Muchness and Light

Scratchin' and survivin'.... Hangin' in and jivin'.

I wrote my last blog post four days before an unexpected first date.

That was eight months ago.

I have been crafting this post for weeks or longer, debating and processing what I wanted to say and what the implications were for me and others. I have thought about who would see this—those loyal readers who’ve been with me from the very beginning, the new friends I have picked up in the 10 years since I started writing again, the people who were removed from my life by their own accord or by mine, those who I know still lurk from time to time for whatever reasons.

Like so many others, I met him online. In the aftermath of my last breakup, I spent some time with some of my girls and debriefed, both before and after Achilles’ tendon surgery. I wanted to have some fun and see what the dating landscape might look like, for whenever I decided I was ready to spend time with another man. I needed to heal, both physically and emotionally. I was still working and raising two young men and in the middle of grad school.

But there was this smile, this tilt of the head that intrigued me. It was simply lovely. Candidly bashful but brazenly joyful and mischievous. Real, complicated emotion captured at just the right angle. Just the right moment.

We realized quickly we had mutual friends, people I’d gone to high school with in Alabama in the late 80s. Similar sense of humor. Incessant, funny, deep, honest conversation started immediately.

The day after I wrote my last blog post.

I was still in a splint and on a blue knee scooter with a basket, but we both wanted to meet. Soon.

That was eight months ago.

Neither of us could have foreseen this, though I suppose no one ever does. But our respective breakups happened almost simultaneously. There was no intention of becoming really involved with this man, and I know he had no intention of jumping into another relationship.

Woobiee. My manister. He’s warm and fuzzy and comfortable. He is strong and supportive. He is present and mindful and considerate. He has done his work—really, with a professional!—and he is wholly encouraging of my continuing my work. He is brilliant and funny and caring. He is gregarious and generous. He is complicated and open and honest even when it’s difficult for him or for me. He is respectful of my boundaries, and I am encouraged by his words and his actions to defend them when necessary, without fear of recrimination.

He did what I asked him to do—which is the same thing I asked of myself—to be open to the possibility, truly willing to accept the consequence of each other, good or bad.

That was eight months ago.

I could gush ad infinitum about his qualities, and I share those words with him regularly. That’s not what this is about.

Muchness and Light was born out of my need to understand myself and to change. Ten years ago, I was unhappy and unhealthy and restless. I didn’t understand that my midlife crisis was beginning. To look back from the position of my life now, it’s startling to see the changes. I don’t know how 2010 Stephanie would feel about 2020 Stephanie and if she would have made the same choices, if she’d known what changes were coming.

Whatever intention I had then, I have achieved only a modicum of success by those standards. I did some writing. I saw some bands. I did a lot of therapy. I have been in and out of a string of relationships that became increasingly nuanced in their unhealthiness.

Whatever I hoped or planned for in 2010 and in the subsequent few years didn’t materialize in the ways I’d intended.

What I got was even better.

I have gotten two sons almost to adulthood. I have a close-knit core of friends who love me, and whom I adore, even when we can’t be together. I am six hours away from finishing my third college degree. I work at a job that I love, and I intend to add part-time teaching to my schedule as soon as graduate school is finished. I am in a relationship that is healthier and more secure than I have ever experienced.

From the very beginning of this process, I have written about how it’s all about the journey and not the destination. I was always open to the possibility of having my path twisted and turned in unexpected directions. I often chose the road less traveled, just to have something new to see along the way.

Above all else, I wanted to live an adventure. It didn’t matter the details, so long as I could talk to my friends and hang with my kids and listen to music and eat some good food and spend time with a romantic partner who offered reciprocity in care and honesty. Nothing ever has to be grand; I thrive on small moments strung together like colorful, random beads.

That journey took me in an unimaginable direction. When I started Muchness and Light, I desperately needed to hear my own voice. It was never public validation that I needed. Accolades and encouragement from others is always nice, but what I needed most was to know that I existed and had value. For a while, I searched for proof that I had value to others.

What I was really always looking for was the value I had to myself.

Over the last 10 years, I have struggled through the demise of my marriage, the financial and emotional aftermath of divorce, returning to college while working and raising two kids, health issues, and one unhealthy relationship after another. Sometimes I flailed and raged against the difficulty and the unfairness of it all, but I never stopped moving forward. Not once.

I still have days that I struggle. Life continues, and my journey is ongoing.

But I am content. Most days, I’m happy. Some days are darker than most. But I am generally content in my life. I am still defiant in being exactly who I am, but it’s no longer in reaction to other people or their bullshit. I am no longer screaming to hearing my own echo, just to know I exist.

Woobiee has admonished me from the beginning to be present, to avoid comparing the past to the present or looking too far outside the immediate moment. As I’ve discussed before, creating expectation spawns the possibility of disappointment, and I still believe that to be true. But expending significant energy on extensive emotional contingency plans is exhausting, and Woobiee makes it safe for me to relax and enjoy myself. He does not make me happy—that’s wholly on me—but he supports and encourages my happiness to the best of his ability, with as much effort as I expend in supporting and encouraging his.

Most days, I am centered and Self-led. I am integrated and whole, better able to handle stressors and insecurities. Not perfect, but better. Self-aware and Self-actualized and Self-controlled.

One of the things I have struggled with is how to handle Muchness and Light.

This blog has been a huge part of my journey, though admittedly decreasingly so over the past couple of years. As my work and school took a different direction, I turned to this outlet less and less. I am no less- Self-analytical—perhaps even more so—but I can hash out those deep explorations with an audience of one or two who know me intimately; I no longer need to hear myself to know I exist.

 I am a Real Girl.

So I have decided to put this on hold indefinitely. I will likely leave something up for a while, at least until I can get my files downloaded and park my domain names and figure out what I want to leave publicly available. For a while, I felt as if I were letting down 2010 Stephanie and 2013 Stephanie and any number of internal parts and iterations that have depended on this medium to be heard.

But I realized they don’t need that anymore, either. Muchness and Light was an invaluable tool, and it helped me to find the voice I lost over the years. It helped me learn to listen to myself and to advocate for myself, even and especially when there is no one else who will advocate for me. The support is always nice, but it’s ultimately Me who is responsible for Me, no matter when or where I am.

I wanted a life with no regrets. That’s impossible to achieve, really. To be wholly human is to be flawed; it is how we react to the consequences of our flaws that defines us.

But to be comfortable in my own skin is blessing. It is a merciful gift that I have given to myself. All I could tell my earlier Selfs is that it gets better, to just keep going.

I intend to still be going for a while, just not this direction.

Thank you to everyone who has encouraged me and supported me and challenged me. You have been an integral part of my journey. Some of you always will be; some of you may never have a place in my life again, nor mine in yours.

Wherever your journey takes you, I wish you well. I wish you good health and peace and the exact amount of adventure that you need. I wish you contentment and love.

Just as importantly, I wish the same things for myself, and I intend to do everything in my power to make that happen.

I deserve no less.

- StephQJ 5/16/2020

 

 

Please learn to rule with your head, not your fist, and those lessons that you learn will carry on.

After Max was born, I remember reading some parenting book (though I can’t remember which) that said not only does your newborn not know that it’s not an extension of you, it doesn’t know that it’s not you.

It makes sense. The baby’s entire existence has been literally attached to you, dependent on you for everything. This doesn’t really change for months, especially during those first vital weeks, when your entire life feels like a never-ending game of Keep the Freakin’ Baby Alive!

But there does come a time when your child starts to articulate its own personality. It was fascinating to me (still is!) to see the ways Max and Tricky both looked and acted like me or DH—and the ways in which they didn’t. No matter if your child has your dimples and the other parent’s cheekbones, they will eventually exhibit certain characteristics that are totally uncharacteristic of either parent. It was always fascinating to me to discover my children.

