Wednesday, August 12, 2015

The Pain of Becoming.



It seems like that no matter what age I reach I continue to run head on in to these precipices.  I cross these paths where I have to move forward yet I'm not quite sure how.  Some days I curse the fact that I'm such a deep dweller and the things that propel my mind.  What I'd give sometimes just to be able to shut it off, unplug, and take a respite from it.  Yet I cannot, or at least do not know how.  I suppose I really wouldn't have it another way in truth.  It is very taxing.  If only my head and my heart could converge.  Perhaps then my behavior would be in congruence.

I had my yearly evaluation yesterday and it's had me in a tailspin every since.  I've been up for hours after only sleeping a few.  The man that did the eval was very good and hit on some very valid points, things that I'd not considered -- but true of my life.  It boggles my mind that strangers can see things that we cannot even when we're willing.

I've written of my distant, conflicted relationship with my mother.  I've not ever really delved into it fully because I get quite the feedback when I am totally honest in what my experience was growing up with her.  Society has some hardcore beliefs about mothers, and my life example doesn't fit, at ALL.  So if your the least bit touchy about mothers, nows your chance to opt out because it's going to get difficult in this particular blog.

My mom is narcissistic.  All that has ever mattered to her is what she wanted, needed and was going to get.  This is how I grew up.  I was not wanted as a child, I was told at a very young age that I was a mistake.  I was even told "how I was conceived."  I intrinsically knew that my mother did not love me.  Don't ask me how I knew, I just did.  She was very jealous of me with my father, and would use my relationship with him to get what she wanted.  She began doing this at an early age -- and the she'd blame me for being able to do it.  She's tell me to go and tell my dad that I wanted something that she wanted, and when dad would do it, she'd kick me in the teeth for getting what she wanted done, done.  This went on from dinners out to buying houses to cars.  I couldn't win.  One can imagine what this did to me.  All I wanted was for my mom to love and accept me, which I never got - and never have had a real relationship with her.  I've just had to grieve it.  It wasn't until I was her 24 hour caregiver that I had my feelings validated when she admitted that she hated me when I was little.  I'd sensed it, and I had been right.

One can only imagine what circumstances like this does to a small child.  Of course I thought it was all my fault.  That's just what kids do.  I internalized it all.  I was defective.  I was incapable of seeing her flaws, all I could do was feel the rejection and abandonment and it had to be me.  I know that this is why my addiction took off like gangbusters at such an early age.  I was ripe for it, I had gunshot wounds all over me.

Now that was a long time ago  - but even after many, many, years of therapy some aspects of those dynamics still plague me.  I become too dependent upon people because I do not trust myself.  I am still healing.  When I lost my dad in 2010 and all hell broke loose,  I almost lost it.  Dad was the one person in my life that I knew loved me unequivocally and without condition.  Mother was very conditional.  That to me isn't love.  It's control.

What I said about my mom is only part of what it was like, there is much more but for sakes of privacy, I won't go into it all but just know I was one perpetually conflicted young lady.  I was in no size, shape, nor form ever taught how to be my own best friend.  I still am not good at that.  I can scorn the crap out of myself but not know how to be gentle with myself.  I did not mirror it.  That's what parents do and that's how we learn.  I did not get that.

Do you know what it's like trying to cling to someone that really can't stand you?  It's horrible.  It's excruciating.  That is what the relationship with my mother felt like.  I was pushed away, over and over, and over, again.  Children don't understand this.  They just keep trying.  Shoot adults don't understand sometimes.  Especially when it's a basic need.  So what do we do?  We TRY HARDER!!  We hurt ourselves in the process.  Sometimes very deeply.  I know today that I have hundreds of scars from that relationship.

I'm still healing.  I always will be.  The very sad part of this is that I meet (in relationships) people just like my mother.  People that reject me, that tell me in one way or anther that I don't matter - and that are narcissistic (most of the time).  I really despise this.  We are attracted to what is familiar..... unfortunately.

