I am a nurse by trade, but most of my days are spent doing something much bigger.
I seek out miracles.
It sounds like a long-shot, but I am successful. Every day.
It’s 11am on a Saturday, and here’s today’s miracles…so far.
1. I woke up.
We are in the middle of a pandemic. Many people went to sleep last night praying for this miracle, and did not receive it.
2. I don’t have too much pain today.
As a person with chronic illness, even a mild reduction in pain is a blessing.
3. My children are happy (as far as I can tell) and safe.
Research statistics on addiction/bullying/foster children/suicide. Too many parents pray for this miracle which has been given to my family.
4. I am sharing company with a man who authentically shows up for me every single day.
I am only capable of receiving him because I learned how to show up for myself first. Anyone who follows along with my journey understands this miracle.
5. I have learned to allow space for opinions that differ from mine, at least for today.
To be able to craft a well-written response to a political comment, then delete it before posting because you remember that you don’t have to show up to every debate you are invited to is a miracle. At least for today…
It’s 11:45am. The sky’s the limit, my friends. What’s your miracle?
This post was written in response to Linda G. Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday
I haven’t written on here in a while. I suppose in some ways, that’s a good thing. I really started this whole writing thing as a way to process the difficult things in my life. Almost like writing was a calling…I would feel an overwhelming urge to write about certain things and then somehow felt better afterwards. I haven’t felt that way most of this year, hence my absence on here. I sort of found a place of contentment and I’ve been doing my thing elsewhere.
So…I’m back. You just never know when you’re gonna get that calling, you know?
I felt the urge to write the other day. I spewed it out on my Facebook page before going to bed, after a few weeks of feeling discontent. I’ve got hundreds of people I actually know on Facebook. Putting my shit out on the line there is a lot more risky than putting it on here. It’s vulnerability at it’s finest.
My inner demons, who had been so well tamed this year, kind of crept back up on me. Almost out of nowhere, yet almost like they were there the whole time. I know, that sounds confusing. That’s because it is. I’m in the middle of an endless struggle to accept the loss of some people I love, all because I have told my story. Not everyone can handle this kind of shit, so instead…they let me go. And I’ve been pondering ways to get them back.
These past few weeks, I was feeling angst. Turmoil. Insecure. Unlovable. These are my inner demons, and when they rise in me, it usually signals I’m on the verge of a change in my life. I never do know what that change is going to be…
This is what I wrote:
Facebook reality check: I post some pretty amazing photos of some pretty amazing experiences, don’t I? I just scrolled through my page and it looks FANTASTIC! I tell you what, I most definitely am GRATEFUL for the blessings I have in my life. But if I’m going to keep it real here…it’s not all sandbars and sunflower fields. I have to work really hard at having these amazing experiences, because life doesn’t just happen that way naturally. Life shits on me a lot… as I’m sure it shits on you, too. It’s like a checks and balances system. You gotta go through the bad in order to appreciate the good. And sometimes, it seems as though I create the messes in my life myself, just as a byproduct of the other messes I’ve lived through. Like I can’t get out of my own way…out of my own thoughts, sometimes. We all have our inner demons, don’t we? I know I’m not the only one who struggles with negative feelings regarding the self. We surely all have them, at one point or another, some more frequently than others, some not. All caused by different experiences, though the details don’t matter, as the feelings are the same. The difference is in how we deal with these feelings. My “Plan A” for dealing is the tremendous amount of time I spend on self-care. You know, all these “amazing” experiences you see on here, and my meditation and my faith and my writing and my reflecting and my service. And it works…for the most part. But not always.There’s always an underlying struggle in my soul. Because, you know…life keeps shitting on you. Or something happens to remind you of the old shit. Or maybe YOU decide to uncover the old shit, just because you’re human. Maybe that old shit never really does go away, you just have to learn how to live around it. Or maybe it’s new shit. Whatever. I’m sure I’ll never figure it out. All I know is, today I was not feeling like the amazing, empowered, enlightened Jami. My inner demons have been creeping up this week…feelings of insecurity, difficulty with acceptance, awareness of broken places…put whatever demon you choose in there, it will fit. This is the underlying struggle. And when I feel like that, I feel like a fraud. I look at what I put out to the world and I feel like I’m trying to pull a fast one over on everyone, which is funny, because I honestly do not care what anyone thinks of me. Maybe what that feeling really is, is that I’m trying to pull a fast one on ME. So, what do I do then? I write it all out. I put it ALL out there, for whoever is bored enough to read this much on a Facebook post. This is my “Plan B” for dealing with life…being honest and vulnerable. Somehow, stripping myself to the raw core of who I am…exposing all my flaws, my insecurities…my brokenness…somehow, it cleanses me. Almost like being baptized. I spent my entire life stuffing things down, hiding the real me from everyone, including myself…for fear of no one accepting me, or not feeling loved, or whatever the struggle is. Maybe it was really more a fear of me not loving myself. Fear keeps you from being brave. When you strip it all down and show the world the not so amazing parts of you, there’s really nothing left to be afraid of. It’s uncomfortable to do this, yet at the same time…freeing. This is how I am brave.