While mine are both biologically mine, I suppose parents of children who aren’t born of the parents’ biology have their won type of discovery. The determination of Nature versus Nurture would be necessarily different, though just as fascinating. In no way do I mean to denigrate that experience; it is simply one I have never had.

Regardless of how your child comes into your world, you have dreams and hopes and expectations for it. Of course, this is at the heart of construct of gender and social stereotypes, and the later pressures that can come from such constructs, but it also inevitably shapes the ways in which you parent your child.

I try not to judge other parents. There are, of course, parenting choices that I wouldn’t and didn’t choose, and there are choices other parents make that I would never make for Max and Tricky. Sometimes I do find myself privately harsh when speaking of those choices. But, generally, I believe each parent must make those decisions for their own child, knowing them and loving them in ways only a parent can.

One of the things I was adamant about when the boys were young—and got great support from DH on this—was not forcing them to be any certain way or to have certain thoughts. I always tried to give them information and to help guide them toward the decisions that were best for them, even if those decisions were counter to the ones that I would make for them or for myself. Of course, sometimes I had to use a parental veto, and that could be met with disdain or anger or outright indignation.

When Rango and I were together, we argued regularly about how his approach to the boys was counter to everything they’d come to expect. He expected them to fall in line with whatever he said, and respect was code for obedience. I have encouraged them to express their emotions, even in an impassioned way, as long as that expression was respectful. I do not tolerate name-calling and insults, though they have certainly slipped into heated conversations at times, whether toward each other or toward me. I am just as adamant that they make the repair after they inflict damage.

As I have said for years, I am not raising children; I am raising young men. I expect Max and Tricky to be self-actualized adults, who are capable of self-sustenance and educated decisions about their own paths. I hope that they are happy, healthy men, who successfully navigate whatever path they choose, but also who can admit to their mistakes and apologize for their transgressions, whether toward someone else or toward themselves.

All I have ever been able to do is to try to give them the knowledge they need to make the right decision for themselves, in line with their own moral compass.

Max graduated high school this year, spent a month abroad as part of a cultural exchange, and started college as a sophomore. Together, we made the decision that he would live at home this year. In many ways, it has given us both time to adjust to his burgeoning adulthood.

If he were living in the dorms, I wouldn’t have any clue what he’s doing in his spare time. I wouldn’t know if he’s eating healthy or getting a reasonable amount of sleep. I wouldn’t know about his extra-curricular activities. And so, I’m trying to give him the freedom to explore his new world, with the encouragement and support to do so safely.

In so many ways, it’s like when he became a toddler, demanding to explore the world on his terms but running back to me for a hug and a soothing kiss when he got scared or hurt. Sometimes I have to let him fall and then offer him a hand to get back up. I cannot take the hits for him.

Mostly I hope that I have given him the tools to make smart choices about which hits to take.

No matter what, Max and Tricky aren’t me. No matter how much they can remind me of teenage DH at times, they aren’t their father. They are wonderfully intricate, self-contained psyches made up of the best and the worst of everything they’ve experienced, including their parents.

This is at the heart of the teenage rebellion—a rejection of what you have mastered in order to establish your own identity. It is painful for both teen and parent, and adolescents can be complete assholes, but they’re essentially overgrown toddlers playing dress-up with incredibly high stakes.

I have no doubt that I defied my parents’ expectations. I am positive I was, at times, a complete disappointment. I have no doubt that they would have chosen differently for me, if they’d had a say in it at all.

And, the fact is, many of my choices were (and continue to be) in conscious, direct rebellion to their wishes. I am independent and stubborn, often flouting their notions of an ideal child. But I was left to take care of myself from a young age, and I bypassed normal childhood almost entirely. I stopped seeking their permission and their approval long ago, and I feel absolutely no obligation to meet their expectations of me—nor do I care to psychologize what those expectations are now.

In reality, I hope Max and Tricky will eventually do the same. I don’t want them to be grown men who need or strive for validation from their mother. (I’m sure I’ve done enough to screw them up that that doesn’t need to be another topic for their own therapist’s office.) They shouldn’t need my approval to make choices for themselves or their children, though I will always be happy to offer advice and support and encouragement. I may snark about their choices privately, but I will have done my job (and kept the freakin’ baby alive!) if they are in a position to even make those choices.

I will always be, as I have always been, present for my sons. I will always ask them about their day and listen carefully to their response (even when it’s just a grunt). I will always encourage them to make healthy choices and then take them to the doctor when they need it. I will always give them information and ask for their opinions regarding decisions about them. I will always try to give them what they need, not what I think they should need.

In the end, they are living their lives. It’s not me making those decisions or walking their paths, any more than they can walk mine.

But I will continue to offer them a hand and a hug and a safe, reliable place to return, because that is what good parents do.

 

 

I will wait for it. I'm not too late for it.

Absolem used to lament my penchant for hyperanalysis, especially coupled with my impulsivity.

“You don’t think, and then you think, and then you overthink!”

I mean, he’s not wrong. I can be suddenly and passionately reactionary, then take the time to process and ponder, then spend even more time breaking down every movement and choice of words and determining where I could have changed course.

What I’ve learned through a year of therapy using the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model is that this is reflective of my parts—either “managers” or “firefighters” trying to protect some “exile” created from trauma—being blended with my Self. Some firefighter swoops in to act quickly, Self determines there likely could’ve been a better way, and some manager dwells on the minutiae for its own future reference.

In theory, it’s not necessarily a bad process to handle action and reflection. It gives those parts a chance to debrief and report back to Self. The problem comes when the parts effectively hijack Self, becoming blended, and the initial action is so reactionary as to be unhealthy.

And that hyperanalysis only ever stops if I am busy and distracted to the point of self-exhaustion.

Sometimes, though, it serves to let me evaluate a situation over time. In both my relationship with DH and later with Rango, our problems became so toxic to the relationship that things seemed insurmountable. But, in each case, I agreed to step back and take the time to move more slowly, to let us both reflect and reassess, to try to come toward the relationship and each other from a different perspective. In some ways, I should’ve broken up with Rango more than a year before I did. But giving us four months of separation, living apart, allowed for the time to try.

For me—hell, for anyone—ending a significant relationship is never easy. Once I’m attached to someone, it can take me a very long time to disentangle. This is part of having an anxious attachment style. So, when something happens that pushes me to feel vulnerable and emotionally injured (usually reminiscent of some past trauma), I can be quick to pull away, with every intention of ending the relationship. When I’ve had time to think about it, I’ll regret the suddenness of the separation, and then I’ll spend an inordinate amount of time in self-analysis, sometimes to the point of extreme self-recrimination.

I’ve spent the last year trying to learn to rewire my thinking, especially when it comes to how I react to emotionally-charged circumstances.

Taking the time to try to reconcile in those previous relationships made the eventual ending less painful. Choosing to end my 19-year marriage was hard as hell, make no mistake, but it was the right decision, in the end. While DH and I inflicted some serious damage on one another, I was eventually able to disengage. As painful as it was, I knew it was time and had no regrets about making the decision when I did. Similarly, taking the time to see if Rango and I could rebuild our relationship was absolutely the right choice, even if the result wasn’t what I’d hoped for. When that ended, I was sad for a time, but I also had zero question about whether it was really time to let go. Rango and Sass were dead, and I had no interest in holding onto that zombie.

Although my reasons for ending my relationship with Bumblebee were valid and healthy, I felt like the air had been sucked out of me. I have never missed someone as much as I missed him. While the reality of long-distance relationships is difficult to manage, there is no question that we love each other deeply. There’s no question that we have potential for a lasting, healthy, loving relationship like I’ve never experienced before. There’s also no question that the distance and the circumstance may be insurmountable.

