I M Perfect lady

Tag: pretending

  • Bird of Truth

    I wonder about the Art of Making new friends, and does this change from when we are small children, what are our needs or requirements in wanting to spend time with each other?  How do we connect and then want to connect again or what makes us decide we no longer are interested in knowing more or finding a new depth in being acquaintances?  Is this a mutual dance, or can one person decide they have gone far enough and no longer are interested?  

    Is there ever an adult mutal exploring dialogue that goes on where you share differing views and opposing insights, and then in a almost friendly manner, say "Oh, we don't match enough for there to be common ground for us to play on…." 

    In my experience, silence is my first red flag, that something is amiss.  Silence without an explaination.  

    When I walked out on my mother, I knew that we had reached a fork in the road, and that neither of us were willing to join the other's path, and parting seemed natural.

    There was a clear and obvious difference, that neither of us could articulate at the time; but it was being played out in reality and the split was there in all its glory.  No words or fancy phrases, quotes or past sentiments could cover it up.  

    A split, a crevice opened up and swallowed what had been…what was before was no more…in its place was two ladies responding and reacting totally different to one man's abuse.

    This gigantic and obvious space didn't allow for small chit chat or table talk, it overtook us and wiped out our past relationship, leaving in its place, estrangement.

    I had similar splits with most of my siblings, where my responses and theirs stood a world apart, setting me on a pathway that would no longer converge with theirs, for I now we heading in a totally new direction for me.

    My changing has also cooled other friendships, for what had bound us together was our similarities.

    It seems like a natural separation, where neither one has to voice words or have lengthy conversations, but each feel more comfortable in the drifting away.

    In the past, I may have overlooked many red flags that popped up early, but now I honor each flag that rises, each response that is made is showing me who they are.  I no longer fight and push flags down, nor demand more then they have to give…nor will I stay for the potential of what may someday arise…I allow them the freedom to be…which in turn gives me freedom to let go.

    It is the old adage, "Birds of a feather flock together."  

    I wonder if we have a subconscious checklist, and we go along until we hit a spot where we no longer match, which tells us our feathers don't match…we don't belong to the same bird.

    And I wonder how many birds there are to belong to?

    I believe we can boil it down to just two birds.

    Birds of truth and Birds of fiction.

    I was taught to fly as a bird of fiction, that in order to be loved and for their to be peace in my family home, I had to not show my broken feathers…

    I fit into a flock of pretenders…until all my lies and pretending came home to roost.  It was then I realized there was and is only one bird in our family.  The bird of abuse…no matter how much we didn't talk about it, or act like it, we still couldn't pull off a new bird.

    It was when I stopped pretending that the split happened…and I began flying with the bird of truth.

  • Recognize the Real Me.

    I wonder why it is so hard to look objectively at your self, why it is so hard to see that which you are. Doesn't it seem literally impossible to overlook yourself while you are being yourself?  Why is it that we can't feel or sense our own powerful energy and it is running within our bodies? 

     

    What I believe to be true is that I was taught to not pay attention to my feelings, to disregard the pulsing emotions, to hide or pay no attention the signals of my body.

     

    In fact, the body was so full of sin, just disregard it completely, or pray hard that you can overcome ITS urges.

     

    I was taught to become the enemy of my body and I did such a wonderful job, I created a life separated from my body.

     

    I never spoke of my bodies signals, the fear that raged or the rage and anger and fear or injustices, the overwhelming immobility of choice, I used my body but never truthfully connected to it.  Well not in words or actions.

    I had a life and my body came along for the ride, but we were each other's enemies.

     

    Its needs and mine were at odds.

     

    What I discovered is that the signals of fear that my body put forth matched the reality of my childhood, compared to the actions that I had displayed.  I acted like nothing had happened…that my father's rape hadn't occurred.  My body however, never, not once forgot. Each and every time I was in his presence, I felt uneasy…pushed back, like an invisible wall arose.

     

    Yet, my actions showed none of that happening in reality.  I pretended to pretend to pretend that all was okay.

     

    What strikes me so is how I was able to NOT join with my body, but to live a life once removed.  That my outward display shown none of the signs from within. 

     

    Like a bad dashboard, all my readings were false.

     

    While I understand in order to survive, I had to have a false dashboard, it now seems totally crazy.  People didn't know me, all they really knew was the false readings I was displaying.  But, underneath a whole different story waited to be told.

