I M Perfect lady

Tag: breaking

  • Keep Silent

    In reading Melody Beatte's book, "Codependent No More"….I came upon these few sentences that explained so much to me.

    " Codependency is an emotional, psychological, and behavioral condition that develops as a result of an individual's prolonged exposure to, and practice of, a set of Oppressive Rules….Rules which prevent the OPEN EXPRESSION of FEELINGS as well as THE DIRECT DISCUSSION of personal and interpersonal problems."  Robert Stubby

    This explains the way the Church Doesn't deal with personal or interpersonal problems, for its members have had a prolonged exposure and have been taught to practice 'following' the rules makes you a good christian.

    The oppressive rules alone are not the culprit, but the long exposure…especially those who have been born in capitivity, where they never visited a world where you could openly express and discuss directly how you felt and what you thought.

    And certainly, under no conditions are you allowed to question the 'sins' or why you can't do this or that.  An oppressive environment for sure.  This bleeds down into the family homes, for it is preached to do so.

    I am finding that our family wasn't just weird like this, but that any family of the church has this same nature it is like the church's mission statement to teach codependency.

    Good members of the church are good codependents.

    Melody writes, "Earnie Larsen, another codependency specialist and pioneer in that field defines codependency as "those self-defeating, learned behaviors or character defects that result from a diminished capacity to initiate or to participate in loving relationships."

    Being unable to openly discuss personal feelings without being punished for it, is what makes us fake who we are.

    One of the oppressive rules of the church is "Honor thy Mother and thy father…" It cares not who they are or how they act, it is a RULE.

    In honoring them, you have to become disloyal to yourself. 

    Where does this leave a child?  

    From my experience, no personal stuff was ever discussed….not even the generic feelings, Let alone abuse.

    Just the very fact that we are indoctrinated into this society, and then abused…leaves a child lost, alone with no way out…

    The only way out is to leave…for a child is not allowed to speak, it is against the rules. 

    What is even more tragic, is that the love goes when you break the rules. So in order to keep the love, you have to keep silent.

     

  • I run, because you can’t……for my sister friend.

    “There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way and not starting.”

                 Buddha

     

    I felt the loneliness today of my Aunt who ran away.  A woman I never met, yet I feel we are one.

     

    I felt her sadness of being misunderstood and unknown, how her choice to save herself, sentenced her to a life alone outside of her family.

     

    Ostracized for escaping, for saving ourselves, for walking free of abuse, we are not cheered, no clapping, instead we are jeered with sarcasm.

     

    I never ever thought my harshest critics would be from my own family, they are forever punching the already weakened psyche.

     

    The Little girl within feels so sad, empty of words to make them see. 

     

    Today I wondered about my Aunt and her life, how she survived without contact from her family, yet like me the family she missed is the same one that brings her pain.

     

    The intellectual part of me understands that the energy they bring me isn’t healthy, but my heart yearns for acceptance, for understanding and even empathy.

     

    Like missing the stick that is poking you in the eye.

     

    I have more empathy for folks who are set aside because of who they are, parts of themselves they cannot change.

     

    Maybe because my Aunt disappeared and no one spoke her name that I want there to be words about me.

     

    Perhaps this blog is a way that I too will not just simply disappear without a trace.

     

    In the first few days of my father being accused of criminal sexual conduct, I wrote.

     

    I wrote in disbelief, I wrote the words to anchor myself somewhere, to hold me in the sea of grief.

     

    Writing is evidence of my journey.

     

    I have kept all written communications from my family as evidence. I know that is an odd word to use. 

     

    It was the evidence I needed to sort out which one of us was in reality and which one wasn’t.

     

    My mental mind fought a long hard battle up against reality and in reality there are written words from a family who is not cheering me.

     

    In as much as I want them to be cheering, what I needed more were their words of mental ness to shine the way out.

     

    Maybe in the end their shouts of sarcasm are cheering me forward.

     

    They are showing me there is nothing for me back there.

    They were showing me how not to be.

    Showing me how far I have come.

     

    I feel the energy of my runaway aunt; she joins me in spirit as I run along, lending me her courage and strength.  I feel the spirit of many little girls whose time ran out, who were too empty to begin, I run for you. 

     

    I run towards wholeness with truth at my side.

    I feel you with me as I run.

     

    The refrain “you are the wind beneath my wings” came to mind.

     

    I am so grateful I was able to run away.

    I am so not alone.

    All little girls everywhere who suffered like I, I run for you.

    I run, because you can’t.

     

     

     

  • I snapped

    I am thinking that the term, “she just snapped” or “she way flipped out” is used when we have a mental breakdown or a loss of control, and is seen as a negative explosion in your world.