But I have to try. I have to give this a chance to overcome the odds. Yes, it’s easier for me to move forward if I know there is absolutely no going back. But he also loves me in ways I have never before experienced.

So, the parts and I had a long talk. Could we walk away now, cleanly and comfortably, or did we want more time to see?

Above all else in my life, I do not want regrets. I would rather fail miserably at an opportunity I took than to let an opportunity slip away. And if I have reason to second-guess my decisions, I will.

So, Bumblebee and I have come to the decision to try. More specifically, to wait. He needs time to deal with logistics in his life. I need time to make sure I’m as healthy and well-equipped to handle a relationship as possible. We have agreed to wait for the other to be ready, to keep talking and maintaining connection, but also to remove other expectations and the pressures that come with them.

There is a love that we don’t want to lose. Maybe that still happens, no matter what we do. But there is also the possibility that we are able to weather this storm, together, and beat our own odds.

And I’ve never known anyone so worth the risk.

 

 

And almost immediately I felt sorry, 'cause I didn't think this would happen again.

One of the things that inevitably comes up in dating is the topic of sex. Sometimes it comes quickly in the form of lewd flirting (sometimes leading to casual sexting). Sometimes it’s a more nuanced, philosophical discussion that may eventually lead to more intimate talk of pasts, of number of partners and STD testing. Maybe eventually to turn-ons and turn-offs.

But, inevitably, it comes.

There’s the unspoken rule of 3-5 dates. Depending on the attraction and the connection, that seems to be the idealized amount of time to wait before getting naked. Sometimes the first or second date seems right, if the conversation has been, as well. Every so often, it’s not about the talk at all—just the carnal need.

But sex is an accepted part of the equation. We are inherently physical, social beings. We need touch from others. We crave intimate connection—even for just a few moments, and not matter how emotionally avoidant we are.

“Why does everything have to be framed around sex?” a recent dating interest asked. “Why can’t people just be friends and then try to meet in those terms?”

He sounds wise, but he eventually asked me for a casual sexual relationship in lieu of emotional attachment. (I named him Ollivander, because he makes magic wands but turned out to be a douche.) His own fearful-avoidant tendencies keep him from maintaining emotional connection, and he has sublimated his desires into other work.

But that’s the thing about dating: we are all looking with the possibility of sex. Even those who wait for marriage have the hope that it comes eventually. That’s kind of the point.

For me, it’s so much more complicated. I have no conscious memory of not being sexualized. The molestation began at about the time long-term memories began to form. It is often tied up with what should be benign remembrances of lazy afternoons and family gatherings. But there are long stretches of years of average childhood that are permanently tainted by those events.

Just before I was ready to choose to be a sexually-active teen, I was raped by a date. I’ve discussed that aftermath at length, both here and privately. There’s no question that it altered my perceptions of myself and of sex in general. My next relationship was physically, emotionally, and sexually abusive. I stayed in it, because I didn’t know better. Love meant hurt, and there was no deeper wound to be found. Other, later relationships often involved withholding and degradation as punishment for my imperfections, especially emotional ones. I often spent months at a time in my long-term committed relationships being ignored and untouched, told it was because I was too needy or too loud or too demanding or too flawed in so many ways.

Over the last 5+ years of dating, I have met all kinds of men. Some were remarkable and fantastic, only to turn out to be incapable of maintaining the connection with me that they so adamantly claimed to want and need. Some were sweet but not right in any way but sexually. Some were just assholes.

But I have always been looking for the one who could maintain both physical and spiritual connection.

That doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. I hear from securely-attached, happily-married friends that it’s not. Sure, shit gets in the way, and there are ebbs and flows. Life happens. But a healthy couple is able to maintain their intimate relationship, no matter what seems to intervene.

Recently, I met a man. We hit it off immediately. It was intense and passionate, spiritual and deeply intimate. It was romantic and idyllic and powerful.

But after a whirlwind, it started to unravel. The first red flags began to wave when I realized he was drunk and driving. He’d made a viable excuse and rescheduled plans with me. Except he was elsewhere, inebriated, and I was yet again faced with a man who was using substance to instill distance between his feelings and mine.

“No,” I said. “This is not okay.”

I cut it off, hurt and angry. And then I found out he had a girlfriend of four months.

It all made sense. It was sickening and difficult. I never would’ve engaged him had I known—and he was well aware of that. I was not a consideration to anything but his twisted needs.

It was shocking, of course. It was fucked up, and the more I learned, the more fucked up it became. It was calculated and methodically manipulative.

But how the hell did I do this again? Hadn’t I had enough therapy to know better, to see better, to be better?

“But you saw it quicker and more clearly,” Queen Frostine comforted. “That’s good.”

Maybe. But how the hell did I get here again?

“You want to connect, in this way and this way and this way,” my therapist said. “Your system, some protector, is analyzing everyone, seeing what boxes they check. When all the boxes are checked, she’s done her due diligence. She steps out of the way.”

Of what? I thought. What other part is she protecting?

In the Internal Family Systems model, there are subparts of the personality that act is protectors. Managers manage, and firefighters come in to take care of shit. They’re doing the best they can to protect exiles, the emotional compilations that manifest in response to trauma.

That manager was protecting an exile: my sexuality.

Since my divorce, I have been in fucked up relationship after fucked up relationship. Bounder and Rango and Rex and Katniss and the list goes on. Most don’t have names at all. There are simply too many of them to readily remember at this point.

Every time, I was looking for intimacy. I was looking for redemption for past hurt. I have written extensively about what I want in a partner and a relationship, so my entire system is very, very aware of what I want and need.

Part of that redemption is, ultimately, for the sex. Yes, my body—hell, my entire being—has been a sexual object. But it is really the objectification of my vulnerability and my innocence that is the real crime. The simplistic compartmentalization of me into very basic terms reduced me to an almost inhuman state in their psyches. Sometimes in my own. In many ways, I internalized the same valuations of me and acted accordingly. If someone who said they cared about me saw me this way, that must be the truth of who I am.

I am overly analytical. I constantly observe and break down every detail of everything. I have a degree in multiperspectival, interdisciplinary interpretation. I spend inordinate amounts of time seeing how seemingly unrelated things are intertwined, peeling apart the meaning created by that relationship. People are especially a target of that analysis.The only time that stops is when I'm having great sex.

Once that protector sees the potential object of my affection as being what I want and need, she allows access to my sexuality. That exiled, traumatized aspect so desperately wants to be redeemed, to be loved in healthy ways, that she will preen until she’s a twisted, beautiful, origami delight.

They seemed safe, but they weren’t safe, and I had no way to know, because my protector was nowhere to be found.

For years, I operated from the place of fuck or be fucked. If I could control it, I had the power, and no one could hurt that part of me again.

But what I’m realizing is that even now, four decades after it started, I am still powerless. I am rarely Self-led or centered in regard to sex. I am perpetually trying to find validation, even when there isn’t love. I don’t inherently believe love is necessary for great or even good sex. I do believe sex is better when it is the manifestation and expression of commitment and trust and respect.

I just don’t know how often I’ve actually experienced that.

It’s foundationally unsettling to realize I am so deeply damaged. Yes, it’s impossible to get to mid-life without some kind of hurt and damage. I’m often proud of my scars, knowing what I’ve survived.

But I also realize that I may never be okay. I may never be healthy or normal. It is impossible for me not to see myself and my life through a libidinous lens. It is hard-wired into me, quite literally. And sex is a vital part of life and love.

How am I ever supposed to repair this hurt, heal these wounds, when I am perpetually tearing myself open from the inside? How will I ever be able to do such work outside of a relationship, when the bounds of sexual intimacy necessarily include another person?

This is the reality of sexual abuse. It lasts far, far longer than the act itself. With and without therapy, it changes the abused, alters how they see and respond to every single thing from that point forward.