Hey, you have your methods, I have mine…but, I’m willing to bet a piece or two of this sounds familiar to a few of you.
It works. I haven’t even hit “post” yet, and already I’m feeling a little absolved. The struggle has softened. I think I might do something amazing tomorrow…
It’s funny how listening to the call and writing it out changes my perspective almost immediately. I’ve read that miracles are really just a change in perception. I purged that angst and now I’m back (hopefully) on the path to contentment, with a few changes. An old friend read my post and felt called to offer me a Harmonyum treatment (similar to Reiki, but not…you’ll have to look it up). I felt lighter walking out of there. I visited a friend I’d been meaning to see but hadn’t gotten around to lately. I said “yes” to a few dates I’d been saying “no” to. I got caught up on a few things I’d been avoiding in my life. I started meditating more. And I made a conscious decision to try to stop getting people back into my life who don’t want to be here, no matter how much I love them. Again. Will it stick? Who knows? All I can do is make the intention for today, and we’ll see what tomorrow brings. In the meantime, I’m enjoying the change in perception.
I’m a crier. Hard core. You know, one of those people who can’t seem to hold it in AT ALL, who wells up even when she’s not sad. It happens when I’m mad, when I’m frustrated, when I see a mother love a newborn baby, when I watch videos of soldiers surprising their kids with an early homecoming, or maybe when I’m too hungry and something super minor happens…like when they mess up my order at the pizza place. Well, come on…you can’t just PICK OFF olives, you know. That oil soaks IN, dammit. Anyway, I turn into a mess, and get emotional and it kind of bubbles up and ruins whatever conversation I was supposed to be having and turns it into feelings overload. Not a big deal with the soldier videos, but kind of a big deal when it’s from me being hurt or frustrated. Basically when my emotional expectations are not met.
That being said…I haven’t done that in quite some time now. Months, really. It’s actually kind of awesome to have this new sense of calmness about me. I mean, sure… I still cry. When sad things happen. Or when I think long enough about sad things. That’s normal. That’s what people do when they are sad…they cry. And I enjoy the cry when it’s about something beautiful. I don’t ever want to lose that type of cry. But, I don’t do much of the over crying about people not meeting my emotional expectations anymore. Especially when I want to talk to someone about something important. Last summer, every time I talked to someone I cared deeply for, about things between us that was hurting me, it always ended up with me hard-core emotionally crying, which caused them to completely shut down and run away. I was trying so desperately to get them to see my point of view, and it simply was impossible. Frustrating, devastating at times, but inevitably impossible. Ugh.
A few of these people, well…we haven’t talked in months. In the weeks that followed us not talking, I still did all the heavy-duty crying, just all by myself. I was no longer trying to get them to see my point of view, but I still wanted them to. Or at least, I wanted them to understand my point of view, except that was never going to happen with all of my emotions, combined with their emotional unavailability. That’s an incompatible, yet common mix right there. Anyone who’s been reading my blog understands that I’m a magnet for emotionally unavailable men because I was raised in a family of emotionally unavailable men. (Yes, it’s THAT easy to figure out!) I’m not sure if me crying to myself was better or worse. I’m sure MUCH better for them, but not so much for me. I still felt all those feelings, and had to hold on to them. Well, I didn’t have to, but I did. That is, until I didn’t.
Want to know how I finally realized how to not hold on to those feelings anymore? Letters. Yep. I wrote them letters. Long, organic, messy, handwritten, stained with tears letters. I poured the contents of my soul out in those letters. Vulnerable, raw and honest. I wrote all the things I couldn’t get out of my mouth, either due to crying, or due to fear, or due to interruptions or whatever other reason keeps one from getting their point across. I was able to say the things I that were eating away at my core. I got them OUT of my body, my mind, my soul. When the words left me, they took the emotions with them. Emotions were meant to be felt and released, not ignored and hidden. Many of the things I wrote were things my insecurities would NEVER allow me to say to someone. But in those letters, I was free to say it all…the good, the bad…the ugly. Because, no one was ever going to read them. That’s right, I never sent them. Sure, I’ve sent people in my life plenty of emotional letters over the past few years…that’s what I do. I write. But these letters, these ones are different. These are therapy. These release angst and lead me to the path of inner peace, by gracing me with the gift of letting go.