    But what is it really?

    What have we been flipped out of or what has snapped within us, or what is breaking down?

    In the middle of a breaking down or when you are flipping out and are in the midst of the agony and turmoil, when all that was normal is now gone, it is hard to see the wonderment of what is actually going on.

    As I stood eyebrow deep in denial, when my illusions snapped and broke open, all hell broke lose, a waterfall of truth fell into my life.

    And I flipped out.

    I literally became undone.

    I am sure I acted, sounded and appeared mentally unstable, and I was.

    It seems to me, the more falsehoods your life holds, and the more things you fail to pay attention to, the bigger the waterfall when truth arrives.

    What is so odd is that we don’t know we are building a tower of untruths, for that is what denial is, ‘a refusal to believe in something’

    What we fail at most is believing in something that doesn’t exist.

    Imagine that?

    I believed in something that didn’t exit.

    I built a whole life upon it, and I react violently when I discover the truth and my whole tower of denial came tumbling down.

    It shook the foundation of who I was and it was from there I had to start fresh.

    Putting me back together one piece at a time, like reconfiguring a puzzle, I had to look at what I failed to see, feel what I didn’t want to feel, and then recreate from there.

    You would think the waterfall would be full of illusion type things, but instead it contained only truths.

    Truths that I had not believed in.

    That I had overlooked, looked around, let slide, turned way from, didn’t want to feel, didn’t want to see, didn’t dig into, all of them lay there.

    Each and every thing I thought was behind me was actually within me waiting.

    They washed over me and in a landslide type motion.

    I became inundated with feelings, truths and understanding, seeing all that I had not believed in.

    For me, flipping out was a good thing.

    I flipped, snapped or broke into reality or what was/is.

    For 46 years I had fully supported and lived for something that didn’t exist.

    How grateful am I that I snapped!

  • Resolve who I am.

    It is New Year’s Eve, the day we all sit down and look at the balance sheets of life, pour over our faults and choose one or two that we feel must go, and then declare to everyone we will no longer do those things.

    How many of us take the time to really sit with the affect, the trouble spot and see where it came from, why it was formed?

    What we call bad habits are usually coverings over some pain.

    They are the lids that keep us from feeling the feelings too severe to feel.

    Usually what happens is we just exchange habits, we seldom delve deeply into what lays beneath, to dive below and feel the pain.

    As I approach this New Year, instead of making resolutions to get rid of bad habits, I want to explore beneath the habits.

    The definition of resolution is the process of resolving something.

    The act of answering, solving…

    Perhaps if we looked at the coming year as the year of the answers, we will look at each day differently; we look to be enlightened about our behaviors, instead of running from them.

    Vowing that we will sit down in the middle of our habit and sort through it looking for answers.

    It is my belief that beneath the habit lays our true self.

    My resolution is to resolve who I am.

  • Die in peace.

    A horrifying thought flittered across my mind, “ I need to write a letter to my father,” and it is like a thorn that won’t leave me alone, a bug, a thought I can’t swipe away, or flick back to where it came.

    It arrived like an unwanted guest and refuses to leave until I entertain the idea.

    I am not sure I will send the letter or if I can write it, but it seems that just as I silently left my mother, I also stopped cold any interactions with my father on December 4, 2004.

    My letter to my mother had to inspire this thought.

    My body trembled in terror back then and I haven’t addressed this man in any way, other than honoring the feelings of wanting to remain far far away.

    I haven’t explored in writing the dynamics between him and I, instead letting the words abuse and rape gloss over and suffice.

    Just not sitting down in the middle of what that feels like to a little girl.

    What will I say?
    What needs to be said?
    What thread needs to be followed through to its completion?

    What is odd to me, is that I have never once thought of writing a letter to him, yet in the past I had a few letters started to my mother, but never ever have I begun one to him or even considered one, until today.

    And I even thought to the point of sending it and finding the address to my sister’s house where he lives.

    I am sure this is the natural progression that follows the one I sent my mother, although perhaps this could be one to both of them, the final good-bye, a swan song to my parents.

    Part of me is afraid to write this.
    There is a part of me that is afraid not to write it as well, for a gift may get left there unopened.

    Many years ago I began a letter but it so enraged me I had to
    stop.

    Is there something I feel needs to be said to give me peace?

    I wonder if the swan sings to die in peace?

  • Change will Happen!

    If you are not trying to change, you do not have any choices to make, you just keep repeating what you have been doing, there will be no inner struggle, no wondering or thinking, no stressing about how you will handle each new moment that arrives, where you will again be asked to make a choice, differently.

    If you don’t make a new choice you remain unchanged, and if you do make a new choice you will be changed, but grow further and further from your old familiar ways.

