Having my feelings validated has always been a huge issue in my life. I’ve always been told that talking about my feelings is complaining and a very selfish thing to do. Although logically I know otherwise, obviously, somewhere inside I still harbor guilt talking about my feelings.
The fear of being judged in certain aspects of my life still haunts me even after years of sobriety, and is probably the reason why I have neglected to post for so many months. I have felt free to “like” and remark on other’s blogs, giving them words of encouragement. I have always been a nurturer by nature and search for some life’s lesson for myself in other’s posts.
I’ve been concerned sharing my true feelings on WordPress because of the fear of judgment. But considering I posted just recently and only three people out of 36 followers visited, and only two are truly verified as followers of mine, I really don’t give two shits anymore. As a matter of fact, I’m starting to rethink who’s blog I’m going to follow and encourage from now on.
In my outside life, I have spent years purging my life of those, including family members, who were toxic to me and my wellbeing. Some of my sibling think we have a close bond, but they are so wrong. When I try to talk about my feelings about the past, present, future, anything or anyone, I pretty much get the same response. I’m expected, as I was as a child, to suck it up and just deal or let it go. In the past, I’ve tried to explain that’s not my process, but they look at me like I’ve just grown a horn in the middle of my forehead. They chose to live in denial of so many, many things that have occurred in our past. So now, I keep my feelings to myself or try to avoid family like the plague.
The last few weeks I have really been struggling with my feelings and it’s really difficult because I have no one to discuss them with except a weekly visit to my counselor.
My son, who just moved in with me, and I had a disagreement last night. I expressed my feelings and he stated, “You’re way too sensitive”. OMG really??? It was like hearing my mother’s voice from the grave. It triggered me big time. Not only have I lived alone for years, I have literally been alone for years, so I immediately resorted to the old pattern of shutting down. I went to my room and stayed there for the rest of the evening, leaving him alone to care for my 10 month old grandson.
I do everything alone and I am self-supporting. I went from being co-dependent from childhood until 41, to being totally independent and self-sufficient. Last year I had two surgeries that I went through on my own. There was no one there to hold my hand before, during or after. I didn’t share on line about it. In my outside life I sucked it up and didn’t tell others because it was what I was taught and it seems what the Universe wants me to do. But it gets tiresome being by oneself and being the only one I can depend on… EVER. At times like these I keep remembering the words uttered by Sonny Robinson, a psychic medium acquaintance of mine, “If you’re all alone or feeling alone, man do I understand. Open your eyes and look around you. Your support group has been there this whole time”. I’d really like to think that’s true, but for me it feels it only pertains to other people.
I have found myself getting angry and bitter a lot these days. If you’d known who I was before, light hearted and so positive, you’d know it’s not like me. So, I keep praying for my HP to relieve me of the bondage of self and to take away my difficulties. I keep praying my HP will put a somewhat healthy person in my life with whom I can talk about these things, who doesn’t have a hidden agenda.
It wasn’t until recently that I had a name for my mother’s illness. I’ve always known she was off and not like other mothers I’d come across. Other mothers would put their children’s needs first without question or hesitation. Not my mother. She would say, “I can’t have anything without you damn brats wanting some”. That was a hint and a half right there that something was terribly, terribly wrong. It wasn’t until I had a name for her illness that I was able to come to terms with why my childhood was the way it was and why my mother did the things she did.
Wikipedia describes Narcissistic Personality Disorder as: Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is a long-term pattern of abnormal behavior characterized by exaggerated feelings of self-importance, an excessive need for admiration, and a lack of understanding of others’ feelings. People affected by it often spend a lot of time thinking about achieving power or success, or about their appearance. They often take advantage of the people around them. The behavior typically begins by early adulthood, and occurs across a variety of situations. Wikipedia’s description barely skirts the issue. It goes so much deeper, but you get the gist before I go on.
