Relationship Patterns / Dysfunctional FOO Issues

[New Leaf]

I hope his sister gives him a good scolding..........

 

[Feeling Sad]

Yes, I agree with Leafy, he feels threatened by the new you. Is he so afraid that he is trying to stifle your beautiful emergence into a new strong woman? He is afraid of losing you. He fears that you are becoming more independent and attractive to other men...

 

[New Leaf]

I screamed not for help but to protest. To not accept what was happening to me. Had he continued I would have continued screaming. He did not. He did try to bully me. I did not accept that either but would not fight with him. I do not want to fight.

In this Copa, you stood up for yourself.

I am so mad, I am imploring the extreme Hawaiian/Chinese waitress goddess to appear.

Fook Yuen!

Protect my warrior sister.

He is not a bad man. He knows what he did was wrong. But that does not make it better. It makes it worse.

He must make amends and promise and abide by his word to never, ever touch you in this way, ever.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I asked M to help me set up a new printer I bought today. I had gotten to a certain point and did not know how to put in the ink cartridges. He was irritated and used the opportunity to criticize me relentlessly. After a certain point I told him it was OK. I will return the printer. He replied. No it is not OK. Fix it. Fix the printer. You start something, you finish it. No. I want to return it, I said.

You will finish it, he said. He grabbed my shoulder, pushed me down. I began to scream. I did so on purpose. It was a decision to draw a line. I would scream as long as he was hurting me or threatening me. He became more angry.

He left.

Copa, I agree with the others of us that M should not behave in these ways, but I ask you to remember Copa that there was a time when you needed that or you would not have chosen M.

As we change, as we come to trust ourselves Copa, the patterns we require, of our men and of ourselves, change. We don't know yet how this will all look. We don't even know how we want it to look. So, this is what I say about what happened last night: Hold faith with yourself Copa, and hold faith with M.

He loves you.

He will give you what you require to grow and thrive and come real. You will be coming in to a different level of caring and respect for M, for the man M is, as you both come through these changes, Copa. Maintain integrity. Stay Germany. Require of yourself the highest standards you can bear to. Kindness, compassion, honesty regarding your own motives. Trust in your decency, and in M's.

M will respond in kind.

You are changing, Copa. What you needed from M is changed. He is learning what you need, too. Only you don't know yet what that is, either.

Trust yourself and trust M.

You will come through this time, Copa. In a way, this is a blazing success story. The rules are changing. You and M are communicating.

You will come into new balance.

Remember when I posted about D H throwing our dinner over the railing, and how out of character that was? Or all the confrontations, all the anger, and the growing sense of this man's integrity and true cherishing of me?

That is where you are now I think, Copa.

It feels terrible, but it is a wonderful thing. Had it not been the printer, it would have been something else because it is time for this, Copa.

You are changing.

M loves you.

He will give you what you need Copa, just as he has, all along.

It's just that what you need from him now is changing.

No shame, Copa. Not for either of you. Real boats rock.

You are coming real.

Cedar

 

[Feeling Sad]

I agree with Cedar. Your relationship dynamics are changing...your 'dance' is being altered, albeit in a positive way.

Two things come to mind. First of all, he is seeing these good changes in you and wants them to continue ...faster. He perceives any step 'backwards' as stopping...possibly forever. He wants to keep the momentum going. He is not fully perceiving the difficulty for you. You cannot just flip a switch and go, "Presto chango!"

He needs to be very patient with you and lose the daily petty criticisms. Those hurt you to the core.

Secondly, I have heard when couples retire at the same time, they often start to bicker. They are not used to being together all of the time.

He is used to going out alone. Now, although it is very wonderful for you...you are now in his perceived 'space' and he finds this strange or even threatening. He is grouchy about the primer because he wants it done quickly and the way that he would have done it.

Bottom line...NO ABUSE IS ALLOWED. This means physical, verbal, or emotional abuse.

Talk with him that you know that he loves you and explain how it makes you feel when he us critical, short, or grabs you. Let him know that it will never be tolerated!

 

[Copabanana]

Has he done this to you before? Oh Copa, it is a terrible thing.

Over 6 years, a few times. The first time was momentous. He used to drink. He had stopped drinking for 19 years, and when he was in this country, he started drinking beer again. When we got together he pretty much stopped.

He is very vulnerable to his children. Something happened. A phone call. He drank a few beers. Alcohol is very toxic to him.

He was supposed to pick me up at a prison about 45 minutes from us. He knew he should not drive so he went to get a friend to drive with him. The "friend" had had some beer, too. When I got into the car I did not immediately know anything was wrong.

The road is in the mountains and is curvy. When I realized M had been drinking, I reacted. I do not know how I felt or why, I knew that it was wrong what had happened. To me, it was wrong. He had a responsibility to pick me up. He had entered prison grounds mildly intoxicated. He had allowed somebody who had been drinking to drive me. That was not what I expected from him.

I began to demand to be let out of the car on the highway. M refused. I began to scream louder. Demanding to be let out. On the highway. I began to denounce both of them calling them every word I could think of. I began to open the car doors. M slapped my face. He was trying to subdue me and to respond to the insults and what he perceived as my hysteria. I was not hysterical. I was furious. I continued. Worse. (This is very hard to write.)

He slapped my face again. I told him that if he did not let me out of the car it was kidnapping.

He did. I crossed the highway on a curve. It was very, very dangerous. I could care less. He followed me. The car was left at the side of the road. Remember, this was a mountain road. There was not much there. Cars and trucks whizzed by. I walked along the side of the highway to a gas station that I knew was there. I did not know what to do. Incredibly, an acquaintance drove by. He had seen my car in the road and knew something was off. He drove me home.

Eventually, M came home. I do not remember when. He was completely abject. Profoundly apologetic. He said nothing like that had ever happened to him before in his life. He never drank again. That was about 5 years ago.

As I write this I am thinking about my Mother. When she was at the board and care place, she was desperately unhappy (she was also, dying, but I did not know that.) We had found an adult activities program. While at my house we had visited together, and all loved it. They adored her. She was all decked out in her Uggs, a gorgeous denim jacket I had bought her with rhinestones all over it and the cutest empire waist tee shirt dress. She had gotten so tiny I was able to buy size 14 in girls. (That greatly expanded the fashion potential.) I did her makeup. My mother was a beautiful woman. How she loved the attention.

She had already begun falling apart. Screaming. When the van to take her to the program came for her the first morning, sh began to scream that they were kidnapping her and that she would call Adult Protective Services. My mother was very feisty and in command as a person.

They had to turn back and bring her back to the board and care home. I was so disappointed and sad.

She had protected herself in her own mind...and denied herself this wonderful opportunity.

I do not know how this story relates to my own.

