I M Perfect lady

Tag: guilt

  • Gaining a friend

    When I began writing, it was all about finding the truth.  I was so lost in knowing what was the truth and what was not…I wrote to find my way. 

    The reasons for this is that speaking the truth is not something that we all do.  Living the truth is for certain what we are not used to.  In fact I feel a flush of shame in speaking the truth.  Isn't that odd???

    You would think that telling lies would have me feeling the heat of getting caught, of being in trouble, and of losing friends…but for telling the truth???

    Even my new young friends have turned away…not because I lie, but because I say what is true for me.

    I don't get this…and yet I do.

    I wasn't taught to tell my truth, feel my truth and certainly not point out or act upon someone else's truth.  In fact telling the truth got me in trouble and was cause for a cold shoulder, annihilation.  And it still remains that way from folks who know, but don't want me to say.

    No one it seemed wanted to wave their truths around.  My father hid his and my mother helped him…and so did I.  It was a given within the family, NoT to talk about it.  To go on and present normal.

    Think about it.  Lies and lies of omission are seen as commonplace. And the truth a shocking attack.  How???

    This is a huge part of the ongoing abuse…what happens to those who speak up…and who point out the discrepancies between what is presented and what happens behind the scenes.  Doors begin to shut…distance opens up, we get pushed away…for telling the truth.

    Only those unhealed in abuse fear the truth.  

    Those who are seeking to be healed, need the truth. The truth is our way out. Untruths will keep you locked in the awkward dance of two lives.

    One where on surface it is a beautiful picture…but the feelings and emotions don't match.

    I used to live there.  I know what it is like to have a life and have feelings that are a complete juxtaposition.  I too used to lie to be normal.  I understand.

    My lies of normal did not make a father…but hid a pedophile.

    My lies supported abuse.

    I no longer can lie.

    I will lose 'friends' but friends don't lie to each other.

    I am sorry…for the potential seems so alive and electric…our similarities so great…and then.

    Then there were big gaps where truth needed to be…and actions taken.  A hole…a space, an opening, a chance, an opportunity to be forthcoming and instead silence screamed out.  Omitting the truth.

    Perhaps my flush of being caught in the truth, is a knowing.  A line in the sand, that separates and divides.

    It isn't so much me and you…but my truth and you from your truth.

    I just keep feeling flung back at the oddness of being caught with the truth and how that feels like I will get in trouble for it.  Striking to say the least.

    It is like I have been taught that telling the truth is as bad as what normal people feel about telling a lie.  Can you see the flip in how I was punished for telling the truth and rewarded and accepted for telling lies.

    It used to be more important to get along and be liked, to not toss rocks of truth into the waters and blink away red flags…but I no longer want to build a life of lies…

    My body doesn't do well knowing one thing, but saying another.  I am no longer capable of remaining silent.  I cannot omit that which I feel.

    And I will lose friends or fail to make some…but a me who lies to be liked will not be liked by me.  My integrity means more than gaining a friend…

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    A lady who knows her truth…imperfectly.

  • Baton-Less!

    I thought about innocence yesterday and what it is, how is it experienced and do I truly know it.

    This morning it came to me that I was picking up pieces of innocence as I walked searching for truth, and that perhaps truth is innocence, for without truth can there be innocence?  And is it possible to have experienced so much that isn't innocent and still be innocent or be able to return to the land of innocence?

    I had looked up the meaning of innocence and one definition said, "freedom from guilt or sin through being unacquainted with evil – blamelessness.  I like this one.

    Being free of guilt…

    I thought perhaps it was impossible to get back a state of innocence, that once you fell out of that pureness, it would be impossible to wipe yourself clean again.

    Innocence dies when you feel blamed.  Innocence dies when you become acquainted with evil… And it returns when the blame lies outside of you.

    If everyone would look upward, toward their parents, victims would dry up…innocence would bloom…like a chain reaction of love flowing backwards through generations; innocence would flourish.

    Seeing the flow of guilt and how it poured downward into small children, you can see the cause…how it forms and why.

    Alice Miller is correct, that the fourth commandment has really messed with our heads and psyches, by bringing blame into our selves out of fear of blaming our parents.

