Understanding more about me

*Edited by AGR to remove needless apology for processing feelings and post length!!  Good grief, Sassy – That is what this blog is for!!!!  :-P*

For the past year, I have agonized over my relationship with my sister.  It’s just the two of us now.  Our grandparents and parents are all deceased leaving just me and her.   We are both married and she has two grown children…I have a dog.

My sister and I are almost 12 years apart with her being the older sibling.  My mom had two children between the two of us but both died shortly after childbirth.  My parents did not raise us to be close.  I remember next to nothing of my childhood until I was 6 or 7 years old and by that time, my sister was moving out of the house to get away from our father.  I saw very little of my sister once she moved out and that was about 40 years ago.

As I said, the last year I have really been thinking about ways to better my relationship with my sister.  The only times we’ve ever spent together were on a few holidays for only a few hours at a time or when my mom passed away for maybe a couple of days at a time.  I’ve always felt a sister-shaped emptiness in my heart though it’s been more pronounced after the loss of our parents.

I’ve made my gestures in the past year to try and get my sister to visit, to write or call.  Most of those invitations have been ignored or refused.  I’ve continued to do this up until this past weekend.

My niece, my sister’s daughter, graduated with a Masters from a fairly prestigious school this past weekend.  My husband and I were invited but I now suspect it was more for show than as a true invitation.  If you think I’ve seen my sister rarely, hearing from my niece is even more rare.

I got the invitation in the mail and almost threw it away but the more I thought about it, the more I thought I would go to the graduation.  The  graduation was 2 hours away from home so I made a reservation at a hotel and decided to make it a mini-vacation for me and hubby.  We arrived on Friday night and I emailed my niece to give her my cell phone number so she could contact me if she or my sister needed to.  I heard nothing from the family until I saw them walking up at the graduation on Saturday.  Even then, no “I’m glad you came.  I’m glad to see you.”  Nothing.

As we were leaving after the graduation my brother-in-law said he would like for us to get together later that evening so we did.  We ate dinner and then walked through downtown and enjoyed some live music.  It was a fun night but nothing earth shattering.  As a matter of fact, after spending the evening with them, I’ve decided I really don’t care for my sister as a person.  Seeing her once every four to six years may be about right for me.

Being with my sister was a very emotional experience for me and one I’m still mulling over in my head and heart. 

If you had been with us that night, you would have been able to tell that we were definitely raised by the same parents.  We both seem to put off this air of insecurity masked by legalism and judgmentalism. 

I don’t know if anyone else can see it but I can see the abuse she has suffered in her face.  I wonder if people see that in my face as well.  Something else I could see in her face…distrust.  She was closed off and very careful of her words and conversation.  I may not be very guarded of my language but I do tend to use humor to diffuse serious situations or when trust might be an issue.

From the outside, my sister looks like this to me:

• She looks old beyond her years – wrinkles, harsh complexion, thin and worn. 
• She crosses her arms a lot when she talks leading me to believe that she is being cautious about being around people. 
• She looks away from me when I’m talking to her as if she might have a secret or she may have something she would like to tell me but decides not to. 
• She smokes like a freaking freight train, one right after the other. 
• She drinks to get drunk and to numb the pain within. 
• Her daughter doesn’t respect her the way she should and her husband “sides with” the daughter whenever a chance arises.
• She is obsessed with thinness and will starve herself to wear a certain size and then tell me to not eat too so I can lose weight.

When I type all this out it seems to haunt me even more.  Part of me says I don’t want to be a part of this person’s life because she doesn’t seem to want me in hers and part of me says we are so much alike it’s unreal.  We may cope in different ways with the pain and sadness of our pasts but we have the same past.  We have something that only the two of us can relate to.

When I look at her I see me!  I don’t want to see me!  But I’m drawn to her and want a relationship with her because only she understands why I feel the way I do…why I act the way I act…why I believe the way I believe.

I want to treat her as I would want someone to treat me – with compassion, with honesty, trust and love – but she doesn’t want it.

Having said all that and gotten it out of my system I also realize that I want compassion, honesty, trust and love from my sister but she is not able to give it.  She never has been able to give it and until she gets some help, she won’t ever be able to give it – to me, to herself or to anyone else.  I’m wanting something from my sister that she is unable to provide.  My expectations from her are too much. 

A call once a year, maybe an occassional email, those may be the only things I ever get from my sister.  Maybe that’s all she can give.  It’s time to move on and work on me for me.  Dwelling on wanting a relationship with my sister is a waste of time and there are so many other wonderful things in my life that I can cultivate if I’m not devoting time to a lost cause.

I think I grew emotionally this weekend and typing all this out helped me tremendously.  The visit with my sister taught me that I have so much to be grateful for.  I am NOT my sister and although our pasts are the same in many respects, I have taken different roads than her and have sought help and support from outside sources (which I don’t believe she has). 

Although I’m no expert on self worth and self love, it was apparent to me that I am leaps and bounds ahead of her on those issues.  I don’t NEED a relationship with a person (even though she is my sister) if she is going to end up being toxic to my recovery anyway.  I feel that her compulsive/obsessive behaviors would only have me sliding backwards and I’m not prepared for that.

Who’s to say that in a few years she might see the need to have a relationship with me and if she does, I’ll be willing to try.  Until then, I am my priority and I’m just fine without her in my life.

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A weight has been lifted

About a week ago I released myself from the bondage of my cultish upbringing.  It took me years to do this for myself…literally YEARS!  I’m 46 years old and this is the first time in my life that I’ve felt free of guilt and shame on a minute to minute basis.  I can’t express the relief that I feel.

