I M Perfect lady

Tag: denial

  • Show and Tell

    The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be. ~Socrates

    I looked up the meaning of the word Integrity and one of its meanings is to be in a state of completeness, undivided.

    My girlfriend said the definition that they are teaching children in elementary school, is that what you say, what you think and what you do all match.

    I had to let go of many relationships of people who were unable to walk the talk they talked.

    I am much more in awe of folks who have integrity and make no excuses even if what they are doing is unkind. At least they are not putting on a friendly face while acting poorly.

    If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, it’s a duck.

    We get lulled by words and swayed in fancy sentences when actions are way off base.

    My husband knows a man called Snake, and he asked him how he got that handle? The man said he earned it. I like that. My husband went on to tell me this man spent time in jail for having a relationship with a young girl…

    If only we called folks by their behaviors it would make life a much easier way to navigate.

    “People show us who they are, Believe them,” is Maya Angelou’s quote.

    The key words are Show and Believe… it is as if the world is one big place of Show and Tell, but instead of bring something to show, we bring ourselves.

    We are all showing people who we are and they are showing us.

    It is not a game of pretending to be something different.

    Watch actions, how they display themselves and how they take care of their lives, they are on this stage called life being who they are, it is our job to believe what it is we see.

    How often do you give them the benefit of doubt? Whose doubt? Who doesn’t want to believe and why? What will happen if you believe? What will you lose?

    It is incredible to me now to not believe them. It is like they are screaming their truths and we are blocking our ears and shutting our eyes.

    “People Show you who they are, BELIEVE them.”

    We don’t want to believe who they are, for it will wreck our dream.

    The pain we are afraid of is the sorrow of our broken dreams.
    It isn’t so much that we lose them; we lose our dreams and our future.

    Yet what is the karma we are actually tending to?

    A lifetime of dancing with people who are disappointing, for they can’t measure up to what we hold in our minds, for we refuse to believe who they really are.

    It gets you so confused, that you then lose who you are.

    You are a believer of what is not.

    While extremely painful, it was very liberating to finally be able to believe in what people showed me. I love what is. I stay in step and in tune with the show and tell!

  • My next move.

    As I walked along these past six years, I only ever had two choices, not three, not four but two, and I could only carry forward one.

    Just one, not two, only one!

    Two would have grown me into a multi personality.

    There would have been two aspects of me, two types of me, two sides of me, a multiple me.

    Each side leading totally different lives sailing between and over boundaries like mixing colored water from glass to glass, until I would have been colored murky, muddy undetectable, where you would not know who is the real me.

    This murky colored water is where I believe I sorted myself out from, I had to re-visit each relationship and see who the real me was.

    To see where I moved from glass to glass not paying attention to how it colored me.

    In each glass I had to see what it required of me to swim there, what side of me shone in that space and what side of me lay in the dark?

    It was literally like running around holding up the old side and the reality side looking for a match, seeing what had integrity that could stand test of truth.

    Time and time again, I was surprised and horrified that most of my life was for the darker side, the side of me that came forth from abuse.

    There was very little in my world that was the real deal.

    Those things left standing are few but precious.

    And it is my belief I will grow from here, gain from here, thrive from here, for I was dying in the murky darkness, unable to know me, find me, see me, be me.

    This personal that lived in the murkiness shone in other’s lives and dimmed in my own.

    Now I am a like a dim light bulb, a faint teeny glow to them, but very colorful and bright inside.

    I see my daughter heading into the murky waters, trying to blend herself in both glasses, trying to appease the truth and the dark, the love and the fear, I see how I lost myself as I watch her go.

    What do I say? Do I tell her to stay out of our glass so she is not confused, so she is just one way to her self?

    What did I need to hear back then?

    What was the key that would have stopped me from losing myself in both worlds?

    Is there a shorter path than what I took?

    A less painful one?

    As she loses her self in like/love she doesn’t see the murky waters swallowing her like quick sand…

    But I do. I see her going in where I just left.

