This is the post I’ve been trying to put into words for a couple of months now.
I still don’t feel like I have the right words for it.
It’s almost a clear sky morning. There’s an ever so light breeze, and the sun is
shining. It’s supposed to be 94 today. Right now it is 69.
I am grateful to the dogs that they let me “sleep” until 6:45. I didn’t sleep well
though, so even though they didn’t get me up at o-dark-thirty it feels like I did.
Jumbled dreams, keeping an ear out for the dogs, things in general just feeling
unsettled. Maybe it’s the earthquakes. Even though I don’t feel them here in
Idaho, maybe it’s the energy of them?
I was watching Suzi Blu’s video this morning that she posted to FB a couple days ago.
In it she mentioned a few things that were a bit of a light bulb moment for me.
If you’ve followed along, you know that I am the child of an alcoholic father. I now
wonder if my mother wasn’t a closet alcoholic. I know she was unstable at best a lot
of the time. Whether it was pure narcissism or some undiagnosed condition, I don’t know.
All my life, I always felt disconnected. Like I was on the outside looking in. Always having to watch, but not being able to participate even if in the midst of things. I have always felt invisible and like I had no voice, that I couldn’t be seen or heard.
I believe at some point, I think, my mother told me not to get attached to people or things. That I shouldn’t trust or be open.
Some where along the way, I think I got broken. I feel like sometimes it no longer matters if people are no longer in my life or something happens. I call it “feeling numb”.
I can remember as a little girl, wondering why my daddy got drunk and yelled all the time. I can’t say with certainty that things were non-violent then, but I don’t think they were. His rage, his yelling was always directed at my mother. It was a rare occasion if he turned it on me. Because he would always yell in Polish, I never knew what he was going on about. I used to think it was because I wasn’t allowed to learn the language, but now I think it might be because I learned to tune it out. To detach, to disconnect.
I used wonder what could I do differently to make him not want to drink and get drunk. I remember what a different person he was after his job mandated him to go to AA. It lasted about three months.
In high school, on the advice of a school counselor, I was told to try Al-a-teen. The adult leader of the group would tell us it wasn’t our fault that our loved one was an alcoholic. That it was a disease. But that we should detach ourselves from the situation because it wasn’t our problem, it wasn’t our fault. Little did I know, I had learned to do that from a young age. Only now, I had “permission”.
I went through a series of abusive relationships of one form or another. One being with an alcoholic and possible drug addict. I thought I could fix him even though I knew what he did to a former friend. I think it was then, that I learned to disconnect from my body to cope with the physical abuse and the sexual assault from him. I learned to numb myself from the physical pain.
Because of this learned behavior, I didn’t recognize that I was even in an abusive marriage for several years. Since it wasn’t physical, I didn’t know the signs. Plus, I relied on old behavior patterns to protect myself without knowing it. I just knew something wasn’t right, that there must be something I could do to fix it. But, no matter how hard I tried or what I did nothing was ever good enough. And so again, I began to detach and disconnect.
I failed over and over again to see or feel the toll it was taking physically. I didn’t recognize or acknowledge the pain I was feeling. It was always chalked up to that I was weak, that I was out of shape, that I was just a pansy. Or as I jokingly say now, ” a delicate flower”.
This learned behavior has made me numb and indifferent to so many things. And when I do feel an emotion, I then feel guilty for feeling it. I feel guilty if I shed tears. I feel guilty if I get angry. I feel guilty if I feel happy. I feel like I deserve the bad stuff that happened or will/might happen. I feel unworthy of happiness of any form. I feel like I am always, Always, ALWAYS waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I realized that whether I know it or not, I am constantly if fight or flight mode. I’m always waiting for the next bad thing. I am constantly braced for impact. And then I wonder, why does my body hurt. But I think, sometimes, I don’t feel the full brunt of the physical pain because I stay too on guard.
I fully believe I have trauma induced fibro. Is that a thing? If not, I am making it a thing. It’s my thing. I fully believe I have C-PTSD. I have just learned to cope, I think. It is a bit scary to think what would happen and how would I feel if I let myself feel safe, to let myself relax, to let my guard down. To just be. To just feel all the feels and all the things.
I don’t know how to break this behavior of being detached and disconnected. It has become my shield for so long. My walls as I have called them in the past. I think though, that it is part of the reason I am so stuck. Why I have trouble writing or making art or practicing photography. I think if I let myself do these things without abandon, that I will feel things I am unprepared to feel. I am afraid I might find happiness and success that I feel like I am not allowed to have. I am afraid to find out what it would be like if I allowed myself to heal fully.
I think, all I can do is try to disassemble it one brick at a time no matter how long it takes.
The Forgotten Muse 