I went to several therapists, beginning around the age of 20.  I always believed my core issue to address was my father but I figured out just recently that my core issue was actually the religion I was brought up in.  Once that realization was made I had nowhere to go but up.

I knew that I had basically forgiven my father for his abuse about a year ago but I still had this feeling of heaviness about something that wouldn’t let go of me and I figured out it was my beliefs from my past religious upbringing.

I am a victim…I’ve played the victim/martyr all my life.  I learned from a very good role model – my mother.  I was a pouter if I didn’t get my way.  I was always worse off than anyone else around me.  My problems were always exaggerated to make my life seem so pitiful.  I was always so pitiful.  Poor pitiful sassyblonde.  I’m so mistreated.  Now, mind you, I truly was a victim in some circumstances but it turned into a way of life for me.

Again, poor sas isn’t worth anything so why try to make things better.  I’ll just wallow in my dispair until someone feels sorry for me.  Oh wait!  No one has to feel sorry for me, I feel sorry enough for myself.

Well, guess what!  I chose to be the victim.  I don’t have to be the victim anymore.  I choose to release myself from that old religion and break free!  I don’t have to be in bondage to guilt and shame anymore!  I deserve better and am worthy of better!

It’s like I have more spring in my step and that a weight has literally been lifted from my shoulders.  My heart even feels lighter.  This change has allowed me to think differently.  The guilt and shame had me encased in a balloon and objectivity and creativity were thwarted because of it.  It honestly led me to believe that I wasn’t even worthy of taking care of myself.  That “religion” had me convinced I wasn’t worthy of anything and that I was defeated before I even attempted anything…that I could never be good enough so why try.

The feeling of freedom that I feel is so outrageously uplifting and inspiring that I feel like a completely new person.  For the first time in my life I think I’m a pretty lovable person and I have some really cool attributes.  Why?  Because I’m not listening to the old tapes in my head telling me I’m not worthy.  I’m erasing those tapes and replacing them with some pretty awesome accepting and loving voices.  I wish I could bottle this stuff and send it to every one of you!  I’M NO LONGER A VICTIM…I’M A SURVIVOR!!

I’m sorry if I’m gushing but I’m just so excited about having found this feeling that has been buried for so long.  I hope you have a wonderfully fun weekend and WRT2, I’m sending you a special shout out!  I hope you feel the support of all your loved ones at this time!

~sas

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I don’t sing anymore

 

Something’s been bothering me lately and I want to explore it here.

The other day I posted “On being a recovery goddess” and got some awesome responses but something really stood out to me.  A comment came in from our co-blogger  wellroundedtype2 that said, “I think an important part of godliness is grace. Giving self and others room to make mistakes and keep moving on.”

Giving self room to make mistakes and keep moving on.  I struggle with this on a daily basis.  I used to have a friend who was always saying to me, “give yourself some grace”.  At first I didn’t really know what she meant but I quickly realized it meant to forgive myself and to move on.

Forgiveness is a very hard thing for me to wrap my brain and heart around.  My background in forgiveness is not a good one.  I was raised in a very oppressive church by a very demonstrative father and very meek mother.   Judgment was what sustained my father.  At some point, God was actually taken out of the equation and was replaced by my father.  Pressure to be perfect and to avoid the gates of hell was ever present.   My father was my god.  My parents believed in hellfire and damnation.  My father was my judge, my ruler, my counselor, my abuser, my salvation and my damnation. 

I was never enough.  I was condemned and damned.  I was going to hell.

My father has been dead 9 years now and I still have my days where I cannot (no matter how hard I try) feel like I’m good enough.  When my father died I was crushed and thrilled at the same time.  I felt the relief of a huge burden being lifted off of me and yet I was so sad for the loss to my life.

I tried going to church for a few years (a different denomination than what I was raised in, and actually the church my husband was raised in) and I was active.  I went every Sunday and Wednesday and I sang in the choir.  I went on retreats and loved it all.  I started feeling like I was worthy of God’s love and my own too when I faltered yet again and had an affair.   I won’t go into all the sordid details of that affair but I will say that what little self-respect and self-love I had gained in those few years was smashed to bits because of that affair.  (this happened just after my father died in 1999, coincidence? I think not)

I tried to remain in church and tell myself that I had confessed this to my husband and to my God and that I was worthy to keep going.  I sang in the choir because I love to sing.   I would so look forward to church for the choir.  I loved performing in Christmas Cantatas and Easter programs and the socializing.  But then, I couldn’t bring myself to go anymore.  I couldn’t go to church and I certainly couldn’t be a public hypocrite and sing in the choir on stage, in front of everyone.  I don’t sing anymore.

Pictures of my father came flooding back to me, condemning me to hell for what I had done.  The voices in my head damning me to hell did not stop haunting me until about 2 years ago.

The singing I used to love and truly enjoy is something in my past.  I used to sing at the top of my lungs while driving in the car.  I loved singing pop music, oldies, hymns, whatever was the flavor of the day.  I don’t sing anymore.

It’s as if I’m punishing myself for my sins by not allowing myself to sing.  Where is my forgiveness and grace for ME?  I can’t believe that it’s buried so far inside of me that I can’t revive it and give myself another chance.  I won’t believe that!

Any insight or encouragement would be greatly appreciated.

~sas

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A weekend of rest and relaxation…yeah right

For a while now I’ve been telling myself I had to take some time off work for my own sanity (and everyone else’s around me).  I finally turned in a vacation request for one day (last Friday) and got on the internet looking for hotels.  We live near a pretty large city and we’re also a couple of hours away from another large city.  (Therein lies the problem.  I was looking into large cities when I should’ve been looking into cabins with nothing but nature surrounding them.)