There is something in my mother and I--a bottom line. Now, it must be said that my mother never, ever defended me--with her children she did not have a bottom line. She never felt the call to defend her daughter. Even when she was responsible to do so.

But there is something in me. And there was something in her, that refuses to go quietly, to succumb control over self, to another.

This and a million other things makes me sure that if ever confronted with true evil, I will not go quietly.

The thing is it is not always clear how to distinguish. In the case of my mother in the van, that quality did not serve her.

You ask if he has done something like this before.

A few months ago M followed me in the hall. I felt he put his hand on my head in anger. He says he was protecting me from falling. This very much affected me because my stepfather when I was about 15 had hit me in the head from behind in a hallway banging my head against the wall. There is no way he was protecting me.

It is very hard to write this.

I am thinking that M must be very conflicted at seeing the great strides you are making Copa.

New Leaf, he does not see me making strides. He sees the cup half empty. He sees all the way I am stuck. He sees me wasting my time doing destructive things. He sees the computer as an enemy. He sees my buying not as trying to flesh out in a material way who I am, but as completely self-destructive.

He must see my desire for autonomy as something completely unfathomable.

He says you must change, but you are changing.
And he is afraid.

I do not think he thinks I am changing. Although I am.

he feels threatened by the new you.

But the new me has not been manifest.

He sees me as having been previously strong and capable and having lost my mojo. Remember, he has seen me go to work in the fiercest of prisons throughout my state. He has seen me fly off alone to Rio several times, alone. He saw me handle my sister and the illness of my mother. He saw me handle the legal ramifications and best my law professor sister.

I do not think he sees my fledgling steps as success or change or capacity of any sort.

I agree with your interpretation, I just do not see that he sees me improving or emancipating.

He fears that you are becoming more independent and attractive to other men...

Again, I think this is true, in theory. But in reality, he sees me still stagnating.

Copa that there was a time when you needed that or you would not have chosen M.

I agree, Cedar. But it is complex.

M is an enigma in many ways. He had a passive but strong mother and an abusive father. To survive in his work he developed a somewhat passive and accommodating attitude. That is what I knew first. With a strength of character.

I think what I responded to first in him was as a loving and strong parent. *OK, now I am getting to where you want me to go, Cedar.

as we come to trust ourselves Copa, the patterns we require, of our men and of ourselves, change.

I am completely in agreement, Cedar.

Hold faith with yourself Copa, and hold faith with M.

Thank you, Cedar. You cannot imagine how helpful this is.

I woke up bereft. To be able to hold faith with myself, makes all the difference. I do not have to abandon myself. I can be OK. You cannot imagine the actual solace this gives me.

Maintain integrity. Stay Germany. Require of yourself the highest standards you can bear to. Kindness, compassion, honesty regarding your own motives. Trust in your decency, and in M's.

I am really liking being Germany. I am stunned by that. I am turning into Andrea Merkel. Who knew? I like it.

What you needed from M is changed. He is learning what you need, too. Only you don't know yet what that is, either.

So, I just stay cool. Not go anywhere. (I mean, in myself.) Stay present. Do not write a story. Just stay open.

Trust yourself and trust M.

You know, I do not think that M's sister is necessarily supportive of our relationship. She likes me. But I do not necessarily think that she supports his staying with me. M does not listen to her. He tells her. He has told her that he is committed to me. She told me that. But I do not think if she could write his story he would stay with me. I think his mother have M stay with me, though.

Last night and this morning I was ready to think about life without him. And how I would do it and what I would do. I think this is important to envision.

D H throwing our dinner over the railing, and how out of character that was? Or all the confrontations, all the anger, and the growing sense of this man's integrity

Cedar, at what point in your lives did this happen? Like how many years ago? At what point were you with your children? With your family?

he is seeing these good changes in you and wants them to continue ...faster.

I think this is true to this extent: We have been planning to go east for about a year and a half. What has held us up is me. I think he feels that his life is on hold. Because of me. And this is true to a large extent.

There is also the dynamics of the other house. He is working hard. He is in pain from crooking his neck to repair the old ceiling plaster. He feels put upon. He owns no interest in that house, but he will benefit from it. Our interactions are very difficult around issues of finance and the differential in control. For each of us and for both of us together. He is in a conflict. He knows it is the right thing to do the work. But he resents that I am not with him doing it too. And at the same time he knows there are things I must do for myself. And that I will not be all that much help to him.

And the printer was connected to the computer. And he sees the computer as the root of all evil in my life. Buying stuff. Clicking.

He perceives any step 'backwards' as stopping...possibly forever.

I think this is true. I think he has tried to be patient with my various incapacities. And fails, sometimes.

He is not fully perceiving the difficulty for you

This is true.

I am feeling sad, Feeling Sad.

I think that there is no solution, right now. The ball is in his court.

I am not so sure that he won't decide to leave me. But this is something I have to face. I could not and would not accept what happened. I had to stop it.

I will have to just get through it.

I did not fall in love with M. There was no sense ever of losing control. Of fear. That had always been present before. What I felt was drawn to him. I felt safety. I felt protected. I felt somebody at my side, on my side.

I had never felt this really with anybody before. Even with my parents.

Thank you very much. I am so grateful to not be alone.

COPA

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Last night and this morning I was ready to think about life without him. And how I would do it and what I would do. I think this is important to envision.

This is crucial, Copa.

If we are dependent, then the choice we make is not really a choice.

Cedar, at what point in your lives did this happen? Like how many years ago? At what point were you with your children? With your family?

I think two years ago, Copa. I had begun thinking differently about family of origin, and about myself. I wanted to talk and talk about them, about me, about what everything meant. Once I was not seeing them, once my mother was not at our house as she chose, once I was not calling her every night, D H just wanted to forget about them.

I didn't.

Nor did I see why I should; nor could I. I needed to know what had happened, how it could be that my own mother and sister were treating me this way.

D H did not want to hear about them, anymore.

I was suffering, and I was suffering alone and was supposed to do it quietly.

That is why D H threw our dinner over the railing.

Because I no longer saw any reason to stop anything because he said so, or to take his interpretation of events over my own.

***

I also have a plan to leave, and an envisionment of what that life would be like. The most important piece of that is knowing there is nothing, not one thing, I need to do right this minute. Another important piece is understanding that I cannot know how any of that is going to look until I am in it. So, no need to plan, then.

A kind of quiet descended.

I changed.

D H felt it.

And changed, too.

But it was tough, and it wasn't pretty. When I look back now, I realize I knew so little that was real about my D H.

Isn't that something.

***

Raising our children, D H and I were in a very different place. He was strong and handsome and important and I was strong and beautiful and important in my own way. It was all about family and houses and pets and school and kids and other moms. The kids got older. I went back to work.

