Now that I am aware…now that I am awake, I am trying not to be hyper-aware of everything I do I am trying not to over-analyze my thoughts and actions. I want to be alive in my world, not just drifting slowly through it, but I also want to relax and enjoy the journey. I want to drink in life and stop being a passive character in my own life story. I want to be able to recognize and admit to a lifetime of abuse without drowning in this grief. I want to realize my own self-worth without becoming self-involved. I want to admit that I need to do things for me that make me happy without alienating the people I love. I want to give myself permission to be happy without seeking the approval of others. I want to be comfortable in my own skin. I want to stop hiding behind the “everything is ok” mentality when things are so obviously broken. I want to be able to admit to this pain that threatens to overwhelm me without making the people around me uncomfortable. I am so tired. So afraid. So broken. I am ready to shake off this cloak and lie in the sun. I am ready… just so afraid…
Tag Archive: emotion
There’s so much I don’t understand. I long to life a life of transparent honesty, but that’s just not practical in our superficial polite society. It’s all about what’s easy and politically correct instead of what’s real. When someone ask, “How are you doing?” they expect a positive answer. If you tell them the truth they are uncomfortable and don’t know what to say. No one knows what to do with the pain. As a culture we are not given any tools with which to deal with pain – there’s no etiquette for this. There’s no precedence for this transparency. This seems universally true – in work, play, school, church… there’s no room for pain. No one really wants to know about your pain and no one wants to honestly share their pain. Everyone wants to pretend to be ok – well-adjusted – happy – but most of us are dealing with some kind of brokenness, some kind of pain, even if we don’t quite have a name for it.
How do we break this habit? Is that even possible? Will we always be a society of isolation? We have more methods of connecting now more than ever before – yet we have never been more alone. All communication have become trivial and the art of sharing reality has been lost. Gone are the days of love letters… we are in an era of romance via hallmark. We depend on someone else to communicate our affections or not at all. If a card or e-mail forward does not contain the feeling we wish to convey we founder – having no words of our own. Why? Because we are a society of observers… always watching, reading, listening – not thinking, feeling, sharing. We surround ourselves with media in lieu of nature, we seek triviality rather than solitude – we spend our energy on status rather than investing it in another.
Where does this leave us? It leaves us all lost and lonely. It leaves us in a home crowded by TV, radio, internet, video games – where two lonely people live who have forgotten how to share what is most important – themselves.
There’s a song by Blue October that just says it better than I can today…. apart from the line about forgiveness, as I believe forgiveness awaits us if we only ask… enjoy. Click to see it on youtube.
“Razorblade”
In the day by day collision
Called the art of growing up
There’s an innocence we look for in the stars
To be taken back to younger days
When there was no giving up
On the people we held closest to our hearts
Yeah it is you that I remember in that glowing
It is you that took my first away from me
It is you I set my standards to… to every walk of life
I haven’t met another you since you were with me.
[Chorus]
A brief bout with a razorblade cut me
I freaked out, thinking people didn’t love me
I watched closely as the you I knew forgot me
In letting go, I am so proud of what I’ve done
In a way, I failed religion
I spit the wine from mouth to cup
And I reached for something more than just your God
Uncle, you spared not your children
And while your praying hands are up
There’s no forgiveness for you! You sick fuck!
It is you that I remember in their bedroom
It is you that took their first away from them
It is you they set their standards to
You wounded them for life
You were a preacher and suppose to be above men
Sing with me
[Chorus]
A brief bout with a razorblade cut me
I freaked out, thinking people didn’t love me
I watched closely as the you I knew forgot me
In letting go, I am so proud of what I’ve done
My grandmother is fiercely loyal to her favorite son. For reasons no one really knows she worships the ground he walks on. It is not unlike a cult, with Eddie the proclaimed prophet or savior. I will never understand where this unhealthy devotion comes from. Growing up in this family of 8 children, Eddie was the one who could do no wrong. He molested some and possibly all of his 5 sisters. When they came and told their mother, she told all of the children to keep it a secret and not tell their father. She was worried that if her husband found out he would kick Eddie out of the house. She was more willing to sacrifice all 5 of her daughters to this man than to save her daughters and put him away where he belonged.
Later, after the children grew up and some had girls of their own, the entire family gladly left their daughters alone with this man knowing full well what he was capable of. It was more important to save this “good man” this “man of God” than to be sure their children were safe. It was more important to preserve a reputation than any of the girl’s innocence. We were all disposable. Just something to be sacrificed at the Altar of Eddie.
If I live to be a hundred years old, I will never know where all of the contempt came from. Why were the girls in my family so despised? Why were we so worthless to so many people? Why were our lives not more important than the reputation and freedom of one man? Why was it ok for Eddie to molest and rape us?