    Innocence is being able to stand up and face the truth of what is…not carrying the blame, shame and guilt that isn't mine to carry.  I didn't start this trickle down affect, but I do carry my responsibility to stop it from flowing down into my children.

    If I blame my children for 'making me mad' or 'losing control', I am passing the baton of guilt to my child.  If she reaches for the baton, she will lose her innocence.  Taking the blame for something you didn't start is to lose your innocence.

    Taking back your innocence is to hand back the blame.

    A relay going backwards, is the only way we can heal ourselves from abuse…

    The weight of carrying the wrong baton is where all the issues lie.  

    I remember in the early days of my mental breakdown, the days of discovering that all I thought I knew, I knew nothing….I recall feeling that this mess was much to big for me AND that I can't fix what I didn't create.  

    It took me out of the lives of my parents and siblings and into my own.  My own was a big enough mess and I carried only that.

    I handed the batons of guilt and responsibility back to my parents.

    I handed the batons of guilt and responsibility back to my siblings.

    And only sat with what I was responsible for.  

    In the past, in the present or in my future.  Holding that damn baton in order to keep my parents guilt free, had done nothing to clean them up, but in fact dirtied me.

    I see sins being forgiven the same way.  "Here hold my guilt for me…carry the burdens of my bad choices!"

    Quitting the relay team of guilt has set me free…I carry only me.

    I take responsibility for what I do, what I say and how I act.

    My children don't have to carry any part of me.

    I am a self contained container…a free me.

    Innocence is being free to be me…baton-less!

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    Photograph by Hannah Jukuri….

     

  • My wrongdoings.

     

    Today I wondered about the meaning of guilt and when is it applicable to feel guilt and even what its definiton was…

    Guilt – Culpable of or responsible for a specified wrongdoing. Justly chargeable with a praticular fault or error. 

    What is my wrongdoing, first off.  What did my do, as my son used to say when he was a child?

    Guilt comes when you have done something wrong.

    As her daughter what have I done wrong.  

    In a letter to her shortly after my father's arrest, I told her that the forgiveness she seeks is of herself.  I can't make her world right, it is not within my power.

    I can however, make changes in my own world; and I have.

    What some see as wrong behavior is actually me making corrections, seeking to find peace in my own world for my actions that served to keep the abuse going.

    I am working on changes within me, in my actions, in my relationships, and working on figuring out what had me so blind to what had been going on in our family unbeknownst to me.

    If I had lived and moved around in this world, unknowingly, I had to now find out how.

    I had to find the faults and errors within me and make corrections.  I had to acknowledge my part in order to change.

    There are no guilty feelings for doing this, none.  My whole body feels completely at peace for what I have done for the past 7 years.

    It is good for me to know, the definition of guilt and that I am only responsible for my wrongdoings.

     PS.  What came to me after posting this, was that I have been working on forgiving myself, on learning about me and accepting what I did at the level of my own understanding and knowing, and then changing my behaviors to correct my wrong doings.

    And my corrective behaviors is what they are most riled about…and what bring me the most peace.  I love that I have forgiven me.

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  • Loving For Me.

    "I wonder, Why you stopping talking at Mom for long time?You need be forgive in your past and let go angry for some reason? You never to know if Mom is gone and you might feel guilty for real. I did forgive what my dad did and time to move on. Please do not waste your time for angry or hate on her. Remember, no one is perfect and you need learn a solve problem. It not hard? Right? Today is new day and do not looking a past.  If you keep emotional, that is not good health. I want to see my family be happy and love anyone!"  Jay Huhta writes on facebook last night.  

    A few entries of my sisters line up beneath…directed at him.

    "you are wise 🙂 Remember Jay, everyone thinks differently and all we can do is respect that….You are sweet Jay, I love you….You are all heart, love you."

    Interesting exchange, it is like there are two conversations.

    And my dialogue would make it three…

    The questions and guilt are always directed at me.  Love and kindness to those who forgive and forget.

    She isn't asked a thing.  

    Nothing is expected from her at all, she is granted all things due to her title, "Mom".  

    Our broken relationship is all my problem; I broke the family pattern, I stepped out of the cycle of abuse, and I am wrong.

