not receive it. To cry for help, compassion, understanding, respite, rescue, release... and find yourself still alone. To starve yourself or slice your own flesh in a silent scream for someone, anyone, to notice that this is a manifestation of how you feel inside, and be labeled attention-seeking, disordered, defective. To reach the care of medical professionals, still mute with fear, hoping that someone will ask the right question and pause long enough for your tongue to thaw, for you to find the words to describe your experience, or somehow miraculously interpret your silence for what it is, sheer paralyzing terror.... Despite all the cautions against it, I still compared, and minimized my own horrors. I still do, I can't seem to help it, especially if I'm speaking aloud. I can get a little closer in writing, at times, but still censor the most painful parts, even from myself. Knee-jerk self defense, for the most part, but also always a sense of deeply buried shame. We have a better understanding now of how repetitive trauma at a very young age embeds this sense of shame within the roots of the developing psyche, they call it "toxic shame". It contaminates everything. It's embedded deeply within my mind as far back as I can remember, and it keeps me silent, most of the time. I can write things I still can't force myself to say, sometimes. I still minimize, deflect, change topics, often against my will, hoping someone knows the question that unlocks my frozen tongue. But I was feeling shame long before I had the language skills to express it. When my conscious awareness of my self came into being, it was already permeated with toxic shame. I've sloughed the top few layers off, more than once now, and it helps, I hope it's a real start, and that with my newfound understanding of c-PTSD I can get some momentum going. I know stumbling across others who have faced court battles with narcissistic abusers, and finding a common theme of PTSD as a court-inflicted injury catapulted me out of the dissociative state I've been in since the trial 2 1/2 years ago and into some intense high speed processing that has already transformed my life for the better. Understand begets acceptance, for me. Feeling resistance, pushing up against it to measure it, nudging my way in around the sides just a little. Catching my breath and backing off when it stings, examine what I've learned. I can see that I've been hopping around enough to illustrate my point, following each intriguing thought before completing the one that sparked it. I've been calling this ADD for 24 years, but many of these symptoms overlap with PTSD and c-PTSD, and many more with the gifted intellect/creative thinker/introvert labels I've received over the years. I've often thought I must be mildly autistic, with a savant-style facility for written language. And there I go again, starting a new chapter, when I still haven't gotten to the point of this one. And since it's late, and I've lost the solitude I need to focus, I'll skip to it: When the other young women in my therapy group told stories of abuse at the hands of their parents, I was thankful that for me it was "only my brother". When they told stories of telling their mothers, and receiving scorn, I was grateful that although I never spoke of it directly, my mother noticed something was wrong, and tried to stop it, though she failed for reasons beyond her control. She tried, and it actually did get better for a long time, and by then I was old enough to make myself scarce more often than not, though he remained an unpredictable, sometimes explosive presence in my home, one whose voice made my skin crawl, until I was nearly 17. When my friends in my therapy group told stories of having their pre-adolescent bodies violated by adult men, I was so affected by my empathy with their pain that I couldn't help but be thankful that my brother was "only 2 years" older than me. When I finally told my story in group, I pushed myself and was both proud and relieved that I was able to say as much as I did, and I really did fight my tendency to minimize and redirect, with some success. But I know I left a lot out, some of it important, that I'm still struggling to even type, because letting it out of my head feels dangerous, like the part about how I'm pretty sure it started around the time I was three. And the part I was crying about when I sat down to write that feels so unfair. How because I was only 3, and the self-awareness portion of my mind was not fully formed, I have almost no ability to self-validate.... I can't consistently trust my own character, the thing in my head that feels like "me" is like a shadow most of the time, and when I catch a glimpse of her I think she might just be a rare and wonderful person, a human poem, but I can't be sure. That's the lived experience of "minimal ability to self-validate", I'm pretty sure, something I usually work around by being sure of my values and living them consistently, by feeding my thirst for poetry, nature, art, and people, by listening to them and loving them, leaving myself as much room for both solitude and spontaneity as I can.... Most of the time that does the trick, but when I'm overwhelmed, by sound or stress or not enough time to think, or when I fear I'm being silenced, I shut down. It's like a self-induced emotional coma, also known as dissociation. I can't self-validate at all in that state, and that shadowy "me" in my head loses almost all definition... That's the set-up for the part that's really unfair, the spring loaded sucker punch legacy of the narcissistic abuser from later years, the one who toyed with my mind for his own amusement, who courted me with poignant, fervent, irresistible love until I felt safe and special in his arms, and then turned on me. The first emotional scar he ever gave me was inflicted with the words "when did you get so fucking needy?".... When realistically, I hadn't been particularly needy at all, and was only trying to initiate some affection after a long absence from each other. Eventually he convinced me that to have needs at all was to be too needy, and that being too needy was the most tedious and unforgivable flaw a person could have. It's the combination, the complex in the Complex Trauma, the 'c' in the c-PTSD, that's so goddamn unfair. When I can't self-validate, I can't believe in myself, or sometimes even remember who I am inside. But I'm scared to seek validation elsewhere, because that's needy and I don't get to need anything. I might inconvenience someone. It's just fishing for compliments, for crying out loud, unforgivable. Repulsive. Selfish. Shallow. Pointless really, since asking for it is proof I don't deserve it. So yeah, not fair. I was crying tonight because an old friend said something nice about me, and I noticed that the flare of feeling recognized was almost absurdly gratifying, which highlighted my catch-22. Can't believe my own praise, can't seek it elsewhere. It's not usually this intense, there's a lot more middle ground most days, and some of the methods I've devised to deprogram my inner critic are paying off, lightening the weight of the "don't have needs" burden substantially. Enough that I can see it for what it is, an unfair toxic legacy I can and will get rid of. That I am actively getting rid of, day by day. Yay me! And hey, looky there. A hint of self-validation, with just a hint of weary sarcasm, not much.... It's a start. And it's 3:40 am, so it's going to have to suffice for now....