Those letters, along with many other things I do for myself, have helped me to let go of any expectations from people I love. I don’t seek validation from them anymore. I accept their decisions as things I have no control over, and that they are not any reflection of me. I only cry once in a while, and it’s just to clear out the cobwebs of sadness from them not being in my life anymore. If I cry more than that, I’ll just write another letter…but I haven’t written one since December…
I started writing as a way to process trauma and other difficult things that found their way into my life. It never lets me down. I’ve been doing some journaling over the past few weeks to deal with some family stuff, and each time I write, I have a cathartic cry and end up feeling lighter. Every single time! You should try it!
Over the past few months, the need to write has decreased. Sure, life continues to shit on me whenever it gets the urge, but I’m kind of OK when life shits on me. I chalk it up to life sometimes being shitty, maybe have a cry about it, and go on about my day. Does this happen every time life shits on me? Nope. But way more than it used to, so I’ll take it.
My therapeutic writing transitioned into writing about amazing experiences I’ve had that had nothing to do with trauma at all..still things I needed help processing/understanding, I suppose. All I know is, when my soul tells me to write about something, I listen.
Tonight, my soul is telling me to write about gratitude. Not processing anything, not pages of angst, no questions…just gratitude for what I have, what I am, what is.
I am grateful for my health. Even though I have two chronic illnesses which cause chronic pain, annoying discomforts and require time, effort, money…and I can’t eat bread, for crying out loud…I’m grateful for my health. I’m alive. I can work. I can drive my boat. I can love.
I am grateful for my family. Of course, my sons…my reasons for going through all this shit. God, I am blessed with those guys. But, when I say I’m grateful for my family, I’m also referring to the members of my family that have been a part of the whole “life shitting on me” crap. Despite all the heartache…and let me tell you, it’s a LOT of heartache… I’ve learned some valuable life lessons from them, and I think going through what I’ve gone through with them over this past year has allowed me to become something akin to angelic. I’ve learned to love when I’m not being loved. I’ve learned to forgive when I haven’t been asked for forgiveness. I know a lot of people know how to do these things, but for me…it took a lot of work. I think it’s a little harder when you have to give this love and forgiveness to people you’ve been craving love from your entire life. To be able to love them, and be OK with them not loving you back, well… that’s just something bigger than any words I can come up with, so I’ll stop here.
I am grateful for failed relationships. Who would’ve guessed it? Well, not really all of them. Most of them I could do without. Maybe because they’re all really the same guy. But, the last couple, I’m grateful for those ones. With them, I was able to accomplish things I never could figure out how to do with the other guys. With one of them, I’ve learned how to stand up for myself, how to value myself. How to feel worthy…at least, for a little bit. At least, until I met the next guy, ha ha. Hey, that’s a pretty big deal when you haven’t done that before. And that next guy? Well… I can’t say the lesson is 100% complete, but I think I’m pretty close. The lesson I’m finally learning, the same lesson all the other guys came into my life to teach me…I’m learning how to let go of people I’m attached to. I’m learning to not take things personally if someone can’t love me. This is so important, because by learning this lesson in a relationship, I’m also learning how to do it with the people in my family. It all comes full circle. You know, you keep unconsciously seeking out the same situations you’re struggling with, in order to resolve them. Except you don’t KNOW that’s what you’re doing, so all you do is keep repeating the same pattern over and over and over, wondering why the hell you’re so unlovable…until something clicks (really, just therapy….just go to therapy. Everyone. Just go.) and you understand that saying, “Remember that time you confused a life lesson with a soul mate?” You learn that some people aren’t going to love you, and it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with how lovable you are. Yeah. That. I’m so close…
I’m grateful for my practice. “Practice” is the word I use to put all of my “work” into a nice, neat little package. Therapy (which I don’t go to anymore, but don’t want to leave out how important of a piece it was in solving my puzzle), writing, meditation, going to church, surrounding myself with people who empower me and lift me up, consciously validating myself, not seeking validation from others, service to others…all of this is my practice. And my practice is what connects me to “source”…which is a long-winded way of saying I’m grateful for my connection to God. Without it, I’d be the lost lamb again. I’m not lost anymore. I am grateful… I am touched by grace… I am love… I am light… I am.
