I M Perfect lady

Tag: not

  • Not Hide

    Mark Nepo writes, "How are you tending to the emerging story of your life?"

    "Like many of us, I seem to be continually challenged not to hide who I am.  Over and over, I keep finding myself in situations that require me to be all of who I am in order to make my way through."

    "Whether breaking a pattern of imbalance with a lifelong friend, or admitting my impatience to listen to my lover, or owning my envy of a colleague, or even confronting the self-centeredness of strangers stealing parking places, I find I must be present – even if I say nothing. I find I must not suppress my full nature, or my life doesn't emerge."

    "Aside from the feeling of integrity or satisfaction that comes over me when I can fully be myself, I am finding that being who I am – not hiding hiding any of myself – is a necessary threshold that I must meet or my life will not evolve.  It is a doorway I must make my way to or nothing happens.  My life just stalls."

    "Tending our stories means that our lies must open if we are to live in the mystery; our ways of hiding no matter how subtle must relax open if we are to be."  Mark

    How appropriate this is, for just yesterday, I was once again asked to not hide myself…to speak up and for my own integrity.

    As a Mail Lady, I have a backup to do my route every other Saturday or when I am sick or on vacation.  He is waiting in the wings to be needed…to be my relief.  Yet time and time again, when I called him, he was unable to, and finally told me that he would only relieve me on Fridays and Saturdays.  Then even Fridays he was unable to. And then it trickled down to him not even returning my calls for relief.  Our communication ceased to exist, my smallest faith in him completely dried up.  I can't rely on someone who is unavailable to even be asked to be available.

    In the past, the backups and regular route drivers communicated without our boss running interference, we had an open and clear communication system of courtesy, of notifying the other of potential days that we would be unavailable…like good parents tending to the route to ensure that it was always taken care of.

    This relatively newcomer to our office has thrown a monkey wrench into how we do things, and oddly enough, it seems he has the most power. 

    The proper protocol is for my boss to find the backup, but we as drivers felt it easier to not have a middleman, but talk directly and share our upcoming events and work around each other to ensure that all of us get to take the days off we truly need.  The higher need, say a wedding would trump a day off to just be off.  Reasons carried a weight, and we were considerate of this.

    Once he stopped returning phone calls, I handed him over to my boss.  It is up to her to reach him, ask my request and then relay it back to me.  

    Yesterday, she tells me he is unavailable to work until March 1. That he has a medical reason.  Which most likely is true, but his past has proceeded him, and it just seems that he is taking me for a longer ride.  The weight of the imbalance is completely on my end.

    My nature is not to take imbalance in silence, I can't let this slip by docile and compliant, for I would not be tending to who I am. 

    As my boss stood up for him, I stood taller for me. I stood for myself and the other two who are faithful and considerate, and who now have to conform to his negligence.  

    My boss astutely felt that I perhaps had more of an issue with her management than his lack of work ethic…and I told her, "I guess I do."

    I felt that as she defended him, she left her three good employees un managed.  She relied on the good to continue to be good…to good naturally take his lack of work ethic one more time.

    What I found so odd, is that instead of coming down on him, she comes down on me.  She expects the good to carry more. And to do so without giving her any lip. Certainly, now with a medical excuse, her hands are tied, but when she stood across the line with him, it left me to stand against authority…I stood up stating my unhappiness.

    It seems like tending to me is to stand up, that I am moved to defend my integrity and faithfulness.  That her asking me to give up my days for his reasons once again is asking too much.

    She repeated many times, "I am sorry."  Until I told her that word from her sounds like a swear.  I can't feel your sorry.  I feel you supporting a man who is disloyal to us all.  Your sorry can't change the fact that I now have to work the next 5 Saturdays in a row.  And it isn't so much Saturday, but the five previous days…with one day off in between.  

    Her answer was to look into getting a backup to the backup.  My answer is to get rid of the no backup backup.  

    Her answer too was that I can find work elsewhere if unhappy.

    She doesn't see that by catering to him, she is neglecting the ones who are doing that which they are hired to do. 

    She tends to those who are neglecting their work.

    This brought me back to the imbalances in our childhood home, and how my mother relied on the good to carry the 'bad'.  That the good have to carry more and more…to keep the balance.

    The failure to carry more is seen to be more of a crime, than the crime itself.

    My mother too was unable to get rid of dead weight, so instead she piled more upon those already carrying.  Never focusing on who we carried.

    My boss is so similar to my mother…and our office much like a dysfunctional home, where the one doing the least or creating the most damage is protected.  And if you don't like it, "Leave."

    The only option I have is to work within her system or quit.

    I see the lay of the land, where her focus lies…and I what I will have to do for myself.  How to become self sufficient as possible and how not to rely on her or get my heart set on having days off.  Things I have to do if I want to work there.

    Just as a child learns what they have to endure to be part of a dysfunctional family.