I debated whether or not to post this. It’s a difficult read. It was difficult to write. But I started Muchness and Light both to give myself a voice and to let someone else, anyone else who needed it, know that they were not alone.

You, reading this, who needs to hear these words: you are not alone. I feel your pain. It’s a terrible shared connection, but it is real. Someone else gets it; I get it. You are strong and you are beautiful and you are loved.

We will find a way together.

 

 

Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon.

During and after my break-ups of recent years, I have lamented why I wasn’t worth their fight. There is a lot of good about me, so why wasn’t it good enough? Was there something inherently broken, or was there something about me that was so bad that it outweighed the good?

In part 2 of this series, I wrote about what I find valuable in a partner. In part 1, I wrote about what I find to be valuable about myself. In hindsight, I do believe that the men I’ve loved found me inherently valuable. Whether or not they valued themselves, I’m not even sure I know, though their actions would indicate they valued themselves above all others.

But one of the things I realized recently is that we didn’t necessarily value the same things in a relationship. Shared interests and similar social and political leanings cannot sustain romantic interaction, if both parties aren’t looking for similar things in romance.

So what do I value in a relationship?

I value communication. It’s important for me to be in regular contact with the person I’m dating. It doesn’t have to be constant, though I fully admit that I am a very active texter, emailer, and caller. I will think of something that I want to share with that person, and I’ll send it before considering any ramifications. I don’t expect that there will always be an immediate reply, but it is important to me to get a response eventually. Ongoing conversation builds rapport, expresses affection in subtle ways, and strengthens bonds. But it’s just as important to me that expectations—of plans, of emotions, etc.—be shared. Far too often, I have inferred one thing to be true, only to be met with irritation that my interpretation was not at all what the other person intended.

I value reliability. Interaction doesn’t have to be constant, though it does have to be regular. Just as importantly, I have to be able to rely on the person to be there. Both because it’s just downright irritating when people don’t do what they say they’re going to do and because I have this deep-seated fear of abandonment, I need my partner to show up. I need them to show up when they say they’re going to, but also when they should. Dismissing important events or forgetting to do the logistical things that you’ve promised to do is an indicator that something in the relationship isn’t worth your time and effort. If you tell me you’re going to do something, show up and do it.  

I value kinesis. I spent a lot of time during my marriage and later in my relationship with Rango sitting around and waiting. I was waiting for them to get up on a weekend or waiting for them to get home from working late again or waiting for them to finish what they were doing to join me (or me and the boys) to do whatever. I stagnated in my marriage, and I became stagnant again during that subsequent relationship. It’s not that I can’t just sit and chill sometimes, but I enjoy going for walks at the park or going to see a concert or a show at a museum. But I also value emotional kinesis. I need movement forward. Not necessarily toward a goal of cohabitation or marriage [in part because I don’t know that I’ll ever be willing to do either of those again!], but at least toward shared future. Happily ever after shouldn’t mean stopping at some self-imposed pinnacle and hoping the balance of my life stays exactly the same.

I value family. My boys are a huge focus of my life, and that’s not changing any time soon. My extended family is important to me, and my girlfriends are the sisters I never had. Whomever becomes a part of my life becomes a part of that. It’s vital that we forge our own sense of family, as well, and that necessarily includes my babies.

I value safety. Yes, physical safety is a big deal. I was in one physically abusive relationship and for far, far longer than I like to admit. But emotional safety, for me and for my partner, is just as important. The relationship needs to be a safe space to share feelings and thoughts and ideas, without recrimination. Far too often, I have felt punished by my partner for expressing emotions he didn’t like. In healthy love, there’s no tolerance for stonewalling or emotional abuse.

I value passion. Look, physical passion may well dwindle after that ubiquitous honeymoon phase, but the loss of physical intimacy is the death knell for a relationship. I know; I’ve been there twice. Sex is natural (and wonderful and fun) and is a healthy expression of emotion and trust between two people. For me, a loving relationship will necessarily be emotionally and physically intimate.

I can write about what I want or need, what’s important to me in a relationship. But until I’m actually in a relationship again, I have no way to put these things into practice. Queen Frostine commented that my break-up with Finn was probably the healthiest and most mature I’d ever had. I do believe that I’m capable of clearly discerning when something is not working for me, of giving it time to grow rather than starting from a place of intense, immediate emotion, and of evaluating clearly whether or not the other person may be a healthy, cohesive match for me.

So I’m going to try dating again. At least theoretically, I’m open to the possibility.

But I’m also going to keep spending more time doing the things that are fulfilling to me, even if I don’t have a partner to join me. I’ve done a couple of 5Ks this year. I joined a fantastic philosophy discussion group that meets monthly. I’ve started volunteering.

If I meet someone who wants to join me for some things, I’m willing to let someone into that space. But I’m also keeping that space well-defined. It has taken me a very long time to realize that I’m worth my own effort, and I’m not willing to let that stagnate again.

 

 

But I don't need a man who doesn't understand the difference separating need and trust.

“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” This is not the first time I’ve mulled over that famous Warren Buffett quote. When I first started grappling with defining my own value and self-worth, I examined Buffett in relation to the Dutch poet Lucebert, who wrote, “All things of value are defenseless.”

The price any person is willing to pay to make themselves truly defensible, whether to themselves or to others, is at the core of their value.  Sometimes we do stupid things that tear that down, that devalue us in the eyes of others or in our own mind's eye.  Sometimes we do things inadvertently that drive up our value, and perhaps those acts are somewhat less important when we aren't really striving or sacrificing to make them happen. 

I think it's the acts and actions we require of ourselves to actively defend ourselves that make us valuable, that make us worthwhile.  And when those acts are performed in the face of adversity, especially self-adversity, they can often be those most costly while offering us the most to gain. 

Value is a manifestation of worth, which is some mystical, magical ratio of cost to benefit. But for something to even have a cost—or a benefit—it has to have been traded. It has to have been utilized in a market, in an exchange.

It has to have been subject to experience.

Relationships are all about negotiating each partner’s needs and wants. It feels kind of seedy to think of it as a debit-and-credit system, but it is a similar give-and-take. In healthy relationships, both partners do a good job of expressing their own needs, of fulfilling what they can for themselves, and of being able to rely on their significant other to be willing to fill in any gaps that they can. It’s delicately symbiotic. If any partner consistently takes too much or gives too little, it quickly shifts to parasitic, and one or both partners suffer as the relationship dies.

What is exchanged has both a cost and a benefit, which is totally subjective to each party to the exchange. That mystical, magical ratio is evaluated—sometimes over a long period of time, sometimes instantaneously—and out pops the worth for the evaluator.

When writing before about my own relationship goals—in early 2013 just before I met Bounder and again in 2014 just before I met Rango—the things I could articulate as wants and needs were themselves manifestations of more basic qualities of a person. I still agree with most of those desires, but I can see how those laundry lists are driven by providing relief from past experience. I cherry-picked moments from different relationships and looked for someone who could engage me in ways that were reminiscent of my past.

Now, though, I understand that the actions are expressions of traits I value in a romantic partner, and the worth I assign is based on my own lifetime of experiences, of gains and losses, and how I evaluate the costs and benefits of previous relationships. At the heart of each of those listed wishes, are there more basic attributes that I would value, regardless of the man who possesses them?

I value intelligence. Maybe it’s snobbish of me, but I just can’t date a stupid guy. It’s important to me to be able to engage in thoughtful conversation with my partner on a variety of topics both sacred and profane, and I don’t have the patience to have to define my vocabulary mid-conversation. I don’t expect someone else to know everything about the topics I do, nor would I want to know everything they know. But I thrive exchange of ideas, and that necessitates a certain intelligence.