I know it’s impossible to ever get answers to these questions, but I long to understand. There’s a part of me that believes if I could just understand this, my life would suddenly make sence. I know this is pure fantasy and will never happen, but I just long to categorize these experiences and make them fit into some form of sanity. I want to have simple explanations, even if they are painful ones. Instead I am stuck with this horrible feeling of worthless-ness. Of being a disposable object… a thing of contempt. I feel like I must be truly broken for an entire family to want to toss me to a monster, then protect the monster.
I know one day I will be beyond this in my healing and the quest for answers will not matter so much. I know that one day I will learn to accept that my family is just profoundly broken and twisted and wrong and completely unaware of what love actually is or what it means. But between now and then I have this gaping hole in my heart and a pain that permeates all I touch and a sadness that lingers behind my smile.
An unfathomable sadness
has settled over me
blanket-like.
Its pain sears my chest
like a hot knife,
scarring.
I shrink away from words
and faces – I shrink
to you…
You-awaiting me beyond shadows
waiting in secret
my love.
In need of somewhere to settle
my restless emotions
ceaselessly search.
Longing for understanding
I cry out
(in despair)
I cry out silently and hear
my fears echoing
about me.
In an agonizing torment
I realize I am
alone.
Why this sad loneliness
this dull ache
these tears?
I should rejoice in your love –
instead I weep
I weep.
I am so afraid… I am embarking on yet another chapter of my life and I don’t know if I can do this. I am finally coming to terms with how abusive my parents were. Even though they did not molest me, they didn’t protect me and not only did they not protect me they treated me like a freak when they found out. They blamed me, they buried the whole thing under the rug and went on pretending that everything in our family was perfect. I have been surrounded by this attitued of ‘everything is ok’ my whole life. No matter how twisted or painful things were in our home we all pretended to be a happy family. I don’t want to pretend anymore. My life was pain… intense, bitter pain… and I am not ok with that anymore. I will not bow down to this cult of secrets and lies anymore. I will approach my life with honesty, even if that means I cry every day until this mourning period has passed… at least I will be real.
There’s so much I don’t understand about the healing process. I feel so lost and confused sometimes. I just want to feel whole again… I just want to be me again, whoever that is… For the first time in a long time I long to be whole, I want it so bad I can taste it. I am tired of lingering in the shadows hoping that everything will be ok. I am tired of settling for being broken. I am tired of being resigned to living this half-life where I never expect my life to be any better than it is. I deserve to be happy. I deserve to be free. I deserve to feel strong and beautiful. I am done apologizing my way through life. I am done keeping my head down and staying out of everyone’s way. I am done being beaten down and just accepting that that is my fate. I want to live. I want to thrive. I want to twirl in the sunshine with my arms flung out and my head tilted back with the wind in my hair and a laugh on my lips. I want to dance in my livingroom unashamed. I want to play and have fun. I want to revel in every day miracles. I want to blow the seeds off dandelions and make wishes. I want to spoil myself and not feel guilty. I want to pursue health and not fear. I want to be embraced and enjoyed. I want to be safe again. I don’t want to be alone anymore. I want to allow my husband to love me. I want to give myself permission to be vulnerable and let down my guard. I want to be vibrant and passionate and ALIVE. I want freedom from this pain, this fear that holds me back… I want to more than conquer it I want to stomp it into the ground and take away its power over me. I want to shake off this weight from my shoulders and sing to the sky. I will be happy one day. I will overcome this.
So when you’re young you celebrate all of your holidays with the family you’re born into, and sometimes that tradition carries into your adult-hood. In my case, I find my self celebrating my holidays more and more with my chosen family. I wasn’t given a choice about who I was born to, how I was raised or how I was treated by my extended blood family. Now, as an adult, I make the choices about being with people who genuinely enjoy me, who love me and who care about my well-being – even if that means they hold me when I cry. I belive my parents love me very much, but negative emotion wasn’t welcome at my child-hood home, so I learned early to just choke back and suppress any unwanted emotion and only display what is positive even if it was a total lie. I don’t live that way any-more. I have the right to feel how I feel with no apologies and no guilt. I embrace all of my emotions and don’t worry about what’s politically correct or socially acceptable. I embrace the truth of the moment and I don’t continually censor myself any-more. Now I approach the holidays with the thought of… “What’s healthy for me?” not “What will make everyone around me like me or approve of me?”
This year I have spent Christmas day with my best friend and my husband, two of the only people who truly feel like family to me, two people who really know me and love all of me, not just the acceptable opinions and attitudes… I will also be ringing in the New Year with them and I can’t think of a more peaceful way to begin my year than to be surrounded by love and acceptance. I am truly grateful to have been given a new definition of love and of family this year.
captivatingbitter 