Muchness and Light

I wish you a happy New Year, darling. May your new love be bright and fair.

It’s not news to anyone that I am superstitious af about New Year’s Eve:

From December 31, 2017:

I am superstitious about a few things, and New Year’s Eve is at the top of that list. How I spend that night is often indicative of the entirety of the following year. I can regale with tales of New Year’s Eve Omens for almost as many years as the Valentine’s Curse.

From January 10, 2014:

But New Year's Eve, in particular, freaks me the hell out.  There's something about the day or so surrounding the marking of the new year that seems to set the tone for the 364 days that follow.  If it's a good night and following day, the year generally goes well.  If it's harrowing—a car wreck with friends or a two-hundred-mile distance in the middle of a strained marriage—the rest of the year always seems to follow suit. 

For a multitude of reasons, 2018 seemed to be an especially trying year for me and mine. It was a year of upheaval for so many. Pandy lost her grandmother and her father. Cookie got divorced. Queen Frostine survived a Mob hit while we were on vacation in NYC. Max graduated high school, cycled through a few fleeting relationships, spent a month in Germany, and we all survived his first semester in college. Another surgery and back problems for me.

And in the middle of the most difficult year of therapy to date, I stumbled into a long-distance relationship that has presented both unimagined challenges and unexpected joy.

I spent last weekend with him, Bumblebee, and with my girls. We all sat at a restaurant together, laughing uproariously in a back room where we hoped we wouldn’t disturb other patrons (and their children) with our loud, foul mouths. All of us seem to recharge a bit when we are together, whether one-on-one or in little groups of twos and threes. This was actually the first time the Castration Committee had been together in its six-part entirety in the same room.

In fact, Queen Frostine suggested a change in moniker, because “Castration Committee” has, taken on an unacceptable tone of man-hating. One or two of us have managed relationships with good men, and four of us are raising sons to be good men. Ideas were tossed around—from Jugaloons to Side Show by the Sea—and all I can remember for sure from the uproarious discussion is the word Psyrens. So there we are, a group of smart, loud, singing women who just know the others, no matter the distance.

And I needed the time with my girls. I’d just survived my first Christmas on my own, ever. The boys were gone. Bumblebee and my girls were all hundreds of miles away. I’d gone into it with the intention of being brave and calm, my Self leading all of my internal parts calmly and safely through an emotionally-charged 36 hours with mulled wine and good food and the cats.

It ended up being far sadder and more miserable than even I could have predicted, and I am not allowed to be alone like that again.

But New Year’s Eve was looming, no matter what. I’d been worried about it for weeks.

“If something happens,” I told Queen Frostine, “and we aren’t together for New Year’s—”

“Then you aren’t together,” she finished.

It’s not an ultimatum, of You-be-here-or-I-won’t-see-you. It is my perception of an emotionally traumatic history that happens to be cataloged by decades of bad New Year’s Eves (and worse Valentine’s Days).

And I’d been clear, that my coming to visit him for the weekend prior did not absolve him of being with me on New Year’s Eve. I love time with him whenever I can get it, but New Year’s Eve is its own category of agitating for me. We planned a low-key evening—early movie and dinner at the same restaurant we’d frequented since our first weekend together—to just be together. But I could not let go of the possibility (probability) that it would not go well.

“Try to let the fear go,” Pandy said on January 30th. “What if we expect the best?? Do we then invite the best into our home/heart?”

Shaking my head violently, I responded, “I can’t expect that best. I can’t. There’s waaaaaaayyyyyy too much history for that. That’s asking to get shattered.”

But I spent that evening readying the house. I made the grocery list and checked the showtimes for the movie. Bumblebee, of course. I laid out the Princess Bride Blu-ray for our breakfast viewing pleasure. I washed the special glasses I’d bought just for toasting with mimosas.

“I’m afraid I jinxed it,” I told Frostine mid-morning, New Year’s Eve.

“You didn’t jinx anything,” she chided. I could practically hear her blue eyes rolling in her curly head.

And then he texted midday, while I was getting ready to leave work early, that he was sick. He was violently ill, unable to travel down the street, let alone the 200 miles to my house. On top of it, he was upset about how this would upset me.

I understood. I know the illness that was plaguing him. Hell, our Thanksgiving got cut short by my being sideswiped by the flu. Of course it wasn’t what I wanted, but I knew this wasn’t intentional, not malicious or even negligent. Wholly unexpected and unwelcomed by both of us.

If he’d just not shown up, no explanation, or if he’d shown up late, no explanation, or if he’d shown up rude and mean, no explanation, and then expected me to accept it and understand it and not express any confusion or hurt or displeasure, or blamed me outright for it, then I would’ve been let down.