    Assumptions are made that I am angry and hateful…that unless I am loving towards abusive people I will feel guilty.

    I used to feel that way, I used to be locked into a frozen stance where no matter what, the only emotion I was allowed to use was love and forgiveness; forgiveness in the abusive sense, of forgetting the abusive actions of changing the past and wiping out the bad things.  Returning that person back to nice.

    My actions are seen as negative, for I will not let go of the past.  I will keep the past as it is, pristine in all its glory, changing nothing.

    I will keep a full image of my father and of his wife and of all they have done to me.  The good, the bad and the very ugly. All of it stays in my book, I will rip no pages out.

    It is written down in the truth of the universe, and you simply can't change what has been done.

    It works beautifully for them to not add the negative things, then you get to keep a kind loving mom and dad.

    My refusing to subtract the hurtful behaviors has my view of my parents totally different that of my siblings.

    The label "Mother and Father" has them capitulating…and I refuse.

    I refuse to go along with allowing abuse.  I know they hate to hear that, I know they want me to believe that they too are taking a tough stand against abuse, that they too will be vigilant. 

    What they want is to have both.

    Standing against abuse and have a happy loving family.  

    Impossible.  

    It literally is not possible when the father is a pedophile and the mother blesses his 'sin's of rapes and fondling away.  

    In a family where abuse lives, you can't stand against it, Unless you stand against the abusers.  It is not my choice that the abusers happen to be my father and mother.  It isn't my choice that those who supported them, happen to be my sisters and brothers.  I stand against abuse, no matter who is wearing it.

    What they call love is to capitulate for abuse; to surrender the facts, the truths and keep a happy loving family.  

    And if you don't forgive and forget you will feel guilty.

    I won't.  

    The only guilt I have felt is for all the years I went along with the abusive family, for supporting her and forgiving him. My guilt is for the first 46 years, and my actions to keep silent about abuse.  I have no guilt about my last 7 years.

    No regrets, none. 

    All my behaviors were perfect for me.  Perfect for someone learning to walk away from abuse. In my confused backwards state; all the actions I took were exactly as they should be.  

    My journey away from abuse began in a state that the abuse had put me in.  Mental, upside down and backwards, with defintions of love completely wrong, disassociated from feelings and emotions and a sense of self.

    I did my best in the state I found myself in.

    I am proud of my last 7 years…it is a huge accomplishment of healing from abuse.  While I see this as a positive, my family still back within the 'loving' confines of family see it negatively.

    And they should.

    We haven't seen eye to eye on this for 7 years.

    Our eyes are focusing on two different things.

    Seeing abuse from two drastically different vantage points.  

    One is to see what my parents need, and the other what the abused child needs.

    My vision cleared and I was able to see the child's needs.

    Mine.  Where in the past, I too could only see what was best for my mother, my father and to keep a family together.  And in doing so, I failed to speak up about abuse and abuse ran through our family into the second generation…for 40 years.

    For 40 years I didn't see me.

    Now I do. 

    And I feel no anger or hatetred nor do I feel guilt in seeing me.

    When I see the abuse in me, I can see the abuse in others.

    When I love myself.  I love myself enough to walk away from abuse…even if it is wearing the label dad/mom.

    Love of self and being in that family were impossible to do.

    I feel very blessed and full of grace that I was able to finally see me.

    I found me in a battered and broken state, but have walked myself into a place that is totally loving for me.  

     

     

  • Guilt and Judgment

    Yesterday as I rode along my mail route, I listened to The Course of Miracles coming from my Kindle…I have it strapped to the headrest so I can hear it without headphones.

    A jotted down a few things that seared my mind…and then this morning wanted to go back and find the text, but I haven’t been able to find all sections that caught my ear.

    Here is one I found.

    “When you feel guilty, remember that the ego has violated the laws of God, but you have not.  Leave the “sins” of the ego to me. That is what Atonement is for.  But until you change your mind about those whom your ego has hurt, the Atonement cannot release you.  While you feel guilty your ego is in command, because only the ego can experience guilt.” 