This may be the first time I have sat down to write already in tears, touching a deeply buried well of fear and pain, and although I refuse to label this feeling self-pity, I have to put that out there just to get it out of my own head, where it's lurking in the shadows, taunting me for daring to express these feelings of "it's just not fair".... I've been minimizing the severity and duration of the sexual abuse I suffered in my childhood for so long, and genuinely unaware that so much of my lifelong battle with emotional paralysis began so early in my life that I can't distinguish the long-term effects of that abuse from what I've always considered my awkwardness.... I brush it aside, because years of therapy as a young adult helped me deal with most of the conscious issues surrounding self-blame and the 'classic' symptomology of Incest Survivor Syndrome. I felt healed, felt my ownership of my sexuality, and had many years of feeling free of the burdens of shame and unworthiness that attach so persistently to so many of us. No one ever mentioned Complex Trauma, 20+ years ago no one was talking about PTSD except a handful of veteran's advocates, and no one was connecting that symptomology to changes in the brain, or speculating about how a prolonged experience of violation and helplessness would affect a child so young that the cognitive ability to recognize one's self hadn't fully formed yet. No one knew, then. We had barely begun to acknowledge the obvious impact on behavior and self-image, the using of sex to secure love in adolescence and adulthood, the tendencies to withdraw, self-injure, the eating disorders that often become a growing girl's last-ditch attempt to control something, anything, about her body in relationship to the world and people around her.... Because even a single episode of sexual abuse or assault can produce the same perceivable psychological effects, as can sexual assault at any age, the focus of therapy in those days was consciously grappling with and releasing internalized self-blame and asserting our right to healthy self-esteem and relationships built on trust, and learning how to feel healthy, adult desire. It was about self-empowerment, mostly; how to not be a victim anymore. Self-love was supposed to naturally follow this self-empowerment process. "I am not a victim, I am a survivor." That was the mantra, the manifesto, the emblem that announced to the world that while you may have been weak and helpless in the past, you were claiming and asserting your strength from here on out. It seemed so obvious then. Clear-cut, once we summoned the courage to speak of our pain, share details of specific episodes with each other, because telling was important, supporting fellow survivors as we fought shame and fear to speak of our experience. I remember joining an incest survivors' group on campus my sophomore year, not realizing that confronting these buried demons would make concentrating on classes nearly impossible. Individual therapy was required to participate in the group, thank goodness- the staff in charge had the foresight to realize we would be stirring up intense, potentially incapacitating repressed emotions and would need one-to-one support to help us through the healing process. We all bought a copy of The Courage to Heal, the incest/sexual abuse/rape survivor's bible. I remember how dog-eared and highlighted mine became, I remember the chapter devoted to partners trying to understand the roller coaster of emotions and confusion they had been drafted into, and all the tips for honoring their own sexual needs without pressuring their healing partner into unwanted sexual activity. Partners were strongly advised to find their own support network, as the healing survivor would not be able to prioritize her needs over her partner's in a healthy way for some time. I remember feeling a lot of resistance to telling my story, we met weekly and took turns, cautioned not to compare our pain with each other's; that we weren't supposed to minimize our own suffering because someone else's abuse lasted longer, or was more violent, or minimize their pain if the reverse were true. Abuse is abuse, they said, and we believed them. I still do- and I don't want my story to be used to minimize anyone else's, truly. Violation of the body and will is traumatic, period. At any age, by anyone. When someone shares the story of their violation, it's to free themselves from the burden of the secret, not to diminish the experience of anyone else. It's to give the amorphous cloud of shame and yuck inside them some kind of finite dimensions, to regain some sense of control, to own the memories they were told to keep to themselves forever. It's part of allowing yourself to believe it really happened, that you aren't crazy, that you didn't die from it and you're not in some hazy delusional coma. In a way, it's a rite of passage. The transition from victim to survivor, from powerless to empowered. If you can stand to tell your story, and others can stand to hear it, you gather around each other and hug and cry and feel enormous relief at believing yourself enough to speak of it, and being believed, often for the first time. [-So very awkward later, seeing each other on campus in unrelated venues- and profoundly unsettling, if you'd managed to NOT think about it for a brief time. None of us knew each other socially, and we weren't supposed to mention group as where we met each other-- revealing someone's past abuse FOR them is understandably forbidden, a betrayal of confidence of unimaginable magnitude, yet another violation of one's will. It makes me queasy to even think about it.] One by one we told our stories, dutifully cautioned not to compare or minimize, we were each here to assert our own truth and be validated.... I remember a girl, painfully thin, still struggling with a teenage eating disorder, her father a powerful man, a judge if I recall correctly, and one of the only stories I've ever heard in which the abuse had not ceased at some point, for some reason, at the very least during the high school years. And now he was holding her tuition over her head as blackmail to make sure she still came home for holidays. I was sickened by her story, for her, and infuriated- I wanted to protect her, expose him, kill him if he wouldn't stop, even if it meant flying to a distant city and learning to skulk in the shadows until the right opportunity presented itself. Getting angry for her helped me get angry for me too, which is yet another reason why we tell.... Knowing with certainty that she was not to blame, that the shame she felt was an additional unfair burden on one already suffering- helped me to grasp that the same was true for me. Feeling empathy and compassion for her helped me connect to those feelings for myself, finally. Hearing her story helped me understanding that telling is not about 'confessing our sins' though it may feel that way at times... It's more like jamming a finger down your throat to puke all that sickness and shame back onto the perpetrator, where it belongs. Unpleasant, but necessary. It sucks, but it helps. There's no prize or anything, and the damage doesn't just evaporate, but when you speak the unspeakable, it loses power. When you tell The Big Ugly Secret, it becomes the ugly truth. Still ugly, but not so scary. Plus, when you break the "don't ever tell" rule, you see how flimsy the other rules were (maybe are, for some, still)..... Don't resist. Don't complain. Be a good girl. Do as I say. Don't say no. Don't cry. Don't look so sad. Don't look so scared. Tell me you liked it. There's power in telling, at least when you tell the right people, and they hear you, and validate your words, and your right to speak them. There's power in hearing each other's stories too, hearing for the first time possibly, at least in person, that you are not the only one. Not the only one this happened to, not the only one who feels this way, not the only one with this seemingly impossible task of healing such devastating