For the last month or so my brain has been a maelstrom of
thoughts and I’ve been trying to organize them, both for me to make sense of
them and also so that I can write them down.
When Mac and I were deciding to get married one of our
shared beliefs was that having a long history with the person you were marrying
was really important, that the knowledge you had gained from day to day life
would offer insight and understanding into the other person’s reactions and
decisions. While I still believe this is true, I have stumbled upon a curious
component of shared history, which I’m going to call the “stop gap.”
After writing my last blog I received a very emotional response
from a family member. Given the strength of that person’s feelings I was
initially worried about how to buffer what I write, but then I began to think
about one very important issue, I have the right to be honest about my life.
Understandably people who have been in your life a long time read between the
lines and add the details that they know. But this is where the “stop gap”
comes into play. A person may be in your life a long time, but that doesn’t
mean they know the details of your life, or even who you truly were and are now.
I spent a great deal of time in therapy discussing the fact
that I have held who I am very close to myself. The motivation of my last blog was
to share my belief that if those of us that could were willing to reach out to
children in need, perhaps even lay our insecurities on the table and show them
how we cope, that we might literally save a life. In the telling of my taking
the Adverse Childhood Experience Survey I was accused of being disloyal to my family;
the person questioned my honesty and accused me of damaging our family name.
Initially the old feelings of my being too much work set in, but Mac helped me
dig my way out. In truth I feel no remorse. Owning a secret in order to remain
falsely loyal is what gets a lot of us into trouble. As for damaging our family
name, I am fairly certain that it was done long ago and others did a bigger
whammy to it than I ever have. So again, no I feel no remorse. I could care less
about a name and care deeply about words and actions.
In complete contrast, another family member reached out to
me and asked me how they missed out on many of the issues I wrote about last
time, could they help me now, wanted me to feel strong. I’m fairly certain that
I can never express how powerful that conversation was. I have waited a very
long time to be me and not feel the need to veil who I am for self-protection. It
was such an emotional release. I feel so much love and appreciation for
that person and thank them for asking me about who I really am. I felt accepted. As for feeling
strong, I feel stronger every day.
Anorexia. I was asked by many people to share my story. There
are components of control, dysmorphia and punishment. Moving a lot as a child
left me uncertain about myself and affected my development; social skills,
fitting in emotionally, physical appearance, how to handle confrontation and
conflict, just to name a few. Bullies have a keen sense of smell. I bought into
their cruel words (dysmorphia). Along the way I developed “Survivors Guilt” and
didn’t feel I deserved to be happy (punishment).Many things in life came easy
to me, and for many around me that wasn’t the case (control). What I would like
to share is that I believe Anorexia is very much like any addiction, it takes effort
every day to overcome it.
I started starving myself in my teens. My parents,
therapist and family priest were active in trying to help me. It took almost
ten years of wearing many layers of clothing, pushing food around my plate, “eating
at friends’ houses,” and exercising hours and hours a day and talking for hours
and hours to my support group to get a handle on things. I had a brief relapse
in my thirties. I was settling into family life with a husband who loved me and
we had everything we needed, while so many that I loved didn’t have all of
this, and again guilt set in.
The angry family member told me I should focus on the
positive. To a person such as me those words just feed the disease. If
anything, the philosophy of only focusing
on the positive can be destructive. Bad stuff happens and why can we not
recognize it, sit with it, feel it, talk about it and then move on? Sometimes
it takes a while. Do I have to follow some prescribed timeline so that someone
else doesn’t feel uncomfortable?
Long ago I decided that a family member didn’t get
allowances simply because of shared DNA. I believe that in order to have
on-going relationships with family the relationship must be built upon respect
and trust. So at the end of the day I need to say publicly that I will not
change who I am, I will not bare my soul to someone who hasn’t earned it, I
will not write only about happy things, in order to have a dishonest
relationship. With regards to this person I am not angry, I am sad. I mourn
the loss of who we were to eachother; in truth our paths diverged many years ago. Is there a future
relationship for us? I allow for any possibility.
Fear is a powerful foe. It stops us from being who we are,
from telling our truth, from confronting bullies. It wounds us, sometimes mortally.
Why do I want to write? Because I understand how powerful words can be, I for
one do not believe “sticks and stones can break my bones but words will never
hurt me.”
By now you’ve probably noticed that music of all kinds
resonates deeply within me. Today Somebody that I used to know (Gotye) is on my mind; my
favorite version of this song is by Walk off the Earth.
Thanks for reading.
