Tag: fears

• Unexpressed fear.

  Mothering for certain is where my greatest weaknesses lie, where all my scars seem to congregate and wait for one child to push a button, and all of the unexpressed emotions come charging forward, ready to spill from my mouth.

  A few sentences do, a few sharp tones and hitting remarks find their target…before I am able to gain control of myself.  Inside of me then echos and reverberates voices of fear and confusion, feelings of being put upon, used, etc.  My child self rallies forth, elbowing out of the way the mom.

  I have, and have had, a very hard time heading into conflict a mom first…leaving behind my scarred child self.  Which leaves me standing there a mom, spewing forth childish words of defense…forgetting I am supposed to be an adult.

  By the time I remember to be an adult, the child has made a mess…voiced promises she isn't going to keep, poured feelings of petty indignation and pretty much presented a 'mental' mom.

  My adult self then has to clean up and find a solution that restores us both.

  As long as my children live here and are under my care, I will have to be on guard.  Just as I don't want my child self creating my nutrition plan, I don't want my scarred child mothering.  

  She mothers out of fear, screams in fear of injustice, fails to see both sides is very much shallow and self absorbed…contents of an abusive mother.

  Knowing she exists inside of me, isn't enough to keep her silent…to keep her back and away from conflict.

  I wonder what triggers her most?  What are the tones that ring for her to enter into my world uninvited.

  They are feelings…feelings of being used.  Feelings of imbalance. Feelings that others should or should not be doing that which they are doing…so when I feel out of control, she rushes forth.

  Guess that is what they mean by Post Traumatic moments.

  Ugh.  I just get so drained being a mom sometimes.  Working to not become postal, and yet time and time I do.  Each time I climb to the upper rung by putting them down, I lose.

  Certainly, they are not the long raging moments of before, just small aftershock like spews.  Is it even possible for me to be in conflict while in control?  I get there, but not till after I have had my ugly say.

  Ugly say has to be like sweet treats, something that my scarred girl lives upon…being mute in the first few moments of any conflict will help and open up space for my adult self to arrive.

  Today, I quilted…lots.  Thankfully so.  Imagine if all I had to do was to monitor the folks who lived with me???  My child self would have a field day.

  Maybe one day I will match the lady of my quilts.  Be a lady at all times…in conflict and without.

  
  Doing Bikram yoga in the Sunrise…. (perhaps doing more yoga will release the unexpressed emotions.)

  And this is my latest Kayak Lady…

  

  Art Therapy…it allows me a place to escape from the trauma…a place to express beauty…instead of unexpressed fear.

   

  March 25, 2012

  abuse, childhood, fears, post traumatic, trauma, Unexpressed

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• Taking the same steps.

  I backed away from people who hurt me, I retreated from untruths, receded from supporting religions, I moved from co-dependency, I pulled myself back from all the places that seemed to support dysfunction and it seems I landed in a corner with my back pressed against the walls of truth, and I now am standing alone.

  Perhaps this is how we enter into Heaven, we come alone with our suitcases fully packed with our lessons, our truths spilling out, our journey’s pivotal moments all stacked up like final exams waiting to be scored.

  Did I pass? Can I fail? How will I know?

  Sometimes it seems that in separating my truth from fiction, I have backed myself right out of my life.

  It is like I am at the end of my fictional life and a toddler in my new life.

  Simultaneously dying and being born, grieving while celebrating, saying good-bye and saying hello, a stranger and a new friend all living as me.

  It is like doing your own autopsy searching for the cause of death and witnessing your birth while being born, all at once.

  My greatest challenge is to find a new place to stand without the exhaust fumes of lingering fears clouding up my new self.

  To live fearlessly after knowing great fear, and not pack too much of the past into the present, be aware but not wary.

  Just as horses where blinders to shield them from scary things, I wear blinders that seem to shield me from good things. I wear them backwards.

  These blinders of immense fear stop me from seeing other alternatives.

  A wise woman kindly suggested removing the blinders, and letting in a view from the side.

  To see if perhaps there is a way to release the high emotions and find common ground where we are looking in the same direction but with two different sets of eyes.

  Self absorbed and selfish, is wearing blinders. Even if the blinders are made out of fear, they are blinders nonetheless.

  As a horse who has traveled so long relying on just one set of eyes, I am fearful in allowing others to see…with me or maybe for me.

  And to take my eyes off my road seems careless.

  Yet this one eyed view in a relationship, renders the other blind.

  Fearlessly I will have to take my eyes off my journey and look into his.

  And then perhaps when our eyes join together we will see a perfect view.

  Like getting the perfect pair of glasses that correct the distortion in our eyesight.

  I recall reading somewhere, that if two people are exactly alike as a couple, then one of them isn’t necessary. What I need isn’t someone who sees like me, but rather someone who sees what I don’t see.

  It doesn’t mean I give up my view, but I include his, and perhaps then we can find a place where we can walk together seeing differently but taking the same steps.

  March 18, 2011

  absorbed, abuse, affects, baggage, blinders, couples, fears, fiction, lessons, lies, new walking, past, post, re-birth, relationships, self, selfish, trauma, truth

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• Pick Up the Broken Piece.

  What a slow learner I am, how incredibly naïve and blindly stupid…I am surprised that I am just now catching on. How has it taken me this long, almost six years to figure this out?

  The pain I have gone through, the mental anguish and all the soul searching, and still I didn’t know.

  My family didn’t break apart, wasn’t destroyed and didn’t crumble under the weight of abuse, it wasn’t shattered, or flung upside right or mentally broken, only I was.

  I broke.

  In my head I had them all broken up like me, but they remain intact, a full family, minus a few.

  No worse for the wear, unscathed and unbroken, they are holding up strong as the same family unit, while I am broken.

  My brokenness is sharp, loud, and unwanted, a jagged point that doesn’t fit into the familiar routine.

  A routine I can’t remember, forgetting the lines and missing the steps, characters changing before my eyes, my script no longer matches theirs.

  When they laugh I cry, what they love I fear, when they gather I flee…I shout at their silences, say wrong words that jumble up the play.

  I am the heckler or a bad actor playing on the wrong set and ruining the show.

  When I am gone and silent the show returns to its familiar dialogue.

  I see the picture clearer now…I see me trying to direct a play in progress, wanting to hand out new scripts, change characters and lines, make it a horror movie instead of a comedy…

  What I have been trying so hard to do is change a play in progress.

  I have been wanting them to change so the broken me fits in…while they want me to return to the stage unbroken, healed, once again the old me.

  The spot is open, the stage is there unchanged all I have to do is not be broken and rejoin the chorus line.

  What I know to be true of all people who are abused within the family, it is not so much the first betrayal, but the second one.
  The second betrayal is that once you expose yourself and speak your words is that nothing changes, except that you are now alone and exposed.

  Kicked off the stage of your childhood home.

  I sit here dumbfounded at my naiveté how I foolishly believed that a child, even an adult child that was broke, would break the whole family, but my family marched on, again.

  No one stopped to pick up the broken piece.

  November 17, 2010

  abuse, adult, betrayal, broken, changes, child, drama, family, fears, nothing, piece, play, silence, stage

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