wounds... But really, you are still the only one your story happened to, and the only one who can tell it, own it, and honor yourself as the victim of an unspeakable crime. It's terrifying, even knowing in advance that you'll be believed, and supported. I can't even imagine the additional layers of trauma added for those who have told, and suffered consequences: disbelief, reinforcement of shame and guilt, ridicule, anger, punishment, and continued or intensified abuse. To tell the truth, and be called a liar, or worse. To ask for help and not receive it. To cry for help, compassion, understanding, respite, rescue, release... and find yourself still alone. To starve yourself or slice your own flesh in a silent scream for someone, anyone, to notice that this is a manifestation of how you feel inside, and be labeled attention-seeking, disordered, defective. To reach the care of medical professionals, still mute with fear, hoping that someone will ask the right question and pause long enough for your tongue to thaw, for you to find the words to describe your experience, or somehow miraculously interpret your silence for what it is, sheer paralyzing terror.... Despite all the cautions against it, I still compared, and minimized my own horrors. I still do, I can't seem to help it, especially if I'm speaking aloud. I can get a little closer in writing, at times, but still censor the most painful parts, even from myself. Knee-jerk self defense, for the most part, but also always a sense of deeply buried shame. We have a better understanding now of how repetitive trauma at a very young age embeds this sense of shame within the roots of the developing psyche, they call it "toxic shame". It contaminates everything. It's embedded deeply within my mind as far back as I can remember, and it keeps me silent, most of the time. I can write things I still can't force myself to say, sometimes. I still minimize, deflect, change topics, often against my will, hoping someone knows the question that unlocks my frozen tongue. But I was feeling shame long before I had the language skills to express it. When my conscious awareness of my self came into being, it was already permeated with toxic shame. I've sloughed the top few layers off, more than once now, and it helps, I hope it's a real start, and that with my newfound understanding of c-PTSD I can get some momentum going. I know stumbling across others who have faced court battles with narcissistic abusers, and finding a common theme of PTSD as a court-inflicted injury catapulted me out of the dissociative state I've been in since the trial 2 1/2 years ago and into some intense high speed processing that has already transformed my life for the better. Understand begets acceptance, for me. Feeling resistance, pushing up against it to measure it, nudging my way in around the sides just a little. Catching my breath and backing off when it stings, examine what I've learned. I can see that I've been hopping around enough to illustrate my point, following each intriguing thought before completing the one that sparked it. I've been calling this ADD for 24 years, but many of these symptoms overlap with PTSD and c-PTSD, and many more with the gifted intellect/creative thinker/introvert labels I've received over the years. I've often thought I must be mildly autistic, with a savant-style facility for written language. And there I go again, starting a new chapter, when I still haven't gotten to the point of this one. And since it's late, and I've lost the solitude I need to focus, I'll skip to it: When the other young women in my therapy group told stories of abuse at the hands of their parents, I was thankful that for me it was "only my brother". When they told stories of telling their mothers, and receiving scorn, I was grateful that although I never spoke of it directly, my mother noticed something was wrong, and tried to stop it, though she failed for reasons beyond her control. She tried, and it actually did get better for a long time, and by then I was old enough to make myself scarce more often than not, though he remained an unpredictable, sometimes explosive presence in my home, one whose voice made my skin crawl, until I was nearly 17. When my friends in my therapy group told stories of having their pre-adolescent bodies violated by adult men, I was so affected by my empathy with their pain that I couldn't help but be thankful that my brother was "only 2 years" older than me. When I finally told my story in group, I pushed myself and was both proud and relieved that I was able to say as much as I did, and I really did fight my tendency to minimize and redirect, with some success. But I know I left a lot out, some of it important, that I'm still struggling to even type, because letting it out of my head feels dangerous, like the part about how I'm pretty sure it started around the time I was three. And the part I was crying about when I sat down to write that feels so unfair. How because I was only 3, and the self-awareness portion of my mind was not fully formed, I have almost no ability to self-validate.... I can't consistently trust my own character, the thing in my head that feels like "me" is like a shadow most of the time, and when I catch a glimpse of her I think she might just be a rare and wonderful person, a human poem, but I can't be sure. That's the lived experience of "minimal ability to self-validate", I'm pretty sure, something I usually work around by being sure of my values and living them consistently, by feeding my thirst for poetry, nature, art, and people, by listening to them and loving them, leaving myself as much room for both solitude and spontaneity as I can.... Most of the time that does the trick, but when I'm overwhelmed, by sound or stress or not enough time to think, or when I fear I'm being silenced, I shut down. It's like a self-induced emotional coma, also known as dissociation. I can't self-validate at all in that state, and that shadowy "me" in my head loses almost all definition... That's the set-up for the part that's really unfair, the spring loaded sucker punch legacy of the narcissistic abuser from later years, the one who toyed with my mind for his own amusement, who courted me with poignant, fervent, irresistible love until I felt safe and special in his arms, and then turned on me. The first emotional scar he ever gave me was inflicted with the words "when did you get so fucking needy?".... When realistically, I hadn't been particularly needy at all, and was only trying to initiate some affection after a long absence from each other. Eventually he convinced me that to have needs at all was to be too needy, and that being too needy was the most tedious and unforgivable flaw a person could have. It's the combination, the complex in the Complex Trauma, the 'c' in the c-PTSD, that's so goddamn unfair. When I can't self-validate, I can't believe in myself, or sometimes even remember who I am inside. But I'm scared to seek validation elsewhere, because that's needy and I don't get to need anything. I might inconvenience someone. It's just fishing for compliments, for crying out loud, unforgivable. Repulsive. Selfish. Shallow. Pointless really, since asking for it is proof I don't deserve it. So yeah, not fair. I was crying tonight because an old friend said something nice about me, and I noticed that the flare of feeling recognized was almost absurdly gratifying, which highlighted my catch-22. Can't believe my own praise, can't seek it elsewhere. It's not usually this intense, there's a lot more middle ground most days, and some of the methods I've devised to deprogram my inner critic are paying off, lightening the weight of the "don't have needs" burden substantially. Enough that I can see it for what it is, an unfair toxic legacy I can and will get rid of. That I am actively getting rid of, day by day. Yay me! And hey, looky there. A hint of self-validation, with just a hint of weary sarcasm, not much.... It's a start. And it's 3:40 am, so it's going to have to suffice for now....