    I stopped and wrote that down. “Only the ego can feel guilty” this was an incredible thing to hear for its implications are mountainous.  No one ever has said, “sins of the ego” instead they act like our spirit has sinned and in order to get a clean spirit to heaven you have to get it forgiven. Imagine if you raised a child to understand there is an ego and there is spirit? 

    Imagine learning that there are two ways to view the world, by ego or by spirit…and to know this as a child.

    If only the ego feels guilt, what is religion for?  So when we were made to feel sinful and unworthy who were they talking to??? It has to be the ego, for if the only the ego can experience guilt, they surely were not talking to our spirits.

    I also wrote down, The ego can’t Know, that Knowing is of the Spirit.  The ego can’t know, it perceives and the spirit can’t perceive, it Knows.

    Here is something else I hadn’t considered. 

    “The ego and the spirit do not know each other.  The separated mind cannot maintain the separation except by dissociating. Having done this, it denies all truly natural impulses, not because the ego is a separate thing, but because you want to believe that you are.  The ego is a device for maintaining this belief, but it is still only your decision to use the device that enables and endures ” 

    This makes perfect sense to me, for when I was a fully engaged ego whom I lovingly call “the mental woman” I had zero contact with my Spirit…I love that they don’t know each other. 

    And imagine…the ego is a device use for separation? 

    To me it kept me separated from God and Spirit.

    Then, came a section on Judgment…

    “Have you really considered how many opportunities you have had to gladden yourself, and how many of them you refused?  There is no limit to the power of a Son of God, but he can limit the expression of his power as much as he chooses. Your mind and mine can unite in shining  your ego away, releasing the strength of God into everything you think and do. Do not settle for anything less than this, and refuse to accept anything but this as your goal.  Watch your mind carefully for any beliefs that hinder its accomplishment, and step away from them.  Judge how well you have done this by your own feelings, for this is the one right use of Judgment.  Judgment, like any other defense, can be used to attack or protect; to hurt or heat. The ego should be brought to judgment and found wanting there.  Without your own allegiance, protection and love, the ego cannot exist.  Let it be judged truly and you must withdraw allegiance, protection and love from it.”

    It seems that the church taught us to judge another, but not to judge the ego.  I love that we are to judge how we are doing by how we are feeling.

    Mostly what I listened to yesterday were the differences between the ego and the soul…and it made sense to me. 

    “Any thought system that confuses God and the body must be insane.  Yet this confusion is essential to the ego, which judges only in terms of threat or non-threat to itself.  In one sense the ego’s fear of God is at least logical, since the idea of Him does dispel the ego. But fear of the body, with which the ego identifies so closely, makes no sense at all.  The body is the ego’s home by its own election. It is the only identification with which the ego feels safe, since the body’s vulnerability is its own best argument that you cannot be of God.”

    Imagine, the ego only judges what is a threat or non-threat to itself. It could care less of how this impacts your life or your souls journey.

    It was so beneficial to my peace of mind to listen to the antics of the ego and its needs and how they contrast directly the spirit, and it made perfect sense to me in my experience.

    And when you read this book, depending upon who has a greater control in your world, the spirit or the ego, it will land differently as you read it

    I am not here to try and convince anyone, I am here to share what I heard.  It brought me peace…and it helped me understand the confusion I have with religion, for it seems to me that religion courts the ego with guilt and judgment.

     

      

  • When I am 80.

    My writing assignment was to write a letter from my eight-year-old self to my adult self, and I sat there blank.  I could not figure out what the little girl needed to tell me.

     

    So, I went and did my morning yoga session. And it came to me that if I look at her sitting within a family of dysfunction and her seeing her older self having escaped, that perhaps then there would be lots to say.

     

    My little self would look upon this adult woman and admire the strength it took for her to walk the walk needed to walk the walk to get her out of the situation of her childhood and to now be working on becoming more artful self.

     

    She at 8 could look upon me where I stand today and be so grateful that I was able to circle back and regain the ownership and awareness of her soul. 

     

    That I was able to traverse the wild churning waters of abuse and arrive seemingly unscathed and actually prospering as an adult woman, she would be amazed at my ability to withstand the truth and then to make new choices based upon it.

