Tag: families

  • Supporting only what exists.

    Yesterday I was left with the line, “believing in something that doesn’t exist,” and it showed me the other person in the lie.

    We tend to blame the liars, but fail to point out the person who is holding it up, who is believing it, and in doing so denying the truth as well.

    I can now see the liar and the lie holder and the lie.

    It takes more than one to lie.

    The lie is a cover-up to a truth that came in that will shatter the relationship.

    Usually the one bringing in the lie is the one that has damaged the relationship.

    The one holding up the lie wants the relationship more than the truth so she will willingly carry what ever needs to be carried in order to save a relationship.

    Isn’t it funny how we become lie carriers, how we carry the lie further for the sake of a relationship.

    She is the disaster team coming in and saving the day. Little does she know all she is saving is the lie.

    All her work from that day forward is to maintain the lie.

    Her main focus is to keep the lie alive, hence believing in something that doesn’t exist.

    I can see how my mother began this game and then eventually include us, how we too learned it was more important to have relationships than seeing truth in behaviors.

    We too believed in something that didn’t exist.

    What is so tragic to me is that we can live a lifetime lost in lies.

    That we will deny our feelings, what our bodies are saying, how we are feeling all to keep a lie alive.

    Six years ago I felt that my pretend to pretend button broke, that I lost the ability to go along with the lies, that something changed, I could not knowingly support lies.

    What is so odd is that when you are born into a family of pretenders, pretending is a way of life, we rarely if ever speak our truth or we have to do so on the side and in hiding.

    Speaking about them behind their backs, saying the truths secretly.

    I am not sure where social niceties begin and lying starts, but the lines get kind of fuzzy.

    I heard Oprah speak to a man on stage stating, “go ahead speak your truth it will open the door for others to do the same.”

    Isn’t it odd that we rarely see someone stand exposing their truths, but rather we live outwardly pretending a life based on lies?

    This double life is what screws with people’s heads and the cause of much disease.

    My body feels so at peace now and when it isn’t I look at what I am lying about.

    What am I pretending?

    Where am I outside of reality?

    Am I the liar or am I believing in a lie.

    Getting my life back from the pretend world hasn’t been easy, I lost a lot of pretend relationships that I loved and supported, but in doing so I began a new relationship with myself.

    Supporting only what exists.

  • The Voices are Silent

    I finished the Quiet Room by Lori Schiller and Amanda Bennett. What an inspiring story of girl with a broken mind; a schizophrenia mind.

    She had voices in her head that were finally silenced with the proper medication, treatment and her tenacity to continue working on herself.

    She explains, “I still hear the Voices from time to time. I try to take my own advice. I distract myself, lecture myself, and focus on the outside world. I have taught myself to use a little mantra when they reappear: “These Voices are not real. Don’t be frightened. Don’t get upset. They are not real. Don’t let them overcome you. Try and think of what happened just before you heard them. Is there some emotion you can isolate that will help explain why they are here now? They are not real. It’s okay. Don’t be afraid.”

    “When I hear the Voices, I shake myself back to reality by using all my senses. If I am riding the train to Manhattan for example, I concentrate on the taste of Diet Coke and the smell of the perfume I am wearing. I look out the window at the changing view, and listen carefully to the sound of the conductor collecting tickets. I feel my own ticket flipping back and forth between my fingers.”
    Lori Schiller

    Even though I am not schizophrenic, I can relate to using reality to keep me on the path to wellness, how my voices were alive and walking in reality, voices of the dysfunctional family I left behind.

    Medication was able to reduce the voices mostly and when they returned, she formulated ways to not believe them.

    My experiences of walking out a dysfunctional family had the Voices on the outside in reality that were beckoning me backwards, and there wasn’t medication that would silence them, instead I had to be silent.

    My Voices were sisters, brothers and mother, my father’s voice never appeared.

    Voices and laughter, seemingly vanilla requests urging me to stop being so mental, so frightened, so weird, so odd, so standoffish, so separated, so cold, so heartless, so mean, so unkind…just like her voices in Lori’s head, mine too rose against me.

    The only medication I have to silence their voices is my truth; it seems to keep them far away.

    It is odd that my Voices are real and in living color and they too can threaten my newfound wellness, and perhaps tear little holes in my confidences, eroding newfound peace, as they bounce around like hysterical laughter, wanting me to join in the false hilarity.