A preface for today's double post- Please start here!
Oy. That seems to be my word for the day....
I'm posting two blog entries, one of which was originally supposed to be my "launch" post, but I got a little distracted! It's incomplete, but I think many of you can relate to that! In fact, anytime I post something without a 'proper' conclusion, just assume my toddler yanked me off my train of thought, and asserted his dibs on my attention.
Academically, professionally, the 'right' thing to do in those situations is to come back later and edit, polish, conclude with a pearl of wisdom, a bit of humor, or a call to action.
That's "real" writing, but that's not my life. I have a two year old, and ADD, and more things going on in my brain on any given day than I can ever hope to articulate, especially if I'm bound to 'the rules' of finishing work before it's published.
The blogging format is real-time, and interactive, and that's why it works for me. Time and competing demands for my attention- those are my limitations, and this is how I work around them:
You. The reader. If you like where I'm going with something, and you feel short-changed by that last dangling sentence or thought, speak up! Ask me about it, or propose your own conclusions! I'm a team player, just a little shy about actively recruiting, so ummm, yeah, join in whenever you like.
Today's menu has two courses, as I previously mentioned:
1. The missing introduction, also known as "Where I thought I was going with this blog when I started, which still may be where I end up, but hey, look- a squirrel!"
http://mydegreeofdifficulty.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-missing-introduction-interrupted.html
2. Long, meandering free-association self-evisceration, in print. As in, I start telling my story instead of 'just' condensing the lessons. It's unedited because it has to be- if I re-read it now I may never post it.
The length is interesting in and of itself, to me, as a portrait of my thought process, and how I confront my own resistance to speaking what feels unspeakable.
The tension between what I must say and what I cannot say...play by play.
http://mydegreeofdifficulty.blogspot.com/2013/03/triggers-land-mines-and-things-that.html
(**Trigger warning, for anyone with PTSD and/or issues regarding any form of abuse.)
I'm posting two blog entries, one of which was originally supposed to be my "launch" post, but I got a little distracted! It's incomplete, but I think many of you can relate to that! In fact, anytime I post something without a 'proper' conclusion, just assume my toddler yanked me off my train of thought, and asserted his dibs on my attention.
Academically, professionally, the 'right' thing to do in those situations is to come back later and edit, polish, conclude with a pearl of wisdom, a bit of humor, or a call to action.
That's "real" writing, but that's not my life. I have a two year old, and ADD, and more things going on in my brain on any given day than I can ever hope to articulate, especially if I'm bound to 'the rules' of finishing work before it's published.
The blogging format is real-time, and interactive, and that's why it works for me. Time and competing demands for my attention- those are my limitations, and this is how I work around them:
You. The reader. If you like where I'm going with something, and you feel short-changed by that last dangling sentence or thought, speak up! Ask me about it, or propose your own conclusions! I'm a team player, just a little shy about actively recruiting, so ummm, yeah, join in whenever you like.
Today's menu has two courses, as I previously mentioned:
1. The missing introduction, also known as "Where I thought I was going with this blog when I started, which still may be where I end up, but hey, look- a squirrel!"
http://mydegreeofdifficulty.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-missing-introduction-interrupted.html
2. Long, meandering free-association self-evisceration, in print. As in, I start telling my story instead of 'just' condensing the lessons. It's unedited because it has to be- if I re-read it now I may never post it.
The length is interesting in and of itself, to me, as a portrait of my thought process, and how I confront my own resistance to speaking what feels unspeakable.
The tension between what I must say and what I cannot say...play by play.
http://mydegreeofdifficulty.blogspot.com/2013/03/triggers-land-mines-and-things-that.html
(**Trigger warning, for anyone with PTSD and/or issues regarding any form of abuse.)
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Circa 1990....
What I love about blogging, and why I think it matters:
There's a larger story here that I keep starting to tell, but it has so many layers, so many chapters that seem wildly tangential, but aren't. Time to write is a luxury for me, as is the opportunity to even finish a thought, but it's becoming a necessity, and I'll get these chapters up as quickly as I can.
I'm trying to get to the topic of rape culture, culture in general, the abuse of individual girls and women as a tool in the oppression of all girls and women, the high cost I have personally paid for the crime of being born female, and the price we all pay every day, female or not, for the systematic violation and control of women, and anyone else that can be wedged into a similar category.
I'm really really trying to get to the topic of victim-blaming, from so many angles. Victims of abuse and rape so often blame themselves, and the resulting shame isolates them, so none of us/them really suspect just how commonplace, how every day every where every body has a story of violation, of victimization, and a secret they've been keeping, usually their own.
I'm making progress with that, but can't seem to finish, because every day the topic grows. Today I remembered that this is a blog, not a book- I don't have to write the whole thing before I publish. I can explore the different facets I'm discovering day by day. Rape Culture and Really Big Secret Everybody Keeps is an important chapter in a much bigger story, and I'm not going to shortchange it due to time constraints.
This process is real-time, and interactive, and sometimes a reader's response can spark a tangent that becomes part of the story itself, something I had no idea was relevant until someone says something, like this:
An exchange from my Degree of Difficulty Facebook page, late last night:
Anon: From all the women in Saudi Arabia..Thank you for giving us hope maybe the day will come when we can join the fight
DoD: I'm humbled and touched....I hope each voice gets heard, and those of us who aren't actually risking our lives by speaking up need to forge the path!
Anon: My sister is waiting to be arrested any time now she is an activist and she is going away for a long time as the secret police told her..they take ppl away and u never see them again
We are trying to deal but of course we cant..life seem unreal in this part of the world
......