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Well, I finally received the print copy of my article. I started this whole “getting something published” journey back in the spring, and it’s kind of like waiting for a baby to be born. No, not really. Bad example. It’s more like waiting for a vacation you planned well in advance. Yes, that’s a better comparison. You plan the trip, and once you book it, you’re PUMPED. You tell everyone you know about it, you are so freaking excited to go there, and then you kind of have a let down, as you realize you have to spend the next several months just living your ordinary life until the day rolls around. Kind of like the trip I just took to San Diego. I bought it LAST November on cyber Monday (BEST day to purchase online trips, FYI….$600 for round trip airfare and 4 nights in a hotel ON the ocean). We were so excited when we bought it, then had to face the reality of a New England winter and spring (basically just one long cold shitty season), go through the summer and then get excited again as the date finally neared. We just went last week, and it was amazing. And the day I returned home, the paper copy of the American Journal of Nursing was waiting for me. Perfect homecoming after a perfect vacation.
And, I read a book on attachment relationship types on the plane, and it allowed me to let go of the angst which had been building up inside me regarding yet another failed relationship. Sometimes, just having the answer to “why” is good enough.
Well, I am happy again…finally. Feeling at peace and ready to conquer the world again. Thank God….
Last month, I took a girls weekend to Connecticut. We specifically went to go on a river cruise to look at American Bald Eagles (which was SPECTACULAR, by the way) and ended up hiking through a couple of really cool state parks. It was dinnertime by the time we headed back to Massachusetts, so we made a spur of the moment detour into Mystic for some pizza. You know, “Mystic Pizza”…the Julia Roberts breakout film…
Mystic is a pretty cool town. It’s quaint, on the water, with a charming main street filled with various shops and eateries. Everything was named “Mystic” something or other. Mystic Pizza, Mystic Army Navy, Mystic Florist . As we neared the public parking lot, I noticed “Mystic Psychic”. It was an unassuming little sign, tucked in between the touristy shops and bars. I normally wouldn’t have given it a second thought. Don’t get me wrong, I do believe in psychics and mediums and the like, but one called “Mystic Psychic” just sounds gimmicky, right? Well, after about 10 seconds, I just knew I was going in there. It was so weird…I had no idea we were even going to Mystic, and once we decided to go, all we had planned was pizza and maybe stopping in a few of the shops. I just could not shake the feeling of having to go in there. We parked the car and I told my girlfriends, “I have to go to that psychic”. We rounded the corner and came upon the cutest store filled with unique trinkets and handmade items…totally up my alley. As we looked around the store, I realized it was time to go. “I’m going to that psychic now”, I told them. I was so nervous that if I waited too long, I wouldn’t get in. I ditched them in the store and headed down the road.
As I opened the door to the psychic, I felt a little confused. It was an apartment. I could see baby toys in the living room, and a kitchen off to the side. I was beginning to think I accidentally walked into someone’s home and was about to sneak back out when she came out of the room. A young girl, with dark hair…some type of accent I can’t even begin to guess… maybe Greek? I dunno. Anyway, she takes my money for a palm reading and gets to work.
She starts by telling me I’m an old soul, that I’ve lived other lives before this one…yada yada yada. Two minutes into it and I’m thinking I’ve been had, when suddenly…her expression changes. “What does the letter J mean to you?” I tell her, “It spells my name…it’s the first letter”. I didn’t want to feed her any extra information, you know? She continues, “You do know you are creative, right?” I said, “Well, sometimes…”. I was thinking of how I’d spent a few nights at the local art bar over the past year or so, but also thinking of how the art gene sort of skipped over me. She interrupts my thoughts. “People are going to know your name. They are going to know your name in three to five years.” She kept studying my palms, almost squinting, as if there was some faint writing on them that was difficult to see. “I see these hands writing. That’s how people will know your name. You aren’t writing for money, but the money will follow. You are writing because you’ve been through an awful lot in the past few years, and writing is how you heal yourself. You will write to help heal others, and they will know your name…in three to five years”. Holy crap! I looked over at my friend, Tracy, and we just stared at each other in amazement. Anyone who knows me knows that I write, and it’s only started last year because of what I’ve been through in my healing process. My therapist suggested a journal, and things just took off from there. I’d never written a single thing before last year…and now I’m in the process of sharing my stories in the hopes it will resonate with others and help them learn to tell their own. Damn, this girl was good.
Around two weeks later, I received a letter from the “American Journal of Nursing”. They are going to publish one of my essays on the back cover of their journal this fall. And last week, I was notified by another nursing journal, “Nursing 2017”, that they plan to publish a different essay of mine. Needless to say, I’m pretty damn excited about this…my first publications and I’m two for two! I can’t help but wonder, if it’s this exciting now with these two stories getting published…what will happen in “three to five years”?
