HELLO SELF!

Disconnection with ‘self’ causes a hollowness internally so expansive that falling into it is an endless dive through an empty crevasse. The pain in the freefall is sharp, severe, and ever there.

Losing my way brings back that rift, emptiness wrapped in loneliness the only hug.

As days grow longer and sunshine seeps into my bones, hope, energy, and aliveness help counter the tendency since childhood to self hate.

The hate makes for loneliness, because no matter how caring others might try to be towards me, if not caring for my own self, no way is warmth allowed in.

You dare show compassion? No. Yet in these softer days when home internally is sought and found, compassion comes in then flows outward.

It is not all luck that brought me here and kept me alive. Hard work, persistence, grueling persistence, and dedication with a great will to live, survive, and thrive has brought me thus far.

And appreciating these facts is OK and deserved. The decades of doggedly sticking to the right thing, learning to do what needed to be done, especially for my boys. That both graduated from a prestigious college due to their hard work in high-school earning them scholarships. And chosen to work as resident assistants during their years of studies which paid for room and board. How awesome is that?

Instead of the constant harangue of badness, look at the good. For a self-hater that is a struggle even during summer. It is OK to rest on my laurels even if for a little bit, enough to at least appreciate them. And as the sunny days accumulate that becomes more possible, warmth flowing in with the sunshine. Sunshine brightens brain chemicals chasing the critic down the path in front of me. The ability to feel good makes mee manic with joy.

Years of struggle, saving every penny while hanging cloth diapers around the wood stove, and shopping for necessities at garage sales; clothes, toys, household items, just about anything and everything to pay bills each week.

That struggle and being so frugal has been what brought us to this place of peace where we can retire but still handle our expenses, a miracle still shiny to me after all those years of barely making ends meet.

It feels so good to feel good after despairing winter months…

ESCAPE

A feeling descends deep inside and a desire to escape it takes over. Restless, up then down, then up again, there it is following me. A hollow loneliness dogging me since childhood is my guess. When ‘family’ no longer was family yet it’s all I had. I lived with them, those I loved but became afraid of.

Since connecting with my internal being, this sharp loneliness has not visited until yesterday. Repeatedly going out to the garage in the hopes that Samuel’s company or words might relieve it, not wanting help, but seeking it anyway. The feeling remained until finally realizing I cannot escape it. I must feel it.

Sitting on the front porch longer than two seconds, the wiser softer voice said, stay. Stay, feel, and breathe. When this loneliness comes, with it comes bad feelings imploding into the hollowness; bad grandmother, bad mother, bad everything.

It is an avalanche difficult to stop, like a tsunami it comes in waves, gentler than before, but there it is. Needing companionship yet it is my own being that needs to be with me. Another being cannot relieve this emptiness.

Only being in me can.

SEVERE DAMAGE from Childhood Sexual CRIMES

When friends let you down, and there’s no origin family safe to interact with, and of course as a mother burdening my sons isn’t an option, there is only Samuel. The feelings arising from this stark realization brings tears, over and over, every day.

When my own internal being is still so very lost, the loneliness of the truth of my existence opens a hole to the floor of my soul. Though recovery brings more strength, this new knowledge of how much damage done to me in childhood hurts as if the wound bleeds fresh again.

But that is how it is… stages. Stages of grief, of what’s stolen when brothers use a little sister as a sex doll, what’s lost when other so-called members of ‘family’ look by and do nothing. Worse, are life-long friends with the criminals who attacked me. Maybe as teen-age boys they weren’t criminals, yet the attacks upon me were.

My lost interior scrapes for connection with others finding none. How could it? The two closest women even known in my life besides a sister-in-law on Samuel’s side have died, and one living friend closer than the women I’m able to be with in person? I’ve never met her, we are pen pals.

I want more. I want tea with her, and outings with fun, laughter, and hugs. The stricken rift at age 8 when a beloved brother raped me, (still repressed due to the violence of it), then the next one, and the next one, and the next… ravaged all hope of fully loving and trusting another. But there are a rare few, gone now, except one.

CHAOS or PEACE?

Echoes of loneliness once filling my life strum through my being like the plucking of a harp. Christmas music playing softly while rocking by the fire brings me to decades past when my sons were little. Loneliness seared through me along with blood in my veins as if afire cutting from the inside out with hot molten pointed daggers, my chest agonizingly hollow and empty.

Always looking to escape that pain, when, like Alice, the answers lay in my own back yard, in my own internal world yet unknown or explored. If not even connected within, if not allowed to due to the family’s resistance to acknowledge me and what they’d done, how would I learn to know myself, be in myself, or accept all that I was or could be?

When all that I was is denied?

When all that I could have been was shattered?

When who I was is not who I am now, or will ever be?

Chaos, uncertainty, and a constant thrumming anxiety shadowed me everywhere, even in the quietest moments threats lurk. There was no escape. To this day in my most peaceful reveries there exists this edge that one of my childhood monsters will jump out and scream, loving to scare me, loving to hate me even though long dead.