I looked on the internet and found a lovely hotel that was in a downtown area that had lots of nightlife and a public transportation system so we wouldn’t have to do any driving.  I knew I wouldn’t get to do this again any time soon so I splurged and booked a club level room so we could have snacks in the afternoon and breakfast in the club lounge.  Each night in the lounge on the main floor, there was live entertainment and that weekend it happened to be a duet of a saxophonist and keyboardist.  They were pretty good.

Mr. Sas knew how badly I needed a break (because I had told him over and over and over, well you get the picture…I told him a lot!) so he didn’t say anything about the room I booked or the 2 1/2 hour drive or anything.  Before we packed up to go, I had told Mr. Sas there was an Italian restaurant near the hotel that I wanted to go to while we were there.  It was on the trolley route so it would be no trouble getting to.  I told him I needed a weekend of rest and relaxation and away from the responsibilities I had at home.

Bottom line:  My expectations of the weekend were not how the weekend turned out.  I expected to have a great room, to have some great food, to rest and stick around the hotel and pamper myself, to go to the Italian restaurant and listen to the cool music each night.

My idea of rest and relaxation is not the same as my husbands.

The first day we got there around 3:30 and checked in the hotel and got settled in.  We went to the club level lounge when it opened around 5:00 and they had coconut shrimp, cubes of cheese and crackers and some sodas in ice.  The shrimp was delicious but I’ve seen so much better club level hors devours.  It was miniscule compared to others I’ve seen (and breakfast wasn’t much better for the price you have to pay for club level). 

This bored my husband quickly and we took off walking the downtown district…and walking and sweating, and walking and sweating, and walking and sweating.  My legs can’t take all the walking but I did it.  I felt so nasty and dirty around 8:00 when we came to a decent restaurant that he wanted to try.  We ate our meal at the bar which means my short fat legs hung off the chairs and my right hip popped out of place.  After we left the restaurant I told Mr. Sas we needed to go back to the hotel and call it a night.

The next day I had wanted to go to the zoo located in that town but opted out of that since I had done so much walking the day before.  We did go to the River Market Farmer’s Market and looked around a while since it was only two blocks from the hotel.  I had told him that I wanted to see if they had a Catherine’s store there so I check them out and we found one.  Then Mr. Sas decided he wanted to check out a mall nearby (more walking).

Mr. Sas said something about going to a baseball game there that night.  The city has a minor league team and the field was on the trolley line so I said ok (giving up my Italian restaurant choice).  The trolley came within a half a block of our hotel so we got to the stop and waited (standing) for the trolley and when it arrived, the driver said it wasn’t going to the ball field that night…they were having trouble with the tracks.  I thought we might go to the restaurant but it was in the same area as the ball field so the trolley wouldn’t go there either. 

Irritated, we started just wandering around wondering what to do for the evening.  We sat in the lobby of the hotel mad for about 30 minutes and ended up walking some more.  We headed back downtown only to the see the trolley going in the direction that the last driver said it wasn’t going.  You talk about mad!  We were livid!  Now we were going to be late to the game.  We hopped the next trolley and got to the ball field and all they had left was general admission tickets which meant sitting on the grass.  If I had sat on the grass, my legs would’ve gone numb and I wouldn’t have been able to get up because I can’t put any weight on my knees.  I opted to stand.  I stood and just wondered around for about an hour and finally some picnic tables cleared out and I grabbed one.  We stayed through most of the game and then caught the trolley back to the hotel.  We stopped in the lobby to see the same duet playing and we settled back with a drink and just listened to the music.  My legs were throbbing and my hips were killing me.  Around 11:00 we went upstairs and went to bed.  I was so exhausted.

We got up and had breakfast and then came on home.  I was so glad to be home!!!  I took a pain pill and went to bed under my ceiling fan with my dog plastered to my side. 

So these feelings of resentment and pain festered in me through Sunday night and Monday.  The more I thought about it, the madder I got.  That weekend was supposed to be FOR ME and it turned out to be all about Mr. Sas and what he wanted.  I was literally in pain and there was no rest and relaxation for me during that whole weekend (until I got home and passed out in my own bed).

I told Mr. Sas last night that I needed to talk and get some issues aired out.  I told him that my weekend of rest was anything but.  I told him that I had made it clear before we left that I needed rest and that there was a restaurant I had really been looking forward to trying but I felt like I needed to do what he wanted to do.  He asked me why I didn’t say no to what he wanted to do and that’s when I had an epiphany!  I HAD TO PROVE MYSELF.

I had to prove to him that I could do anything he could do…that I didn’t need special privileges…that I wasn’t special…I was just normal.  He told me I didn’t have to prove anything to him and I could’ve voiced my opinion. At that point I realized I’m embarrassed for even my husband to know how much I hate myself and how badly I feel physically.  I’m embarrassed that I’m fat and that I can’t do what he can.  I cried that cathartic type of crying that frees you of something that’s been literally weighing you down.

Mr. Sas is dense, ok?  AGR says I need to keep a shovel handy to bonk him on the head a lot but if I did it every time he “forgot” something I said or just ignored me, I would have a dead husband with a shovel imprint on his head.  🙂   For all of his denseness, he sometimes says the right things.  He told me last night that I don’t have to prove anything to him.  That he loves me just as I am and that he wished I would’ve stood up for myself.