For the first time in years, I have down time. My divorce is moving along, I’ve finished up most of the work that’s left after selling my company (doing dreaded taxes next week, ugh) and my new job allows me to be all done by the afternoon. It feels weird to not have tons of work looming over me, to not be connected to my cell phone 24/7 in case of a work emergency…to just go to work and come home and be done. It also feels weird to not have the need to write, every spare moment. I filled up a good dozen journals over the past year, processing my childhood and my current life problems. I had no control over it, like smoking cigarettes. Now, I pretty much just write in this blog, maybe once a week. I don’t have the need to go to therapy that much anymore, so when the kids are at their dad’s…I’ve got down time. I’d heard it existed, but wasn’t sure if it was a rumor or not. It’s true. There really can be time in the day when I don’t HAVE to do something! So, this week, I’ve finally started tackling a project that I’ve been thinking about for a year…. I started writing my book.
Wow. I haven’t really admitted that to anyone, yet. It feels weird to say it… to read it. I started writing my book. I’ve told my friends “I’m transcribing my journals”. That’s my way of tricking them/me into thinking I’m just writing them out on word docs for the sake of having them in one place. I don’t think any of us really believed me, though. They all have been telling me I should write a book, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to actually admit that this is what I’m doing. I think maybe I’m afraid. It feels kind of grandiose to announce, “I’m writing a book about myself“. What if people say, “Who gives a shit?” Hell, I say that to myself all the time. But then, I follow it up with, “I don’t give a shit if people don’t give a shit” and let it go. That’s the glory of spending a year diving head-first into intense therapy, yoga, meditation and writing…you learn to not give a shit and to let things go. It’s freeing. If something hurts me, I let myself cry and feel whatever emotions it brings up, without shaming myself for having those emotions and most of the time, without shaming the person who hurt me. Then, I just let it go….most of the time. Hey, I’m not perfect…
I finished transcribing my first journal into a word doc last night. Over 30,000 words. I’m using Dragon dictation software (something I highly recommend, if you have a lot of writing to do). It doesn’t really like swears, though. I keep trying to train it to understand I’m not saying “ship” or “flock”, but I guess it’s more pure than me.
It was interesting to read where I was exactly one year ago. Amazing how much a soul can grow in that amount of time. Who knew souls could even grow? I sure didn’t. I was full of despair and was so sure I’d end up a failure. I felt so broken and damaged beyond repair, like a seed cracked wide open. Little did I know, that’s what it takes to blossom.
This post was written in response to Linda G Hill’s Stream of Social Consciousness. It’s organic, free-flowing writing in response to a prompt. I like participating because it makes me write! I’m lazy!
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Somewhere between the ages of 12-14 or so, I was a bully. I was one of those kids who made a few other kid’s lives miserable in school. Not a lot of kids, just a few. They were actually friends of mine, that I “sprung” being a bully on. They never saw it coming. Neither did I.
I hated that part of me. I never knew why I was doing it. It made no sense that I could be walking out to gym class with a friend and just punch her for no reason. I actually did that…we were walking and talking and I punched her in the cheek. I instantly said “I’m sorry” and acted like it was no big deal. What the hell? And she stayed my friend. She was a quiet, meek sort of girl. Just like me. Except I hated that part of me, so I guess I hated it in her. And because she was quiet and meek and didn’t have a lot of friends (like me), I knew I could get away with it. I didn’t understand why I needed to do that, it’s just something that erupted from me. I felt guilty afterwards. Shame.
I did it to a few other girls. I can remember starting a fight with a friend of mine in 9th grade. I made up a lie that I had heard her talking about me, and I punched her. We had been friends for 3 years, and I spring this crazy shit on her. Just awful. There was another girl who was new and befriended me. She would come over my house sometimes. No one really did that, so you think I would have valued the crap out of her. Nope. This one day, I decided to become really angry at her and chase her out of my home with a big kitchen knife in my hand. How scary must that have been for her? I can remember thinking to myself “why am I doing this?” as I chased her, scaring her… like it wasn’t even a really me. Like I was harboring a wild animal inside me and it would just break free on it’s own. I really had no control over it….or at least, that’s how it felt. It was sort of like watching a movie of it happening. When it came out, I think I felt a little powerful, or maybe in control…both things I never had in my life.
Over the years, I felt terribly guilty for how I treated them. Still, I never knew why. I just chalked it up to me being a bad person. I had always inherently known I was “bad”. I was never really sure why this was so…it’s just how it was. I think I must have thought I was bad since my mom decided she didn’t want to live with me anymore. And I must have thought I was bad because my dad would keep reminding me that he offered me to her and she didn’t want me. He must have offered me to her because I was bad? Is that what I thought? I’m not sure I consciously thought those things, but looking back, I can see that I felt them. You don’t always have to put words or labels to feelings, or even understand what they are. You still feel them, and they define you.