DoD: I've been hibernating for a while, but I grew up on Amnesty International, ran a little chapter in my high school back in the day when letters need stamps! If someone is risking their life and freedom to for simple human dignity, the least I can do is raise my voice about it, and notice, as loudly as possible, if they go "missing"....
I forgot to mention that those Amnesty International days were back when Nelson Mandela was still imprisoned, and apartheid an evil so undefiable that resistance within its confines generally met with death. Winnie Mandela spoke through every channel she found, enlisting support wherever she could, including AI. And so we wrote letters. Once a week, a few at a time, and mailed off to dictators in foreign lands. Letters that carried no more power individually than a dandelion seed with a tiny tag attached that whispered "I know what you've done, and it's wrong." Easy enough to ignore, and truthfully, for all I know every letter I wrote ended up in dictator's incinerator without ever being counted, or read. I imagine more than one postal official in a corrupt and violent land hid many in a desperate bid to not become the next executed messenger.
It's possible every letter I wrote never even reached the intended recipient, but that doesn't matter.
Because when the slightly older classmate I silently revered founded a chapter of Amnesty International in my American Bible Belt high school, I was drawn to join. I took over the chapter when she graduated, and had my first meaningful leadership experience- leading meetings and organizing campaigns and fundraisers, helping my best friend and my boyfriend start a chapter at their high school, overcoming my paralyzing fear of making myself visible in any way- those are the only moments of my first 20 years on this planet that I actually felt just a little bit "cool". In the midst of a conservative and self-absorbed dominant culture we created a little oasis, a subculture where social awareness and activism, even just writing a letter, was a ticket to "the cool kids' club". I didn't realize that at the time, I just felt, finally, a little less awkward. I found my courage in my cause, and spreading that cause gave me confidence, and multiplied the effects of my individual efforts, in ripples.
That confidence and the support of my teachers, and the kinship of my peers helped me to believe my college counselor when she said I should apply to Brown. I did laugh out loud (while doing an internal spit-take) when she mentioned my name and Harvard in the same sentence, before she mused that Brown might be a better fit. When I asked why she chuckled affectionately and said "it's where all the really smart weird people go", and I'd fit right in.
(spoiler alert: I did get into Brown, and attend, on academic scholarship, which still blows my mind to this day. And I didn't 'fit right in', although I could have, for many personal and painful reasons that I'll get to in another chapter, as it's a very long story and I've strayed pretty far from the point of this chapter already.)
My point is that the happiest chapter of my life until around age 22 was the year I found myself by following my passion for social justice, writing letters and recruiting a team. I wrote a letter to the South African government protesting the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela, based on information provided to Amnesty International by his wife Winnie, who never gave up. I wrote one letter, and led one meeting that resulted in a couple dozen more. By then there were 3 local high schools with AI chapters, and I passed the information along.
We didn't have the internet in 1989 the way we do now, though I believe it was technically in existence as I was assigned an email address in college the following year.
We still generated a few hundred letters on behalf of Nelson Mandela, and mailed them off to South Africa, and I still have no idea if they were ever received by the addressee, and read, but I know that thanks to our 3 chapters of AI you couldn't be a 'cool' kid in any of our schools if you didn't at least know Nelson Mandela's name, and what apartheid was and why it was bad, whether or not you ever came to a meeting and wrote a letter.
I know that one confident, intelligent, humanitarian-minded girl inspired me, and when I followed her lead her encouragement made a leader out of me, drove me to suppress my terror and step out from under a cloak of invisibility, and multiplied my impact a hundredfold or more.
I know that this happened in the fall of 1989 and in February of 1990, after 27 years in prison, Nelson Mandela was freed, and became his country's first black President in 1994- less than 5 years after a black child could be killed on the street, legally (or at least without repercussion, so de facto legally regardless of the text of the law) for offending or even annoying a white person. Five years after resisting the system meant risking your own disappearance in the night, Nelson Mandela became President of South Africa, and has continued to lead his nation and the world in various roles ever since, without inciting hatred, violence, or vengeance for the wrongs done to him.
Imprisoned for 27 years, now free for 23. People under 30 years of age have to actually look up 'apartheid' now. Racism still exists, and in many areas something resembling apartheid can still be found, but it is de facto, like segregation in America today.
Despite the fact that racism itself hasn't been eliminated worldwide, none of 'the cool kids' do it anymore. Peer pressure, social media, leading by example-- all tools in our workbelt to create and multiply pressure for change.
I don't know if my letter alone had anything to do with Nelson Mandela's release from a South African prison after 27 years for the crime of objecting to injustice on a massive scale. For the crime of defining and resisting his own oppression.
Mine was not the only letter, and not the only chapter of AI, and AI was not the only organization behind his cause. In 27 years the voices calling for his release, protesting the system of legally enforced apartheid had grown very loud, and spread very far, and from 1987-1989 there were films, benefit concerts, outspoken music artists organized a formal boycott....
My little conspiracy of iconoclasts may have been the last ones to join the campaign, the end result could have been predetermined long before we wrote and mailed our letters, en masse.
Or we could have been the tipping point, the last bag of mail that got delivered, shaken out onto a table somewhere in South Africa, the arrival of a few hundred letters postmarked from Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA the final straw in a dictator's dwindling grasp on power.
I can totally envision this, by the way, as a comic sketch, with dialogue like:
"Are you freaking kidding me? Where in the hell is that stupid-sounding town anyway? Somebody get me a map! Why can't these people just mind their own business? Why do a few hundred people from across the damn globe even know, much less care about my country's traditions? Fine! Fuck it! It's not even worth the damn effort anymore!
--mutter mutter stomp stomp grumble grimace stomp--
Guards! Release Mandela already, this apartheid lunacy is more trouble than it's worth!
....which is probably not how it happened, but it could be. It doesn't really matter what tipped the balance, apartheid fell.
I wrote letters, and made friends, and made those friends write letters, and I was happy, and apartheid fell.