STOOD UP FOR MYSELF.  There are times I’m good at it but I sucked at it this past weekend.  I owe it to myself to stand up for myself.  I owe it to my mental and physical health to care about myself.  I thought I was caring for and loving my husband when I was doing things he wanted to do this past weekend but what I was really doing was not caring for myself and building up resentment toward him.  Ultimately, what good did I do myself to do what he wanted to do?  (This is an issue that goes really deep into my relationship with my father but that’s for another post.)

What a learning experience for me!  My hope is that you won’t have to go through all the self-abuse I’ve gone through before you learn this kind of lesson.

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Sadness. Deep Sadness.

I didn’t realize I’ve been so sad.  I thought I was dealing with my mother’s craziness (here and here) exceedingly well.  It turns out I’ve merely improved on past reactions to her nut-ball-ness… and that I’m not such a paragon of “I could give a shit” as I thought. 

I can see why I’ve been so clueless about my own sadness.  There hasn’t been time to feel it.  I started that new job and training was a big ordeal and so has getting used to the new ropes and all.  Then hubby left for vacation without me.  I stayed behind to take care of our stray (that we’re still trying to trap), Mr. Orange.  Hubby left the day my mother disowned me.  I was surprised and how “whatever” I was about it.  Apparently I was just holding it all together, so I didn’t implode when I had little support at home. 

Given my history of eating disorders and self-harm, I’m glad I didn’t do anything along those lines.  The only symptom has been my utter lack of willingness to participate in my own blog or to check or reply to emails.  I had no idea what the heck was wrong with me… I realize now that I was just trying to hold things together and keep things very simple, so I wouldn’t fall apart.  I needed every ounce of energy to get this new job down and not have a break-down while hubby was gone… 

Well, he’s back now and I feel the tide of sadness rolling in like a tsunami.  I suppose I finally feel safe enough to feel the feelings, now that my biggest supporter is home and I have some days off work. 

Big sadness is scary for me.  In the early days of therapy for eating disorders, PTSD and depression a flood of sadness that I had held back for decades drowned me.  I spent most of the time every day crying.  I cried in the office.  I cried on the train home.  I cried over the dishes as I washed them.  I cried in the shower.  I woke up crying in the middle of the night.  I am so tired of crying.  I am so afraid to feel this sadness I feel welling up.  It’s been a long time since I was so depressed or had really bad flashbacks.  I also have a sense that allowing this sadness to well up is going to cause flashbacks… and I really don’t want to go there.

But, I guess I have to.  It’s either deal with all this or continue trying to micromanage my life to such an extent that I have enough energy to keep the pressure cooker of feelings closed.  And, that pressure will just build and build and the amount of energy required to hold it all down will become more and more.  It’s just not worth it.  Been there.  Done that.  It sucked. 

I’ve been wondering why I’m even sad in the first place.  I’ve come to the point where crazy is what I expect from my mother and I also expect her to try to give me trouble in any way she can think up.  She bigger the better seems to be her motto.  My step-father also said that she thrives on chaos.  Maybe he has a point.  She doesn’t seem to go more than a few years without completely cutting some family member (that she used to be close to) off for “disloyalty.”  Pretty soon she’ll be living on an island by herself.

I don’t think it’s her recent episode of bull that is even bothering me.  What bothers me is that every instance of abuse from my mother just reminds me of all the other abuse… even worse, the abuse that happened when I was a child and had no way to protect myself.  She made it clear that it was either put up with her nutty behavior or I could go be homeless.  She made this clear to me when I was 12-years-old and reminded me of her resolve constantly, because she TOLD me of it constantly. 

If I complained that she constantly ran around the house naked or left buckets of her own urine under my bed (no kidding, she did this) or that she grounded me for entire summers with no warning because she felt I had too many friends or that my father beat me…. well, I should’ve just been happy that they bought me clothes and that I had a Nintendo to play.  To my parents the abuse didn’t matter.  The proof of their wonder-parenting was in my wardrobe or video game and music collections.  It didn’t matter that my mother was a pathological liar and my step-father (who raised me) a rageaholic.  I didn’t matter that my mother couldn’t seem to help herself from making sexual comments to me or telling me details of her own sex life (this started at age eight) or that my step-father ranted that I was a whore to anyone who would listen (including visiting family members) when I hadn’t even held hands with a boy.  They allowed me a small collection of nicknacks, so that made it all okay.  The fact that I stopped speaking as a teenager for several years was really just a symptom of my own selfishness and stubbornness… it couldn’t have possibly been PTSD or depression from all the craziness I’d been through. 

The memories just hurt.  I end up feeling like that scared little child again who is stuck at the mercy of big, scary adults who don’t seem to see their own failings, abusiveness or hippocrisy… 

Every time my mother (and I just mention her, because my step-dad is no longer abusive and I have cut my bio-dad and step-mother off for their abusiveness) is just another knife in my heart that is already full of cutlery that was plunged in and twisted regularly long ago.  Her one tantrum doesn’t feel like just one tantrum to me.  To me it is a rehashing of a childhood of torment… like she’s trying to remind me that she’s the one who is really in control and I am just some dirty, shameful child who needs to be put in her place. 

I suppose it would be more helpful to see this as it really is.  It is unlikely my mother consciously wants to remind me of the abuse.  She’s a tantrum thrower.  That’s what she does.  She throws tantrums and twists words and alienates people and disowns them.  It’s like her hobby or something.  It does help to understand that this isn’t a conscious attempt to drag me into the past…  as for her unconscious, I have no idea what’s going on in there. 