I continued to do “bad” things, because that’s what “bad” girls do. That’s how I made sense of it. When I was molested at 13, that was me being “bad”. I figured I had “let” that happen to me because that went right along with me being “bad”. So, it only made sense for me to have sex with other guys when I was 14, because I was already so “bad” for doing what I did at 13. Even though I told those boys no, and looking back now I can see that what really happened is they raped me…I thought I was just “bad”. I had no control over it. It was just who I was. It was me. I was bad. Not even just bad…I was a whore. But hey, we all know whores are bad, so really, what’s the difference?
When Facebook came on the scene, I found a few of those girls and apologized. They had moved on, of course, but seemed genuinely happy to hear me say I was sorry. I apologized for ruining what should have been the best years of their lives. I couldn’t give them an excuse, because I didn’t have one. That was 7 years ago, and I hadn’t started therapy yet. I was still bad.
Fast forward to now. I’ve been in therapy for a year now. And I don’t mean “just therapy”. I mean deep, painful, hard work therapy. I was going twice a week for most of this spring and summer. Writing up to 10 times a day in my journal. Peeling off those 30 year old layers resulted in PTSD…nightmares, flashbacks, hyper-vigilance, confusion, panic…really life changing stuff. I describe the whole therapy process as a giant jigsaw puzzle. After I process a few layers, I’m usually able to put a few pieces together. Last week, the pieces that seemed like they just might fit was the piece of me being a bully and the piece of me being sexually abused. I wrote to one of my victims and asked her about the timeline. She remembered it vividly (which sucks, because I know she remembers it because that’s when her life was hell because of me). It was right around that time. I’m still not sure if it was right before the sexual abuse started or right after. If it was right before, it must be related to my mom leaving. If it’s right after, it must be related to the sexual abuse (or maybe the physical and emotional abuse of my teen years?) Either way, in the big picture, the point is moot…. it’s not going to change what happened. I have my answers….I was a bully because I suffered trauma. Does it really matter which trauma caused it? No, it doesn’t. Trauma is trauma. Which one is minor details. All I need to know is that my trauma caused someone else’s trauma, and that sucks. We are in our 40s now, and they have all moved on, and even consider us “friends” now, so I am grateful for that. And hopefully, by me making amends, maybe when they think back to those awful times, they might not be so awful now. I’d like to think their memories sting a little less now that I’ve reached out to them, but I’ll never really know.
One thing that does not make this whole question moot is… most bullies do what they do because something bad happened to them. Well, I can only speak for myself. Maybe some kids are just born bad, or just have bad role models… but I really don’t think that’s the answer for most of them. I love that schools and society are addressing bullying now. Back then, it was brushed under the carpet as “kids being kids”. That’s wrong. Kids kill themselves from bullying. It needs to be addressed. But I also wonder…if someone had dug a little deeper back then…if they had found out why I was acting that way…do you think I could have been saved? Saved from 30 years of carrying that heavy load of guilt and shame inside me? Saved from making lifelong bad decisions because that’s all I thought I was worthy of? I’m not going to wonder too much…it’s a moot point. The past is the past. I can look back at it, but only for so long. I need to look forward, because I’m not going back. I’m moving on. All I can do now is try my best to add happiness to the world, including to myself. I hope by doing so, I might reduce the amount of bullies in the world…even if just by one.
This post is in response to the prompt “moot” in part of Linda G Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday. It’s neat way to stimulate writing. It’s organic…we can’t edit it. So, what you just read is raw…straight from my brain to yours….
Emotional roller-coaster. That’s the best way to describe my feelings this year. Ever since that one ugly marital fight a year ago in September, I’ve felt it all. Well, almost all. Frustration and resentment stemmed from that day, and lasted through couples therapy. It transformed into sadness and longing as I transitioned into individual therapy to process my Mom/abandonment issues. After I peeled off that Mom layer, all hell broke loose as I processed the sexual, physical and emotional abuse that followed. Fear, shame, sadness, anger, disgust, guilt, depression…basically months of negative emotions. It seemed as though it might never end, but it did. Little by little, I started having happy moments, empowered moments, fun moments. Like a pendulum, I would swing back and forth between the highs and lows, though luckily I could see some sort of light at the end of the tunnel. I kept up my “work”… therapy, writing, meditating, nurturing myself… trying to love myself. Sometimes, I was just going through the motions, but that’s just part of the process. The positive moments eventually started to outnumber the negative ones, and I turned the corner. I started believing in myself. I started to feel a little less unworthy. I shed a lot of that heavy guilt and began to learn, appreciate and accept…me. Though, throughout it all, one thing kept bothering me. I couldn’t feel love. Through my painful, exhausting work, I rewired my brain enough to believe that the people around me loved me. I knew it to be true, in my head. I just couldn’t feel it. So many times, I would find myself nervously admitting to my therapist that I couldn’t feel anyone’s love or caring for me, not even my children. I was ashamed of this. It made me feel ungrateful to admit it, like I was not appreciative of the people around me. Especially when I said I couldn’t feel the love from my children. What kind of mother says that? This type. This mother who is nothing but raw, open and honest sitting on that couch. I give therapy…I give me…my all. I’m not wasting time playing games or pretending. I want to be “normal” so desperately, so I tell Susan everything. Everything. Each time I told her this, I looked down in shame, imagining her thinking I’m ungrateful or selfish or whatever it is I’m thinking of myself when I say it. She didn’t. Each time she reassured me, “It will happen in its own time”, smiling. Smiling, like she knows. I never believed her, because I knew I was different from her other clients. She thinks she knows, but she doesn’t know.