Then, our family seemed to fall apart, and things got very real, very fast.

I had changed. D H had changed. With first one child and then, the other in trouble, neither of us seemed to be the parent we had believed ourselves or the other to have been. I think we hated one another because we could not see one another as the hero, as the wonderful mother, as successful people, as wonderful parents.

Like I said Copa, things got very real, very fast.

It was all very ugly.

I don't know why D H stayed with me.

The kids were in so much trouble; there were grandchildren.

D H just kept pulling me out of it. We sold a house, bought another, went on vacation. D H changed our lives altogether but I was never really present to him. I was so focused on the kids and then, the grands. It was after I got detachment theory as a benefit to the kids that I ~ I don't know, Copa. Became present to my own life again, maybe. I had worked and taken classes and done all kinds of things, of course, during that time, but what I was really doing all those years was focusing on my kids.

But it would be like, every time I looked up...there was D H.

And as I have come through the work we have done here in FOO Chronicles...there is D H.

And I like him so much, and find him ethical in the heart of him whereas before, he was a hero figure bigger than my mother. (Safe in the way you define M as safe maybe, Copa.) More than anything, he was a hero figure. I always thought he knew everything. Now, I get it that he doesn't, that he does not automatically know, anymore than I do. I realize I can be pushy and nasty sometimes in my attitude and thinking and behaviors without meaning to...and here, I thought I was ~ I excused alot of really crummy behaviors and was of thinking about my D H on my part.

It has been quite humbling, to realize that. To acknowledge it.

At the bottom of all that perfection was...shame.

Under shame, there is me.

Isn't that something.

Cedar

Remember we were posting about the uncertainty in functioning outside a role? That desire to go back to the safety of a role is very strong, but we can't do it, anymore. Maybe that is the downside of reclaiming ourselves.

 

[New Leaf]

Over 6 years, a few times. The first time was momentous. He used to drink. He had stopped drinking for 19 years, and when he was in this country, he started drinking beer again. When we got together he pretty much stopped.

Copa, it is incredibly difficult to share all of this.
I know, because I have had similar experiences with the hubs.
It is painful, it is a rawness, and reveals a vulnerability. Not ours. Their vulnerability.

Alcohol is very toxic to him.

The same for hubs, and my Dad. Dad had many struggles with alcohol, not the day to day drunken images we perceive, but the once in a while all out, oh G-d I've done it again, one or two or three drinks too many and lost control of myself kind of drinking.
I think Dad was more self destructive.
The hubs, too had a drinking problem. He drank to get through life. He drank to numb his memories of being raised in a family so dysfunctional, a father so abusive, a mother so compliant, it makes my toes curl to think of it. But you know what Copa, sometimes when he drank, those memories would come pouring out of him.
His drinking was both self destructive and destructive to me.
He was a mean drunk.
Happy go lucky with friends, mean and abusive to me.

I began to demand to be let out of the car on the highway. M refused. I began to scream louder. Demanding to be let out. On the highway. I began to denounce both of them calling them every word I could think of. I began to open the car doors. M slapped my face. He was trying to subdue me and to respond to the insults and what he perceived as my hysteria. I was not hysterical. I was furious. I continued. Worse. (This is very hard to write.)

He slapped my face again. I told him that if he did not let me out of the car it was kidnapping.

This brings back a lot of memories for me Copa. You are not alone in having experienced this.

He did. I crossed the highway on a curve. It was very, very dangerous. I could care less. He followed me. The car was left at the side of the road. Remember, this was a mountain road. There was not much there. Cars and trucks whizzed by. I walked along the side of the highway to a gas station that I knew was there. I did not know what to do. Incredibly, an acquaintance drove by. He had seen my car in the road and knew something was off. He drove me home

How strong you were, and how wonderful G-d provided a ride for you.
There were many times, Copa I got out of the car at a stop light, to get away from the hubs.

It is hard for me to write this too. But, it is true.

Eventually, M came home. I do not remember when. He was completely abject. Profoundly apologetic. He said nothing like that had ever happened to him before in his life. He never drank again. That was about 5 years ago.

This is such a recent memory, Copa. I am writing about events that occurred 35 years ago, yet they are still fresh in my mind. The things he does now, more subtle, remind me that the darkness is still lurking.

When the van to take her to the program came for her the first morning, she began to scream that they were kidnapping her and that she would call Adult Protective Services. My mother was very feisty and in command as a person.

Did this remind you of your experience with M Copa?
Sometimes things seem completely unrelated, but they have a way of conjuring the memory.

There is something in my mother and I--a bottom line.

Bottom lines are important.

But there is something in me. And there was something in her, that refuses to go quietly, to succumb control over self, to another.

That is a good trait.

This and a million other things makes me sure that if ever confronted with true evil, I will not go quietly.

I am sure you will not Copa. Roar, or should I say Howl.

You ask if he has done something like this before.

A few months ago M followed me in the hall. I felt he put his hand on my head in anger. He says he was protecting me from falling. This very much affected me because my stepfather when I was about 15 had hit me in the head from behind in a hallway banging my head against the wall. There is no way he was protecting me.

It is very hard to write this.

Yes, Copa it is very hard to write.
The Bull is what makes me so mad. "Protecting you from falling" my butt.


Your stepfather had no right to do such a thing, neither does M, much the same, try to twist it into a confabulated protection excuse.
He must see this for what it is Copa, for it to stop and for you to be safe.

Ancient Hawaiians believed the head to be a most sacred thing. It is something to be protected, because it is one of the centers of our being.
It is one of the piko.
A portal, where all of our connection to everything exists.

The head is not to be touched or handled disrespectfully.

I see the intelligence in this.
There is new discovery on the fragility of our brains, that our brains are much more easily injured than was previously thought.

I do not know what is worse Copa, the hand on the head, or the insult of the excuse.

I am glad you see it for what it is. M needs to own this.
I am not saying you must leave him.
But this intolerable putting of hands on you, he must own.

New Leaf, he does not see me making strides. He sees the cup half empty. He sees all the way I am stuck. He sees me wasting my time doing destructive things. He sees the computer as an enemy. He sees my buying not as trying to flesh out in a material way who I am, but as completely self-destructive.

He must see my desire for autonomy as something completely unfathomable.

Yes Copa, I am there with you.
My hubs has a way of looking at the world thusly.
So different we are.
Perhaps in this way we compliment one another.
Or, his negativity drives me to the positive ever more so.

Yet, he has his TV watching, my hubs. He has his moods and his non-communicating.
He drives me to the computer, then complains of it. Huh.

I see my time here as an education. I am in college as I share and learn and grow here on CD.

I know I must balance myself more, with my work and housekeeping.

But I believe this is very important work, this clicking, because I feel myself changing and growing.