    Not changing is easy; it is mindless and falls effortlessly within your life, like smoke seeping into each minute.

    Change is like breathing new air into each choice we are asked to make daily, the small and the large, the complicated and the simple, each little decision has to be dealt with as a if you were a new arrival on earth, yet with the magnetic draw of a long held pattern.

    To jump the track of an old pattern isn’t as easy as one suspects and you will not know until you are actually the one doing the heavy lifting.

    Heavy lifting is doing the opposite of what you are used to, the complete and total opposite is required in order to change.
    You can’t change your life by doing nothing different, by not affecting your world and each relationship in it, the only way to change is to allow waves of new you flow into everything in your life.

    Since you are the common denominator in your world and with all whom you spend time with, if you change, all will feel the ripple affect.

    If there is no ripple, you haven’t changed.

    In the book, “Tattoos on the Heart” by Gregory Boyle, he is speaking to a gang member who is asking “How many homies have you buried…you know, killed because of gangbanging?
    “Seventy-five, son,” (this was some years ago. If he asked today, it would be more than twice that number.)

    “Damn, G, seventy-five?” He shakes his head in disbelief, his voice a bare hush now. “I mean, damn…when’s it gonna end?”

    I reach down to Omar and go to shake his hand. We connect and I pull him to his feet. I hold his hand with both of mine and zero in on his eyes.

    “Mijo, it will end,” I say, “the minute…you decide.”

    The moistening of his eyes surprises me. He grabs my hands in his.

    “Well,” he says, “then, I decide.”

    “Omar,” I tell him, “it has always been as simple as that.”

    “How many things have to happen to you,” Robert Frost writes, “before something occurs to you?”

    Change awaits us. What is decisive is our deciding.
    Gregory Boyle

    When you decide, change will happen!

  • Homeless to Harvard.

    “Breaking Night” by Liz Murray, how she went from Homeless to Harvard, shows that you can change the legacy you were born into.

    Her endurance to survive was what she needed to change direction when she could see her course aligning with her parents.

    She is seventeen when she decides to return to high school, a friend suggests an Alternative high school, “It’s a place like a private school, but for anyone who is really motivated to go, even if they don’t have the money. The teachers really care about you.”

    Here is where she sees her past and future collide.

    “I was scheduled to begin high school in September, it was May now. I would use the months ahead to prepare; I had four years to make up. The next thing I had to do, in order to complete my registration to Prep, was return to JFK, my old high school, and get my official transcript.

    Having seen Prep, JFK looked absolutely massive in comparison. I passed through metal detectors to enter the building. No one looked at me. Students were everywhere, thousands of them. It felt like a bus station. Taking the number 1 train back to Prep later that day, I sat down and ripped open the manila envelope. Columns of failing grades- 45, 60, 50- were everywhere. It was unnerving, reading row after row of flunking marks. I felt like a mess, a big walking train wreck. The experience of talking about my grades (having been lectured by adults so many times) versus actually seeing my transcripts was night and day. Transcripts were a real thing, a tangible expression of what I had and had not done with my life, and a road map of what still had to be done. Looking at my academic disaster, I could see that I had a mountain ahead of me to climb.

    Then, very suddenly, sitting on the train gazing at the JFK stationary, it dawned on me – my Prep transcripts were still completely blank. I literally had nothing, no grades, zip on my Prep transcripts yet. I could start fresh.

    The thought of the clean slat was thrilling, especially after looking at the mess I had created. With all the things that had been difficult, it was one blessing to count on, the knowledge that what I did from this moment on didn’t have to depend on what I had done before. Back on Nineteenth street, I asked April to give me a copy of my blank Prep transcripts, which was a simple printout of my name on Prep stationary and rows of blank columns waiting to be filled in by my future grades. The JFK ones I handed to April and never looked at again. The blank ones I kept with me at all times. They were a reminder that I was, day by day, writing my future. Sleeping in a hallway around Bedford Park later that week, I took out my blank transcripts and I filled in the grades I wanted, making neat little columns of A’s. If I could picture it – if I could take out these transcripts and look at them – then it was almost as if the A’s had already happened. Day by day, it was just catching up with what was already real. My future A’s, in my heart, had already occurred. Now I just had to get to them.

    A memory of Ma helped me decide this. The only papers I’d ever seen that were as ‘official’ looking as transcripts were Ma’s short stack of documents to verify qualification for welfare. Ma’s caseworker were always so difficult, so technical with us. And the walls of those depressing welfare offices, for some reason, were always painted puke green, a color made uglier by the harsh fluorescent lights and the iron bars on the large windows. There were so many people waiting in those offices – dozens, hundreds. When the hard little seats filled up, people sat on windowsills or on the floor; they stood or they paced.