Well, she does know. I’ll be damned if there’s a thing about the human soul this woman does not know. I’ve been not feeling love since…well, since…hmm. I don’t know. I guess that’s a long time. I’m sure I’ve felt it at some point in my life, but right now, I can’t recall. I can remember feeling it, but with conditions. Knowing it was at risk if I didn’t play by the rules, and is that really love? Anyway, it happened. It happened at my butterfly party (see last post). I wasn’t sure if it was the alcohol, or maybe the song, or just that I was with a fun group of people, or I was tired. I felt like I had to blame it on something, because I was afraid to let myself think it really happened. If it really happened, something else would happen to make it not real, or go away, and I would be left feeling empty. Feeling loss. Feeling that hole inside my soul again. It’s much easier to just set myself up to not let the things I want to happen occur, then I won’t be disappointed. But you know what? It happened. And it wasn’t the booze. And it wasn’t the song. I know this because it happened Saturday night, and each day since then, I’ve thought about it…and cried. Oh sure, I cry all the time, but not this type of cry. This one is hard to describe…a feeling of love, joy and belonging, mixed with the sadness of knowing it’s something I’ve been missing for so many years. As I was surrounded by that circle of friends, as I looked into each of their eyes as they smiled and sang to me, I felt it. I felt love and I cried, because I honestly thought it was just never in the cards for me to feel that…to have people want to give me that. This is what I’ve been working on all year. I went from a girl who felt she didn’t deserve a damn thing in life… not love, not kids, not attention, not even going to therapy, to a girl who felt she deserved to throw herself a birthday party. A party to acknowledge her freedom from the heavy shame she’d been carrying around from her childhood. A party to acknowledge her bravery in getting divorced so she could preserve her true self. I stood right in the middle of that freaking love circle and accepted it all. I felt no shame. That’s when I realized I had accomplished my greatest feat yet…I had learned to love me.
“People smile and tell me I’m the lucky one….”
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When I was first diagnosed with PTSD (and really, even now), I punished myself for having it. I guess that’s pretty common for people like me. As I journaled through the influx of emotions and hyper-vigilance of those first overwhelming weeks, I wrote and said some pretty nasty things to myself. “Stop being such a drama queen! You’re such an attention whore…these things happened YEARS ago! Get over it!” It was pretty ugly, but I was ugly, so it makes sense. I was a bully. I shamed myself for needing to go to therapy twice a week. I shamed myself needing therapy at all. I shamed myself for being dramatic and sleeping with a knife by my bed and one eye on the door. I shamed myself for how I felt when I was faced with a trigger. I shamed myself for even having triggers. I shamed myself for my nightmares. I shamed myself for not being a good enough wife. I shamed myself for spending so much time writing in my journal. Yeah, I shamed myself for just about everything. That’s PTSD for you. It’s a self-centered bitch that likes to be in charge. “Oh, you’re planning on spending time snuggling your husband on the couch tonight? I don’t THINK so! You’re going to have tachycardia and nausea instead, loser!” My life was like a giant puzzle tossed in the air…pieces flying everywhere and nothing seemed to connect. I couldn’t put any of it together to see the bigger picture, or even a fragment of the picture. Pieces would fly right in front of me, and slip away before I could make any sense of them. Even a four year old can put together a puzzle. What the hell was wrong with me?