I do not think he thinks I am changing. Although I am.

He sees, Copa.

But the new me has not been manifest.

Ahhhh but the perception of it is there.

He sees me as having been previously strong and capable and having lost my mojo. Remember, he has seen me go to work in the fiercest of prisons throughout my state. He has seen me fly off alone to Rio several times, alone. He saw me handle my sister and the illness of my mother. He saw me handle the legal ramifications and best my law professor sister.

I do not think he sees my fledgling steps as success or change or capacity of any sort.

I agree with your interpretation, I just do not see that he sees me improving or emancipating.

It is coming, and if he loves you the way I think he does, he sees it Copa. He wants it, but fears it at the same time.

But in reality, he sees me still stagnating.

This stagnating, Copa, I have thought about it. My son is 14 and going through an incredible physical growth period, eating us out of house and home, he has gotten an inch taller in two months. In this time, his brain is kind of well-gone. He does things, like leave the door open, the refrigerator door, the front door. He is clumsy and trips. He is not a careless person. I have read that when children have growth spurts, the brain goes on vacation.

What if this stagnation you speak of, this taking to your bed, was all about your brain growing, so your body went quiet?

M is an enigma in many ways. He had a passive but strong mother and an abusive father. To survive in his work he developed a somewhat passive and accommodating attitude. That is what I knew first. With a strength of character.

Yes Copa, my hubs had the same dynamics. He can be passive and accommodating, he has strength of character, but the stuff of his FOO, the numbing, comes out in bits and spurts and pieces at the weirdest times.
This does not mean I accept the wrong behavior, but ahhhh, I understand it.
Add health issues and "grumpy old man syndrome" we make quite the odd couple.

I woke up bereft. To be able to hold faith with myself, makes all the difference. I do not have to abandon myself. I can be OK. You cannot imagine the actual solace this gives me.

No, you do not have to abandon yourself, or even M, for that matter. We all make mistakes, we all act out of sorts in one way or the other.

I am really liking being Germany. I am stunned by that. I am turning into Andrea Merkel. Who knew? I like it.

I like you being Germany too Copa, it is exciting, watching this transformation.

Last night and this morning I was ready to think about life without him. And how I would do it and what I would do. I think this is important to envision.

Yes, and no. It is up to you to decide. As Cedar wrote in all of her wisdom, the boat rocks.

There is also the dynamics of the other house. He is working hard. He is in pain from crooking his neck to repair the old ceiling plaster. He feels put upon. He owns no interest in that house, but he will benefit from it. Our interactions are very difficult around issues of finance and the differential in control. For each of us and for both of us together. He is in a conflict. He knows it is the right thing to do the work. But he resents that I am not with him doing it too. And at the same time he knows there are things I must do for myself. And that I will not be all that much help to him.

Men do not handle pain well Copa, physical or emotional. If men had to bear children, the human race could not have survived.

And the printer was connected to the computer. And he sees the computer as the root of all evil in my life. Buying stuff. Clicking.

I think this is true. I think he has tried to be patient with my various incapacities. And fails, sometimes.

We all fail.

I did not fall in love with M. There was no sense ever of losing control. Of fear. That had always been present before. What I felt was drawn to him. I felt safety. I felt protected. I felt somebody at my side, on my side.

I had never felt this really with anybody before. Even with my parents.

It is as it should be. What is falling in love at our age? Would it be the passion of a 20 year old, or the great comfort of having someone by our sides. The knowledge that we are not perfect and they are not perfect and somehow making it work.
The maturity to not completely lose yourself in the grips of love as a younger person would.

Copa, thank you for sharing more of your relationship and this struggle. I know it was not easy for you.

For me, the past experiences I have had with my hubs are painful. In the drama of it all, I did understand that he was reacting and patterning because of his horrendous upbringing. Although I did not accept or condone it, I understood it. He gave up drinking. He changed. The stuff is still in there, because he has never worked it out. I sometimes wonder if it has much to do with his health issues, I do not think anyone can bear the memories he has, and not release the pain of it, without some kind of ramifications.

We have been through much, the hubs and I, as you and M have in your relationship together.
Cedar put it so succinctly in one of her posts, how she and D H loved and hated each other.

Good Lord, when we told my father we were going to get married, that is exactly what he said
"There will be times when you will absolutely hate each other"

Imagine that.

Then there are times when we absolutely love each other. Not mushy, gushy love, but the love of knowing we had stayed by one another's side through the thick and thin of it.

I am much comforted by your post Copa.
You are in a good place.
You are an amazingly, intelligent, strong woman.
And you will figure this one out.

Howl

Leafy

 

[Copabanana]

M came home. He was calm. So was I. He said he came to get things. I said it does not have to be that way. How can it be, he asked?

I do not think I replied. I asked him if he wanted lunch, he said yes.

He brought a poem for me to read on FB. About mother love throughout the lifespan. It was touching. He said his mother's brother died. We will send money to help with the funeral. That was that.

I am grateful he is back. He said he worked last night at the house until 3 am. And slept on the floor. I am grateful he is back. I am not sure why.

COPA

 

[Copabanana]

Because I no longer saw any reason to stop anything because he said so, or to take his interpretation of events over my own.

I think that even though our relationship is only 6 years old, and I was already at an advanced age, I have obeyed him.

I do not think I am obeying so much.

I realize I can be pushy and nasty sometimes in my attitude and thinking and behaviors without meaning to...and here, I thought I was ~ I excused alot of really crummy behaviors and was of thinking about my D H on my part.

M talks about this, too. How I am aggressive and impose my will over him but do it in a different way.

I think he feels invalidated by me, in ways I am not conscious of. My son has felt the same way. I have changed some with my son. I am more direct about my limits and expectations and silent about my opinions. And less controlling.

In a way by changing into Germany, I may be usurping the space I ceded to M. That is not bad. Because for him to become a little bit Argentina is not a bad thing. After all, Argentina has Borges and the Tango. And delicious food.

Remember we were posting about the uncertainty in functioning outside a role?

Which must be what our changing does to them. If we function outside of a role or no longer accept the space they have allowed us, this changes stuff for them. Their roles are impacted. They cannot continue as they were without confusion or distress.

The hubs, too had a drinking problem. He drank to get through life. He drank to numb his memories of being raised in a family so dysfunctional, a father so abusive, a mother so compliant

This was M, too. I was not around when he drank to excess. But the dynamics were the same in his birth family as for your Hubs.

His father was one of the most famous mariachi singers/guitarists in Mexico at a time when this was the pinnacle of celebrity. His father lived his life as a womanizer, leaving his family to starve. He is alcoholic.