    What I find deeply disturbing about all of this, is that while my mother didn’t seem me slip into the quick sand I do, I see her going deeper and deeper. It seems unfair for me to watch this play out.

    To see the innocence blend with deceit, lies, until all that is left standing is this murky sense of self, this dim light.

    Why do I need to see this?

    What is my lesson yet again?

    To see the power and the lack of control, the submissiveness, the equal partnership between abuser and abusee?

    Is it more right to see two folks dancing in the quagmire?

    Will they save themselves while tossing more dirt upon each other?

    Who will save them from themselves?

    It seems in my murkiness, one day I saw the whole scene, the whole dreadful scene of filth and dirt, the lies and the deceit, is that what flips you out?

    Do you have to go in and swim, taste and feel the darkness; you can’t know it from the shore?

    It is like just curing yourself from cancer and turning around and seeing all you tossed off has landed on your child.

    I am just not sure what my next move is.

    “When in doubt, don’t.” Don’t move, don’t speak, don’t act. Just don’t.
    Again, great Universe this is up to you…let me know my next move.

  • Free to be you.

    At the end of Dr. Jill Bolte’s book, “My Stroke of Insight”, she writes what she needed the most to heal, and I too would like to share what was most beneficial to me as I made my way out of the legacy of dysfunction.

    When you wake up and find that you lived in denial for 46 years, you are smack dab in the middle of a pretend life and you need to begin finding truths everywhere and living truth.

    Here are some things in no particular order…

    The book, “Loving What is” by Byron Katie helped me embrace the idea of acceptance and how it is much easier to walk with reality and to separate whose business is whose. My lines of responsibility blurred and I was lost in other people’s lives and absent from my own.

    “Be Here Now” by Eckhart Tolle helped me live in this moment while unraveling the past. Showed me how to not deny but to embrace the moment right here and all that it delivered.

    Martha Beck’s book “Leaving the Saints” showed me the way abuse blinds you and how the family situation and religion has a great impact on how you then go forward, abused and confused.

    My brother’s ears listened, his eyes sought the truth like I, and his hand reached forward in healing always. Together we bravely walked deeply into what we had experienced to find where we lost ourselves, felt the pain or discovered the things we missed, clues that led us to our self. It greatly helps to have one family member in a dysfunctional family that wants to get out as bad as you, that wants to end the legacy in their life. His understanding of dysfunction as well as his desire to be free was the perfect companion on my journey. His willingness to bravely let go of family in dysfunction to be whole gave me strength.

    My husband bravely walking with me in the unknown, of me and the future, of allowing me space to figure it out, of hearing the truth and not fighting it. He made no demands for me to Not change, nor did he make demands on how I should be, he simply stood by and let me find me. We both had no idea if when I healed if there would be a we. Love is letting go and being free. We found a love that has no strings, you be you and I be me kinda love. His freedom was key.

    Friends. Well, I lost some old friends and old family members who were unable to bear the new me and my new found truths, and I am way okay in letting them go, for I don’t want to make them believe that which they don’t.

    New friends arrived, deeper, wiser, more understanding and caring, they match my new me.

    Playing in Art was my saving grace, a place where I still could play with colors designs in fabric, creating and letting go of the heaviness of dysfunction, there I felt free to be. My Art carried messages to me, like letters from the Universe, showing me I was on the right path and that I would be okay.

    I M Perfect Lady blog, is a key component as well, it has be a sacred space for me to bring my truths, to lay them on the white sheet and to dissect each morsel and to find answers. While I often hoped it would help another person, I have selfishly gained the most. It has beautifully displayed all aspects of me, the broken wounded little girl, the mental survival woman, and the sprouts of the real me. I grew to love this imperfect me and know that each part is perfectly me! There is no part you could take out, for each part hold up a section of my life, each part has a hand in making me me!

    What we need the most is freedom and for others to hold the space of our innocence until we can find our way back.