1990 was a very good year.
I hadn't discovered Audre Lorde's writings yet, but it wouldn't take me long.
I close this chapter with two relevant quotations from her work, to foreshadow the chapters to come....
“Unless one lives and loves in the trenches, it is difficult to remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless.”
“We must constantly encourage ourselves and each other to attempt the heretical actions that our dreams imply and so many of our old ideas disparage.”
It's possible every letter I wrote never even reached the intended recipient, but that doesn't matter.
Because when the slightly older classmate I silently revered founded a chapter of Amnesty International in my American Bible Belt high school, I was drawn to join. I took over the chapter when she graduated, and had my first meaningful leadership experience- leading meetings and organizing campaigns and fundraisers, helping my best friend and my boyfriend start a chapter at their high school, overcoming my paralyzing fear of making myself visible in any way- those are the only moments of my first 20 years on this planet that I actually felt just a little bit "cool". In the midst of a conservative and self-absorbed dominant culture we created a little oasis, a subculture where social awareness and activism, even just writing a letter, was a ticket to "the cool kids' club". I didn't realize that at the time, I just felt, finally, a little less awkward. I found my courage in my cause, and spreading that cause gave me confidence, and multiplied the effects of my individual efforts, in ripples.
That confidence and the support of my teachers, and the kinship of my peers helped me to believe my college counselor when she said I should apply to Brown. I did laugh out loud (while doing an internal spit-take) when she mentioned my name and Harvard in the same sentence, before she mused that Brown might be a better fit. When I asked why she chuckled affectionately and said "it's where all the really smart weird people go", and I'd fit right in.
(spoiler alert: I did get into Brown, and attend, on academic scholarship, which still blows my mind to this day. And I didn't 'fit right in', although I could have, for many personal and painful reasons that I'll get to in another chapter, as it's a very long story and I've strayed pretty far from the point of this chapter already.)
My point is that the happiest chapter of my life until around age 22 was the year I found myself by following my passion for social justice, writing letters and recruiting a team. I wrote a letter to the South African government protesting the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela, based on information provided to Amnesty International by his wife Winnie, who never gave up. I wrote one letter, and led one meeting that resulted in a couple dozen more. By then there were 3 local high schools with AI chapters, and I passed the information along.
We didn't have the internet in 1989 the way we do now, though I believe it was technically in existence as I was assigned an email address in college the following year.
We still generated a few hundred letters on behalf of Nelson Mandela, and mailed them off to South Africa, and I still have no idea if they were ever received by the addressee, and read, but I know that thanks to our 3 chapters of AI you couldn't be a 'cool' kid in any of our schools if you didn't at least know Nelson Mandela's name, and what apartheid was and why it was bad, whether or not you ever came to a meeting and wrote a letter.
I know that one confident, intelligent, humanitarian-minded girl inspired me, and when I followed her lead her encouragement made a leader out of me, drove me to suppress my terror and step out from under a cloak of invisibility, and multiplied my impact a hundredfold or more.
I know that this happened in the fall of 1989 and in February of 1990, after 27 years in prison, Nelson Mandela was freed, and became his country's first black President in 1994- less than 5 years after a black child could be killed on the street, legally (or at least without repercussion, so de facto legally regardless of the text of the law) for offending or even annoying a white person. Five years after resisting the system meant risking your own disappearance in the night, Nelson Mandela became President of South Africa, and has continued to lead his nation and the world in various roles ever since, without inciting hatred, violence, or vengeance for the wrongs done to him.
Imprisoned for 27 years, now free for 23. People under 30 years of age have to actually look up 'apartheid' now. Racism still exists, and in many areas something resembling apartheid can still be found, but it is de facto, like segregation in America today.
Despite the fact that racism itself hasn't been eliminated worldwide, none of 'the cool kids' do it anymore. Peer pressure, social media, leading by example-- all tools in our workbelt to create and multiply pressure for change.
I don't know if my letter alone had anything to do with Nelson Mandela's release from a South African prison after 27 years for the crime of objecting to injustice on a massive scale. For the crime of defining and resisting his own oppression.
Mine was not the only letter, and not the only chapter of AI, and AI was not the only organization behind his cause. In 27 years the voices calling for his release, protesting the system of legally enforced apartheid had grown very loud, and spread very far, and from 1987-1989 there were films, benefit concerts, outspoken music artists organized a formal boycott....
My little conspiracy of iconoclasts may have been the last ones to join the campaign, the end result could have been predetermined long before we wrote and mailed our letters, en masse.
Or we could have been the tipping point, the last bag of mail that got delivered, shaken out onto a table somewhere in South Africa, the arrival of a few hundred letters postmarked from Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA the final straw in a dictator's dwindling grasp on power.
I can totally envision this, by the way, as a comic sketch, with dialogue like:
"Are you freaking kidding me? Where in the hell is that stupid-sounding town anyway? Somebody get me a map! Why can't these people just mind their own business? Why do a few hundred people from across the damn globe even know, much less care about my country's traditions? Fine! Fuck it! It's not even worth the damn effort anymore!
--mutter mutter stomp stomp grumble grimace stomp--
Guards! Release Mandela already, this apartheid lunacy is more trouble than it's worth!
....which is probably not how it happened, but it could be. It doesn't really matter what tipped the balance, apartheid fell.
I wrote letters, and made friends, and made those friends write letters, and I was happy, and apartheid fell.
1990 was a very good year.
I hadn't discovered Audre Lorde's writings yet, but it wouldn't take me long.
I close this chapter with two relevant quotations from her work, to foreshadow the chapters to come....
“Unless one lives and loves in the trenches, it is difficult to remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless.”
“We must constantly encourage ourselves and each other to attempt the heretical actions that our dreams imply and so many of our old ideas disparage.”
Friday, March 8, 2013
My Last Bad Day/How to Be Happy, Chapter One
I want to tell you a story from the summer that my sister died, just a little vignette that shaped my world view. It may sound melodramatic at first, but bear with me- I'm going somewhere with this....