     

    The story of the body.  Its emotions and feelings are rarely displayed accurately on people's dashboards, instead we say Yes when we mean No.  We feel its unkind to speak what we feel, not realizing we are disowning our own bodies…creating a chasm that we may or may not get back across.

     

    This space between what we feel and what we say widens each time we speak against our feelings or act in opposition to what we feel. 

     

    My life and my truth were an ocean apart.

     

    The life I was living in comparison to what I was feeling were two distinct drawings…and my feeling inside that I ignored carried my truth…and the false dashboard I presented out of 'kindness' crashed to the ground, for there was nothing holding it up but pretend.

    Pretending that I had different emotions than I did.

    Pretending that I was okay, alright, fine, perfect…

    Pretending overshadowed my truth…until I couldn't recognize the real me. 

     

    (As Alice Miller's book states, "The Body Never Lies.)

     

  • Without your truths.

    I sat with my old self yesterday and caught a glimpse of how I used to be, how if it weren’t for the truth exploding into our family, where I too would be caught.

     

    I saw her living in two worlds, locking up her truth before entering each side, so a part of her was always in the closet.

     

    And to me the part that gets locked away is the truth, for there will be a price to pay to let it out.  And the price is very large…huge in some cases, your whole family is on the line, if the truth slips out of the closet.

     

    She continues to walk into a church she no longer believes in, to keep her family believing she is there. And her family needs her to arrive so they too can pretend she is still the same girl.

     

    She knows if she doesn’t arrive, if she speaks her truth, her whole world will change.

     

    As I left her yesterday, a song was playing on the radio, and the words filled my jeep, “I am not ready to say good-bye…”

     

    In life we are often asked to pick between staying and not being truthful or leaving with the truth and all it curtails.

     

    When you are raised and believe in a religion that is based on pretending and false facts, and your whole world is comprised of this, you will lose your whole world.

     

    While greeting the truth, you have to say good-bye to your pretend family.  I say pretend, for you will know them by how they respond to your truth, until then, it is all pretend.

     

    In my family of origin, it was built primarily on false facts, the façade and truth hid in the closet.  All then acted, pretending there was no such storage for all the sins she blessed away.

     

    It wasn’t until one sin fell out that the rest came tumbling after and I was overrun with truth.

     

    I am not certain how the rest could just push it all back in and go on pretending, but they did and have.  Their capacity for hiding is much larger than mine. 

     

    While it may seem that they have once again locked the door, I believe that we all get to face our truths some day.

     

    I can’ t know when, nor can I force you to open your door and let them out, to live with them in harmony.

     

    Our truths don’t disappear, just because we fail to look upon them, instead what happens is you live a life without them, a pretend life.

     

    You get to have a pretend father and mother.

    You can have pretend sisters and brothers.

    You then get pretend security of being surrounded by folks who care.

     

    As I found out, if you open your closet of truth, your pretend family disappears.

     

    Most are not willing to say good-bye to pretend…while I thought they did not want to face the truth.  It isn’t the truth they fear, but the façade of pretend. They truly don’t want to know it is made of up fakeness.

     

    It is better to live in the comfort of fakeness than to live alone with your truth.

    Yet who are you without your truths?

     Smug mug pics 602

    “Every exit is an entrance somewhere else. “

    ~Tom Stoppard

  • My feelings are me.

    In reading, “A Course in Weight Loss” by Marianne Williamson, it came to me how we are so untruthful with our feelings, so neglectful, so mean, how we run away ducking and hiding, how the planet at large doesn’t like to see sad feelings.

    Feelings of grief or despair, feelings that lower the energies within, a dark foreboding feeling, the feelings that maybe we are not one with reality.

    It seems that at least in my house, we were to skip over reality and that alone was the cause of most dark feelings.

    I am thinking, and I may be wrong, but that when you walk hand in hand with reality, you will be less sad, if you are not wanting things to be different.

    It is the wanting to change what can’t be changed that brings sadness.

    To not be who you are.

    When there is a separation between what is and what you want, that the most suffering happens.

    When you surrender in agreement and sit with what is, although you feel sad to let your dream go, eventually you will see the peace of being in sync with the Universe.

    My greatest sadness was that I didn’t have a dad.
    It wasn’t that I had a pedophile.
    Once I got over the fact that I couldn’t have a dad, when I accepted I was a girl without a man who could be a dad dad, I was much more content and at peace, I was no longer fighting reality.

    To me, when you feel deep sadness I wonder if you are in a place of wishful thinking, mad dreaming, reality changing, if you are struggling hard with acceptance.