I know, because I have been let down in those ways by men who professed to love me. Over and over and over.

But he got sick, and he told me. We came up with an alternative plan to wear each other’s t-shirts and snuggle under blankets and talk and FaceTime kiss at midnight, to save the champagne until we are together and can get a do-over.

And I was completely cool with that. I was centered and calm, accepting and still felt both loved and loving.

And then the anxiety struck.

Fighting off a nasty cold, I didn’t feel well. A short nap on the couch was discombobulating. Given what had happened just a week before, I steered clear of the wine and sad movies. But by 9:45, I was well-ensconced in my reluctant acceptance that 2019 will be a year of sickness and distance and thwart and tears and anxiety, that we will likely find ourselves frustratingly separated by illness and trying to make up for it when our already-difficult schedules allow.

“Baby, do not do this,” he admonished over FaceTime, his brow furrowed. “This is self-fulfilling prophecy. We are not subject to the whims of a capricious non-entity.”

Of course I know that. I am too smart and too well-educated not to understand the logical fallacy of my fear of being thwarted by fate or Fate or the Ghosts of Relationships Past. But the reality is that I have been conditioned over four decades to expect disappointment. I have learned to set the bar for other people so low that I just need them to show up. I don’t need them to do anything or say anything or bring anything. I just need them to be there, to be present with me.

My entire system is on such high alert, constantly scanning the horizon for potential disappointment:

• Is this something that might hurt me?
• Is this something that is likely to hurt me?
• How much hurt could I feel?
• Does that possible hurt stem from a previous trauma?
• How do I feel about that trauma now?
• How have I successfully dealt with this before?
• Can I avoid the hurt altogether?
• Is there benefit in feeling the hurt?
• Is there possible reward that’s not hurt?

This is how anxiety works. It is a constant cost/benefit analysis of people and experiences and moments, examining how they may impact my emotions and what future influence they may impart. It is eviscerating discernment, and it is neverending judgment of others and of myself, in desperate attempts to stave off hurt.

“Eventually, I have to stop,” I told him.

“Stop what?”

Stop hoping. Hope means the possibility of disappointment, of more hurt, of more agitation, of more anger, of more self-recrimination, of more tears and heart palpitations. Hope is an inherent expectation of good, of not-hurt.

If I have no expectation, then the good that comes can be met with exuberant joy and delight. And I do feel those things, regularly. I love deeply, and I am deeply loved, by my sons and my friends and my boyfriend and my family.

But that is not enough, and may never be enough, to assuage the perpetual angst that all comes down to basic value judgments made about me by other people, before I had clear, conscious memory. I cannot undo those choices others made, and I struggle to rectify my learned responses. At times, it is a gaping psychic wound that may never fully heal, only close over for some indeterminate length of time. I am always on edge, waiting for the next slice into an ever-refreshening scar.

I know: only my reactions matter now. How I choose to treat myself and others in light of my emotional makeup is what matters. And I try, so hard, to be present, to be mindful, to be kind to myself and to others, to carefully bring my concerns into balance before I act on them.

But when you feel like you’re drowning, it’s impossible not to thrash toward the surface with a desperate breath. When the anxiety hits, it is like waterboarding myself over and over with my own tears.

I am not, generally, unhappy. I am not so afraid that I have trouble experiencing the world, as I was when Max was a baby. I do have occasional days, when the benefit of staying in to read and binge watch whatever is greater than the potential cost of detached interaction with suburbia. I am far more than merely functional in my life. I am engaged with my wonderful, active sons, my dear friends, a man I love deeply who loves me just as much, a job at which I am very good, and I just applied to grad school.

Sometimes, though, I trip over a deeply existential crack. Usually, I can right myself and carry on, maybe with a momentary limp or scrape. Every so often, I fall into the chasm. Mostly I’ve learned to hold onto the edge and pull myself back up. I have no interest in traversing those depths ever again.

We missed the midnight countdown. There was a brief FaceTime at 12:02. I fell into a cold-medicine-induced, tear-stained sleep a few minutes later, the sound of raindrops and neighborhood fireworks outside, wrapped in his t-shirt. I woke this morning, fed and pet the cats, started a new book, watched the last bit of Leap Year while I prepped a Gouda-and-bacon frittata, started chicken stock and chicken salad for later in the week, prepped vegetables for roasting this evening, and did the dishes.

I often do more by noon than a lot of people do in a day.

I don’t write about these things to shame anyone else or myself. I don’t write to find sympathy from anyone else. I write, because there is someone else out there who needs to know they’re not alone in feeling overwhelmed, especially at times when we are expected to be happy and joyful and hopeful. I write because it’s cathartic for me, to help me cull so many simultaneous thoughts and emotions into better focus.