M began to work at 5 years old to help his mother feed the other children. M's father beat M's mother and the older sons when they tried to protect her. He was thrown out of the house when he was 13 when he and his older brother tried to protect the mom for the last time. His father kicked him on the floor with his boots, in the head. (*Interesting huh?).

He and his brother wandered through Mx trying to survive, including the desert where they climbed trees or something (I do not know what kind of trees are in the dessert) to escape snakes and scorpions. Or I think that is the story. Something creepy.)

I like you being Germany too Copa, it is exciting, watching this transformation.

Yes. In a million years I would not have thought I could or would be Germany or want to be. Until Cedar told me I was. And I thought? Really? I am Germany?

Yes. I am Germany. And that made all the difference. I have forfeited the Germany part of me for my whole life.

I can have self-control. I can own responsibility. I can own accountability. I can be decisive. Insistent and make rules. And impose them. Without fear and shame. I can be dominant and strong. I do not need to have a debt crisis. I can take the leadership role. I can plan and administrate. I need to put it into effect, only.

I can even be prompt and run on time. And be neat and clean and organized. I have said it before but will do so again: I can budget. I can be frugal. And careful. I can respect authority. Especially my own. I can keep my own counsel.

The more I realize this and the implications the more dazzled I am with the concept.

Metaphor is so powerful. It is like Cedar talks about with the mother who named her grief with the image of "The Scream."

Thank you New Leaf and Cedar and Feeling and Serenity. Welcome back, Serenity.

I am grateful.

COPA

 

[Copabanana]

I don't know why D H stayed with me.

Why do you say that, Cedar?

Why would he not stay with you?

Or what was it about you that made you unworthy of his constancy, in your own mind?

Or was it something in him, that you think was inconsistent with constancy towards you?

Or is it your vision of what a relationship is? Is constancy not part of it?

Is it just as unbelievable that you stayed with him?

COPA

 

[Copabanana]

To me these are powerful questions, and not just because I thought of them. I will answer putting myself at the center.

what was it about you that made you unworthy of his constancy, in your own mind?

My goodness. I never believed that I could hold anybody. That anybody would want to be with me if they really knew me.

I think at the heart of me was a deep rage. I did not realize that it was my own self that could not tolerate the rage in me. And that once I could see it and own it, it no longer scared me so.

In these Foo threads I realized more than I had ever permitted before, that I suppressed my rage at how I was treated as a child. Doing so was the price of surviving. I had to adopt the persona as a good little girl so that I could hold on to the idea that my parents loved me enough to take care of me. So anger got suppressed. I feared it so.

That is why my own son's anger as he grew up was so intolerable to me. I believed, I think it was me that was out of control. I took personally his anger, and reacted in kind because I felt accused as angry. Which I could not tolerate. And when I became so angry, I became angrier at him for making me so.

Or was it something in him, that you think was inconsistent with constancy towards you?

Well, in my case, my Dad did not stay. And then he disappeared completely. And then he destroyed himself. And when he did he denounced me as unworthy.

When my Dad left, I believed it must have been my fault. Or else he would not have left. When he died, I must have felt it was my fault, too.

Of course I was wired to believe everything was my fault and my responsibility. At the same time I believed I was a flake. Now I know this is not true. Because now I know I am Germany.

Or is it your vision of what a relationship is? Is constancy not part of it?

I do not think I deserve constancy, because everybody important to me betrayed me in one way or another. It is a marvel that I can be constant.

Thank you all for your constancy to me.

COPA

 

[New Leaf]

Copa you have done a lot of work here. It is a good thing. I am going to Sis in laws for Halloween. Will write later after my chocolate festival. I will pay for that dearly tomorrow.
The hubs is angrily trying to fix his truck brakes, he paid a friend to do it and he messed up. This should be a fun evening......

 

[Copabanana]

I am thinking that what we are doing here is writing our autobiographies. But very special ones.

As we post over and over again we get closer and closer to what we need to know about our lives and ourselves. As we post we re-vision our pasts.

By imagining a reader, in my case, you Cedar, and Feeling, and New Leaf, we strive to write clearly. As we write clearly we begin to think more clearly.

As we think more and more clearly, we bring the adult's point of view into what was a small child's experience; a child who may not have had more than a few hundred words, and did not have experience beyond her own family and home.

These stories are not so much remembered, but recreated, by applying our wisdom and learning and experience as adults to our early experience. At the same time our adult selves are enriched by the child's suppressed energy, optimism and depth and purity of feeling.

The children who we remember did not exist as we see and feel them now. While they could have under other circumstances, they could not have existed in the families in which we lived. We have nurtured them together, giving them that chance to thrive which they denied themselves, in order to survive.

It is interesting to me that each of us came here because of grief and fear having to do with mothering. And when here found a way to mother ourselves and each other.

I am so grateful to each of you.

COPA

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Two things come to mind. First of all, he is seeing these good changes in you and wants them to continue ...faster. He perceives any step 'backwards' as stopping...possibly forever. He wants to keep the momentum going. He is not fully perceiving the difficulty for you. You cannot just flip a switch and go, "Presto chango!"

I think it is like what they say happens in a relationship where one of the persons has been physically sick, or has been very heavy ~ or even, has been alcoholic, and stops drinking. The patterns that have been seeded in the relationship have become habits. We do what we do "in the zone", and find comfort there because, however unbalanced it is, we can predict what will happen with some degree of regularity.

Thus, no fear.

But also, no intimacy. Intimacy is a very risky business. Everyone is always naming the ten thousand ways we interact but what it comes down to is that we must be very strong in ourselves to be present, to allow intimacy, to feel and be unguarded at that depth and not be afraid of being destroyed. I am not there yet, either. I think that is why we are fascinated by these questions now.

We are going there, next.

Not so much a triumph as a fact, just a fact and therefore, beautiful. I would always read things like that, but I am only now realizing I did not understand the concept being expressed. It goes hand in had with "Nothing real can be threatened; nothing unreal exists."

So it has to do with fear, but I don't know the complexities of it yet.

***

In relationship, when one of us changes, everyone's main concern at first is to come back into balance. If one of us has become healthier and refuses to accept the old patterns, no one knows what to do. If we love ourselves enough to hold faith with ourselves (and maybe, that only has to be just a little, just enough to recognize ourselves in ourselves as we heal old traumas), then, we can love one another enough to change the patterns of interaction.

Somebody has to go first.

These are both subtle and hugely obvious changes. Courage is required from everyone, and faith, because nothing is certain anymore and everything requires thought and we have to go naked, without our roles. We risk disappearing; we are without defense unless we are very present to ourselves.

It is very hard to be real and not role.

We see one another; we see beneath the roles, maybe for the first time, and fall into a kind of intimacy that makes sexual intimacy seem like just a physical thing, almost a meaningless thing, just a part of life and nothing so close as a smile or a glance or the comfort of touch.