    Sadness has a message.
    What is it saying?

    To me I have lots of sorrow escaping in yoga, past sorrows, past dreams and expectations that never came to bear. Even new sadness comes in along with a future dream, which can be no more.

    Some of my sadness that escapes in yoga is the little girl finally telling me where I hadn’t been with her.

    Where she was left alone while I dreamed on.

    Where she was in reality and I escaped.
    Tears flow of rejoining, connecting and being one.

    I stay with my feelings now and find them very enlightening no matter how dark and confusing and restricting, for underneath the tangled mess is a part of me that has been lost and unfelt and needs to be tended to.

    All feelings are signals, which steer you to live authentically as you.

    They are not about the other person, the feelings are specifically made for you, they are your prized possessions, they are what makes you you.

    When you stand with your feelings, you are standing up for you.

    When you cover them up, you are pretending to be someone else.

    My feelings are me.

  • 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.

  • Tamper with Reality.

    I was asked after my last blog, if others will think I am crazy, and perhaps they will. However, unless you have lived a life deeply in denial where your head view of life is not what is actually going on, where you body is experiencing one thing and you are telling yourself something totally different, you will not get my post, my blog or my experiences.

    What I feel happened to me was that when I found out my father was a pedophile my body’s feelings made sense, although in my head there was no evidence of it.

    The totally extreme opposites of what I thought life was compared to what it really was was mind blowing.

    It blew all my beliefs, thoughts and views to pieces and I was left with a head that had to relearn how to see reality.

    I taught my head by how my body felt, instead of allowing it access to create a scenario that opposed reality.

    If I sound crazy, well that is okay for I was for 46 years, and it is crazy to go back and discover the way I was formed, how my mind made things up, how it was detached, how it and my body saw life drastically different.

    I feel that the root of all madness or insanity is to live a life where the mind and body are not aligned.

    In cases of child abuse or where the adult says one thing but does another, is where insanity or madness begins.

    Love hurts is an example.
    Relying on someone who repeatedly lets you down.
    Where we are unable to put up boundaries we then make up stories to live with instead.

    So much so, that we live in an alternative reality.

    If at anytime you let your feelings down, by not voicing them, by fooling your self that you don’t feel what you feel, you are dabbling in insanity.

    What I learned most in these 6 years, is that I not only have the right, it is best if I walk hand and hand with my feelings, and my thoughts and beliefs will follow.

    I have learned that by watching actions and feeling the sensations in my body, I can navigate myself in reality and be authentic in words, thoughts, feelings and actions, we all agree.

    Sanity does not have to pretend a feeling doesn’t exist.

    What some call social niceties are close to insane allowances, pretending to pretend not to see/feel/know what you know.

    I again feel that some of what we call ‘Mentally Handicapped’, are actually more sane than most, for they don’t seem to have the flipping switch to pretend.

    They call life as they see it, as do little children, they are not looking to spare another’s feelings; they are just calling it like it is.

    Sparing another’s feelings by making up a lie…just seems odd to me, are we not making up a new reality?

    Anyway, call me crazy I don’t mind, but I am no longer interested in sparing someone’s feelings.

    I spared my father, I didn’t want to disappoint him, to make him unhappy, and look where it led?

    I would rather hurt your feelings than tamper with reality.

  • The Consequences are nothing.

     

    “To go against the dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the people you see every day, is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can perform.”   

             Theodore H. White

     

     

    Today a sister has a birthday…I am silent.

     

    I will go against the usual Happy Birthday banter and say nothing. 

     

    Saying nothing matches the flavor of our relationship, which is nothing.

     

    To pretend that we do have something between us seems pointless to me, to drop our nothingness for one moment to utter ‘happy birthday seems sacrileges.

     

    We both agree we do not match, there is no pretending between us, so it seems even odder to step out of our nothingness to act in a manner of being ‘something’ to each other, and then retreat back into nothingness.

     

    It doesn’t feel heroic, but sad that my relationships between them and me were so easily changed to nothing.

     

    Nothing is what we are to each other.

    Not sisters or friends, maybe more like strangers we once thought we knew.

     

    Standing in the truth of nothingness feels better than wanting something from nothing.

     

    I know that I am the one who changed severely, who went against the dominant way of thinking, what I didn’t expect was that, that act alone would relegate me to nothing.

     

    It takes a heroine to be nothing, to stand with yourself, your truths and your perceptions, knowing you are heading against the current and will suffer the consequences.

     

    The consequences are nothing.