     

    She would be so grateful that I am no longer in abusive relationships or that I am still being victimized, that I have learned how to do self care, to speak for my self and have the strength to follow through.

     

    She would breath a sigh of relief to know that we survived and are now heading into an even brighter future, where I am honing my self-awareness with yoga and The Artist’s Way, that we are on the pathway of self-loving.

    At times I too find it hard to see the distance I traveled and the depth and breath of change that my life has withstood…I stand with my little girl in awe of where we have been and sit in gratitude we not only survived but also are thriving.

     

    What brings me the most peace is that I can look straight into my little girl’s eyes and feel proud and wise and strong, and not have to look away in shame and guilt.

     

    I feel so strongly confident that we are on the right path, and that when I am 80; I will look upon this 52-year-old self the same way.

     

    And in fact there is a writing assignment to write a letter from your 80-year-old self to your 50-year-old self.

     

    I found that much easier, for I was telling me what the Artist’s Way is teaching me, to be more artful, more daring, more wild in learning new things and experimenting, to go out and grasp all the delights the world has to offer, to change your routine, to add some spice and thrill, to toss in colorful experiences…

     

    I want to be at 80, what I am today, but more of it. 

     

    I want to look backwards at the next 30 years and be breathless at what I did!

     

    Each Artist’s date is adding to the list of things that will blow my mind as I look back when I am 80.

     

     

     

     

  • Be you alone.

    Yesterday I was asked if I felt lonely and I felt inside of myself and I didn’t, but I understood lonely and have been there often.

    Yet what I failed to understand until I started writing today was that lonely is seeking that part of ourselves that were wounded in childhood. It isn’t so much someone, but a part of us that is missing. We are lonely for ourselves.

    I was writing along and discovered that my meaning or my view of a childhood wound was neglect, sexual abuse, damage, something awful, but do you know what it really is?

    If you look at this from the point of view of what the child lost instead of what happened to them you would discover that the wound is something missing, not something added to who we were.

    It isn’t that we now carry rape and its disgusting features, especially if you were a child and the man your father, but what happens is that in that instant, we felt that our innocence went missing.

    Most focus on the rape and its ugly addition to us, like it now becomes part of who we are, instead of seeing this as something our innocent self endured.

    What I believe is if we are not treated as innocent, we then believe we are not, and then leave childhood minus our feelings of being precious and innocent.

    Living life without knowing you are innocent and precious will open you up to all kinds of situations where you sell your self short, become a people pleaser, have no sense of your own value and self worth.

    The one two punch that my parents delivered left me feeling that I was no longer innocent, my value had changed, I was no longer precious to him and she was unable to see her precious husband change, so instead I had to be the one.

    How confusing this can all be. You think you have to go back and wrestle with the feelings of being abused, but actually it is feeling the loss of innocence.

    A childhood wound is a hole in our innocence.

    And we are the ones to bring it back.

    We are the ones to strengthen our weakened state.

    In the beginning of healing we find ourselves as leaky as a sieve and we slowly over time, we become a solid bowl.

    My container of self, my wholeness is more solid today than ever before, I had plug the holes by speaking up about my innocence.

    In the past few months, I have been able to witness the loss of innocence, the lure and the grooming and the way others treat my daughter after, myself included, to find the intricacies of abuse and what it actually means to be wounded in childhood without the experience of guarding your self worth and value.

    Sadly, the reason there is so much childhood abuse, is these newly arrived souls on the planet haven’t learned to protect themselves they are easy targets.

    They are loving trusting and kind individuals that get lured and groomed into letting go of their innocence for the pleasure of an abusive person, confused with the attention and courtship, they fail to see the hook, before they swallow the line.

    What makes this so hard to stop, is that the abusers knows how to lure and groom and make comfortable and when they have complete trust and faith, they then ask or move in a direction we did not see coming, and in that instant we are asked to stand by our innocence or please them.

    Comfort them, love them, allow them, do this favor, lend an ear, bring compassion and empathy…letting go of our own innocence we focus on what they are asking, and our innocence fades away.

    We become part of the dance.

    Even though we didn’t start it, we participated and that alone makes us guilty, yet all we did was let our innocence go to please someone one.