I value patience. I am incredibly impatient. Motherhood has taught me a million ongoing lessons in patience, but I am still prone to jump headfirst into a moment without significant deliberate thought. (That tends to come after the fact, historically with self-recrimination.) It’s important for me to be with a partner who can remind me to slow down, who is willing to wade through my thought process to whatever realization I eventually come to. Sometimes I need the reminder to stay on task, in the moment.

I value expressive affection. In the realm of Love Languages, I have equal needs for quality conversation and physical touch. I both need to touch and to be touched. But there has to be emotion beneath the skin-to-skin contact. Hand-holding and hugs and random kisses are a physical manifestation of care and concern. I need to hear that I matter and why. Acts of service and gifts are nice, but they mean very little to me if they’re incongruous with words. For some people, outward expressions are difficult. For me, they are a necessity.

I value passion. Yes, sexual passion is incredibly important to me, but I also value a general passion for life. I want a partner who is passionate about his beliefs and his work, who combines them into a personal purpose. I love what I do, and it’s saddening when I meet people who don’t enjoy the work that consumes a third or more of their life.

I value compassion. Whether it’s toward me or toward themselves or toward the world at large, I find it valuable when my partner can feel and express empathy.

I value availability. Because I have a lengthy history with emotionally-avoidant men, I have been stood up, ignored, and dismissed more times than I care to remember. There are the logistics of availability, meaning our schedules have to match relatively well to be able to see one another. But emotional availability—a willingness and ability to be emotionally open and vulnerable—seems harder to come by. By this time of middle-aged dating, it’s virtually impossible to meet someone who doesn’t have some kind of damage. But I’m no longer willing to be trapped by someone else’s defenses.

I value bravery. Life is hard. Bad stuff happens. Sometimes it’s enough to make you want to shut down and crawl back under the covers until the world calms down. Everyone is afraid of hurt and failure and rejection. But there is strength in acknowledging the vulnerability that comes with fear and stepping forward anyway. I know the failures and the successes that come from facing your fears, and I cannot stomach another man who refuses to accept his own challenges.

Per our usual, Pandy and I have talked at length about my ideas of value. She asked me to turn the tables and think about what I’d want a partner to value in me.

“I don’t think it matters,” I told her.

I know what I value in myself, and that value comes from having paid a cost to become the person I am today. I also know what I value in someone else because of those same costs. I spent a lot of time getting my garden to grow. I weeded out the thorns, and now I’m culling the dead growth that could threaten to choke out my prize roses.

Someone else will have paid their own costs, had their own experiences before they come into my life. How they assess my worth to them will be based on their perceptions of their own needs and wants, their own successes and failures. Maybe my curiosity and quick smile mean more than my vocabulary. Maybe they place more value on my punctuality and dependability than on my tendency toward effusive, written expressions of emotion.

I’ve come to realize there’s something else that has its own set of values: the relationship itself. And what is valuable in one partner or another may not be at all what’s valuable in a relationship.

I’ll explore that topic in my next post.

This is the second in a three-part series. For the first post, please click here.

 

 

Burn up a basement full of demons. Realize you're a slave to your mind. Break free.

A couple of weeks ago, in her perpetually optimistic way, Goldilocks suggested I give Finn a call.

“No. Absolutely not,” I responded.

“But why?” she pressed. “You guys got along so well. Maybe his schedule has eased—”

“No.”

When I told Pandy about the suggestion, she replied that she would be in agreement with Goldilocks.

But here’s the thing:

 As I see it, one of two things happened. Either I did have significant personal value to Finn, and he wasn’t able to communicate that or to make time for it (for me), or I wasn’t worth to him what he had previously indicated, and he wasn’t able to communicate that and bow out respectfully. Either way, he all but stopped reaching out to me. Even when I questioned whether his schedule would allow time for dating me, he assured me it did. But then it didn’t, given his line of work and the time of year. Rather than say, “Hey, I’m really sorry this is the exact thing I assured you it wouldn’t be,” he just let it drop until I made the call to see other people. Although I said I had no intention of cutting him off from contact and would still like to hear from him, there was nothing from him. After a month of radio silence, I did indeed add him to the ever-growing list of IGNORE THIS ASSHAT contacts in my phone and put him on permanent DND.

This was wholly indicative of much of my dating life the last five years. Sure, potential relationships dwindle, and other things are more important sometimes. Sometimes people realize they aren’t as interested as they’d initially believed. I’ve been on both sides of that. I’ve had dating plans hijacked by daily logistics.

And I admit to having ghosted on people, though never anyone I’d been dating for several weeks, as Finn and I had.

I find it to be cowardly behavior, and I’m tired of dating cowardly lions.

There’s no justification for my own cowardly action at times. Reasons, not excuses. Yes, it’s hard to say to someone that you’re just not feeling it, especially when you know first-hand the feeling of rejection that comes on the other side of that exchange.

But to say to someone that they are important, that they matter, that you enjoy your time with them and want more—with only them—and to then just let it dwindle is cowardly. That person must either keep putting up with feeling like an unimportant option because of your actions, or the other person must be brave enough to admit that their worth is higher than the value of your passive-aggressive rejection and make the call to end it.

That’s exactly what I did. Given my history of holding onto decaying relationships far past their natural expiration, especially to the detriment of my self-worth, it was strange to make the decision and carry through with it. It was uncomfortable as hell and felt a little arrogant to say to someone that their actions were unacceptable and to stop accepting them.

Breaking that cycle, not doing things the way I always have and letting the relationship drag on ad nauseum, is part of my redemption of my past. I can’t control what other people do. I have some control over what I feel about it. But I have complete control over how I react to their actions.

Part of the pathology of anxious attachment style is a repetition of the past, of constantly striving for some kind of cosmic do-over in which it eventually doesn’t turn out the same way it always has. Another part of the pathology is being attracted to emotionally-unavailable men—especially those who want desperately to believe that they are available and thus initially convince me that they are. But if I am always doing the same thing, so are they.

I’m by no means the first woman to be hurt by those men, and I likely won’t be the last. And here’s where I am trepidatious of my dating future. I don’t know what it will take for me to believe that someone else is telling me the truth—not some hopeful aspiration, but honest truth—that they 1) are willing and able to engage in a healthy relationship and 2) can maintain that healthy relationship when things get complicated and difficult, even if the relationship has to come to an end.

I am more jaded now than I was five years ago, and that’s part of the reason I’m choosing not to date right now. It’s not fear of rejection or disillusionment with love or men in general. I don’t want my jaded perceptions to establish expectations of others before I’ve given them an opportunity to truly engage me. I don’t want to go into a date with a half-hearted, cynical view, because it would never give that other person a fair shot at getting past my other defenses.

I get that I tend to dive inward deeper than most people are ever willing to go. My expectations of my own self-discovery and -exploration are so high that it would be unreasonable to expect that same of anyone else. But dammit! It irritates the hell out of me when people are too afraid to try to move past their pasts, to be too afraid to confront their own failings and shortcomings and to try to learn from it.

It’s hard as hell to admit that you have a role in the demise of your relationships. In my experience, it is never only one partner’s fault. Ever. No matter the circumstances. But to choose to hide your eyes and cover your ears to avoid your own truths, especially when you know it will mean you’ll continue to make the same mistakes over and over, hurting other people in the process, is utterly nonsensical to me.

Right now, I am reticent to believe that I will ever meet that man, who is brave enough to choke down his fear and really face himself, especially if it means having a clearer view of me. Right now, I’m not sure I would even recognize him. I don’t know that I could see past my own jaded expectations to see someone else clearly, and I’d likely end up right back in that same cycle of infatuation and rejection and hurt.

So I’m taking the time change my own views, which includes evaluating my own worth only through my own lens. I can’t adequately gauge my value by someone else’s metric. It’s hard. Sometimes it’s a little lonely.