For us especially, this kind of naked requires incredible courage. Even for you to demand that M not "catch you because you were falling" took huge mojo, huge testicles, Copa. There was a time when the abuser taught you that is who you were ~ that truth was in the initial abuser's eyes and you were not. Part of the damage done us is that we were not seen as the human we are when we were abused as children. What we saw in their eyes was hatred and rage and self-justification but even worse, what we did not see in their eyes was us. We were erased, for them to do what they did.

So, when we revisit traumatic incidents (as you do Copa, each time M behaves physically) we cannot see ourselves there; there is no reflection of us in the abuser's eyes.

That is the unbearable truth we learned, the hole at the centers of our families of origin, the thing beneath the shame.

That is why we have to love ourselves on faith.

Believe.

And sure enough, there we will be. That is the essence of powerlessness: that we are not seen. That someone hurts us and does not even see us. When M apologized for his behavior on the highway that time Copa, his apology had to do with not seeing you or himself.

That was the crux of the betrayal.

We need to see ourselves, and we need to see ourselves through our own eyes and we need to love, and not shame, the little girl or that little boy that we were. We need to find them, and witness for them and believe for them until they believe in us.

To have been abused is a lonely thing.

We were not seen.

And that is the heart of the hurt.

That we were made invisible, and used. That the abuser justified what he did because he (or she) was a coward and coward's do justify their actions or...or they would be Germany, Copa.

Like we are.

You were always Germany, Copa.

But you couldn't see it.

These are some of the patterns we are working through as we heal. Integrity is important because when we miss that mark, that is how we know to explore the wound revealed there.

This seems true to me regarding my own process. It is difficult to admit my own shortcomings because it echoes for me that invisibility that shame covers.

Invisibility, seen but discounted, is what lives beneath shame.

It is a frightening, shocking feeling.

I cannot imagine how any of us survived it.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

He needs to be very patient with you and lose the daily petty criticisms. Those hurt you to the core.

"What do you mean?"

That is the best reply to criticism or even, praise.

There is a quote about that, everyone. It goes something like, "The wise man does not waver before blame or praise."

I fell into fascination over the praise part. This is very true. Not to be swayed by blame or praise.

Talk with him that you know that he loves you and explain how it makes you feel when he us critical, short, or grabs you. Let him know that it will never be tolerated!

This is true. D H does not hit me, though he says rotten, cutting things and is controlling and etc. I think that if we say: "I will not tolerate abuse.", we are opening ourselves and our people into a sadness where someone is the good guy and someone is the bad guy. To me, the phrases: "Is this really the way you want to treat your wife?" Or, "Is that what you meant to say to me? Is that what you want me to believe you think about me?"

This is what I mean when I am trying to explain what I see about risk and intimacy. We need to be very sure first that we will survive it if our mates go commando on us and roar on about terrible things that we cannot defend against because the fact that they are yelling is keying into the shame response and, as I think might be true (at least, it is for me) to the having been made invisible emptiness that lives beneath the shame response.

Isn't that something. As intense as the shame response was and still is...it was a defense, a cover, for invisible.

That is the worse thing: Invisible to ourselves. That is the wound. Not shame. Just as it was in the story: Shame is a signpost...and there are worse things, and that is where we are going, to save ourselves.

Now, where was I going with this?

I don't know.

He is used to going out alone. Now, although it is very wonderful for you...you are now in his perceived 'space' and he finds this strange or even threatening. He is grouchy about the primer because he wants it done quickly and the way that he would have done it.

D H and I cannot do anything together ~ even shopping. It's almost funny. This happened when I became myself. Before that I was ~ I don't know. Almost an appendage of D H. I sheltered under his wing. I was afraid most of the time, then; was bound up in a role most of the time. It is not that I am not afraid, now. It is that I acknowledge that we all are afraid; that we all are human, like me.

It changes everything, to get that piece.

She had protected herself in her own mind...and denied herself this wonderful opportunity.

I do not know how this story relates to my own.

You wrote those lines after relating the story of M and the highway and the curving mountain road, Copa. You are wondering, I think, how to proceed in your relationship to M. Vulnerability with all its risks, or the shutting down; or the fear of expansion.

Go for vulnerable, Copa.

Spend it.

What I see in this story is M sliding into a lesser self; into a role. Because of the friend. Because of what it is to be seen as weak, or to be a man.

M chose correctly then, Copa. He was appalled at himself.

He will choose correctly, now. It takes courage to face it, when we recognize a role. Roles feel so strong, so certainly right. It is very spooky and nasty to give them up.

If M continues to insist on the role...you will know.

We will know.

The thing is, as you continue to heal, though you may need us to review the pieces of how things come together for the sake of your own integrity, you will not need us to know what to make of it, how to think of it.

You were always Germany, Copa. That is why you refused the role M presented on the highway. He was trying to insist you were Argentina. Or Mexico, and the role of his mother.

You are very strong; equally, very ethical.

I like that about you. I would like to learn that from you.

I am forever compromising my integrity because I don't even believe it when someone does something nasty. That is why I love ballet and martial arts.

No compromise.

It is what it is; a place to stand, a place to begin. Shame, and what lives beneath it, and learning to disregard the feelings. In a way, this is what Pema Chodron meant when she said there is no place to stand.

Or when someone said: "Have nothing to protect."

I need to go make breakfast now. It is Sunday, and I said I would make breakfast on Sunday. It's an integrity thing. Then, I foolishly said I would wash the car. I said that yesterday, in a fit of boastful generosity or something, after I washed my own little car.

Now I have to wash D H car or look like I have no integrity.

I said it because I was showing off about having washed my own car when everyone knows D H should have done that for me.

Oh, roar, when am I going to learn to stop doing that?!?

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

to feel and be unguarded at that depth and not be afraid of being destroyed. I am not there yet, either. I think that is why we are fascinated by these questions now.

I was going to say that I first became aware of the horror of this space about 7 years ago in an interaction with my son. He said something so nullifying to me that I could not bear how it felt--as if I did not exist. I think it must have catapulted me back to a pre-verbal state, where I did not have even the language to express my feelings or tell myself that I even existed apart from the person who cared for me, my Mother.

And my son's words triggered this place where I did not even feel I could exist.

But when I went into analysis (with the doctor who was eventually discredited) this place is where I would not go. With him. I fought to not go there. A win I did not want. Because I wanted to "get better." And getting better meant going to this place I would not go.

but even worse, what we did not see in their eyes was us. We were erased, for them to do what they did.

Yes. And when we were erased in their eyes, we felt as if we did not exist because it was at a point where we only existed as people through their gaze or words or touch. To be denied it deprived of as if life. We died.

To have been abused is a lonely thing.

We were not seen.