Somehow, I managed to keep it together enough to continue raising my kids and keep my business running. It took every ounce of energy and concentration I had, because what I really wanted to be doing was lying under my blanket in my locked bedroom. I spent most of this year like this: kids, therapy, journal, work, bed…kids, therapy, journal, work, bed. Unfortunately for my husband, there was no room for him. Journaling was a tool my therapist gave me. She gives me the tools, and I have to figure out how to use them to fix my problems. At least, that’s the plan. Anyway, I just so happened to have signed up for a four week course to become a Certified Alzheimer’s Case Manager, right around the time all this PTSD shit hit the fan. “Great”, I thought. “I have to learn about dementia right now?!” She started the lecture by discussing the brain, specifically the limbic system. I dreaded where this was going, but once we started, I actually found it to be a welcome distraction from my flashbacks and paranoia. But here’s where it gets exciting… I actually learned about something that was directly related to what I was going through…the amygdala.
In a nutshell, the amygdala ( pronounced “ah-MIG-dah-la”) is a section of the brain that is responsible for emotional responses, including detecting fear and preparing for emergency events. Any physical or psychological threat activates the amygdala. When this happens, the pre frontal cortex part of the brain activates. It assesses the situation and decides whether the threat is real and what to do about it, then shuts down the amygdala. Like when someone startles you…your amygdala reacts with fear, and the pre frontal cortex realizes it’s someone you know and shuts down that fear response. Pretty simple, right? However, chemical and biological imbalances can present after trauma, resulting in an over-stimulated amygdala. So, instead of the quick “fight, flight or freeze” then relaxation, sufferers often find themselves without the relaxation part of that process. Basically, the amygdala holds on to that trauma…and won’t let go.
“Ahhh…so THAT’S why I feel this way”. It made sense. It was like I put at least 6 pieces of the corner section of my puzzle together. Validation! “So, I’m NOT a drama queen, after all…it’s just my amygdala”. I felt the heavy weight I’d been carrying around just lift from me. I felt…good. I sort of skipped out there, humming U2’s “It’s a Beautiful Day” and replaced the word “beautiful” with “amygdala”. “It’s an amygdala dayyyyy…..” (yes, I’m that big of a dork). I felt free. Wow…I couldn’t believe an Alzheimer’s class cleared up my PTSD! So easy! Why didn’t my therapist know about this?We could have saved me so much angst…and so many co-pays! I couldn’t wait to fill her in on the cure I’d just discovered. She was going to be so grateful to me!
Well, that’s kind of funny to read now, isn’t it? Yeah, that euphoria lasted a good 45 minutes or so, before I returned home to my trigger of a husband and learned my next lesson… just because you understand why you have these feelings, doesn’t mean you can control them. So, in perfect traumatized form, I beat myself up for singing that song… for thinking I was better. “You fool. There’s no fixing you. You’re damaged. The whole world doesn’t change just because you took a dumb class, you dumbass. You’re still scared. You’re still needy. You’re still worthless. What’s wrong with you?” God, I hate that damn bully.
So here I am, 7 months later, still finding I’m beating myself up for my feelings, my needs, my expectations. Only now, since I’ve learned about why I’m such a bully, I’ve found I’m a little less mean. I’m slowly rewiring my brain to allow myself have these feelings and not judge them so harshly. When I’m feeling sad or insecure, I allow myself to feel sad or insecure (well, sometimes). That in itself takes a boatload of work, but that’s what this journey is: work. The rewiring work is a heck of a lot easier when you’ve got the right tools. Each therapy visit, each journal entry, each mediation, each yoga class…each one gives me a new tool. Now it’s up to me to remember to use them.
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When I was first diagnosed with PTSD (and really, even now), I punished myself for having it. I guess that’s pretty common for people like me. As I journaled through the influx of emotions and hyper-vigilance of those first overwhelming weeks, I wrote and said some pretty nasty things to myself. “Stop being such a drama queen! You’re such an attention whore…these things happened YEARS ago! Get over it!” It was pretty ugly, but I was ugly, so it makes sense. I was a bully. I shamed myself for needing to go to therapy twice a week. I shamed myself needing therapy at all. I shamed myself for being dramatic and sleeping with a knife by my bed and one eye on the door. I shamed myself for how I felt when I was faced with a trigger. I shamed myself for even having triggers. I shamed myself for my nightmares. I shamed myself for not being a good enough wife. I shamed myself for spending so much time writing in my journal. Yeah, I shamed myself for just about everything. That’s PTSD for you. It’s a self-centered bitch that likes to be in charge. “Oh, you’re planning on spending time snuggling your husband on the couch tonight? I don’t THINK so! You’re going to have tachycardia and nausea instead, loser!” My life was like a giant puzzle tossed in the air…pieces flying everywhere and nothing seemed to connect. I couldn’t put any of it together to see the bigger picture, or even a fragment of the picture. Pieces would fly right in front of me, and slip away before I could make any sense of them. Even a four year old can put together a puzzle. What the hell was wrong with me?