But there is also freedom from expectation, of my self or of someone else, and so there is hope that I will be able to do it all differently, someday.

 

 

 

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How silent treatment is used as a defence - Andrea Harrn Counselling Services

And when the night is cloudy, there is still a light that shines on me.

About a year ago, I was taking a class on women’s religious memoirs. While the women and their journeys were very different, I kept noticing a sometimes-subtle, secondary theme of self-compassion in each text. Mentions of the female Buddha Tara, a sublime personification of compassion and wisdom in female form, led me down a path toward the White Tara, which can be one of seven of the 21 primary emanations of Tara, representing the enlightened activity of pacifying. Sometimes this can be pacifying limitations of the physical body and overcoming illness and avoiding an untimely death. Sometimes it can be pacifying fears to overcome obstacles in a path to success or enlightenment.

In my readings, application of the teachings of the White Tara included applying those concepts to the self, especially for women, who seem more likely than male adherents to turn to Tara. I started to look online for “‘White Tara’ +self-compassion” and eventually stumbled across a book, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha, by Tara Branch. (See how that path goes along?) Writing from her own intersectional experience as a Buddhist and a clinical psychologist, Branch offers Radical Acceptance as a spiritually-healthy alternative to the “trance of unworthiness” that we tend to fall into when faced with unhealthy or unreasonable expectations and demands of society, family, and ourselves. She analogizes Radical Acceptance as a bird, which can only fly with both of its wings--in this case, clear seeing (mindfulness) and compassion.

She also posits that the Adam and Eve story is at the heart of much of Western dissatisfaction. Even if it’s not part of your chosen religion or mythos, she asserts, the idea--of punishing the self to redeem your own sins (and thereby the Original Sin) in order to be returned into God’s paradisiacal garden--so deeply permeates Western culture that it’s almost impossible to escape its influence. People are assumed to be inherently flawed, to be in need of repair and redemption for sins that may not even have been theirs to begin with. By this measure, our suffering stems from the conflict between the ideal of paradise and the manifestations of our intrinsic unworthiness, and we are caught in a constant cycle of struggling to redeem ourselves.

Of course I started to think about this in terms of my own struggles. It’s no surprise that I have consistently gone back to emotionally- and logistically-unavailable men. Subconsciously, I am always hoping the next one will do what the others couldn’t--love me no matter what, thereby alleviating the deep-seated fear of emotional abandonment that stems from my childhood.

Not only do those unavailable men never fulfill my hope for redemption, that’s a wholly unfair amount of pressure and expectation for me to put on anyone else. So if they can’t make up for what was done to me in the past, and if the people who traumatized me to begin with can’t undo what they did and are unlikely to ever make any kind of real amends for their transgressions (see that sin thing happening again?), then how exactly am I supposed to get over my fears?

Where is redemption for me, for my inner child? What does redemption even mean for me?

Those things happened. I can’t escape the reality of having been sexually or physically or emotionally abused. While I have finally come to understand that they weren’t my fault, that I didn’t choose to be a sexualized object or to find the man I loved had moved his heart a million miles away from my own and blamed me for it, I do have culpability in how I responded to the trauma. Especially within the context of adult romantic relationships, I could be difficult and demanding, so desperate not to feel what I was feeling as a result of my insecurities coming into contact with theirs. I had moments of utter tantrum and a fatalistic view that if that relationship in that moment couldn’t be fixed in such a way that I felt secure, then I must be unlovable and undeserving of anything different or more.

But that’s just not true, either.

Yes, my insecurities are strong and numerous. So were theirs. That’s just a reality of lives experienced into established adulthood. Sometimes bad shit has happened, and we all have developed in response to those stimuli.

But the redemption comes not from meeting someone who can not do the stupid shit that undermines my tenuously-reintegrating psyche. It comes from my not making the same choices, not having the same limited emotional responses to similar stimuli.

I met Finn a few weeks ago and really liked him from the beginning. There’s a lot about him that’s truly wonderful, and it was exciting to see the possibility of something again. It was reassuring to find that I was attractive to someone else, both physically and psychologically.

But Finn’s schedule and my schedule don’t mesh. He works long hours on a schedule that’s very different than my own. Our time together had dwindled considerably. While I loved spending time with him, to date someone requires actual interpersonal engagement within a certain physical proximity. Logistical conflicts made seeing each other very difficult, and I made the decision to be open to other possibilities.

Reliability and consistency are very important for me. I am not comfortable with not knowing when I’ll see my romantic partner again. Rango accused me many times of wanting him “up [my] ass 24/7,” which was actually not the case at all. What I did want was to know that I was a priority--not the only priority--and that I would get concerted care and attention from him. I needed reliably consistent and consistently reliable. I needed to know that he would set aside time to show up and would actually show up when he said he was going to.

I didn’t take it as a personal affront with Finn. Whereas I might have previously seen his inability to spend time with me as a rejection of me outright, this wasn’t. His work schedule is hectic. He tried to make time for me, because he liked me and wanted to spend that time with me. He just wasn’t able to do it at times when I was also available.

I don’t feel abandoned by him. It’s unfortunate that we couldn’t make our schedules work. I really, really like him, and I was looking forward to exploring more with him. I miss him a little bit. I’ve had a few moments where I felt a little sad that I don’t have time with him to look forward to. But I was constantly looking forward to time that wasn’t coming, that he couldn’t provide because his job is different than mine--not because he didn’t like me enough to want that time.

So I made the decision to do what was healthy for me. Rather than drag it out for weeks or months longer, hoping beyond hope that it would magically fall into place, I gave myself the freedom not to be bound by the emotions and unhealthy responses to them that would come from fighting futility. I didn’t have a tantrum. I made a Self-led decision and executed it without blame or recrimination--aimed neither at him nor at myself.

When the pangs do come, I take a moment and let them sit. Sometimes I’ll feel something and one sub-part will immediately chime in with her interpretation of what that emotion is and means.

“Oh, that’s irritation. That’s the beginning of angry, because he didn’t make time to show up to see you, and that means he wasn’t ever going to be able to love you like you need, and your needs aren’t unreasonable, and he’s an asshole for not seeing how wonderful you are--”

Shush.

Breathe.

“But--”

Shhhhhhh.

Yes, it might be irritation. It might be at him, or it might be at me, or it might be at the email I just got, or it might be at the scratchy tag on the inside of my shirt. It’s just an emotion, and it will pass almost as quickly as it came. There’s no need to turn the faucet on just to watch the water swirl. But you’re sweet to be concerned. You’re sweet to defend me and to protect me, and I love you for wanting to.

I try to be mindful of the emotions, to clearly see what they are, and to treat them compassionately, letting them exist without the endless overanalysis that always seems to end in judgment and recrimination. They are neither good nor bad; they simply are, and to let them just be is the healthiest way I can deal with them.

The same goes for the men I meet, and it goes for me, too. Certainly there are not nice people in the world, but someone else’s bumping up against my insecurities doesn’t necessarily make them a bad person. My even having or admitting to my own insecurities doesn’t make me a bad person. While I twistedly pride myself on being able to pick out the Fragile Cats quickly in a crowd, I can’t usually know how their issues will play with mine until we are engaging. Rather than hope beyond hope that an extreme avoidant will love me so much that it changes his attachment style--thereby helping me to change mine--it’s far healthier for me to work on myself and to politely disentangle from any relationship that seems very likely to be unhealthy for me.

The redemption comes not through someone else’s choices in how they love me but rather in my own choices of how I love myself.

It’s all still new. It’s an ongoing process, of course, and I won’t really know how I’ll respond to emotional stimuli until I am adequately stimulated. For now, there’s no agitation or anxiety, no desperation to quell an internal storm of fear or dissatisfaction or loneliness.

Today, I’m just aware, and I’m not beating myself up over it.