    Letting go of our innocence is our crime.

    What I also found is the steep incline it took to get my innocence back, I had to put the ‘blame’ if you will on the one who treated me poorly, they had to own their own actions and I got to own mine.

    While I balanced my self worth sheets inside, I created two columns, what was my responsibility and what was yours.

    Separating who did what to whom, what age, what experience, what was reality in that time frame in my life, and in doing so, was able to see the trend continuing forward, all the places I lost myself.

    What I have found is the characters from way back then to present didn’t change, but rather I was able to see what was actually going on, and how I felt and how they felt about me by our actions.

    I had no one to blame in my adult years but me.

    It is in owning me as an individual and not a public held entity, that I see it all begins and ends with me.

    My business is being me, being whole, and finding myself in the midst of deep lonely feelings, for you can be certain there is another hole to plug.

    Healing is removing the parts of my self that I have given away to others, pieces of my innocence, chunks of my self worth, bits of value. To see all the times I looked at other to carry me, to make me happy, feel loved, feel worthy, all are signs of my weakness…the places I let my self go.

    Each time I am lonely…it is clue, I lost my self there.

    Each time I feel powerless, well you can bet I gave myself up there.
    Each time I am angry at another’s action, I am expecting them to do something for me, carry me, love me, make me feel secure, and so I know I dropped a part of me there.

    It is amazing how fragmented we are, how may folks carry our sense of self.

    It is lonely, if you need others to be you.

    In a co-dependent society, being alone means being lonely for no one is supporting you.

    How awful to stand alone, separated, unattached…

    Being whole means needing no one to be you.

    You just be you alone.

  • Hand and Hand…

    There seems to be two energies of silence, awareness and unawareness, peace and hostility, love and fear, solitude and loneliness…

    There is silence to shun and hurt to push out and away that isn’t inclusive but divided.

    Silence that is cold and uncaring, thoughtless and too busy, unaware and out of touch, forgotten…and good intentions piled high, never spoken.

    Silence of lazy relationships or untried or pushed, where silence is required, no speaking of the ills, just silence.

    The silence I was raised upon.

    Seeing, feeling, and knowing my mother’s silence in anger, dark still, raging, quiet, strong silence.

    Her silence against what was wrong.

    Silently staying.

    Silently waiting for change.

    Silently looking away. Silently.

    Silently hoping, wishing, praying.

    Silently walking hand in hand with pain, shame, guilt, abuse, neglect, betrayal, faithless, unworthiness, looking away from innocence and vulnerable child and self.

    The dark side of silence…where nothing changes, pain continues, victims born, old victims live, abuse blossoms.

    Silence isn’t peaceful in an abusive home.
    Silently we suffer.

    Breaking the silence I have found myself in a new kind of silence, the knowing silence.

    Knowing silence is peaceful, strong, empowering.

    I speak out about the abuse, but am silent with the abusers.

    Living the opposite.

    Where before my ‘peace’ was gotten from being silent, I needed to be silent in order to survive, to be in my home, my family.

    A false sense of peace and security living silently in abuse, blind and unknowing.
    Now my peace is to speak of my abuse, telling is my peace. Telling brings me power.

    Silence and abuse go hand and hand…

  • Let the Pain Out

    “Real difficulties can be overcome, it is only the imaginary ones that are unconquerable.” ~Theodore N. Vail

    When you face what you actually are compared to what you desire to be, you will find much peace, it is trying to be someone else that’s impossible.

    Letting go of the potential, the prize of someday, the if only of yesterday, and the idealized version of self that is the hardest to do.

    To sit down fully in imperfection and disappointing the mind, by facing all the evidence contrary to many beliefs.

    What I felt most for the men on stage with Oprah was that they were unable to claim their lost innocence and how abuse changed them.

    They wanted what is impossible to attain, and in doing so sit in denial of whom they are.

    They are the combination of innocence lost and the affects of abuse, and when they can see the imperfections of their lives, they will see how perfectly it is.

    How abuse does steal innocence, how if you don’t address abuse, abuse lives its life for you.

    It seems that you are a victim when you repeatedly succumb to the wishes of if only, or I can’t be different, and you become a victor when you stand and state the obvious.