    There is a small part of me that longs for the old group, yet a much larger part of me overcomes that, knowing what I would be joining.

    It is almost like I was raised in a Mental Hospital, and that I escaped into normal, and the old patients are beckoning me back.

    And the patients in the Mental Hospital were told that they were living normal, and see me as going into a land of total insanity.

    There are even times that I like Lori, have to concentrate on the smells, sights and sounds around me to keep me with reality, to know that I am okay, I am not the one with mental issues or dysfunctional patterns controlling my life, that I have done the due diligence to get me here.

    Here the voices are silent.

  • Bubble Of Pretend

    I was told yesterday that hypochondria was a disease, that somebody with an imaginary illness, is ill.

     

    I had never considered that just believing in something nonexistent made you sick.

     

    It is a belief in something that isn’t there, an imaginary idea, and the belief is what makes you ill.

     

    In denial you refuse to acknowledge existence of something and being a hypochondriac you believe in something imaginary.

     

    The two seem like kissing cousins, related in an odd way, where both are removed from what is truly going on, and both cases, it is a belief that keeps them ill.

     

    Within a dysfunctional family we have relationship hypochondriacs (or the opposites), for they believe in something imaginary; believing things to be better than they truly are, and unable to see the illnesses that surround them.

     

    The coorelation between the two is remarkable.

     

    I am surprised I didn’t realize that just believing in something imaginary is in itself an illness.

     

    While the hypochondriac is convinced things are worse than they are, a person in a dysfunctional relationship are convinced things are much better than they are.

     

    I wish they had a name for the opposite of a hypochondriac.  When I looked it up on Yahoo here is what I found.

     

    “The opposite is a MAN! Most men will think nothing is wrong with them even if the tumor is growing out of their head!”

     

    I guess the opposite is thinking nothing is wrong in the face of evidence to the contrary.

     

    Both sides are caught in a belief that keeps them from seeing what is true, and that in itself is the illness.

     

    Stuck in a belief that doesn’t exist in real life.

     

    Living in a bubble of pretend.

     

     

  • A voice and a choice!

    The dialogue continues with my sister and I.  That alone is surprising.  What she continues to show me is how she seen him and experienced the hurt.  What she fails to see is a way out of the hurt.

     

    I will repeat myself, that it doesn’t make it better to have your abuser be a your father, a man you trusted, loved and who fed and clothed you, IT MAKES IT WORSE.

     

    Wrapped up in and twisted around in is love and abuse. You can’t seem to tell where fear begins and love ends, or visa versa.

     

    Then let’s add the expectations of others as to how a daughter should act, and even expectations of your self!  Who are you if you can’t love and honor the father?

     

    I am certain this is where the rubber meets the road, the separation or division between my family and me.

     

    Perhaps they did see who he was, but they didn’t know how to stop being the role they had for many long years.

     

    Isn’t it funny it isn’t about him or who he is, but rather about who you are.

     

    Who are you in your relationships, what do you allow or not allow?  What would cause a daughter to give up her role, is there a line that has to be crossed, what is the line?

     

    My sister bravely stood in front of him, stated her fears and revulsion of him, yet couldn’t stop being a daughter.

     

    I know that in the past, I have heard of others who stand staunchly in their places amidst great forces, and I used to think how strong and how brave.

     

    But when I see a child who has been abused by a parent continue to be with or feel obligated to them, I see the breakdown of free choice.

     

    There seems to be a binding that takes place at a very young age, a bonding of sorts, one that will hold strong over the greatest evils, blood indeed is thicker than water.

     

    To break away, to stop being in a relationship takes more strength than staying.  And staying has to be very very hard.

    Maybe it is the opposite, for to stay would have killed me.

     

    How interesting it will be if we can continue to dialogue out why she stayed and why I left.

     

    Two abused girls with different reactions. 

     

    I will not judge them why they stayed, for I know the pain of leaving.  I know the cost of losing all, yet I also know the glory of finding a free self.

     

    I am free and strong, I now have a voice and a choice.

    I love that, “a voice and a choice” that is what all humans should have.

     

    He is allowed to be the man he is and I am allowed to walk away.  My mother is allowed to be the woman she is, and I am allowed to walk away.  I am not staying in a place that doesn’t suit my new found truths; I am not staying for their good and my detriment.

     

    I walked away from them, but straight into being me!

    At last I was present in my world, I had a voice and a choice!

     

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