I am no shameful and dirty child… I never was.  I was a good kid caught up in insane circumstances and I have worked very hard to heal the wounds and learn how not to do to others what my parents did to me.  Oh right… now I remember… I’m a survivor.  I survived.  I’ve even taken these horrible experiences and tried to use them for good… to offer others the compassion that I didn’t receive until I was 25 and finally gave in and found a therapist. 

When I am in a wise mood, I am sure that those years of hell were a gift in disguise to make me unique, to make me strong, to be a voice against abuse and to help others in any way that I can that are dealing/have dealth with similar things.  In those moments, I feel grateful for the abuse and I feel like I wouldn’t change a thing about it even if I could. 

I can’t say I’m in a wise mood right now, though.  I hurt…. ouch, it really hurts so bad.  Unhelpful questions and statements scream in my mind and keep me from accepting what really happened… I tell myself it was too crazy to have really happened.  No people could be so cruel.  Such a horrible childhood cannot be possible.  Then I ask the ghosts of parents in my mind why they never seemed to see the pain they put me through (and still do) and why they won’t stop the abuse and how could they be so cruel?… 

What helps is answering the questions and even the statements… They were so cruel, because they were (and are) very mentally ill and untreated.  Such a horrible childhood IS possible and there are many on this earth who have had worse than I have.  It IS possible.  People CAN be that cruel.  People can also be kind and lovely.  It is up to me to bring in the lovely people and to give the abusors as little leverage over me as possible… 

Maybe all this repressed thought and feeling explains why I have had horrible nightmares about my parents for a week now.  The dreams are disturbing enough for me to not even want to sleep.  I get up… usually at about 4am and sit on the couch and force myself awake, because there is no way I’m going back to sleep and face the possibility of another dream of sexual, physical or emotional abuse.  I drink caffeine.  I watch “That 70’s Show”… usually after a few hours have past, I can go back to sleep and not have the nightmares.  I am so tired and frustrated with this screwed up sleep cycle…

I need a break. 

Again, I find myself wishing that my mother would get amnesia and forget that I exist.  I feel like if I knew that she had completely forgotten me that I would finally be safe… because even now I fear getting a phone call from her and going through all this again…. the pretending to be “normal” with all the tension under the surface and my mother getting more and more inappropriate and abusive over time finally ending with a peak of accusations and craziness and being told what an evil person I am and being reminded of years of memories of abuse…

Maybe this time I’ll be lucky and she really will just let me be or I’ll finally have the nerve to refuse to respond to her overtures.  All I know right now is that this cycle has got to end.  It hurts too much and I’m tired of the flashbacks her tantrums cause me. 

Kind words would be much appreciated.  For now, I guess I’ll finally let the tears come… even if I’m afraid that I will never stop crying… sigh…

–AngryGrayRainbows

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Fat Acceptance & Buddhism

Nope, I’m still not religious.  😉  I do like to take what I find useful from whatever paths I run across.  However, I will admit that I have found Buddhism particularly useful in my learning to become more accepting of self (and fat), recovering from eating disorders and recovering from years of abuse.  Recently, I have had some useful breakthroughs in the use and application of some Buddhist ideas that have been particularly helpful.  It makes me laugh to have found comfort in the idea of non-existence of self… yeah, those Buddhists sure know how to name something so that no one would ever want to attain it or understand it.  Heh.  But, it’s turned out to be a really lovely thing… I am still surprised over the whole thing…

I cannot remember where I read a description of this idea that finally took root in me.  Maybe it was on a website or one of the many books I have around that touch on Buddhism and similar ideas.  The image is of an ocean and we are the waves.  We just manifest from the universe (so to speak), our genetics, our history, our environment, etc.  From this perspective, the self that we blame ourselves for and hate ourselves for is just something that manifested… like a wave on the ocean… in other words, it is not something to beat myself up about.  The thought that someone might make fun of me for my body becomes laughable.  Making fun of my hyperness becomes absurd.  Shame over my sensitivity makes no sense at all…  I just am what I am. 

Ironically, I find that I struggle a lot less with hyperness (ADD), accepting my body or my depression/PTSD when I think of myself as a wave on the ocean, as opposed to some dirty rotten thing that needs to be punished and shamed for its inferiority (yes, I said “thing” and “its”… when the mean parts of my brain wake up, I can dehumanize myself quite thoroughly… sad, I know…).  I’m starting to understand what Buddhists mean when the they talk about the root of some seriously painful problems being an attachment to self – ego. 

I also find that it is FAR EASIER to live in the moment when seeing myself from the POV of the “wave”… I’m not worried about the past and how my past mistakes or present imperfections might screw things up.  I’m just here.  A wave… rolling on the ocean.  Foggetabout shame, guilt and blame… it is so pointless. 

I hope that some of my ramblings in this post make sense to at least some of ya’all.  I know all too well how confusing Buddhist ideas can be… and I know that I am no expert in explaining them, especially when my breakthroughs in the basics are still so new to me.  😉  I’m putting this out there in case it can be of some use to someone out there… and maybe through the process, I’ll learn to communicate all this more clearly. 

Comments? 

–AngryGrayRainbows

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The Guy Who Counted MY Calories

For a few weeks, acceptance has been difficult for me.  Perhaps it would’ve been easier if I would’ve posted more.  😉  However, I got my new laptop (my old one died) over the weekend, so maybe I’ll get back up to pace now… 😉

It took me these few weeks to remember that bad body thoughts are usually (if ever…) about the body and I have been in bad body thought city!  Then I remembered what happened and the very day – the moment even – when the self-hate started bubbling up like some old toxic sludge…

Hubby and I were driving home from a grocery run and I saw this idiot that I dated for approximately four years – the guy who used to count my calories.  I immediately was nauseas and scared.  Only after the relationship ended did I realize it was abusive and being around that particular person is one of the last things that I want or need.  But, the memories came flooding back… and I remembered how much looking a very certain way mattered to me and to my relationship. 