    We need to use reality like Braille watching all actions as they brilliantly say what words can try to cover; we need to have narrow vision staying with the evidence of actions.

    As we tear down our life of denial, we need to build a life in reality, we need to build up our strength, add wholeness to support what we want to become, while saying good bye to the things that kept us down.

    We need to find the stamina to go against old beliefs and life patterns.

    We need the courage to face all we turned away from.

    We need to reconnect to our bodies and yoga is a spectacular way to join, the mind, body and soul.

    Mostly we need the space to be free.

    Abuse steals our power; we need to become powerful again from the inside out.

    Abuse steals our love; we need to become loving of self.

    Abuse steals our faith; we need to become faithful to self.

    Abuse steals our trust; we need to learn how to trust our judgment, our value, our morals again.

    Denial or dysfunction or abuse has us living from the outside in, where we will please other before self.
    We have to turn ourselves inside out and begin living from inside. Listening to our quiet inner voice, and following our feelings inside.

    Mostly become one. Separated from the leagues and groups and piles of folks that wanted us to be something for them. We need to become a sovereign nation of one. One wave in the Ocean of the Universe.

    What is great about victims is that they bring love, trust and faith and give it to another. In order to heal, they now need to use all those great gifts to heal themselves, to now treat thy self, turn inward.

    All my strengths I had for helping others, I used to help me. I became my biggest cheerleader, my strongest friend; I learned to love my self.

    It is like having the wounded heal the wounded.
    The ultimate healing, I who was broken healed myself.

    The blind learning to see.
    The deaf learning to hear.
    The dumb wanting to know.

    The desire begins with you.

    “Ask and yea shall receive.”

    Seeks the answers of who you are and you will move into being you.

    It all begins in wanting to know the truth.

    The truth shall set you free.

    Free to be you.

  • I was Missing?

    One theme of fear that has nagged at me in the past six years is; I don’t belong.

    I don’t match, I don’t fit in, I am different, I am at odds with those around me. I stand out; I walked away, leaving behind many.

    I see them fitting together and me fitting out.

    I see a flock of people being in life in harmony and then me, singing off tune.

    The feeling inside was one of separation, loneliness, not belonging, forever standing on the fringe.

    What I failed to do was take one more step back and see the completed picture.

    My focus has been on the group, not on me, my view is from this odd angle of group mentality.

    Understandably so, for I was raised to be a group member, but not an individual and I excelled at this.

    I was a superior group member, outstanding in blending in, merging my life into the group, that I simply disappeared.

    Each time I felt the separation I felt lonely and not whole and grew smaller and smaller.

    I seemed to disappear from their life while my own life seemed to loom larger and larger.

    If you could see me from both views, you would see me growing fainter in their light but if you stood on my side you could see me growing bigger and brighter.

    My success or failure depends on where you are standing.

    If you are expecting me to return and become a group member, you will see me fading, growing weaker and farther away.

    And if you jump over to the side of individual your view will totally change.

    You will see a person standing up for her own feelings, her own passions and truths, a separated soul finding its own self worth.

    I too fall victim to the group view, to see me in their eyes and each time I do, I feel less.

    However, when I stand inside myself and witnessed my life from the inside out, I feel my uniqueness and my independence of free will.

    A group no longer owns me.

    As a child I was taught to give up my body, my feelings, my life and my individual stakes for a group called family, which was governed by religion and undermined by abuse.

    They took ownership of me piece by piece.

    Or I gave them pieces of me little by little, believing the more I gave the more I would become.

    I gave til I was gone.

    It has taken me a long while to remove the sense of self from the views of a group and see myself within my self, to feel my self as self.

    To weigh and measure myself by my own ruler, to no longer feel my value is defined by the Ruler of the group.

    This separated wholeness I see of me outside the group is to see and feel something I am not familiar with, a self beyond the group.
    My favorite image or saying is, “I am going to go find myself, and I don’t know who I am or even that I am missing…”

    I had no idea who I was separated from a group.