In July of 2000, my little sister was struck by a car and killed, at the age of 14, in a ghastly auto-pedestrian accident witnessed by her twin. The driver wasn't drunk, just a young nurse driving home from church with younger siblings in car. Distracted by something, maybe the kids, maybe the radio, at exactly the wrong moment. She was speeding a little, but not recklessly for the road or conditions--There's really just no villain in this story, no target for anger, nothing to do with the pain but feel it. I was told that the driver had to be sedated at the scene, and I can certainly imagine that. What I can't imagine is why no one thought to do that for my sister, the teenage girl by the side of the road screaming, slipping into profound emotional shock, as her twin sister's body lay on the asphalt nearby with every bone broken, but her heart still beating. Not at the scene, not in the ambulance, not at the hospital that was a mere formality at that point. Her heartbeat meant they had to bring her, the condition of her body and brain stem made her heartbeat irrelevant. With the exception of one kidney, every organ was too damaged to donate.
At no point in this event did any medical professional take a moment to assess the surviving twin sister's condition as she crumbled, distraught, right in front of them, and think that just maybe it might be a good idea to treat her for shock.
The twins came into our family when they were three months old, and I was 14. I spent my teenage years with a baby on my hip, essentially a co-mom. They were my first babies, and losing one was beyond any pain I had endured or imagined.
The only thing more gut-wrenchingly painful was watching my other baby sister's world disintegrate around her, feeling powerless to fix her shattered soul.... to lose a twin, someone you've spent nearly every minute of your existence with, at the age of 14, and witness it? To layer that kind of grief with all of the emotional confusion of being a teenage girl? For her it was like being ripped in half, and not even being sure which half was her, and which was gone.
I spent 10 days in my hometown trying to help my family pick up the pieces, assuming I would deal with my own grief later, at home with my fiance's support.
I came home to a crumbling relationship with someone who couldn't understand grieving, and had no patience for me in that state. I'm not exaggerating when I say he was cold and cruel. I know now that he is/was a clinical narcissist and incapable of empathy, but at that time, I was utterly bewildered.
My daughter was 14 months old and looked exactly like the twins did at that age. Sinead O'Connor's song "Three Babies" lodged itself into my brain during the funeral, and ran in a perpetual loop for months.
Every morning I woke up relieved, thinking I had finally awakened from the worst dream ever, thankful that all my sisters were alive... remembering felt like a sledgehammer blow to the center of my chest, every morning.
It rained every day for 3 and a half weeks.
My mother's best friend's daughter was killed 5 weeks after my sister, also in an auto accident
Life was heavy, and no one around me seemed willing or able to share the burden. I avoided any situation that could possibly require small talk- being asked "how are you" felt like being handed a loaded weapon, as the only reply I could muster was "My sister is dead and my marriage is crumbling, you?"
One day at work I started feeling sick and realized I'd be throwing up soon, so I left early. I didn't even make it to the parking lot before my stomach revolted. I threw up in a tiny little strip of landscaping next to the building, eventually looking up to see a large group of people standing together with horrified faces- I made it exactly as far as the bus stop. Fantastic!. I hate throwing up, really extremely very much hate it, and having an audience really takes it up a notch. In that moment, nauseated, heaving lovely yellow bile, with a crowd of spectators, I felt entirely, thoroughly, irretrievably, redundantly pathetic.
Someone took my arm, explaining that since I was still on my employer's property, an EMT needed to evaluate me before letting me drive home. I was trying to decide whether I was grateful or pissed that my bus stop audience practically alerted the media when I felt a sharp pain in my knee and screamed "something just BIT me!"
He kept walking so I followed, feeling another sharp pain a little higher "it just bit me again!"
Once inside I went straight to the bathroom, and between bouts of dry heaves I removed my pants to see what the hell had bitten me- to my surprise, little bee corpses fell to the floor.
My first thought?
"So that's what a bee sting feels like." It actually was my first, and second bee sting, ever. My next thought was that "My throat's not swelling shut, so apparently I'm not allergic..."
I realized that my unintended audience wasn't the biggest drawback to the site where I'd lost my lunch. The ground-dwelling hive of bees I had graced with my stomach contents were not pleased, and the wide-leg pants I was wearing gave them a direct path straight upwards to communicate their displeasure, unequivocally.
I had a little moment there, a "come to Jesus" meeting with the Universe, in a way.
The Depeche Mode song "Blasphemous Rumors" cuing up in my brain.
My internal monologue goes something like this:
You have got to be kidding me. Weeks of nothing but death, grief, tragedy and relentless lonely pain, and now this? Am I on God's Absurdist Comedy Hour? Bees. FLEW UP MY PANTS. I'm being Punked by the Universe right? Seriously? Bees? I'm lucky I didn't get stung in the hoo-ha!
Right there my brain stopped to process the truth of that last sentence:
I actually did feel lucky. As absurdly unlucky as it may have been to throw up on an underground bee's nest in the first place, overall I was genuinely thankful that I was only stung twice, and had no life-threatening allergies, that bystanders had cared enough to fetch help, that a medical professional had been nearby so even if I were allergic odds were that I'd have been okay...one sting on the knee, one on a butt cheek- truly, it could have been worse. A lot worse.
I could have had dozens of stings, including several to the vagina, and I didn't.
I'm pretty sure I exhaled a breath I'd been holding since the news of my sister's death knocked the wind out of me.
Bees flew up my pants, and it could have been worse. I felt lucky. It felt good to find something, even a small thing, to be thankful for. Something could have gone wrong but didn't, a set of variables coincided in a relatively harmless, even funny conclusion instead of a tragic one.... I almost forgot that could happen.
How did I go from death-grief-gloom-pain to Bees Flew Up My Pants to the world making sense again?
Somehow the bees reminded me of how to find a silver lining, to reset my baseline from what could have gone right that didn't (seeing only the loss) to noticing what could have gone wrong that didn't. It didn't change the fact that one of my beloved baby sisters was dead, but it did remind me to be thankful that both of them were not, that my daughter was not, that I was still here and could keep loving them all.