    I can see clearly now my role as a child; to carry the dead weight.  It was expected of me. 

    The greatest difference in my job is I do get paid for carrying his weight, for working his days.  I am compensated for it…

    It is my intention to use the compensation well. Extra money to do fun things, and floating holidays in which I can play.

    My life isn't at a stall, I am making my way through, I am speaking up and evolving and learning how to use these exchanges for my benefit…to see the present and not hide!

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Rear-View Mirror

    It is interesting to me the dynamics of Functioning or Dysfunctional, and how the very nature of dysfunction leads you to make choices that will reap more dysfunction.

    The very nature of dysfunction is to not look at what is, or not feel that which you feel, which leads to a life that you won't look at or feel, which has you facing forward to the next moment in time, but not this moment.

    It is natural in the dysfunction to look ahead and disregard past behaviors, to not voice how you feel and to remain focused on the future, without looking out the side windows or definitely the back-window.  To not follow through with what you feel, but toss your feelings behind you and look ahead.

    My mother drove her life, heedless to how her actions affected us. Her attention on the future, kept her from dealing in the now. And she certainly was not going to look behind her at what lay there…and in doing so, years upon years of abuse lay scattered in her rear-view mirror, while she doggedly drove on into the sunset, never taking her foot off the gas peddle to stop.

    Her not stopping her life for an act of abuse…made it so my father didn't have to stop either…If she stopped, he would have been made to stop.

    She was his ticket to keep going.

    While she focused on the wide window in front of her, he was off to the side abusing, and in her rear-view mirror we all lay abused…while her attention was looking anywhere but there.

    Dysfunction is not looking and certainly not stopping your life style or interrupting your 'family' for abuse.

    Dysfunction doesn't stop when it sees abuse.  Dysfunction doesn't stop when it feels pain. Dysfunction doesn't stop when it is betrayed…dysfunction just plows ahead.

    Heading to a destination that is far away from abuse, into happiness or laughter, but dysfunction certainly doesn't stop for abuse.

    That is dysfunction. That is why families are okay with abuse, for it doesn't pay attention to it.  It allows it to ride along in the rearview mirror by promising NOT to LOOK.

    Looking at abuse is not permitted in dysfunction.

    Speaking about hurtful behavior by another is not allowed in dysfunction.  You are to forgive and move on, you are not allowed to hold 'grudges' or carry the truth forward, you must leave it lie in the rear-view mirror.

    Dysfunction is to create a person without a past.

    None of their 'sins' are taken into the future….only who they are today…sinless, abuseless, just a body without past actions….that is all that comes into the future.

    You are not allowed to look at the junk in their trunk…that is dysfunction…you must keep separating actions from the person.

    Surely I could keep a dad if I didn't bring forth the rape…that is dysfunction.  Yet,I kept looking behind in the rear-view mirror and seeing the rape….oh why couldn't I just focus on today…and a rosie future.

    In my experience, the only thing that happens if you never look back or out the side windows is Abuse gets to dance free….

    While my mother stared ahead toward future happiness…my father was able to rape and fondle and forcefully hold many little hands upon his penis…dysfunction won't look at abuse.

    Function stops and stares at abuse…function sees the child, function doesn't drive on…function stops her life…and stares behind her at all the flags she missed, all the places she didn't see…Function sees the monster…dysfunction sees the husband/wife.

    In order to continue on without abuse, you have to see where you have been…how you drove and not take that road again.

    Is impossible to stop abuse by not seeing it.  You can stare for the rest of your life ahead and it will not stop.

    Abuse needs you to not see.  My father needed all folks to Not see his abuse. And sadly, only the children saw it.  The helpless child felt the pressure of his powerful hands pressed upon his penis….they couldn't stop him.  

    Dysfunction will not stop and stare…

    I believe children are told to not talk about it, not dwell on it, to forgive that action and move on….it isn't that it isn't seen, but we are told to look ahead, and not to look behind.

    Not hold another person accountable…not let that one action or multitude of sins color their character, focus on the good times, the good things and ahead.

    That is the ingredients of dysfunctional families.  They don't stop for abuse…and they never look in the rear-view mirror.

    "Objects Are Closer than they Appear" 

     

     

  • Back to the Lake of Innocence.

    The previous post’s pictures articulate the changes, and how in fact the little girl continues to look the same, but now feels like that dirty lake resides inside of her, by the actions done to her and the lack of response.

    Prior to abuse entering into her world, her world is like Lake Superior on a beautiful summer day, calm, peaceful, relaxing, clean, fresh, beautiful, loving, kind, innocent…

    And then….