Yet… my persistence for peace, my willingness to learn discipline, and to know myself in all the dark corners, and all my depths- that is what and who sustains me.

Universal Unity

The aloneness felt now is not the one haunting most of my life like a double edged sword, a searing loneliness to run from. This aloneness is to sit with, explore, and accept in its entirety. Because we are born on the path from womb to air on our own, and leave this world on our own.

It seems so very odd at times, this craving for less stimulation or fakeness found in so many people, choosing instead the bluebirds, the swaying meadow grasses, and other creatures living under mother’s hand.

Then, the realization that we all make choices about our lives, though mine didn’t begin until recently, the freedom to make my own. Cages of the past confined me, but the door of the cage began to open and daringly my being began to slip free.

My choices. Not what you think I should do, or more so, my critic always yammering about abnormality and get your ass moving and doing something other what you are doing. Choices that move me towards a peaceful life looking at myself with new eyes that see a being as normal as you and everybody else.

That is a miracle for someone who believed she had no right to be here, that she was a ‘fluke of the universe.’ I am the universe, and so are you.

SPRINGTIME MANIA

That feeling of being different digs in oppressing my ability to enjoy the coming of spring. Spring itself is causing this upheaval, interfering with sleep as a manic brain swirls when hitting the pillow causing leaps of ecstasy but landing hard going under without resurfacing well.

Working daily to keep my hat on, bringing it down a notch, doesn’t always work towards good sleep. Thoughts still sometimes race making me wonder what kind of mental ailment might yet overtake me in this life-time.

The physical deterioration of my body due to age is enough to handle, but PTSD always lived with since age 8 worsened as years went by. An older body cannot take the hits of adrenaline and cortisol that daily occurrences cause- simple surprises like Samuel appearing in the hallway or a leaf blowing by while walking. My body reacts as if in danger though none is there.

It is hard, that feeling of ‘differentness.’ During the pandemic, though scared until the Governor talked daily about what he’d do, then doing it, bringing a new sense of security, the days became the best ever. Now the rest of the world knows what my life has always been like; solitary, lonely, and alone.

Yes, I have a partner, but it doesn’t matter. You can be with people and still be lonely. Because others don’t know unless they have been through something similar.

Waking after a bad night where yet again a sleep aid was needed, my head drops down while explaining to Samuel, or trying to, “You don’t know how hard it is.”

Tears fall. “If something happened to you, I couldn’t stay in this house one night,” I said.

The night before it occurred to me that I could not, nor didn’t have to do what Samuel always said was the wise choice if one of us were to die first. Stay in the house at least a year before deciding what to do with it.

When parents die, in this case both of our mother’s years ago, (our fathers have been out of the picture- mine through death when I was a child- his out of divorce and ambivalence), then you begin to think about dying because you are next in line.

But I’m not Samuel. He does not deal with PTSD, nor does he understand its challenges. Of course he could easily live here alone because he’s not scared. What he said made sense, don’t make any rash decisions. So I believed that’s what I had to do in the case of his dying first. But in the middle of the night when awake every little noise scares me even with him right there next to me. No way could staying here occur without him. Tears fall yet again when explaining this to him.

“I couldn’t stay. The thought of staying terrifies me. And that doesn’t make me weak. Comparing myself to my friends makes me feel weak because several have no problem being alone. But I am not weak. In many ways I’m stronger,” I said.

Bringing these real fears out made me cry, made my feelings real and valid. Making the decision to honor who I really am, what I really deal with, and do what is the safest and most loving for myself is a huge leap of growth quite miraculous. And it helps in those dark scary moments to remember that somewhere deep inside myself is a rock, a strong secure rock to hold on to and guide me.

Friend Within

When people go back to their usual daily socializing, whether parties, work, or just hanging out, feelings of being a misfit or outcast will take hold once again. Oddly, this past year made me feel like one of a whole, as everybody had to stay away from everybody, much how my life already had been erected.

When severely traumatized as a child by those who you trust and love, it leaves in its wake a belief that no one can be trusted. What evil are they up to?

Those beliefs haven’t wavered. The only way to stay safe is not to interact with evil others. OK, maybe not evil, yet people are capable of evil… all of us. This I know.

Over the years my loneliness drove me to seek some connections, maybe not the best or most healthy ones, but at least something to hold on to and keep. While at the same time learning boundaries, even with those called friends. Because anyone will take advantage of you if you let them.

And I was taught to be ever willing to be your doormat. When silenced over such horrific trauma, I learnt I didn’t matter; not my needs, wants, or hopes. Yet I persisted to meet all of those, and it has taken decades to begin to fulfill them.

But becoming a gregarious people person is not going to happen. What will happen is much of same. While others begin to take up their past lives interacting daily, my life still remains quite solitary. You could say lonely, but no, most of the time, no.

The relationships I have deepen and grow as I do. And you don’t need crowds of friends. One or two will do. And mostly the need is found home right inside me. That is where the best friendship lay. Cultivating that has begun to fill me where once only ragged tatters blew.