    I had no individual view of self.

    I was nothing out side alone.

    My whole composition of self was defined by their needs of me.

    My fear of being alone was that alone I am nothing.

    I recall being scared spit less to the point of frozen immobility, to be naked without a group.

    The group I had woken up in was filled with filth, untruths, lies and cover-ups, forgiveness of sins, a mess.

    It was me!

    The group looked liked me, talked like me, walked like me, it was a direct reflection, a bird with the same feathers.

    There was no dividing line between it and me.

    I found me, lost, brainwashed, blind, abused, broken, confused, mental…I was upside down and tilted away from reality.

    It’s denial and mine were equal.

    My long walk back to find myself and see myself in reality has not been an easy road, but one that has set me free to stand alone belonging to me.

    Isn’t it funny I found myself exactly as I felt, Lost but not knowing I was missing?

  • 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!

  • Tamper with Reality.

    I was asked after my last blog, if others will think I am crazy, and perhaps they will. However, unless you have lived a life deeply in denial where your head view of life is not what is actually going on, where you body is experiencing one thing and you are telling yourself something totally different, you will not get my post, my blog or my experiences.

    What I feel happened to me was that when I found out my father was a pedophile my body’s feelings made sense, although in my head there was no evidence of it.

    The totally extreme opposites of what I thought life was compared to what it really was was mind blowing.

    It blew all my beliefs, thoughts and views to pieces and I was left with a head that had to relearn how to see reality.

    I taught my head by how my body felt, instead of allowing it access to create a scenario that opposed reality.

    If I sound crazy, well that is okay for I was for 46 years, and it is crazy to go back and discover the way I was formed, how my mind made things up, how it was detached, how it and my body saw life drastically different.

    I feel that the root of all madness or insanity is to live a life where the mind and body are not aligned.

    In cases of child abuse or where the adult says one thing but does another, is where insanity or madness begins.

    Love hurts is an example.
    Relying on someone who repeatedly lets you down.
    Where we are unable to put up boundaries we then make up stories to live with instead.

    So much so, that we live in an alternative reality.

    If at anytime you let your feelings down, by not voicing them, by fooling your self that you don’t feel what you feel, you are dabbling in insanity.

    What I learned most in these 6 years, is that I not only have the right, it is best if I walk hand and hand with my feelings, and my thoughts and beliefs will follow.

    I have learned that by watching actions and feeling the sensations in my body, I can navigate myself in reality and be authentic in words, thoughts, feelings and actions, we all agree.

    Sanity does not have to pretend a feeling doesn’t exist.

    What some call social niceties are close to insane allowances, pretending to pretend not to see/feel/know what you know.

    I again feel that some of what we call ‘Mentally Handicapped’, are actually more sane than most, for they don’t seem to have the flipping switch to pretend.

    They call life as they see it, as do little children, they are not looking to spare another’s feelings; they are just calling it like it is.

    Sparing another’s feelings by making up a lie…just seems odd to me, are we not making up a new reality?

    Anyway, call me crazy I don’t mind, but I am no longer interested in sparing someone’s feelings.

    I spared my father, I didn’t want to disappoint him, to make him unhappy, and look where it led?

    I would rather hurt your feelings than tamper with reality.

  • Words to Cover-up.

    Compassion and forgiveness when misused, covers up evil they do not delete it away.

    They become tools that are used to cover up dirt…like putting a pretty blanket over the top will change what lay beneath.

    What happens instead is you now have a dirty blanket too.

    What is so surprising to me is that many cannot see that their acts of forgiveness and compassion are fuel for evil and not only that, leave a stain on your own hands.

    I know that the words seem to have this magical power to make changes in another, but sadly the only one it changes is you.

    You become blind to the real power of evil or maybe blind to the power of truth.

    The power of the truth is often set aside for the comfort and warmth of forgiveness and compassion, and it is much easier applied.

    Kind words are spoken, prayers and intentions are muttered or uttered, words, words, words…a blanket of words.