Yesterday brought up some old issues of my dependency on people for strength.  I need to find the courage and confidence inside myself first and foremost.  The problem being, I'm not sure how to do this.  Oh I know how to get by - but not how to excel even when things are tough.  I don't know that I have a strong inner core without a safety net.  God has always been with me, but I haven't always trusted Him either.  I'm ashamed to say that.  Hence, it is the truth.  There's always that thought in the back of my head --- perhaps He'll fail me too.  I know that this is awful but with my history - I always wait for the other shoe to fall.

My debacle is what do I do with this information?  It has my guts torn up, and my head spinning.  I've  known all of this, but after yesterdays eval and the information that I gleaned it's all fresh again.  I feel like I'm right back at square one.  I know that I'm not but it sure feels like it.

I'd taken a vow sometime back that my mom wasn't going to rule my life any longer.  I wish it were that easy because this thing is multilayered.  I've come a long way at healing many of the parts that she damaged - but it would seem that I'm down to the core of this issue.  When I can't figure something out I get frightened, plain and simple ; fear evokes anger in me.  I suppose it's a powerlessness of sorts, and I'll be damned if I'm going to have another area in my life where I'm powerless.  I'm just not.

The bible tells me that I'm not of this world.  It tells me that I have an heavenly Father now and a new family, the family of God.  I loose sight of my faith when I get into this stuff.  I think that I have to work all of this our on my own, and the truth is that I just don't.  God will direct my paths.  I am responsible for my effort, and my attitude towards the healing and change.  However Jesus is the ultimate authority of it all.  I don't know why I went through what I did in my family.  I suppose in the long and short of it, it doesn't matter.  All that matters is that I have the faith to make it through this, and to learn to be good to myself.  Yes it was awful and I've only written a small portion of what it was like.  Emotional blackmail is never productive on either party.  Children are not to be used as pawns in relationships - EVER.  This has been an issue that has haunted me through out my life.  However I know that God can and has been healing me.

I don't hate my mom.  I never really have, what would that solve?  WE only can do what we know how to do.  Somewhere in there she was only doing what she knew how to do..... or she was responding to a truth that she believed.  Somehow she felt that my father cared more for me that he did her.  She acted accordingly.... it doesn't make the things that she did right, it will never make them right.  Yet, I have to look beyond the symptoms of the person to the spirit.  She wasn't all bad.  She had tons of insecurities.  That is what fueled her.  I have them, and I know how I respond when I'm under that pressure.  She's tried every religion in the book.  I so wish that I could have introduced her to grace and it could've  stuck.  She might have had a chance to heal too.   She is very tortured to this day in a nursing home, with dementia.  I go see her from time to time and it's okay.  Since we talked in 2012 we're closer now.  She acknowledged that she was a bad mother to me.  I guess I kind of needed that in a way - but I think she needed to say it more.  I feel for her.  I have compassion for her.  This lets me know that I've come a distance with this because I used to really despise her.  Thank God for answered prayers of forgiveness.  I never would have dreamed that I could have been her caregiver for eight months but I did it.  I grew too - but leaps and bounds.  I forget that.

This life thing is hard sometimes with it's emotional ups and downs.  Issues ebb and flow like the crooks and crannies of a river.  I just have to slow myself down and remember that everything takes time, and trusting God.  Maybe this isn't something that I can do myself - but that the Lord is going to have to direct in my life.  Perhaps I'm just going to have to be patient.  And trust.  That's something that I don't do well, trust.  Safety isn't an easy thing for me, I have always made things happen in my  life.  This time, it's just not going to work.

Father God remove from me the bondages of my past.  Free me from all dependencies on people that can fail me and direct me to depend solely upon you.  I give You the emotional wreckage I carry daily - because I cannot bare it alone.  I crave Your peace as You have given it to us.  In Jesus precious name, Amen.

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Chemicals no longer needed.

  I agree with this wholeheartedly.   I'm going on day three... of little sleep, I'm in a transition with my depression medications....