And that is the heart of the hurt.

And by not being seen we were killed off over and over again, psychically.

Invisibility, seen but discounted, is what lives beneath shame.

And beneath invisibility is a kind of social death. When done to adults we call it marginalizing or shunning. When it is done to an infant or toddler it kills them. They die.

This is what happens in orphanages. The babies will die. Given food and changed and cared for physically, they die for lack of being "seen." We call it love but really it is acknowledgement. Is that not tragically fascinating that a psyche will wither away and perish for not being awoken by a sleeping beauty kiss?

To me, the phrases: "Is this really the way you want to treat your wife?" Or, "Is that what you meant to say to me? Is that what you want me to believe you think about me?"

I like this, Cedar. Because it puts the onus right on the relationship, the conversation between two equal people. It also puts gives trust and possibility and expectation that the other will meet the challenge.

Isn't that something. As intense as the shame response was and still is...it was a defense, a cover, for invisible.

And if sustained, death.

I am forever compromising my integrity because I don't even believe it when someone does something nasty. That is why I love ballet and martial arts.

We have posted about this, Cedar. A while back. About the sisters. Or in my case, about my sister.

Remember? She would say or do something raunchy. Impossibly wrong. And I would see it. Know it happened. Experienced the feelings.

In fact, the feeling would be "nullified." She would as if nullify me as a person. Make me not exist. It would horrify me.

And what would I do? I would nullify myself. Obey. I would know what I knew. But disbelieve it. Know it happened. But not believe it happened. Willfully Incredulous.

I still am shaking my head that my sister could be so brilliantly evil.

How could her instincts be so acute and perceptive that she would know how to cause me "social death?"

That is very interesting about your love of ballet and martial arts where every nuance is so codified and formalized that there is no space for personal improvisation required to express something unknown or covert. Everything is rule bound.

So now you are stepping out of the formalized roles. Where there are no rules. And everything is improvisation so you only have the integrity and motivation to sustain relationship driving it. It is kind of interesting, no?

Thank you Cedar. Good morning New Leaf and Feeling.

I bought Halloween Candy for the first time in several years. Big mistake. I ate 2/3 of it. And then we were so spent by the time trick or treat came, we turned off the porch light.

COPA

 

[New Leaf]

In these Foo threads I realized more than I had ever permitted before, that I suppressed my rage at how I was treated as a child. Doing so was the price of surviving. I had to adopt the persona as a good little girl so that I could hold on to the idea that my parents loved me enough to take care of me. So anger got suppressed. I feared it so.

Suppressed rage, survival, persona.
We could not envision ourselves and our endless possibilities as little children, because we were thrust in a role. To step out of the role was dangerous, this we knew.
Perhaps we tested a bit, and the results proved our instincts to be true.
Thats when the swallowing begins.
When we swallow our feelings and stuff them down, we develop a shield for ourselves and protect our inner child. Persona.

My goodness. I never believed that I could hold anybody. That anybody would want to be with me if they really knew me.

Goodness is the key. Were we able to see our goodness? I never felt, good enough.

I think at the heart of me was a deep rage. I did not realize that it was my own self that could not tolerate the rage in me. And that once I could see it and own it, it no longer scared me so.

Though we had to stuff our feelings, reactions and responses to what happened to us,(each of us with our different experiences) the rage was still there. The anger of a small child knowing that what was happening was wrong, with no control in the situation to stop it. The completely absurd notion that we could not be ourselves. The having to act the role, develop the persona, for survival.

In these Foo threads I realized more than I had ever permitted before, that I suppressed my rage at how I was treated as a child. Doing so was the price of surviving. I had to adopt the persona as a good little girl so that I could hold on to the idea that my parents loved me enough to take care of me. So anger got suppressed. I feared it so.

I have a real, clear memory of myself at two. How could I remember that?
I had an operation. I was very scared. My Mom did not stay with me. Nobody did. I can remember looking out the hospital window, swallowing my tears, in the background, Mom is saying "You will be alright, no crying, be a good, strong girl."
She handed me my toothbrush "Remember to brush your teeth." My Nana had come and gave me a teddy bear. I remember very vividly, sitting in the metal barred hospital crib, holding my teddy bear and my toothbrush, watching my Mom and Nana walk out of the room."

As I see it now, I am outside of myself, looking at this little two year old, sitting there in hospital gown, in the crib, clinging to that toothbrush and teddy bear, trying her best not to cry, at TWO YEARS OLD!
OMG, who does that? Could my Mom, or somebody, not have stayed with me? Was that hospital rules back then?
I do not remember the pain and recovery from the operation.
That is the only memory I have.
That I was left, to fend for myself, with strangers, my only solace a toothbrush and a little panda bear.

As I review the memory with adult eyes, as my inner child, the crib, the bars, it looks as if I am in prison.
I am trying to be brave and not cry, I feel the lump in my throat, I want to yell for my Mom, my Nana.
"Why are you leaving me here? I am scared, I do not know these people, Why are you leaving me?"

In my adult mind, I am like, really?
Two years old, in a strange place, alone
with a f ing toothbrush and a stuffed bear.

Good Gawd.

Huh.

That is why my own son's anger as he grew up was so intolerable to me. I believed, I think it was me that was out of control. I took personally his anger, and reacted in kind because I felt accused as angry. Which I could not tolerate. And when I became so angry, I became angrier at him for making me so.

Yes, we were supposed to stay even keeled. There is something about even keeled. But, I think that is achieved truly, after the hard work of removing all of the layers we developed while putting on the persona.

Well, in my case, my Dad did not stay. And then he disappeared completely. And then he destroyed himself. And when he did he denounced me as unworthy.

My Dad stayed, but in a sense, he did not. He suffered the loss of his Mom to cancer when he was a young boy. I believe he was not allowed, or able to fully address his feelings.When I was five, his little sister was in a head on collision and died. I remember all of the confusion and the muffled conversations behind my parents bedroom door. I do not think we went to my aunties funeral. Children didn't go to funerals is what my Mom said. I remember a change in my Dad. A kind of sadness, then, not. It was as if a wall went up. He walled up his heart. He was there, but he was not. My Dad was a wonderful man, hard worker, he read us bedtime stories, took us to museums and places of history, taught us the importance of education. But there was something...missing.

When my Dad left, I believed it must have been my fault. Or else he would not have left. When he died, I must have felt it was my fault, too.