    A blanket, which covers up the dirt/evil, becomes a veil behind which you see; eventually it is so thick you can’t see yourself.

    Not only is your sight impaired looking outward, but also the vision of your soul is hidden from view.

    In the moment I discovered all that my blanket had covered, I uncovered my soul.

    I sat with a bare soul and a dirty blanket.

    A very dirty blanket, a reality unchanged, actions unstopped, wounds unhealed, sorrows and pain lay in a heap by blanket of useless words.

    Words of morals,
    Words of value,
    Words of piety,
    Words of kindness,
    Words of forgiveness,
    Words upon words upon words…the mighty words had fallen.

    Had bounced off of evil leaving evil unscratched, words just pieces of the alphabet all jumbled up.

    My new definition of forgiveness is once again Martha Beck’s. “Forgiveness is accepting that the past will not change.” And I believe compassion is seeing what is.

    Using words to match the action, like the old sesame song, “two of things belong together, one of these things just doesn’t belong….”

    Reality needs no words to cover-up.

  • A Cracked Lady that is Imperfectly Me.

    I am trying to lay on paper the picture I present to the world; how I am learning about a life I lived unknowingly to me, mourning that life, while living this life today.

    The combination is insane at times.

    Finding parts of myself that were missing, living them, and then releasing them and mourning their loss, at the same time I am living in the present building a life and feeling this life, a combination of present and past, mourning and living, dying and being born.

    My broken past revealing itself and its corrections laid back into the foundation, rebuilding me and who I am.

    Like building a new foundation on a fully built house, taking out one brick at a time, without moving the whole structure, yet the whole structure eventually changes.

    Being a caterpillar while making a butterfly without a cocoon.

    Living naked in the midst of change.

    Each broken brick creates a past I tentatively embrace, knowing it changes who I am and how I live today.

    Like picking up pieces of a puzzle wondering what the final picture will reveal.

    Perhaps the whole change is who I am, that I am the combination of a life of denial, a life of destructing that and rebuilding.

    I am the pot, the crack, the broken pot, and the glued backed together one.

    A cracked lady that is imperfectly me.

  • A pocket of Unreality.

    What I think I have been doing in an odd way is by only looking at the criminal, I spared my ‘dad’.

    By focusing so much on the criminal aspects, I negated joining them with my father. I left the father part pushed far away, in a spot where crimes can’t touch him.

    I didn’t want my criminal to intertwine with my dad.

    I didn’t want the combo, the molesting dad.
    I wanted the criminal called Ray.

    This is a reverse of what I did as a child.

    The time has come to join the two together and make them one, a criminal dad.

    Then I become the daughter that he hurt.

    Not just a random girl, and he not a random man.

    The two parts merge as one; the disassociation now associates with both sides of the same mirror, no more trickery.

    I didn’t know that I had slipped the dad in a special spot, and only focused on the criminal, that I had still kept them separated inside.
    In my heart of hearts, in the fiber of my being I had separated them and never spoke of dad crime, just Ray crime.

    This is incredible to me that I had flipped and exchanged into my mental hiding spot, a dad.

    I hadn’t brought them together inside of me for reconciliation.

    Which is why in order to write a letter they will become one.

    A criminal dad.

    Even resorting to his given name or using the word father, removing the familiar comfortable name while addressing his crimes kept the dad safe inside.

    I would not have known that I was hanging on to a dad inside, that I immediately changed his name when the crime came in, yet there is no way to quickly alter the mind’s beliefs and thoughts attached to him.

    Now the time has come to drop the divider and let them hook up together.

    A little girl sits with a criminal dad; there is no separation or pretend space he can sit in, nor I.

    The restraining letter should have been addressed to my mom accomplice.

    What I failed to realize is I was separating them inside by addressing them by their given names, so that I wasn’t saying my mom did this or my dad did that…I was making my familiar into strangers for the crimes.

    This is unreal to me that I protected the child in me by not joining the two together, reversed from my childhood days, but nonetheless kept them separated.

