Tag: estranged from family

• Freedom in Healing.

  Yesterday I felt the sorrow of not going back, of being forever outside, being stuck in a new life upon which there is no return.

   

  That my inner truths and feelings will not change, and I don’t have the magic to make it happen, they sit there rock solid unmoving, unshakeable.

   

  I felt like I was riding shotgun to these feelings, like I am riding along behind them and have to act accordingly.

   

  Even if my inner wishes and desires are to go against them, I am weak where they are strong.

   

  These truths are not of my making, I didn’t dream them up to make my life difficult, to stay away from weddings, and forgo all family activities.

   

  The makings of these truths came in ways not many care to know or acknowledge; they forget that I am not the maker of these truths, but the carrier of them.

   

  It is like I am carrying a disease that I didn’t invent, but yet seen as the magician and the creator. 

   

  That I am the one who started this whole thing and now that I have had my ‘fun’ with it, just get rid of it and be ‘normal’ again.

   

  It still catches me unaware that they still think it is me that is the real trouble, that if only I would just stop sprouting this garbage than a normal family I would have.

   

  Then once again I could rejoin them in celebrations instead of wanting to be in exile.

   

  That I am the one who wants to stay away, NOT that there is actually something to stay away from.

   

  That I am enjoying this new role, this new life, the knower of my unchangeable truths, that I prefer to live estranged, that I decided this is a new me choice for me.

   

  If only that were true, that one day I simply decided that my old life didn’t work anymore and I set out to find a new me.

   

  What they fail to appreciate is the fact that I was unaware and blind to the abuse in our home, that I built a life upon a false foundation. 

   

  When the foundation crumbled, so did I, I had a break down of me.

   

  In the million pieces of me that lay shattered, I had to find a way to make a new me.

   

  The last five years isn’t an experiment or fad, it isn’t a temper tantrum or something I can set aside for a wedding, it is the way I healed.

   

  I healed inside by setting up boundaries.

  I healed by acknowledging my abuse, my abuser, and those who support abuse by not standing against it.

   

  I healed myself putting myself in exile.

   

  And exiled from this family I will stay, it is the choice of being healed or abused.

   

  I felt the sadness of this exile, the aloneness, the being seen as different and difficult, and it is.

   

  Yet I no more can go back into abuse than I can let go of the freedom in healing.

   

  "I must be willing to give up what I am in order to become what I will be."
   ~ Einstein

   

  June 13, 2010

  abuse, carry blame, dysfunction, estranged from family, exile, family pressures, incest, life after abuse, setting boundaries, shame

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• The Web Called Life!

  I now know what it is like to come home from a long day of work, to be relieved of the stress of wondering if your car will make it through the day, (my breaks are barely working) ready to sit and sigh, and instead be assaulted by the mail.

   

  The mail lies on the counter, in a seemingly harmless pile and in the midst I see her handwriting again, I shove aside the bill on top, to expose the recipient’s name, relived, it is not mine.  Addressed to my son, his yearly card, the one time she singles him out, his birthday card.

   

  I know that assaulted is a strong word, and that perhaps I am being dramatic again, but it seems that it literally can pierce and intrude into my world. 

   

  Her handwriting is like a scream into my house.  I may be over sensitive, but like a ghost from the past, it arises when I least expect it.

   

  And then last night she appears in my dream.  In the dream we happen to be reaching for a grocery cart at the same time and she comes to hug me and tell me that my ‘dad’ misses me.  In the dream I move away, mumbling something incoherent to both of us……I wake up, it is near morning.

   

  My family ghosts are free spirits, they can and do pop up whenever they please, unleashed and unbounded, they plop into my world and I then bobble for a while as they steal this present moment, flooding it with a jumble of past and future daydreams.

   

  While doing this new mail route, I delivered mail to a younger brother, and while sharing that info, the other carrier said that he knew my oldest brother real well, in fact just spoke on the phone to him for a long while.

   

  I simply said, “Oh.”

   

  The carrier lived near my brother’s place before my brother sold it and headed out of town to live near my dad. 

   

  What can I do or say about that?  Luckily my silence was chalked up to concentrating on where the mail goes.  Instead in my head I had to continue to push away the thoughts of him and fight to keep the focus on the mail.

   

  Isn’t it peculiar that a mention of a name can open the floodgates of so many thoughts and emotions, that by simply seeing handwriting it brings forth a volume of words that hold stories upon stories?

   

  It may be my naivety where the trouble lies, for some reason I am surprised always when I happen upon a sister or hear a brother’s name, or see my mother’s handwriting.  What am I expecting?

   

  Isn’t it like being shocked that there are bears in the woods, fish in the sea, and birds in the air.  I live in the same place, and not much has changed physically, just that my relationships have been greatly altered.

   

  How divorce parents make it is beyond me.  I guess we will forge this new non-relationship and until that becomes familiar, this will be odd and assaulting to me, until I get used to it.

   

  Isn’t that like getting used to being slapped?  How will I become used to that? 

   

  Is it better to explain and to point out to strangers that I no longer speak to that brother, for that brother paid the defense fees when my father was in jail for sexual abuse! Isn’t that cruel and unusual punishment to the stranger?

   

  What would be a way we can both stand in that spot, this man who seems to like and admire my brother and me who shudders to think how off balance he truly is?  Is there a mutual spot?

   

  It always leaves me silent.  How does my life’s drama fit into a normal day learning a new job? 

   

  When we enter into new places and are introduced to new people we immediately try and find out if we have common ground between us, and in my case, my ground is unusual at best.

   

  You know the term, “it is a small world after all” it truly is. 

   

  How the connections continue to spread like a matrix around us, that no matter where you go, no matter what group you attend, there will be someone in there who has ties to your family.

   

  There are 16 in my immediate family counting me, so the matrix is spread far and wide, like a spider’s web.

   

  Oh the web we weave……I think that was when we are lying, but we weave webs just living life day to day, we make pathways and alleyways, we build and demolish roads, my web has to be a real tangled mess.

   

  Instead of the spider that is weaving it, I feel like the fly, or a very dizzy spider, with disconnecting lines!

  Do spiders plan their webs or do they just continue going around and around and in the end there is this wonderful tapestry that glistens with dew drops in the morning sun?

   

  Do they have a pattern they are following?  Are spider webs like snowflakes, no two alike?

   

  I guess we spew out the same tiny threads as we walk along in this life, a matrix is being tied in behind us, we are leaving a trail, by word and deed, a fragrance of who we are, the web called life.

   

   

  August 22, 2009

  Dysfunctional, estranged from family, ghost of past relationships, mother

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