    Ma, Lisa and I would wait for hours too, one of the dozen of other families all nervously checking and rechecking their own short stack of vital documents. When it was finally our turn, what I can remember most about being hoisted onto Ma’s lap is the bizarre interaction between Ma and the caseworker. It did not matter what Ma was saying. All that the caseworker focused on were Ma’s documents. Birth certificates, notarized letters, doctor’s notes to verify mental illness, our lease. Ma’s actual words and particularly Ma herself, were invisible to this woman, a woman who had the power to give or take away food, rent and safety. All that boiled down to was this; either we had the exact documents required for approval, or we did not. There was no in between. And even if we were missing only something small, like a second set of copies or one of Ma’s doctors’ notes, a single error could make all our effort- the document gathering, the travel, and the hours of waiting –irrelevant. One missing or invalid document and our file was shut, tossed. They called “next,” and we had to come back another day to start from scratch. All because the documents were either correct or they weren’t, period.

    How was this different from my high school transcripts? It wasn’t. I thought, if one day, maybe just maybe I wanted to go to college, some person in a suit in a very different kind of office would open my file, read my documents, and either I would have the qualifications, or I wouldn’t. Yes or no, nothing in between. And if I didn’t, my file would be shut and they would call “next.” I would be out of luck. Some things in life, I’d learned, were nonnegotiable. Documents as official as these transcripts were big, they were my yes or no, they were my options. They were my ticket. Now I was going to think of everything I did at Prep inside the framework of my transcripts – and that turned out to mean everything.”

    Later, there would be times when I did not want to go to school. I wanted to sleep on Fief’s floor and not get up. Bobby and Jamie were hanging out, walking around the Village. People were cutting school, and I was missing all the fun. There would be times I did not want to sit in a chair all day long while fresh air was outside and I was missing out. But all I had to do was think of my transcripts, and I would go to school, on time, every day, for the first time in my life. Either I would have the qualifications or I wouldn’t, and besides my friends weren’t going to pay my rent.”
    Liz Murray

    Each moment she has to make a choice to either act differently and get a different outcome or fall back on the way of life she was used to.

    Her focus on having a different document to hand out in life, gave her the tool she needed to stay the course.

    Change is not easy, you have to go against all you have ever known, extract stamina in each moment to not waffle and capitulate, you have to be willing to let go of who you are to become who you wan to be…as Wayne Dyer says.

    A great book of how she turned her life around…imagine she did this at seventeen homeless and with a father addicted to drugs who lived in a halfway house.

    Literally, Homeless to Harvard!

  • Thy Will Be Done

    A thought came to me last night as I lay down to rest, “Being a Victim is easy….”

     

    Being a victim requires NOTHING from you, you get to just sit and wait for the world to change.

     

    Victims always have someone to blame you are never held accountable, you are blame free, a loving kind individual and the world is beating you up.

     

    Someone is always coming in and wrecking your world so you lose your kind demeanor.

     

    It is by far easier to point a finger at the cause of why you act the way you act, than it is to change your actions.

     

    “If someone can steal your peace, You are the Loser”…says, Bikram.

     

    I just never felt to the depth of my soul, that being a victim was the easy way out that it required less than actually making a change.

     

    It seems that it is more painful to be a victim, but now I am wondering if that is true?  Maybe it is actually harder to change, to walk out of the old patterns, and do something different.

     

    Make a new response; require more from your self and less from the world, to bring back to you the ownership of all your behaviors.

     

    Instead of people out there pushing your buttons, keep your fingers on your own buttons; turn the buttons inward, so when you explode, it was you who did it, not some outside source.

     

    Changing from victim to empower is wearing your emotional clothes inside out, so all the buttons are on the inside, where there is no one to blame but yourself, each and every time you speak or act out, you are the only one hurting yourself.

     

    Is it possible to be Masochistic to self?

     

    It is a cycle of self-abuse.

     

    How is it easier to remain in that role, than it is to stop the pain?

     

    It just doesn’t seem right that it is easier to be hurt over and over, to have your hopes and dreams dashed again and again?

     

    How is it so much easier to be so out of control of your self?

     

    And yet, most of the victims I know are working so hard to control the world and yet are unable to see that they are the ones out of control in their own world.

     

    There is a slight but profound difference between being in control in a world that’s in control, or being out of control by and out of control world.

     

    The mirror affect yet again.

     

    If you are a victim, the world is out to get you.

     

    When you are not, the world is out to give you all that you could ever dream and more.

     

    It is literally impossible to be kind in a mad world, the laws of the Universe works beautifully always, "Thy will be done".