Growing up with with my mother was a nightmare to say the least. I never knew from one moment to the next which mother I was going to get depending on how she perceived life was treating her. She was not affection on any level and never had a positive thing to say to any of her children, only the negative. She didn’t sling around a lot of profanity, but trust me, she did get her point across. I was told I was going to be nothing from a very young age and anything I attempted to do was never good enough. In my mother’s words, “You’re not good at it anyway so you my as well just stop trying”. It seemed she was always putting me down to make herself feel better.
Everything was always about her and her feelings. She resented having to put her children before herself and it showed in her actions. She’d throw temper-tantrums… yes, temper-tantrums. It was embarrassing to see a grown woman acting this way, but it worked and my father would give in just to shut her up. After my parent’s divorced, I was left alone to deal with my psychotic mother. We were all teens by then and my 3 older siblings left the house (who could blame them), leaving my little 5 year old brother and me to contend with her. The tantrums, name calling and belittling continued if things didn’t go her way, especially if she didn’t have a man in her life to focus on, which was pretty much daily.
People who did not live in our house did not see the extent of my mother’s behavior. They did not live it, therefore they do not have an inkling of what transpired there. They saw what she wanted them to see, which is what she told them. Family and family friends took her word as gospel, pitting us children as the spawn from hell. The wall I have up while around her family members is tall and deep. They do not want to hear the truth of who my mother really was. Some of my own siblings are still in denial of who she was because of our different experiences, how we each perceive them, what role we played in her world and what we each took away from our relationship with her. I was the the sensitive one in the family. Coined by my mother as “spleeny”, not because I cried when I got physically injured, but because I felt and questioned everything. No, she didn’t like that. She was not to be questioned and her answer for everything was, “Because I said so”, or “Because it makes little girls like you ask questions”. End of sentence, no discussion. Crying also was not allowed. It meant weakness.
My mother and I were never close. We never had any kind of emotional connection whatsoever. Except for the fact that she spit me out of her vaja-jay, is the extent of our connection. When she married me off and I left the house at the age of 17, she bid me a bon-voyage, stating if I had marital issues just remember, “You made your bed, you lie in it. Don’t come crying back to me”. Of course, I never would have gone back there. I’d crawl through the pits of hell throughout my life before she’d even know whatever happened to my children and me. She did this with all her kids. Washed her hands of them the moment they left the house.
As time passed and my sibs and I made our way through life, making something of ourselves, she would get word and she would brag about us to anyone who would listen, and how close we all were to her. Typical trait of a narcissist. She was grandiose about herself, saying certain men wanted her and women were jealous of her. She never, ever spoke of her past, her childhood or when she was growing up. I can only recall one story she told and that was about when she and my dad were dating.
My mother was the oldest of nine. Her father passed when she was six and then she had a slew of stepfathers which she was never close to. My mother’s mother was also a narcissist and always put herself above her children and her spouses. So, I’m sure hers is learned behavior and my mother must have had the “if you can’t beat them, join them” mentality from a very early age. Her own mother would have nothing to do with us kids from as far back as I can recall, and my mother enabled her mother’s behavior. My memory was always seeing my mother chasing after her mother’s skirt-tails, begging for her love and attention, her own children be damned. What a sad, sad story she must have had with her own mother.
Whatever their demons, they are both gone from this earth now. They have to answer for their actions while they were here. I am not their judge or jury. But my mind is one of the products of the wreckage that they left behind, and I’m the one left holding the bag, the one left to deal with the emotional crap.
This subject was a difficult one for me to share due to the intimate details and painful memories it brings up. I know within my soul this is my journey and she was an intricate part of of it. She was my teacher of sorts, as were many, many others along my life’s path, of what choices I did or did not wish to become. It’s all a learning process.
It’s a shame that I’ll never really know who my mother was from a soul’s standpoint. I think she was a victim of her childhood to some extent. I believe we all have to take accountability for our choices in life. She chose her path in life. At an early age I made a conscious decision not to be like her. I do know that although narcissistic personality disorder is difficult to treat, it is treatable if the person is willing to admit they need help. She was not willing.