My Dad left. He was there, but part of him, left. He was protecting himself, I think. I think he was deeply sensitive, so much so, that after these two significant losses, he decided that he shouldn't allow himself to love so completely. As he went through his series of illness, the end years, he became even more and more shut down, to me at least. I would come to visit, it was as if I wasn't there. I would quietly sit in his presence and inwardly become that little girl again, that overly sensitive child that was never enough.
I tried my friends, to have conversation, to no avail.
I would tearfully share my despair at this with my sister. She said "You must open the book, you must tell Dad what you are feeling." She drove me back up to do so. It did not work. My Dad, could not respond as I imagined to my overwhelming sorrow and fear that I would not see him again.
I felt the wall, and the wall would not budge.
I had to satisfy myself with his presence, but he was not really there...... for me.

G-d forgive me, I think this is the crux at why I did not go to his death bed.
I could not bear to go one last time, and see the nothing I was, through his eyes.
Feel that emptiness.
I am crying as I write this.
This is very hard.
Because I know now, I was not nothing,
I was everything, everything he feared the most,
I was his feelings, and he could not wall me up.

So, I was shut out.
Not completely, not in a mean sense,
but still, shut out.

I do not think I deserve constancy, because everybody important to me betrayed me in one way or another. It is a marvel that I can be constant.

Constancy, even for ourselves Copa.
The shopping. I will be this, or that, represented in purchases.
As if material things can satisfy our need to define us.
They cannot.
Because we are much more, so much more.

I am thinking that what we are doing here is writing our autobiographies. But very special ones.

Special indeed. In anonymity, we do not have to fear what we write. There is an honesty to it.

As we think more and more clearly, we bring the adult's point of view into what was a small child's experience; a child who may not have had more than a few hundred words, and did not have experience beyond her own family and home.

Yes,the awakening.....

The children who we remember did not exist as we see and feel them now. While they could have under other circumstances, they could not have existed in the families in which we lived. We have nurtured them together, giving them that chance to thrive which they denied themselves, in order to survive.

Embracing the inner child. We can love our inner child, understand her, relive the stories of our memories and begin to understand why we are who we are.
This is very intense difficult work.
We are virtually throwing up all of those swallowed emotions.
Okay that is gross, but that is the image that comes to mind.
I will restate that.
We are unraveling our tapestries. Not that one either.
I need to work on this imagery.
I think it will become a poem, or a painting.

We are remembering our past experiences, through our own adult eyes, and we are embracing our inner child. We are understanding why this and this and that happened. How it became a role, why we were patterning. How to change and redefine ourselves through our own understanding. How to open up to the incredible, beautiful butterflies that we always were, but could not fully be. We can forgive ourselves for all of the silly things we did, and we can also forgive those who transgressed against us.

If we do not forgive and hold on to the rage, we are shortchanging ourselves.

It is interesting to me that each of us came here because of grief and fear having to do with mothering. And when here found a way to mother ourselves and each other.

Yes Copa, what a beautiful thing. I am truly grateful for my unseen (physically but you are so seen through your writings) sister warriors. You cannot begin to imagine the comfort I feel.

This self examining is better than college. It is better, because knowing and understanding yourself opens up the world.

I am so grateful to each of you.

As I you, Copa, Feeling, Cedar. When I first came to land here, and read your responses, I marveled at your intelligence and wit, and insight. I was astonished at the depth of your conversations, the close bond, the love.
I am deeply indebted to you all for opening up this world to me.
Mahalo ā nui, many many heartfelt thanks.
Leafy

 

[Copabanana]

OMG, who does that? Could my Mom, or somebody, not have stayed with me?

That is horrible, New Leaf. Of course your mother should have stayed.

I remember my son had an MRI when he was about 5. He had had a seizure. That was so horrible. I will never forget it. It was as if he had died before my very eyes. He got up from his bed. His eyes rolled back into his head. He dissolved to the ground.

Hysterical I went to the neighbors. They called 911. We went together my son and I in the ambulance.

When we came home from the hospital, the taxi caught fire. My son said: Mommy, I smell something burning. I looked behind me, behind the rear seat. And there were flames. I screamed at the driver. Who slowed the car. Still rolling, I grabbed my son in a bear hug and rolled out into the street.

Then a couple of weeks later I feared it was happening again. Again an ambulance. The doctors gave him Ativane which induced psychosis. That was scary too. I have had too much experience with ambulances in my life.

Sorry to hijack your hospital memory. Back to the theme: He had an MRI and they had to put him under. I was so afraid.

Can you imagine how frightened your mother must have been? How could it have been for her to have to leave her baby?

Did you ever talk to her about it and see what she remembers? Would you be afraid?

How afraid you were for her that Friday when she went to the lung procedure.

There is a movie by Ingmar Bergman. I cannot remember the name. It portrayed children of 100 years ago around Christmas time at a family gathering. From their point of view. How confusing and frightening is life itself. For them. I wish I could remember the title. I will try to find it. It is from about 1974.

G-d forgive me, I think this is the crux at why I did not go to his death bed.
I could not bear to go one last time, and see the nothing I was, through his eyes.

This is so hard. Of course you were not nothing.

You needed his recognition of you. It is like my sleeping beauty kiss. We need to be answered. It was not that you were not seen. It was that you were not acknowledged. I think it is so hard to have significant parts of ourselves unacknowledged by our parents. And to come to accept that we were never seen as what we were or are, but only to the extent that they were able to or willing to see us.

And then at the end, to know there will never be another chance, as it was with your father.

It is so scary to be alone with ourselves. When our parents die. And we no longer have them, their existence, to pretend that we are complete. Or safe. Because it was always a pretend. We needed to pretend that they were more than they were, so that we could be what we needed to be.

Because I know now, I was not nothing,
I was everything, everything he feared the most,
I was his feelings, and he could not wall me up

Yes. I do not necessarily think he allowed himself to know or see this at the end. I think he may have used everything he had in him to defend.

We are virtually throwing up all of those swallowed emotions.

Yes. In my case I think what was swallowed was only rage. And beneath that: fear of abandonment, and non-existence.

COPA

 

[New Leaf]

A song for our inner child
yearning, longing
stretching, reaching,
bursting from the cocoon of our past,
at first, paralyzed from the confines
of our roles and persona,
wet wings
holding on
to the
ripped cocoon
then carefully gingerly
stepping away
onto the branch
in the brilliant
ray of sunshine
we stretch out
our wings to dry
and dare to fly

This song represents for me,
the collective work we do here to review our pasts
to help one another
leave the roles
leave the patterning
and release the voice and feelings of our inner child.
We can better understand ourselves.
In doing so we are emerging from the painful realities
the "wreckage"
the fire
to
jump into the shocking, cooling waters
of
acceptance
to climb the mountain
to reach the top
and stand as ourselves
in the bright
orange light of the sun

The "you" in the song is that inner child
the "you" is what my warrior sisters are sharing
the bigger "You"
is our higher power,
faith
G-d
or whomever
we hold onto
to
recreate
ourselves

Thank you so, so much for accepting me as I am
Leafy