I am surprised I never saw how superficial this guy was.  Sure, he didn’t bother to groom himself to perfection.  What he cared about was that I maintained a certain weight.  Second and third priorities were my skin and hair color.  He wanted me blonde and tan you see.  I’m a glow in the dark pale brunette.  Hah.  Skin cancer runs in my family, but knowing this never stopped him from trying to pressure me to go lay out in the sun all day… 

In some comments on a recent ShapelyProse post, I mentioned this relationship and one of the most ridiculous things in thin obsession I put up with, so I apologize if you’ve heard this already, but I think it’s worth laying this out in a post of its own – It was my birthday.  We went to one of my favorite Italian restaurants.  I dared to order dessert.  He managed to keep his mouth shut until we left the restaurant and then he went off on me about that brownie a la mode was prolly like 800 calories and what the heck did I think I was doing eating something like that! 

I was already an over-exerciser, but this particular person taught me how to go even further.  I used what he taught me to abuse and even injure myself for years.  He seemed almost as obsessed with my weight as I was.  When we went to dinner, he always just wanted “a taste” of what I was eating and then would eat like half of it or more.  In those days, I had prolly been restricting all day and working out strenuously and when I finally did get a meal, he ate it.  When I got mad at him for this, he told me I was greedy.  He’s a real winner, right? 

Even more ironic, when I was diagnosed with bulimia and told him this, he got mad at me for having an eating disorder (even one that I didn’t know that I had… I didn’t vomit… I was a starving and exercise purger) and not telling him about it before.  Right.  So, the guy who enabled my eating disorder, encouraged my eating disorder and dumped me when I finally started getting better got mad at me for having an eating disorder that I didn’t know I had and not telling him… that is insane on so many levels it is just mind boggling.

The relationship finally ended after I had been in therapy for a year or so.  He said that I started smiling and laughing too much.  I am not kidding.  Over dinner at another fancy restaurant he told me that I had started to smile and laugh too much so that he didn’t know me anymore. Plus, I had gained some weight – the big no-no.  It didn’t take long for everything to unravel after that.  Some men just can’t have feelings for women who can think straight (because they are eating enough to even think) and that smile (because they have the energy to actually feel happy).  Sad. 

Anyhoo, seeing that person walking down the street (I don’t think he saw me) brought back a whole load of memories that I would rather not have dusted off.  I suppose I have not fully forgiven myself for even dating a person who is so shallow and cold.  I started the awful wondering about how I could’ve been so amazingly stupid to have ever spent any time with that person.  How could I have allowed myself to be in such a horrible relationship?  How could I have ever let someone like that into my life and have so much control over me…?  😦 

So, I’ve been working on forgiving myself for my mistakes… and it has helped me feel better, but some wounds take more than an instant to heal.  Since the day I saw that jerk, accepting myself has been harder, though it’s getting easier. 

I used to have this old and horrible habit of looking in the mirror and trying to imagine what he would think of how I looked.  He generally had a lot to say about it.  I had stopped doing this before the relationship even ended, but after seeing him on the street, I found myself with those horrible automatic thoughts of what he’d think of me now.  Yippy.  Now those are some fun thoughts.  We haven’t talked in years, but I have little doubt that he would be angry at me (and express it) that I weigh what I weigh now. 

Of course, my weight is none of his business.  I’m sure my husband would be annoyed that this jerk is effecting me so.  He gets similarly angry when I talk to my mother and, yet again, my mother makes me so mad or sad or depressed or whatever… 

I suppose this is the time to remember that I have a choice to let toxic people (even those that only live in my mind at this point) to have control of me or not.  Is Mr. IAMSOCRAZYSHALLOW worth my suffering?  Hah.  No.  No way.  He’s not even worth my sneezing in his direction…

Maybe this is a time to remember the good things in my life like my health and my hot and loving husband and my fur children and the garden outside…

Yeah, I’m feeling better already.  Hopefully, I’ll be fully out of the bad memory ditch very soon.  I’m tired of feeling crappy… seriously…

–AngryGrayRainbows

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Where Did My Curiosity Go?

This morning I spent a fair amount of time wondering where my curiosity went… I know I used to have it. 

This all came to mind after listening to some awesome Buddhist postcasts from the Zune marketplace (if you have a Zune, you can download these podcasts with ease… they are called “Zencast”).  The speaker, Gil, talks about brining a sense of curiosity and wonder to meditative practice and to life in general.  He also talks about not taking things too seriously, because it can overwhelm the experience one is trying to achieve… to just go with the flow and notice without judging in life and in meditation. 

And, I wondered… where did my curiosity go?  Am I naturally a less curious person?  Maybe I am.  But, I think the answer is more complex than that…

The next time I have an appointment with my therapist (in several weeks), I will ask about the effect of trauma on curiosity.  I have a gut feeling that there is a connection between my lack of curiosity and the various hells I have endured in abuse survival.  Off the top of my head, I feel that it made no sense to be curious.  Life just sucked.  Curiosity seemed to get me in a lot of trouble that I would’ve rather have avoided.  Asking my mother questions earned me punishment, scorn and lies.  Trying to be playful, not gravely serious about everything I did and trying to give myself the space and time to be curious got me raged at and beaten by my step-father.  In many ways, they broke my spirit. 