Today I pray for her. I tell her I forgive her. Not because I really want to or because I think she deserves it, but because I have to for my own sanity. I do this every single day, sometimes several times a day, whenever the thought comes to mind I simply say “I forgive you Mom”. Without doing this, the anger, resentments and disdain will eat me up inside like a cancer. I pray because in the end the forgiveness is for me, not for her.
So mommy’s, hug your babies tight, no matter what their age. Tell them you love them, how special they are and how proud you are of them just as they are. Allow them to be human and be there for them when they fall… and fall they will. Just be their mom, that’s all they really need.
Addiction… it’s such an underestimated word. Some people cringe when they hear it, thinking we should just get over it. To those people I say, educate yourselves. If you think, like I once did, that addicts live under bridges and drink canned-heat, you are living in la-la land. Chances are, you know someone who is an addict of some sort.
Before I had a name for my addiction, I really thought I was going crazy. I knew I drank too much, but kept trying to control it. Like so many others I had the preconceived notion that an alcoholic was not functionable. I worked 7 days a week, had my own place and the main breadwinner of my family. For years I purchased and read self-help books by any author I could find, trying to fix what ailed me. Obviously, none helped until I saw a book that said “I’ll Stop Tomorrow”. I thought to myself, “God, how many times have I said that about so many thing in my life”. So I started to read it right there in the book store. It was a book on Alcoholism. The first couple of pages told me all I need to know. I identified all over the place and I knew. Oh, Hells Bells…this chick is a full blown alcoholic! Believe it or not, I felt relief. I was not crazy.. I had a name for what was wrong with me, therefore I could do something about it. That was the beginning of my long journey out of my own self made hell.
The following I wrote 3 years before before I discovered I had an addiction. The piece remained untitled until a few years ago when I figured out exactly what I was writing about. Funny how our mind works.
courtesy of wintersixfour at Morguefile.com
Addiction
Lost souls trapped in an endless hall
of empty promises and broken dreams
where nothing is
as it ever seems
Where monsters
with bright colored eyes
look to devour what's left
from those who have already died inside
No way out
Nowhere to go
Void from above
Void from below
There is no light
in this hall of hell
just the glowing eyes that draw us back
to make the same mistakes we know so well
Only wishing to be freed
from the loneliness and pain
but the monsters continue to feast
again.. and again
So hopeless.. so helpless
and empty the lives
of those who have to exist
with the monsters of lies
So those wretched monsters
will continue to feed
off those who are dead
but still can bleed.
I cannot tell you how many times when I was growing up I would hear “Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry for!” Well, hot damn! After you’ve fallen and had glass embedded in your hand at the age of 9, just had your hind end beat with a belt or been molested by an uncle who lives at your house, who the hell doesn’t have something to cry for. These are just a few examples of the dysfunctional dynamics of my childhood home. So, when I figured out I could put my feeling to pen and paper, out they came.
It took a few years to actually express how I really felt, because of all the confusion I had surrounding my feelings. I didn’t know how to express them appropriately. So crying was my outlet for anger, resentment, hate, anguish, sadness, love, anything positive or negative.
Back in 2001 I wrote a little ditty called “It’s Ok if I Cry”. I was still trying to come to terms with being ok to cry and that it was not a weakness.
By the way, the little girl inside of me that you will read of so much in my poetry, has healed nicely today. The person she gets to lean on and depend on to protect her, grown up me.
My oldest grandson, Alec, as a baby
It's Ok if I Cry
There are times I sit and wonder
why I'm the chosen one
To bear the physical hardships
For someone who's so young
I'm told that I am strong
and I'm lucky to be alive
I smile and nod in agreement
If they could only see inside
Sometimes I feel like a little girl
needing someone to hold me near
Someone to lovingly stroke my hair
and help ease away my fears
Someone who'll say, it's ok to cry
"as much as you need to dear"
Someone who will not leave me alone
in my darkness and my fears
Someone who will not say "Don't cry"
Or say, "Please don't be sad"
They will not say how brave I am
or that things aren't all that bad
Sometimes I feel not all grown up
I still have a little girl inside
Who fears what she does not understand
And sometimes she just needs to cry.
Aleta’s Attic 