I write about love a lot on here. Not so much love stories, or being in love…more like the struggle of love. Which is ironic, because real love should not be a struggle at all. It is for me, though. Not as much, lately, but something I’ll probably be working on for the rest of my life…and likely during the next life, too.
Last year, I wrote a blog post about a really difficult, yet amazing time in my life. These difficult, amazing times make for the best writing from me, if I do say so myself. I often go back and read this particular story about the deer, it’s that amazing. You can read it here.
The reason I’m sharing this post from last year is not to promote it, or get out of writing something worthy tonight. I received a decent amount of comments on that post, considering I’m not well-known in the blogging world. One comment in particular has stuck with me all this time. I reference a phrase from it almost weekly, at times…in my mind. I’ve never said it out loud or written it down. It just plays in my mind, like someone softly speaking it to me when I least expect it. I don’t really know why it’s stuck with me. Must be part of God’s plan. That’s what I tend to say when I can’t figure something out, “It mustbe God’s plan for me to fall in love with emotionally unavailable men”. It’s a great way to deflect responsibility. But sometimes, I think it’s true. Sometimes, you just gotta give it to God, or you’ll drive yourself crazy trying to figure it out.
Anyway, I’ve been repeating this phrase from that one comment a lot lately. Dealing with love, or more accurately, the loss of love. More like the loss of the idea of love…my expectations of love. God, there was a period of time during the past few years where I didn’t think I was capable of even feeling love, let alone worthy of receiving love. I’ve grown past those feelings, a bit. Not by experiencing love, per say…but by facing the loss of my expectations, I’ve been able to grieve the love I thought I should have had. Well, I’m still grieving, to be honest. Does grief ever truly end? I’m not sure it does. I think you just learn to live around it. Or through it. You spend your life fluidly dancing around it then diving right in and sinking a bit. I never even knew you could grieve a feeling or emotion, did you? I also didn’t realize you could grieve a person when he was still alive. Trust me, you can.
Anyway, back to this comment I was talking about. It was from Finding A Sober Miracle on WordPress. We didn’t know each other at all when she wrote this. Since then, we’ve developed a connection. Another part of God’s plan I haven’t quite figured out just yet. So, she reads my post about the deer and my fears and trauma and confusion and she just opens up her heart and speaks to me….
“Please know that nothing could ever change y our worth in the slightest. If anything, you are all the more precious for being the lost lamb.”
Why do I keep repeating “you are all the more precious for being thelost lamb”? Over and over and over…for a good year and a half now.
I suppose I really am a lost lamb. I’ve had the people I love most in this world walk away from me this year. I know it’s them, and not me. I get it all. I understand their capabilities. I realize my value is not lessened because other’s can’t see it. But I’m still the lost lamb. Understanding someone’s behavior doesn’t make the tears go away. Knowing why you can’t be in a family any longer doesn’t make you feel any less lost. Overcoming a life of trauma does not mean you won’t be traumatized as an adult, and overcoming abandonment issues is challenging when you are currently being abandoned. Does this make me more precious to God? I hope so. I hope there’s some divine reason for it…
So far, I’m okay. It’s been over a year and a half since I told them about all the things that happened to me when I was a kid, and subsequently, an adult. Most difficult words I ever had to say. I knew the risk I was taking when I made that decision. But really, it wasn’t a decision. God lays out a plan for you and you can fight it or follow it. I spent most of my life ignoring it, and then I started fighting it for a bit, and finally I woke up, and eventually started following it. His plan was for me to tell my story, no matter what the outcome. I knew this in my soul to be true. I was warned by others that the outcome could be horrible… that I could potentially lose them. I was afraid of that scenario for sure. I love my family intensely. Losing them was not something I wanted to face. Still, I told.
Turns out, that outcome is exactly what happened. I’ll save the details of why for another day…they’re your typical dynamics of a co-dependent family combined with common responses to people reporting abuse. It’s funny, because at first, they were all so shocked at what I had to say, that I actually received genuine caring responses from them. For a week or so, I thought my decision to tell was actually bringing us all closer…what a great surprise! But, as all families like mine do, they quickly realized they did not have the capability to deal with it, and went back to easier ways of denial, avoidance, gas lighting, lying, shaming…you name it. Whatever it took to make the family “function” again, in it’s co-dependant dysfunctional way. I became the scapegoat. Let me tell you, that is the worst role in this type of family. Trust me. When this happened, I had a hard time. Hell, I still do. But it’s getting easier each day. The more I learn about how textbook we are, the less I cry. Knowledge is power. I actually feel sorry for them, most of the time. I’m not angry any more. I do still wish for things, though I know they are useless wishes. The fairy tale I’ve been dreaming of my entire life, I know in my head, and mostly in my heart, that it’s not reality. I’m actually finding that I’m starting to outgrow my family a bit. I miss them, but when I imagine seeing them, with them still stuck in this dynamic, it feels dark, and it doesn’t feel good. Still, I wish…and so far, I’m still okay.