    (Recounting from the file)

    “He was always very nice, showing interest in me… he casually pulled me on his lap, real friendly like, a real laid back guy…but very strong…he would pull me onto his lap, he forcefully pulled me on his lap and then take my hand, held my hand, and place it over his erect penis that would be out of his long johns…if she tried to pull it away, he would very firmly put it back, rubbing his penis, while Ray would be doing this, other people would be in the room, including his wife. The same scenario happened, over and over again…”  Little girl voices…

    After abuse the world changes color, it is now darker, scarier and monsters lurk in kitchens and living rooms…friendly laid back guys can transform into monsters and then back again. No one seems to see the monster you are experiencing… It becomes this fluid ever changing landscape.

    And from the file, each girl spoke of my father’s transformation, of going from nice laid back neighbor man to a forcible pedophile.  The juxtaposition.

    What is missing is the transformation of the other adults.

    The wife, neighbors and minister continued on as normal.

    What is horrific is that they don’t become unglued…and transform into raging indignant people reeling about the injustice of such treatment of the innocent.

    We are left with double transformations.

    We wait to see our loving caring parent transform into rage at our abuse…and it doesn’t happen.

    So we then, watch or feel inside the disappearing love, trust and faith.

    It transforms from loving and caring, to caring less.

    Our world now holds people who are not who they say they are, there are flipping images and we can’t trust what we see anymore.

    The truth is, there is no truth.

    This is the awful state to be in, where you can’t trust the kind face of my father for lurking in the background is forcible contact with his penis.

    Double images.

    You can’t trust your mother’s high morals and values for when it comes to the real tough things in life, she is unable to stand tall, to come out swinging for you.

    She proclaims strong and comes out weak.

    She turns a blind eye towards your abuser, which translates to us, a blind eye on our abuse our wounds…

    If you don’t value your children, you don’t value anything.

    And when you don’t value the children, the children can’t value themselves. They literally see themselves in your eyes.

    What I saw in my parent’s eyes is the Lake of Sins…their sins.  I seen me through their eyes of sins…believing those eyes were talking about me, instead they were showing me who they were, and it had nothing to do with me.

    Their value became my value…they can’t make me precious and valuable…without it being within them first.

    “you can’t give what you don’t have…” seems like a lofty bit of wisdom the therapy world imparts, but I know form experience this is true.

    When I discovered my own innocence, I could then see my children with eyes of innocence…but first I had to see the abuse my parents gave to me.  I couldn’t hold them innocent, for when I did I was the problem.

    And what I know for sure is the girls; the little children who are forced to perform sexual acts are never the problem.  Not now, not ever.

    Until I held my father accountable, my innocence was not mine.

    This is very very tough for a child to do, for we want at all cost to keep a loving parent, a strong caring forceful in love parent, but instead we get parents who become strong in abuse and weak in love.

    Even at my old age, I still wanted to have a strong generation before me, I didn’t want to be stronger than the top, I wanted a soft place to fall, someone to rely upon, a warm embrace, a shelter from life storms…

    My healing and dealing and bearing the brunt of all ridicule and disdain is giving my children the parent I sought.

    I have to withstand all the storms that have been leveled at me to show my children and I how strong I am, that no matter who abuses…I can stand tough.

    I have stood against my father, my mother and all siblings who have openly and willingly supported and cared for them.  I have let family go for the sake of my own little girl inside and in doing so have secured an environment for my own children.

    I have transformed multiple times…innocent to abuse, to innocent again, from strong to weak and weak to strong, from loving to fear and fear to loving, from me to not me to back to me again.

    Back to the Lake of Innocence…

    IMG_6803 

  • Love without Hurt.

    What I didn’t know was that my distrust of kindness and love, was actually fear, that love to me was very wobbly and had lots of sharp edges and was ever changing, it was smooth and calm one minute, but filled with rage or hurtful the next, I didn’t know that love didn’t have a hurtful side.

    To me, Love hurts. If not now, it is coming so prepare it room! There was no time in my life that love didn’t eventually turn to hurt, turn to mistrust, turn to betrayal…so, Love Hurts, eventually.

    In fact the people I loved were people with two sides.

    They had the side of trying to be good, be better, be kinder and then the side that failed.

    We were taught to forgive the failing side and to focus on the trying side.

    I was taught that all folks had this Light and Dark side, and that you overlooked (forgave) their darkness and put them back in the Light.

    It wasn’t focusing on the Light that did the damage, but overlooking the dark side.

    This dark side seemed to be forgivable, because it was uncontrollable, its animalistic ways were beyond human control, it rendered many a man helpless.

    It was a sin, that seemed to come in from the outside, but it wasn’t really them. A happenstance, but not of them, so do not throw a person away due to bad behavior. Forgive and forget, until the next time…

    These sins were just clouds that happened by and you got caught in them, it wasn’t something you had control over and within each human was a weak spot.

    A spot colored in by whatever ‘bad’ behavior they didn’t have control over.

    It is this spot that I have spent 6 years investigating within me, and it isn’t a spot, but my whole pathology of becoming me, a monster whose love was nothing but fear.