    I was abused.
    I am confused because of the abuse.
    I lived an upside down life due to being abused.

    Until we can recognize how upside down we are, we can’t seek to right ourselves.

    By holding on to the picture of innocence, we miss who we now are.

    I will never not know the feelings of terror of a father.
    I will never not know who I would be without the abuse, but I can know who I can be in spite of it.

    There is a life after abuse, a way to reclaim your life today, but not undo yesterday.

    Life after abuse starts when you out yourself.
    Until then, you are locked in the dark with the secret.

    Once you step out, your life after abuse can begin…Abuse and its shame lives in the dark quiet silence.

    You don’t have to tell the whole world, but speak to someone, open the wound and let the pain out.

  • Keeper of their Illusions.

    One more part that really stayed with me from Sickened by Julie Gregory.

     

    “I now feel ready to try and talk to a therapist again.  Most times I do not feel like a client, but an educator who pays to teach my therapist about MBP.  I answer her questions?  How did it slip past the doctors?  Why didn’t anybody notice? Didn’t you have neighbors?  Were you really sick?

     

    But still, in our sessions, I cry from the guilt of betraying my mother, for not keeping the shroud on her secrets when I held them locked in such trust.  And I feel terrible about my own secret.  I have been writing, writing about what it feels like to be cut open while your mother’s tight, thin smile mouths, “Doctor’s orders, honey.”  To be emptied and filled by your mother, just like the IV bag she’s arranged for you. And to believe you are genuinely ill because that is what everything in your world mirrors back to you.

     

    My therapist explains that my mother was cannibalistic.  That she wanted to ingest my living flesh, to tear chunks from my body. That the closest she could come to cannibalizing me was to lift me onto the serving platter for the men of the medical community to carve.  The longer I hold guilt for betraying her, the more I will keep climbing on the platter all by myself.

     

    And yet the hand that pushed me down was the hand that helped me up.  The one who beat me was the only one to save me from being beaten. The one who wanted to kill me was the one who would kill her self if I didn’t offer myself under the knife.  I was trained from the womb as an alibi for her innocence.  She would snuff out my life if I went against her, even in thought.  She brushed me this way as casually as you would slide a ling brush down a pair of slacks, to get all the grain running in the same direction.

     

    I still told myself that it was okay, it really wasn’t that bad.  A normal sacrifice for any child to make for her mother.  Words programmed into me as my own. Tangled in her web, if a doctor couldn’t decipher what she did, how could I?

     

    Until I turn thirty.  Then I see her almost as clearly as if I was standing on a windswept sea cliff and she was looking up from the sand below.  There is only one line that connects us, and it is wrapped around my waist; my hunger is tied to the most intimate, emotionally deep contact you can ever get: a mother’s touch.  Anything less that where she took me feels like not enough.

     

    And so it is for the people I bring into my life.  My relationships, like the one I had with my mother, turn immediately intense, sometimes violently invasive.  I start to see that I surround myself with broken people; more broken than me.  Ah, yes, let me count your cracks.  Let’s see, one hundred, two…yes, you’ll do nicely.  A cracked companion makes me look whole, gives me something outside myself to care for.  When I’m with whole, healed people I feel my own cracks: the shatters, the insanities of dislocation in myself.

     

    So I start over.  When I ruin something or when someone vines around me, I move on.  It is just another opportunity, another chance to interact with the outside world and not have it take me completely, utterly to the bone.”  Julie Gregory

     

    As much as her mother needed her sick, my mother needed me innocent.  We are the exact opposites.

     

    She was well and her mother needed her to be unwell.

    I was molested and not okay, and my mother needed me to be okay to hold her marriage, her life, and her world together.

     

    We both found out that what our mother’s needed had nothing to do with us, but rather we were the vehicles used to get her where she wanted to be.

     

    Perhaps we know what our unveiling will do to our mothers, we are wrecking purposefully her illusion, and we are no longer caring enough to sacrifice ourselves for their insanity.

     

    We know we are shattering their dreams to a million pieces… yet their dreams go on; someone takes our place to be the keeper of their illusions.