And maybe, just maybe, there comes the day when it all makes sense, my Epiphany, when I can close those old wounds for good.

 

 

With their guilt and shame, they think they're to blame for Candyman.

I spent a lot of the last week or so listening to a couple of podcasts about Internal Family Systems, about how and why the personality becomes segmented and how it’s possible to reconnect with each subpersonality and integrate the segments with a healthy Self. Look, I know from the outside it seems like a ludicrous idea of having a fragmented personality, with slivers of varying sizes and abilities vying for opportunity to help the person manage and live their life. But what I also know is that what I was doing wasn’t working well. Making the opportunity to listen to my emotions as they come up, to hear and feel without recrimination what each offer and to mindfully consider that specific point of view, has been eye opening.

I can be mercurial. I can move quickly from one emotion to another, be blissfully joyous in a moment and then respond in an extreme flash to come perceived hurt or threat. In the IFS model, that is one subpart responding and then another. Sometimes they not only battle the world around me, they battle with one another. But each has a job. Each has specific skills and methods to protect and help me, even though they’re not always as effective or healthy as would be best. Because their abilities are limited by only select experience and memory, none has a full range of tools at their disposal, but they do the best they can.

One thing that kept coming up this week was the idea of triggers. The word “trigger” itself can be met with an eyeroll or irritation at its overuse in recent years, especially in pop journalism and often in regard to social justice issues. But emotional and psychological triggers are a real thing. [I’m no psychologist or neurobiologist, and my explanations and understandings here come as a paraphrased interpretation of what I have been learning in regard to my own work.] As I understand it, experience is processed by the body and through the mind’s eye, imprinted on the brain and maintained in the prefrontal cortex, which is sometimes referred to as the “mammalian” part of the brain because it controls less instinctual functions. However, when there is trauma, the memory is imprinted in the amygdala, or the “reptilian” brain. This part engages during stressful moments, when protection becomes instinctual. That angry, extreme outburst during an argument, when you just can’t disengage from the emotion and scream and say terrible things you might not mean when you’re calm—that comes from the amygdala. The brain thinks we’re under attack and chooses fight over flight.

Triggers are created in the amygdala. When some later situation occurs that feels similar to those memories, fight-or-flight is engaged again. Not only does the perception in the moment seem like a very real threat, memories of previous, similar moments seem like additional threats. Anxiety and agitation, even fear and panic, can ensue, and we do what we can to protect ourselves from those threats. Again, maybe we are able to disengage and flee the moment. Often, people who have experienced trauma will fight, sometimes in ways that seem bizarre or non-sensical, both to others and to themselves. Unless there is healing of the trauma, the hurt can be triggered over and over. Without healing, the hurt is continually reinflicted—at least it seems that way to the brain—and the damage is deepened every time it’s reopened.

In the same way scars serve to protect a vulnerable space that has been damaged, the subparts of personality that are born of trauma act as protectors. In some ways, they are psychic scars, doing their best to heal a hurt and keep it from causing more pain, closing a wound to keep it from festering. But sometimes the scar tissue itself causes problems, sensitive from nerves that didn’t heal fully and pulling against healthy tissue painfully. When something in a moment triggers a traumatic memory, the subparts work to soothe the pain. They’ll twist and turn to pull the person away from hurt—like an emotional flinch—or they’ll engage it fully to stop the hurt from happening at all—swatting away an insect that is about to sting or bite. Born in the amygdala, the subpersonalities function instinctually, often without our conscious knowledge of how they work.

The goal of IFS, and currently my own therapeutic goal, is to identify and connect with each subpersonality, to understand its specific functions and motivations, and to teach it healthier ways to function, eventually allowing for an integrated, healthy Self. This is not the extremity of The United State of Tara or Sybil. There may be days in which it seems like I’m living The Three Faces of Stephanie, but I don’t have a dozen extreme personalities trapped inside me, fighting to get out. Not like that.

But taking the time to listen for them and hear what they say, breathing through an emotion or moment of extreme thought and examining how that connects to my Self, has been both wonderful and emotionally draining. I’ve been able to be less reactionary to some pretty difficult situations. I’ve reined in anger and avoided unnecessary outburst. I handled some particularly stressful engagements with some exes quite calmly and healthfully.

I also spoke about my molestation this week, verbalizing and articulating the logistics of my sexual abuse in ways I never have. It took 40 years for me to feel safe enough to say out loud specifically what had happened (at least in part). It was frightening, conjuring those memories into my present, feeling like adult Stephanie was watching them happen while simultaneously feeling what Cissie felt in those moments. I am incredibly thankful to have an amazing therapist who I (we) trust enough to ask her to help me with those feelings.