    Perhaps a letter addressed to Mom and Dad is what is needed, to speak my peace now standing in a spot where there is no veil between the roles of mom and dad and criminal and accomplice.

    I never knew that you could do reverse disassociation, switching the good for bad or the bad for good, that the mechanism worked both ways.

    A pocket of unreality. Where real could hide and not be seen by me.

  • Reality shows a hole.

    As I walked down the driveway to get our mail, my foot slipped on the ice and I did an impromptu triangle pose, stretching further than my muscles actually stretch, it was as if the ground shifted beneath my feet and caught me way off guard.

    You find your self in a position of surprise and pain, slipping out of control, trying to restore balance.

    That is exactly what happened when my mother’s request came in, it caught me unaware and it took me awhile to gather myself back into control, for it felt like she had snagged my life for a few hours, upending my plans by sidetracking my emotions and me.

    One minute you are walking along with a firm ground underneath you and zip its gone, replaced with rolling upsetting thoughts and emotions, going from a placid empty space to a state of turmoil.

    It is amazing that she still can tromp in and trash my space with just a few uttered words and make me feel that she has tampered with my child.

    The request is secondary to the position she inadvertently put my daughter in, playing monkey in the middle in a game of insanity, where it is impossible for my daughter to win.
    It’s the price paid for allowing my children to define their own relationship with my family, I knew it would leave them vulnerable and open to being a conduit for information about me.

    I just hoped it would never be used, or my children would be used.

    Being used is exactly how I feel my daughter was treated, my mother didn’t see the girl who she was asking to perform this act, she just wanted the picture and took the route easiest traveled, she didn’t want to ask me directly.

    I have tried hard to not use this access myself; I have tried to maintain a neutral stance as I witness their involvement with my family, allowing them to leave or stay as life unfolds.

    A phone call wouldn’t suffice, for she has hung up on me before when the words coming at her were not what she wanted to hear, so I will write a letter.

    A restraining letter.

    A letter that requests her silence between her and I, letting her know that my kids are not to be an open line for her to Use.

    This behavior of hers going to the second generation really boils me, asking others to do her dirty work.

    She knows without a shadow of doubt that if she asked me the path would be unfruitful, she wants what she wants and it matters not how the mission is accomplished, who she steps on and mistreats along the way, what she wants most is a complete set of daughter pictures.

    She wants no holes or vacant spots and she is using my children to patch the hole.

    My glaring open hole in our family will remain that way.

    She isn’t interested in knowing my life; she just wants my photograph to fill the hole in hers.

    The simple thing would be to fill the spot.

    That is what she has wanted all along, for me to get back in line, to rejoin the family, to not be standing out here alone, making her family look shattered, she wants to paint a pretty picture of all her children, to see them all unaffected and looking no worse for the wear, it will soothe her conscience, and make her feel like a whole mother.

    My refusal to slide back into position leaves her with a broken family.

    It is amazing that she wants a picture of the one who ran away.

    The striking juxtaposition of asking for a picture, when she has yet to ask in all these years, “How are you?”

    How are you feeling and dealing, how is your life going, how is it being abused my husband, how has that affected your life? How are you…?

    Nothing, silence…she doesn’t want to know or hear or wonder how I am, she just wants a pretty picture to fill her spot.

    The one sidedness of her world blows me sideways.

    Once again, she doesn’t see me or see my daughter, she sees us both as fulfilling a request.

    A request from a very selfish woman, who is so self- absorbed she is unable to see beyond the end of her nose.

    She doesn’t see the lives behind the pictures, just the pretty pictures; we have no life beyond what we can give to her.

    She doesn’t see the lives beyond the hands doing her dirty work, we have no purpose but what we can do for her.

    My giving days are over; I was done giving to this mad charity a long time ago.

    By keeping focus on the picture, you don’t see the madness orchestrating the life in denial.

    The picture completes a perfect set of six.
    Reality shows the hole.