    I began to dissect all my relationships and all my actions to see what was what, only to discover, unbeknownst to me, I never met love, not the real love, the love that doesn’t change love, the real genuine thing.

    I was a stranger to real love. I had never felt real love, for within me lay fear. If you are full of fear you can’t feel love, all you feel is fearful.

    Fearful it won’t last, fearful it will betray you, unease and afraid, you sit with fear by love.

    My journey has been to climb out of the hole of fearful love, as a monster of fearful love and then in the Light of day, learn what love is.

    It was scary to show the world that I am fear, that I do fearful things, that I come from fearful places and have wounds of fear and that for 46 years I had no clue what love was, and was loveless inside.

    I had such empathy and love for my monster of fear while I was so inept at what love does, how love feels, where love goes, how it speaks, how it listens, how it lives.

    How grateful am I that I was able to transition from a fear-based life to one that is embracing love.

    That saddest part of being the monster of fear is that you feel you are handing out love, compassion, caring while you are sowing seeds of fear.

    I had to feel the icy water drip into me after I had transformed myself, to really understand this monsters message.

    When my daughter’s abuse presented itself to me, I had post traumatic like behaviors, I vacillated between fear and love, and I felt the calm peace and acceptance of love and the wild terrorizing bitter cold fear, and watch the affects both had on my daughter.

    My brave little daughter was caught in the maelstrom of this fear filled love monster.

    What an incredible transformation and what a roller coaster ride, for all who live with me, myself include, to get to just one side of love.

    Love without hurt.

  • In Me

    “Once you know, you can’t not know”, is a quote I read, it’s the knowing that changes you forever.

    Knowing is different from hoping, wishing, dreaming or wondering, knowing trumps it all.

    I know what they wanted the most is for their lives to remain unaffected, to not let one shadow to cloud their whole lives, to be so strong as to not let it change who they are, and it didn’t.

    I have seen the evidence, but refused to see it, I have heard the silence and refused to hear it. I have felt the absence and wouldn’t feel it.

    Blindly not accepting what is.

    What I wanted the most was for the family to implode, for it to feel what I felt, the loss.

    Loss of love.

    Loss of trust.

    Loss of faith.

    The betrayal within the family.

    None of that happened, a bomb went off without flicking a hair or altering a stance, it was dealt with like a bad review, ignored.

    One bad review will not stop the many who are cheering and clapping as life goes on.

    It does play with the mind to see pictures of normal, am I nuts? Did I make this whole thing Up?

    What I see displayed around me today, all the unchanges, it has to be the same reaction repeating itself again.

    I can just see the tiny girl, speaking the unspeakable and nothing happens. Nothing. Life goes on without a hitch.

    You are left to deal and heal alone, unsupported.

    Unsupported you drop, you fall, you lose your way, your mind, your knowing, your trust and your faith, stripped naked of all you counted on…you begin again alone.

    ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’…oh I am strong.

    Also something that has been broken and glued back is stronger in its broken spots.

    My heart is stronger.
    My faith is stronger.
    My trust is stronger.

    In me.

  • 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…

  • What Isn’t There to See!


    To be upset over what you don't have is to waste what you do have. 

     ~Ken S. Keyes

     

    We have two eyes and I am thinking we need to use them for two separate things; one to see what we have and the other what is missing.  I also suggest keep one eye working more than the other, perhaps even wear a patch over the one who is a forever counting what is Not here.

     

    Our train of thoughts need to keep the track to the positive eye well used, and abandon the tracks to the one that is forever reporting the doom and gloom, the worrier, the spoil sport, the one that is adding up a long column of negatives, when there is a whole world of good to be calculated.

     

    I know that by switching how I look upon my job makes a difference, if I can see all the positives, the downsides will fade from neglect.

     

    I heard Dr. Maya Angelou say of people who whine, ‘stop you will let them know a Victim is in the area.’

     

    So in the vicinity of your voice how is it being heard?

     

    What are you mentioning most often, the things going right or what is going wrong?

     

    We are either a victim commentator of life or one that sees things as they are and rolls by accepting, being enthusiastic or having enjoyment in what is, as Eckhart Tolle suggests.

     

    If you can accept what is going on, you are no longer a victim.

     

    When you fight it, you become a victim to It, no matter what It is.

     

    It is raining and you want sunshine, the rain will victimize you.

    Just by wanting what is not there, IT takes your power; your eyes are on what isn’t happening.

     

    When you keep your strongest eye on what isn’t happening, you waste what you have in life.

     

    Can you have what you don’t see?

     

    Yet we believe we can have what we don’t see by focusing on what isn’t there.

     

    How backwards this all is…What we can see, we don’t and what we don’t we focus on.

     

    Seeing what isn’t and not seeing what is.

     

    Like a trick mirror, reporting back what isn’t there to see!