I remember how much it annoyed me that my cousin (who I was very close to growing up) always told me to not take things so seriously.  Ooooo… she made me SO MAD when she said that.  If I didn’t take things so seriously, after all, I could be painfully punished.  She didn’t know that.  But, now that I’m an adult and living in a non-abusive environment, I’m starting to see her point.  I think I’m going to call her today and tell her that and also to thank her for giving me good advice that I just couldn’t take at the time… however, the seeds she planted seem to now be taking root and I’m glad to have her voice in my head reminding me that not everything needs to be an emergency.  😉

I also have a gut feeling that some of my lack of curiosity has to do with just how I am.  Almost like I was born this way.  I have a strong drive to just get things done.  It doesn’t always leave room for questions or curious observations.  My therapist always tells me that she thinks my ADD may not be real-ADD.  It may be something that looks like ADD that is caused by PTSD… a hyper-vigilance born of growing up in an insane home.  I think it’s both.  I have reactions that I have been told by doctors are only the result of real, honest-to-goodness ADD.  For example, cocaine works like a sedative on me.  I tried it a few times in my early twenties.  I had the best sleep of my life, while my friends spazzed out.  At first, they thought I had overdosed… but after a bit, they learned that I am simply weird.  I look back fondly on that experimentation, because that was a turning point for me where I decided that messing with drugs was a really dangerous thing for me to do.  I never know what they’ll do to me.  The few things I’ve tried have given me ridiculous results.  Even alcohol hangovers are weird for me.  My psychiatrist is ever telling me how weird I am that ritalin can give me the loveliest naps and how klonopin was seriously unpleasant, while many people I know have used these drugs to get very different results than I do…  Geez… get lost in tangents much?  My point is… it is time to accept that I am the way I am.  In some ways, I am like the average Jane.  In some ways, I am not.  My guess is that we are all like this to some extent.  I bring this up, because this point helps me settle down and accept myself AS-IS.  Not how others thing I am.  Not how I “should” be.  Just as-is.

This morning I did a little meditation on my curiosity.  I sat back and listened to where some deep part of my mind thinks my curiosity went.  It was like a daydream.  I dreamed that as a child my curiosity wasn’t safe where I was, so it flew away like fluffy dandelion seeds on a wind.  The seeds went somewhere save… some grassy place near a forest where they could bloom and grow.  My curiosity is still in existence – it just went somewhere safe, you see…  So, I imagined myself being in that safe place with my curiosity blooming all around me and I was glad to know that this part of me was at least somewhere I now know… that it doesn’t feel completely lost to me anymore. 

My lack of curiosity has gotten me in plenty of trouble.  It caused me to not question things that needed to be questioned… that were obvious to others around me that there should’ve been questions.  This came up in my job a lot.  I cannot tell you how tired I am of being asked why I didn’t think something was worth looking more into… well, heck… my brain doesn’t really work that way… at least not very well.  Sigh…  Otherwise, my lack of curiosity makes life boring… and lifeless.  I’m not sure how to describe it better than that.  Life simply loses all flavor and color when we close our senses to the world around us and our questions and wonder dry up. 

I would really love to hear from ya’all how you cultivate your own curiosity.  How do you do this?  Have you had struggles in losing your curiosity like I have?  Did you get it back… if so… how?  I’ll definitely be bringing this all up at my next session, but in the meantime – I want to hear what you guys think.  I’m all ears…

–AngryGrayRainbows

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Open Threadiness! 07.08.09

It’s that time again!  As usual, random ramblings  as well as coherent thought are encouraged.  Have at it!

BTW… I got some cacti in the hope my cats wouldn’t eat them, like they eat all other plants.  One of my cats went so far as to eat all the flowers and leaves off a rose bush… I had hoped the thorns would be a turn-off… apparently not.  Wouldn’t you know it – one of my cats is obsessed with the cacti and keeps trying to eat them.  He doesn’t care about thorns, the big weirdo.  Sigh… cats are so weird…

–AngryGrayRainbows

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I Loathe 12 Step Programs…

I’ve been debating myself on whether or not to take-on that seeming “sacred cow” that is the twelve-steps.  On the very pro-12-step side of my family, they were very clear that I could be KILLING people (yes, killing them) by turning people off to “the program,” as they call it. 

The thing is, the years I spent in AA and OA (alcoholics anonymous and overeaters anonymous) were some of the worst years of my life, hands-down.  My alcoholic biological father kept at me that I was some kind of alcoholic, though most of the time I didn’t like alcohol.  I had spent some time in my early 20’s binge drinking and that was enough for him to label me.  Beyond that, he knew my weight went up and down (due to the eating disorder that he refused to acknowledge existed) and he also pressured me into OA. 

My biological father is quite a disgusting character.  When 9/11 happened, he lured me from New York with promises of paying for my university and some of my living expenses.  It started out okay, but slowly and surely, he attached strings to everything, before I hardly had any control over my own life anymore.  At the same time, he helped less and less with my uni and living expenses.  After I had been living near the bio-idiot in a whole new city and region of the country for nearly a year, I disclosed that I felt a horrible depression coming on and that I really, really, really, really didn’t want to become suicidal again.  I asked for help of some sort to make the madness stop.  So, bio-jerk got me a therapist.  The therapist, however, is awesome.  She has saved my life.  But, when I really started showing improvements to my mental and emotional health, the bio-idiot tied my going to 12-step meetings to his helping me pay for therapy (therapy in my case wasn’t cheap).  It felt like 12-steps were undoing all the good I had done in therapy already and was pulling me back into the depression I was just starting to get some small distance from. 

