It took losing everything to realize

[beentheredonethat2]

Please, fellow friends. This is entirely new to me, and I didn't realize it until my life fell apart (It's fallen apart many times, but this is the ultimate of falling apart--like going to purgatory). And I have never confessed this to myself or anyone, and I'd like to share it with you. I typed it earlier and want to share it here.

 

I don't expect any responses, just to share and hopefully it will ring a chord in someone else here, i guess...mostly I just want to be heard and make this declaration real to me. I guess my question is, should I give this horrendous note to my mother?

 

Here goes...

 

It wasn't until a life path forced me into an extremely uncomfortable situation, which most people would have depression and difficulty finding hope in, yet I found it crippling. I started thinking about everything I could do: my ultimate goal was to find a place of my own, whether it be a hole in the wall just so I could be alone and deal with all my feelings. I discovered that I keep lots and lots of things inside, more than I am even conscious of. And having a predictible situation, even though abusive, allowed me to protect my need for silence and aloneness because he himself had a disorder that caused him to be abusive and seek partners who he could control and keep at home, no contact with anyone. The thing is, as much as my family complained about what they were seeing, me drinking too much, him being physically, psychologically, and financially abusive, just assumed it was a by-product of being in a battered state. Now I know, I used the comfort of thinking someone wanted me only for them to excuse the fact that I just felt more confortable being alone. It was easier for me.

 

I've gotten to the point where I can't function normally unless I get almost the majority of the day alone, no tv (unless I choose the channel or movie), no sound (I shut the door so the children have to knock to talk to me), and I drink to forget how miserable yet comforting this method of living is. If I take a walk with my infant, I feel as if every car's driver is watching me, every window of every house has some person inside it watching me walk, every passer-by has been studying my every move--how I walk, how I dress, my teeth, my hair, how I smell. I sometimes hold my breath in front of passers-by because I am scared of offending them. I never smile. I never look people in the eye unless I have to. I don't answer the phone, I even make elaborate excuses why someone can't call me on the phone. The only way I feel comfortable talking to people is on the computer, because I can be myself, and I can type well, and most of all--I CAN ERASE. You can't erase a wrong word. You can't erase a wrong figure of speech or a slur or a stutter or hide that you're panicky. It has become a way of life, except my partner won't let me speak on the computer either, the only way I truly feel safe. He thought I did it to hide what I was doing, because he knos nothing of computers, doesn't know how to spell. But truly I did it because I was scared to speak on the phone, even to people I've known for years.

 

And it's very comfortable for me. The only problem is that my "partner" also has a disease. His, while probably from the same origin--a parent--is debilitating, he hides it so well that everyone loves him. I don't know if that makes me worse or better. I have to wonder how others see me. That's what I'm always wondering. He on the other hand, wonders how others think but vehemently refuses to think he's worthless. So he goes out searching, finding someone--anyone to tell him he's worthwhile--like the psychopathy of someone in a fix seeking drugs. Whether it be a neighbor, a previous partner who he has convinced himself adored him and would walk of a cliff for him, or a current partner who he is attempting to condition to be like the first partner. It is a sick cycle but at the core of both of us is an understanding that we are somehow beneath others, that we can never achieve greatness. But my acceptance of that (whether or not it's true) has become a lifestyle, formed by the inferiority to my mother, a past child of an alcoholic in poverty who was determined to never let someone make her be or remind herself of her former life. I remind her of that, and thus I have formed my own life around her view of me--something unwanted, unbirthed, unknown, unachieved, unhuman. And I have become just that. And that is the reason I don't leave my house.

 

I avoid my supervisors at all costs--even my job, when they are female. I am scared they will tell me I am not doing well enough. I got the jobs because my mother approved in the first place, and to be disappointing them would be disappointing my mother, so I just go home from work and drink and forget that I dodged the meeting or that I had a panic attack at the board meeting, or that I couldn't look anyone in the eye as I stuttered through my notes, prepared days in advance, with a trembling voice, a weak stomach, and never looked a soul in the eye. I described this to her at a later time as "a district meeting to present the objectives of my job and the impacts on families and children." I never once told her how I had faultered. I was ashamed. And after subsequent social failings, I realized that this was distinctly a symptom that occurred only in the presence of women in a superior position to me. I somehow was able to muster a conversation with a professional male of further career advancement than myself. Not comfortably, but manageably.

 

This carried to my next job, which I thought I had escaped by moving cities. I thought, new place, new start. That I would somehow magically transform into a different person just because I had a new zip code. Approaching 30, with $47,000 in debt for school and a myriad of past due utility bills, and still the same problem I had not "outgrown", I felt useless. So I succumbed and ended up with the opposite of what I fear most--at least until now. I met a male, blue collar, fundamentalist, obstinant, patriarchical man, who seemed to care about every aspect of my life, little did I know he cared about every aspect of my life he could control.

 

Having been under the control of my mother, this was a familiar feeling. However the rules simply didn't apply to him somehow. Just like I could talk to male supervisors but not women. But 2 years and 100 bruises later, I fear both. So where am I to go now? She won't help me because I'm not the educated, eloquent, healthy woman of aspiration she expected me to be. I guess she figured she would give me the tools--an education, a generous allowance, positive reinforcement (which was actually like the military convincing new recruits of their so-called "purpose" in the army) and expected me to do with that what she had to work so hard to get away from. And I am no different than the blue collar, potato-salad family she left. While she travels to Italy, I go across town to the arboretum. I rarely leave home, and just seeing flowers in bloom is a new experience. I guess she tapped out of new experiences above the working class in her own area. She is living what she dreamed her life would have been before, yet with the emptiness of never having a starting point. Not even now. She is not herself, she is a figment of her Alice in Wonderland dreams which coerce and entice her. She cannot accept who she was and she blames her economic status on that. I cannot accept who I am and I blame myself for that. But the truth is, it wasn't her upbringing, and it wasn't myself. For me, the hurt lies in her. For her, the hurt lies in her father. I don't know which one of us is in more denial. Being an adult and blaming the wrong person can be disastrous--misplaced anger, misdirected dreams, false identity. I cannot blame myself, and she cannot blame her father (and my likeness to him) for our mistakes and place in life.

 

 

 

 

 

wheew if you hung through that youre a trooper

[amaysngrace]

I'm not the educated, eloquent, healthy woman of aspiration she expected me to be

 

I see nothing but an educated, eloquent and healthy-enough woman, considering what you've been through.

 

Enough of the negative self-talk already. You're extremely bright and have a good knowledge of seeing who you truly are.

 

Now, how about finding some of your more positive qualities to focus on?

 

You may just surprise yourself.

[beentheredonethat2]

how sweet the song....

 

 

thank u

[amaysngrace]

You're welcome.

 

What others think of you is nowhere near as important as what you think of yourself.

 

Sometimes people put other people down in hopes of lowering them to their level. Rise above it. And you'll come out on top.