This free-flowing, organic post was in response to Linda G Hill’s Stream of Social Consciousness Saturday
“I’m fine”. Wow. Crazy how those two words can mean such different things, depending on where you’re at in life. “Hey, your mom and I are getting divorced, and she’s moving across the country…OK?” “I’m fine”, replied the little 9-year-old girl. Except she wasn’t fine. She wasn’t sure what she was, but it definitely was not “fine”. She just said that because she knew it was the expected answer. She knew better than to say otherwise. She knew her role, without even being instructed, or handed a script. Her role was to be “fine”, and I’ll be damned if she didn’t play that role with perfection. She rarely even had to say the words…as long as she acted fine, that was all that counted. Acting fine kind of comes easy, after a while. Even when things couldn’t be more opposite of “fine”. She acted just fine during that period of time when that hormone fueled teenager effectively ended her childhood. No one had a clue. She acted just fine when she was treated like Cinderella…that is, Cinderella before the ball. You know, when she was the despised step-child and made to do all the work and was unloved, while the golden children lived a life of adoration? Yeah, that Cinderella. She acted just fine when no one blinked an eye at her being that Cinderella step-child. Just fine. Not one person blinked a damn eye. I suppose she acted that way because it’s all she knew. If it’s just fine to everyone else, then it must be just fine, right?
She played that role right through high school and into adulthood. Boys and men doing things…it’s just fine, right? I mean, it was just fine when she was a kid, so…
She played it to Golden Globe status as an adult. She was sleep walking by this time. Just sleep walking through life, through that script written out for her. No improv. All script. At this point, it wasn’t even her anymore. Just some typecast actress, playing the same old role, over and over and over, until one day…she woke up. When you wake up while sleep walking, it can be pretty jarring. You most definitely are NOT fine. Everything you thought was real turns out to not be real, and you realize there’s some real shit in your life you pretended didn’t exist. Or you didn’t understand, because you were never taught to think otherwise. She absolutely became not fine. She started to speak about how not fine she really was, and all the people who expected her to play that fine role became nervous. They were playing roles, too…and now they didn’t know how to act. God, NO ONE ever steps out of character! Who did she think she was??? They tried to force her to say the lines that narcissistic director demanded, but she just didn’t have it in her anymore. She realized she just might love her new role a bit more than she needed that conditional love from her co-stars. She asked if she could just play her new role, and let them continue to play their roles, and still be in the same movie…because she did love them, regardless of the conditions. But those character actors are sticklers for routine, you know? So, they kicked her out of the movie. Just like that. No getting together for coffee, no catching up. No “it’s not you, it’s me”. Just out. She found herself alone, sad… and not fine. Sounds horrible, doesn’t it? Well, it’s not, I swear…
Even though she loved her co-stars more than anything, she really hated the endless movie they were all acting in. Seriously, it was a movie with NO ending. Who would sit through a movie like that? No one. It’s exhausting. Her sadness eased as she realized that them kicking her out of the movie was not a reflection of her, but a reflection of them. It was actually textbook behavior of a co-dependent family. Textbook. She began to feel sad for that 9-year-old girl, and the teenager she became, and learned how to nurture that inner child. She learned how to nurture herself, as an adult. I mean, God…SOMEONE had to do it, right? She learned how to nurture others, in a healthy way. She learned so much, and continues the learning process to this day. Definitely not perfect at any of it, but at least she’s wide awake now, and is following her own script. And though she misses her old co-stars more than anything, she can sleep at night with her decision. She’ll always be waiting, with open arms, for them to wake up and join her. She can do this because she’s been touched with grace for traveling the path of the awakened. She experiences everyday miracles. Who do you know that you can say that about? Not too many, I think. It really is quite magnificent. Healing is quite magnificent. Now, for the first time in her life, she means it when she says, “I’m fine”.
This post was written in response to Linda G. Hill’s Stream of Social Consciousness Saturday. Check out her page at the link below. Anyone can join…