 

 

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5 Buddhist Teachings to Help us Become Better (& not Bitter) after a Breakup.

Everyone touts the amazing benefits of mindfulness - but it's not what we think it is, and we don't really know how it works

A million lights are dancing, and you are a shooting star.

As I wrote about a few weeks, I have been seeing someone new. I won’t wax poetic here; it’s simply too early to exalt him to the status of Blog Fodder, in and of himself. I hadn’t necessarily intended to get into a relationship—though maybe it’s still too early to even call it that—while also trying to work on my own stuff, much of which was highlighted and exacerbated by the ending of my relationship with Rango. But the fact is he presented as an opportunity worth exploring while I was beginning the process of self-reintegration.

Whether coincidental or due to some meaning I have assigned (or even thanks to that fickle bitch Fate), there are things about him that remind me strongly of Bounder. He is not another alcoholic, though he may well be overcoming a history as a dismissive-avoidant. He is not Bounder, however, and it is unfair of me to make direct comparisons. They are two different men, with different histories and stories, but there are moments that are striking, to say the least.

Because of this thing with Finn (so named because he is my huckleberry) and because of the end with Rango and because I sometimes pass him driving on the road between our houses, Bounder has been on my mind a lot. A lot a lot. It makes sense that he would be, but it set me off on a path of re-analysis and overthinking (again). I think I’ve dissected that relationship for the millionth time over the last few weeks, still looking for where exactly I went wrong. Because his shit is his shit—I can’t control how he acts or reacts or fails to act—all I can do is try to figure out what I screwed up. He told me numerous times that it wasn’t me, and I generally believe that, but I always dissect to the point of vivisection, flaying myself to a bloody, psychoanalyzed mess.

I do remember getting a text from him, a couple of days after we’d met. He said he was glad we could take things nice and slow. Except we didn’t. We started intensely, quickly, and that’s exactly how it continued. Within two hours of that text, I was making out with him in the parking lot of his office, a quick drive-by on my way home.

And that is where I failed him. Hurricane Sassafras was coming, no matter what he did. I didn’t really hear him and slow down. It wasn’t terribly caring on my part, no matter how unintentional the push was.

Finn also said he wanted to go slowly, I have tried to honor that. I have tried to dial back my impulses to forge full-steam into his world. There is something there worth exploring, and I don’t want to do it all in hindsight.

Which brings me back to Bounder.

Working within the IFS model, I have become very mindful of my feelings. I don’t just mean my emotions. When I feel something—anger, grief, sadness, longing, affection, attraction, love—I take note of where in my body I am processing the emotion. There is usually a physical locus of that energy. Because my strongest emotions are often tied up with what a subpersonality is processing in a given moment, I feel them in different places, which is effectively where each of those subparts resides. Harley and Quinn and Stephie and each of the others sits in a specific spot and pulls on my center from her point of reference. When I feel a subpart whose name I don’t know (who maybe I didn’t even realize existed) pull at my center, the emotional and physical feelings are often coupled with anxiety.

Because there has been so much thought of Bounder over the last few days and weeks, my anxiety has been really high at times. It has often felt like a pull from the right of my stomach. Sometimes it has been so bad that I would get nauseated and irritable, desperate to make the pain stop.

“What is that she’s feeling?” my therapist asked. “She may just want you to acknowledge her feelings. Can you tell what she wants?”

“She wants relief,” I replied. “She is hurt and angry and confused. She doesn’t understand how anyone could have something so precious as that kind of love in their damn hand and just walk away. It makes no sense, and it’s infuriating.”

This, of course, is wholly indicative of my fear of emotional abandonment. While that’s rooted deeply in my childhood, the feelings of hurt and betrayal and confusion are never more profound than when I think of Bounder. While I’m still angry at Rango for how he handled the boys during our break-up, I have dealt with my feelings toward him, kept what I needed to keep and shed the rest. Same for DH and Rex and others whose names and memories don’t really matter or impact me all that much anymore.

I explained to my therapist that the feelings are seated in this very specific location, that they can be overwhelming at times. And when I am most overwhelmed by something, I tend to dive into it head first, hoping to reach the bottom quickly and resurface cleansed.

But that never seems to happen with him, and I am forever in a loop of self-flagellation.

“Well,” she said, “first of all, she needs to know that you are simply witnessing the trauma again, a memory of it; it’s not actually happening again. You’re not being traumatized again.”

Okay. Just a ghost. Not real. Not happening now.

“And,” she continued, “she doesn’t have to feel that anymore. You don’t have to feel that anymore. That’s a lot of burden to have been carrying around for so long. She can let it go. You can let it go. Let the elements have it—they can take it—they can take a lot more than that. But she doesn’t have to feel that anymore.”

Wait—WHAT?!?

Even I could tell that my facial expression shifted in that moment. I was stunned, utterly baffled by the idea that it was okay not to keep feeling those emotions over and over, effectively retraumatizing myself every time. I have dealt with it repeatedly, and there is no healthy in dragging the futility of it all around, night after night.

And it makes sense. I had stopped feeling similar things for others long ago, in a healthy timeframe and in healthy ways. Why is he so special that I should continue to carry that burden?

In part, I think, it’s because he wouldn’t. Part of what happens during the emotional abandonment is that I’m left to feel whatever with no support, and I’m the only one feeling it. Maybe the other person is feeling something, but it never seems to be anywhere close to what I’m feeling, especially when the other person is a dismissive-avoidant who is so well-versed in compartmentalizing emotions away to protect themselves.

I have often railed against feeling like I was carrying it for both of us, because that was sometimes the only way to prove that the thing had ever happened, with no acknowledgement of grief coming from the other person. I am sure Bounder felt it in the darkest of times, but I know that he never faced me to tell me he was sorry for hurting me. His not acknowledging me and the hurt he created, his ignoring of me when he damn well knew it was the worst possible way to hurt me, made me feel worthless, especially to him. But that flew in the face of his telling me he loved me, of his moments of showing me deep, incredible love, and I could never reconcile the conflict of extremes no matter how much I psychologized him and myself.

But to think, to realize, that I don’t have to do that was foundationally shifting. I could feel the anxiety and the tension to the right of my stomach abate immediately. There was a deep sense of relief. She’s there, and she’s a little antsy about what she’s supposed to do now. If her job was to hold all that baggage, what is she going to do now that still allows her to be of use to the Self?

I had a dream once while Bounder and I were dating, one of those lucid nap dreams. I was standing outside a tall, wide, stone tower, trying to figure out how to get inside. I could hear a knocking from the inside, and I needed to let whomever was in there out. As I looked more, I realized the tower was his face, the details of his mouth and eyes and brows built from each brick. I climbed some scaffolding and began to chip away at this one high, white stone. It was the speck of light in his left eye.

Months later, he told me that I’d been like this force knocking on his walls, over and over and over, until he eventually poked his head out enough to see what was in the light.

I let light back into his darkness, and somehow that wasn’t worth staying for. And it’s not that I wasn’t worth it; it’s that he didn’t see himself as worth me. So convinced that he would hurt me in the end, he made it happen, pushing me unaware into the dark pool so that I felt like I would drown before I could resurface.

But in the same way I did it for him, I must do it for myself. I get to be the disco ball for myself, to reflect light and shine it brilliantly into my own dark corners. Disorienting and distracting at first, yes, but eventually it becomes a beautiful swirl worthy of dancing.

It is odd, a little unsettling, to think of life without the possibility of him. I gave up the possibility of him as a romantic partner long ago. Our life goals are different, and he would never be able to consistently meet my needs. But he was always this driving force of emotion and thought, even when we weren’t together, sometimes in contact and sometimes not. Music, in particular, became a daunting prospect for me, because everything could remind me of him.