My relationship still sucked, and I was still financially trapped in it, but I was working, and had plans for my future independence. Patience and persistence would get me there.
I could control my own perspective. I could choose to see how many things hadn't gone wrong:
My mother didn't lose two daughters in the same year.
I wasn't permanently trapped in an unhealthy relationship.
I had friends who cared enough to listen, and comfort me when they could.
I wasn't as alone as I felt.
Acknowledging what I hadn't lost helped me honor what I had lost without being overwhelmed by it.
I lost a beloved sister who was like a daughter to me. I lost the illusion of a loving relationship, one I had planned my life around.
Both of those losses were real, and painful, but neither of them could take away my joy in watching my daughter grow, or planting a garden, or feeling the sun warm my face, or reading a favorite poet's new work.
I might feel hopeless or helpless, but I could change that.
I lost the ability to make small talk, and found the silver lining of deeper, closer friendships, and an ability to risk social awkwardness to offer kindness to a stranger, compassion to an acquaintance, an unexpected ally to a coworker.
I lost the ability to feel sorry for myself, and gained deeper compassion for others' pain and my own.
I learned that I can be happy even when I'm sad, or hurt, or struggling, or busy, or late, or arguing with someone, or behind on my laundry, or worried about money, or frustrated with myself for any reason whatsoever.
My empathy was amplified, my appreciation for every aspect of my life multiplied, my confidence in my ability to endure what I must and do what I can solidified.
My sense of humor got a shade more macabre.
I became comfortable with sadness, and lost the need to ignore it, or drown it, or drown it out, or run away from it. I gained the ability to be a resource to others who are suffering, without losing my own center. I can sit quietly, comfortably, with someone in pain while they feel their way through it.
I became intolerant of certain traits and behaviors, and able to stand up to them. I call Bullshit a lot faster now, especially on subtle, unspoken shit. Just ask anyone who has ever told me "everything happens for a reason".
I became more me. The Undisputed Queen of the Silver Lining.
I stopped having "bad days". My days since then have been many combination of a thousand different adjectives and sometimes I will come right out and say "today was hard" and pay attention to why.
I remembered this, and why I chose it for my Senior Quote in 1990, because the moment I read it, I felt the truth of it in my soul:
-how fortunate are you and i,whose home
is timelessness:we who have wandered down
from fragrant mountains of eternal now
to frolic in such mysteries as birth
and death a day(or maybe even less)
(still the truest thing I know, even when I forget to remember it.)
Every. Single. Minute. Matters.
We are here, on this planet, with human bodies and hearts and brains and emotions and perceptions and lives for a microscopically infinitesimal speck of time in a Universe that our human brains are literally incapable of ever comprehending. We cannot comprehend the vastness that surrounds us with the brains that we were born with, and that's all part and parcel of the ride.
We explore what we can, learn what we can, we keep trying and we keep going and we just keep loving. That last part is risky, because loss can be so painful but it is always, always, always worth it. Feeling, feeling anything at all, ever, is a miracle, period, and whether or not you believe that miracle has an author, no human mind has put it into words, but we keep trying and that's beautiful.
That's my creed and I'm sticking to it. We're not here to be happy, we're here to be. I'm happy to be here, period.
I'm also happy that I've made it this far without a bee sting on my vagina. Really. I'm pretty sure that might qualify as a bad day. So far though, nothing else has.
Monday, March 4, 2013
I want to make it clear, the fact that you are reading this right now is proof that I have overcome a boat-load of obstacles to accomplish something that is very important to me, and that's the point.
It means I've finally rid myself of some old, deeply negative messages that have kept me paralyzed for a long time, longer than I even realized.
Messages that said I couldn't do it, because I'm too scatter-brained, and have no follow-through. That no one wants to hear my story. That speaking my truth is self-indulgent, that I have no standing to claim my experience of my own life as truth. That no one will read it, that it will be a waste of time. That blogging is trivial, and Facebook is for wasting time. That I can't possibly form an accurate opinion of myself, or analysis. That some inherent character flaw in me is so apparent to others, though invisible to me, that I should be ashamed to speak of my own life. That everyone else's opinion is more important than mine, not to mention more intelligent, and just more valid.
I overturned that verdict.
It's actually far more plausible to believe that I am actually a pretty balanced combination of smart, kind, and creative, and that certain unique features of my brain function combined with my values, my history, and my sheer endurance have combined to give me both an interesting tale to tell, and the means and ability to tell it.
Some things that make it harder are the ADD and the toddler, they combine to make follow-through a real challenge, but that's also the point....
The fact that it takes work, persistence, that some parts may be painful, even that I may drop the ball from time to time when Life Piles Up- none of these, not even combined, rise to the level of Reasons Not To Bother. They do add up to what I call a Degree of Difficulty-- just a small bump in my mental self-score, a recognition that while others may find these things easy (or make it look easy), maybe it IS a bigger challenge for me than others. Maybe life is harder for a lot of people, for a lot of reasons, in ways we can't see or even imagine unless they tell their stories too, and someone listens. The point is if doesn't stop you, at least not for long, or forever, if you keep going regardless of pain, confusion, and fatigue... whatever you accomplish in your life gets bonus points In My Book, and I think it should in yours too.
I think it's ok to say that life is hard sometimes, even harder at other times, and maybe, just maybe, you should pat yourself on the back for being such a trouper, and carrying on. It sure as hell beats giving up, and it's much less exhausting than self-pity.
It was ingrained in me many years ago, rather painfully, that I'm not worth listening to, and 'people like me' don't matter. Self-esteem is not a buzzword for me, it has real meaning, real consquence, and every little scrap of it that I have has been hard-won. Or maybe hard-recovered, or remembered.... yeah, that's probably more accurate.
So I won't be asking anyone's pardon for the self-indulgence of speaking my truth, or apologizing for being me- and if my story inspires you, comforts you, or does anything at all for you, that's also bonus points In My Book. The real triumph is writing it.
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