What were my problems with the 12-steps…?  I had lots…

I will start with their beginning creed.  Before every meeting, someone read this statement about how if you are willing to be honest with yourself that this method will work for you.  Period.  Only years later did I realize that the success rate for AA was something like 5%, which is the same as the people who spontaneously get sober without any kind of help.  It was beaten into my brain (and a vulnerable brain it was in those years…) that if I could just get it right that I would get better. 

In OA, there seemed to be this overwhelming fixation on this “no white flour/no sugar” diet that supposedly cured “food addiction.”  This was before I realized food isn’t addictive – period.  I realized that what really worked for me was working on the underlying issues (PTSD, abuse, ADD, depression, etc…) and intuitive eating… but, I couldn’t find support for this within OA.  I don’t know if any IE or HAES people were active in any of the meetings I went to.  The only talk I ever heard was of “unclean food behavior”, constant weigh-ins, food addiction and the no white flour/no sugar diet.  I was told by my own sponsors and several other people of influence from OA and AA that wanting to process my issues (like the decades of abuse I suffered) was something like mental masturbation and that I needed to just get a life and stop eating flour, sugar and all that…. then everything would be peachy keen.  *headdesk* 

People who left the group were described as “somewhere… I don’t know… out there…maybe dead!”  I never saw it assumed that someone might have found another path other than 12-steps and gotten better.  It was 12-steps or die. 

One thing that always rubbed me the wrong way was the nasty self-talk.  Meeting goers overwhelmingly talked about themselves as if they were bratty children who would try to get away with anything if it might over a millisecond of “fun.”  I  started to adopt this self-talk myself and descended further into self-hate and righteous self-bashing that was ultimately self-destructive.  I got to the point where I couldn’t stop crying due to the constant self-criticism and obsessive self-analysis. 

My therapist explained to me that sometimes the 12-steps REALLY, REALLY, REALLY don’t work for some people.  Some women who have never felt like they had any control in their lives do not react well to the creed that we are “powerless” over our problems and need to blindly follow direction to get better.  Heck, I’d been admitting powerlessness my whole life and blindly followed whoever since I was a little kid!  The 12-steps wasn’t something revolutionary to me… it was the same old crap. 

Other things that bug me about “the program”:

– it supposedly has no religious affiliation, but is chock full of god-talk and it was obviously and largely xtian god-talk. 

– it is said in one of their creeds that the steps are merely suggestions (implying that you don’t have to take them 100% literally carved in concrete), but I never found a single group (and I went to dozens of meetings in a huge metro area) that didn’t put enormous pressure on attendees to follow the steps AS-IS with little to no deviation. 

– the program seems to straight-up lie… and it doesn’t even try to lie subtley.  They say OA is not a diet program, but most of the people are on the no white flower/no sugar diet!  They say anyone who is capable and willing to be honest with themselves can succeed, but only 5% of people who go to AA meetings ever become lastingly sober.  Then there are the other hippocracies I’ve already listed above…  Not to mention the bit about theirs being a program of “attraction not promotion.”…. LOL… that might be the biggest lie of all.  12-step groups have lobbied for decades to become the default program forced on people who end up in jail or in psych wards with drug or alcohol problems.  If that isn’t promotion, I don’t know that is.  I simply cannot put my faith in a group that is based on so many lies that are fundamental to the whole program. 

If 12-steps has made you a happy and truly healthy person, then more power to you.  I am not claiming that it doesn’t work at all.  Maybe it does work for some.  My point is that contrary to popular and regularly reported creed – the program doesn’t work for a lot of people and this has nothing to do with those people being unwilling to work hard or be honest and all that.  I am sick and FREAKIN’ HUGELY TIRED of seeing people beat themselves down, because this program obviously isn’t a good fit for them, but they are so brainwashed into believing “it works if you work it” that they are afraid to give up… and ya know… maybe die “out there.”  At best, it might work, if you work it… but that doesn’t have the same emotionally feverish punch does it? 

I have more than one motivation for writing this post.  First off, it is cathartic.  I went through hell with the 12-step groups and a whole different kind of hell with my 12-step obsessed family members.  My stomach turns when I see the popular myths about 12-steps being perpetuated and the program being forced on people who might do a heck of a lot better with some other method(s).  Plus, just thinking about writing this post made me nauseas and made my heart pound… that usually means there is something to process and I’d rather face my fears (in this case, my fear of expressing my beliefs about 12-steps) than sit on them.  My mind goes right back to that memory of a scary AA old-timer screaming at me how I “kept my own counsel too much,” because I was following an IE/OO/HAES path which is self-loving and kind and stopped talking mean stuff about myself and how “deficient” I must be.  Sure, only one person got in my face and loud about it, but it’s not like it didn’t feel strongly to me like he wasn’t saying what most the other folks at meetings thought about where I was going with my recovery.  Meh. 

Lastly, I know there is a lot of resistance in our culture to thinking critically about the 12-steps and I know from experience how much pain this can cause.  Screw sacred cows.  I’ve learned that when something is seen as a sacred cow (like how thinness is the only way to be healthy – EVAR!) that this is a red flag to start figuring out what the hidden catches are and what motivations could be behind promoting an idea of “sacred cowness.” 

I will end this post with something really beautiful that I heard in an OA meeting years ago.  A woman in her (prolly) mid-twenties stood up and said that it is none of her business what her body looks like.  It was her business to live well and eat well and get active and stuff… but if she had a lot of back-fat, it was none of her business.  It was her body’s business… not her business to control and try to diet into perfection.  I wonder if that women stuck with OA for any long period… she sounded way too intuitive to me to want to stick with their diety nonsense…

–AngryGrayRainbows

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