And that’s her job now, that’s what she is supposed to do, to dance. She is lightened of her load. And she gets to pick the music she wants to dance to. She’s not trapped by the years-long playlists of Bounder songs. She doesn’t have to be afraid of hearing one of them in the grocery store and bursting into tears. She doesn’t have to listen for him in every new song. She can move freely again, not weighed down by his burden or mine. She can find the path that she lost, can move toward light and laughter and love, because she deserves that.

This wasn’t her fault.

And if we pass him on the road again? I don’t know. I could feel something; I could not. I may well never see him again. I’m not going to dwell on what might happen. Now I have different roads to explore and a different Stephanie to discover.

And there is dancing to be done.

 

 

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You can be the outcast, or you can be the backlash of somebody's lack of love... or you can start speaking up.

NOTE: This post includes discussion of some pretty difficult subject matter, presented in an emotionally honest way. It may not be appropriate for all reading audiences.

At the heart of my myriad insecurities is a deep-seated fear of emotional abandonment. I am afraid that the people who profess to love me will stop caring, will decide that I am not worth their love and affection, and will dismiss me and my own emotions outright.

Physical abandonment is daunting enough, but it always seems to be symptomatic of a deeper emotional distance. DH left after our 19-year marriage crumbled, but that came only after he’d emotionally checked out of our relationship for years. I’d struggled to get Rango to engage in any emotionally significant way for more than a year before he told me he just wasn’t showing up for Max’s football game or my birthday. And when Bounder was most overwhelmed by the intensity of our relationship, he stood me up and distanced himself—at least until he decided he missed me too much to stay away—only to do it again and again.  

But the fear comes, plainly, from my childhood and adolescence.

I’ve written extensively about the sexual abuse I suffered as a child. There are at least six years during which I can remember being told, “Don’t tell anyone. You’ll be the one to get in trouble.” Years later, when I did finally tell—in the aftermath of a date rape at 16—I was left to deal with the physical and emotional impact on my own. Both the molestation and the rape were acknowledged very calmly for a few days, but there was no significant follow-up. I wasn’t sent to a counselor or therapist. I was sent, by myself, for my first pelvic exam to make sure I didn’t contract an STD.

My fear and my shame were dismissed, were boxed away so that someone else could handle what happened to me. My emotions were treated as if they were secondary and unimportant—or at least it seemed that way to me. With the exception of one close friend who literally held my hand through the process of telling, I never once felt that I was supported or cared for in those days and weeks.

I was scared and sick and confused and alone. When I most needed to be loved, the person who should have loved me most left me alone in my horror, pretending then and for most of the years since that none of it happened.

So what I learned from an early age, and relearned over and over and over, was that when someone loves you, then they leave you when your emotions are too much for them.

They leave you when you are too much for them.

Because they can’t handle what they’re feeling in response to what you’re feeling, it’s easier to pretend the feelings don’t matter or that there are no feelings at all. So while love is supposed to be this caring, beautiful, wonderful thing, for me it’s also tainted by hurt, twisted up with rejection and carelessness and neglect.

None of this is new. None of this is revelation.

What is new for me is the realization that the subpersonalities are afraid that I will emotionally abandon them. They are terrified that I will decide that they aren’t worth the trouble, that the help they try to provide is too much of a hassle for me to bother to listen to them. They are afraid of being ignored and dismissed. They are afraid that I will shut them all down, in turn becoming exactly what I fear most.

And my choices, my culpability, in all of my relationship failures make my trustworthiness questionable. My complicity in DH’s ignorance of me, which I would go on to rebel against in the most damaging of ways possible. My constantly shifting boundaries, allowing Rango to pull further and further away while I accepted the blame for his distance. And my tortured love for Bounder, whose kiss could make time stand still and the seas turn to sand—who I will still seek out when I feel utterly lost and alone, even though I know he will almost certainly let me down. The multitude of others, who said I mattered but then walked away with barely a glance over their shoulders.

Besides, I was the one who was making out with that guy the night of the rape. I was the one whose tiny body reacted with sexual arousal when touched inappropriately. While that is a totally normal physiological response, the behavior that wasn’t normal became utterly normalized. I knew things at an age when I should’ve been happily playing with my baby dolls and getting hugs goodnight instead of confusion and lies to deflect someone else’s blame.

They won’t love me anymore if I don’t do this thing that feels weird and wrong, being done to me by someone who says they love me.

Hurt was normalized. Secrets and shame were normalized. Pretending like nothing happened, like it didn’t matter, was normalized.

So if I have culpability or complicity in those hurts, who the hell am I to be trusted? How can my internal family trust me to make healthy loving decisions for them when I can’t even seem to make them for myself? How can I be trusted to do the right thing for any of us?

The difference in me and those who’ve hurt me is that I don’t want to be distanced from my emotions or anyone else’s. I don’t want to be ignored or dismissed, and so I try like hell not to do the same to anyone else. To disregard those parts of myself, to act as if my own emotions just don’t exist or matter, inflicts unbearable hurt. Shutting down, being numb again, silencing those inner voices entirely is the last thing I ever want to do.

I have to show myself the love and care that I expect from anyone else.

Integration can only come about if I trust the parts not to hurt me and vice versa. I have to honor what each feels, acknowledge each emotion I am ultimately feeling, and accept that the emotion itself is not the trauma. The traumatic events are over and done; the feelings are ghosts whose chains rattle me in a million directions at once sometimes, making me shaky on my feet. Making me insecure.

I may be moving forward, but I’m not leaving them behind. These parts of me, trapped at different ages and stages of development—disintegrated—deserve the chance to mature. They deserve the opportunity to grown into the woman they would’ve become had shit not gone horribly wrong.

I deserve the same.

Part of that maturation is coming to terms with the fact that it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t allow those other people to hurt me. I didn’t encourage them to devalue me and to dehumanize me. I didn’t ask to be sexually assaulted. I didn’t ask for them not to love and care for me.

It wasn’t my fault.

IT WASN’T MY FAULT.

I am worth love, and I am worth care and concern. There is nothing about me that is so inherently ugly or unlovable to have warranted horrid, difficult abuse. I was a sweet, smart, precocious little girl with Moonpie eyes and one dimple. I should never have been a sexualized object. I didn’t deserve to be molested. I didn’t deserve to be raped. I didn’t deserve to be smacked around and degraded by an angry boyfriend. I didn't deserve to be used and abused and discarded.

I never deserved being the target of someone else’s self-loathing and guilt.

I was worth more than dismissal and ignorance because I didn’t meet someone else’s expectations or conform to their fucked-up, dysfunctional norms. I am worth more than an eyeroll-and-sigh in toleration.

All of those bits inside me have fought to protect me from hurt, from allowing anything in that might cause more damage, But the fracturing of my personality into smaller parts left vulnerable cracks. Rather than fill the spaces with gold, like Japanese kintsugi, I often used whatever I could find: leftover packing tape ripped from an old dusty box… someone else’s half-chewed gum… desperate hope coated in blood and sticky mess.

But I was never going to be able to close my own rifts with someone else’s effluvia.

It’s up to me to find the healing from deep inside me, to let those internal persona who so badly want and need to help do just that. If the end goal is a whole Stephanie, the parts that make her up have to have a role in filling those gaps.

So I’m letting them talk, and I’m listening. I’m hearing what each of them says they need, and I’m doing my best to honor those wishes. I’m giving each an opportunity to share their respective visions of wholeness and then choosing what works best for all of us. For me.

It is a process to pick up the broken pieces and put them back together. It took years for the breaks to happen, for the dust to settle enough for clean-up to begin. But it has.

And it’s up to me to do that work.

It’s up to me to show myself the love and care that I need, and that starts with sweeping away everyone else’s pain and destruction and refusing to force my bits to fit with theirs.

It’s up to me to trust that I can do this.