That night, I remembered a dream I had when I was very young, maybe 3 or 4. I’ve always remembered the dream, a nightmare that terrified me. Because of that dream, I fell asleep with the lights on until I was a teenager. I still tend to sleep with my blankets drawn tightly up around my neck because of it. While it would sound innocuous and maybe even silly to describe it now, I realized it was taken from what was happening around me while I was being molested. It was the distraction from what was happening, and my tiny, young subconscious turned it into a nightmare that haunted me for a decade.

There was no sudden healing that came with this realization. But there was connection with that part. There was understanding that allowed me to connect with Cissie, who was the target of the earliest trauma. To understand her is to show her that I can be trusted, that I will protect her and love her, no matter what, that I am a capable adult who can handle it for all of us. She doesn’t have to be left in the care of teenaged babysitters with their limited knowledge and capabilities.

I have spent years in a constant state of fight-or-flight, hypersensitive to perceived threat. Sometimes those perceptions have been wrong, and I have misinterpreted experience through the filters of my own agitation. Sometimes the voices of those subparts have chattered and whispered chaotically, warning me of what they see, and I have accepted their perceptions as truth. They’re not always wrong. They are, however, always singular and myopic in what they can see from their standpoint in the past.

There will be people who feel discomfited reading this. My words will make some people uncomfortable. At times, they make me uncomfortable. But the secrecy and shame that came with sexual trauma should never have been mine. Cissie should never have felt afraid and ashamed by what was done to her, without her consent and without her love. Stephie and Quinn should never have felt the need to protect her. While I have created a façade of transformation over the last seven years, there has still been a constant turmoil inside of me. The discomfort of a reader can never compare to the discomfort I have felt inside for my entire life.

I will not hide behind someone else’s shame again.

 

 

Though you drown in good intentions, you will never quench the fire. You'll give in to your desire, when the stranger comes along.

Break-ups can be foundationally shattering. The end of a long-term relationship can be shocking to the core. There is the grief that comes from severing a deep, meaningful connection, of lamenting what has been lost, but there is also a sudden shift in daily routines that now feel hollow and future plans that will never come to fruition.

The day after Rango came to get his stuff from the house, I struggled just to maintain. I woke early, fed the cats, and cried for a while before falling back asleep. At noon, I realized I needed to get up and do my normal Sunday chores. The boys would be home from their dad’s that evening, and they would be expecting clean laundry and food for the week.

Walking through the grocery store, I felt raw. I felt like everyone who passed me in the aisles could see the sadness dripping from my every pore. I was certain that my hard-fought composure would come undone if anyone spoke kindly or smiled at me.

It’s not just that the sadness is a part of the grieving process. The sadness fulfills a purpose.

When I realized the futility of the relationship, I started looking for a new therapist. Therapy had been incredibly helpful through the demise of my marriage to DH. I was fortunate to have found an incredible therapeutic partner to help guide me through a couple of years of divorce and dating and loss. But my insecurities undoubtedly played a role in the tensions and break-up with Rango, and I knew I never want to feel those things again. I never again want to feel so easily broken by another person, especially when my head knows it shouldn’t be possible.

As I did some research online, I came across the Internal Family Systems therapeutic model developed by Richard C. Schwartz in the 1980s. It seemed to be especially effective in treating anxious attachers and rejection sensitivity. The idea is that we are each a Self, which is the true, whole, spiritual center of us. But we also have these discrete subpersonalities with their own intentions and needs and quirks and purpose. Each part has a specific viewpoint, developed from its interpretations of life experiences. Each has its own memories and interprets them according to its unique perspective:

• Managers handle the way we interact with the external world. They try to protect us from hurt, whether from others or from our own memories.
• Exiles are the parts that feel the worst emotions—pain, hurt, shame, fear—usually resulting from childhood trauma. Managers and Firefighters try to exile these parts to prevent their emotions from coming to the surface.
• Firefighters show up when Exiles break free and demand attention. They try to distract us from the pain, often encouraging unhealthy behaviors as coping mechanisms.

The goal of IFS is to allow the Self to access and connect to each subpart, healing them one by one. Thus, the Self leads the other parts in harmony and health. We become a whole, heathy person, rather than an amalgam of these smaller bits that exhaust themselves fighting to maintain a losing battle.

I have long believed that we each are made up of various persona, and we take them out and show ourselves when everyone has gone….

In an online interview reposted through the band’s Facebook page, Alex Wheeler said the title, Persona Non Grata, referred to all of the unacceptable and unwelcomed parts of everyone—the lurid, the shadowy, the hidden, the broken.

“Each of us has a persona, all the time,” he said. “I’m one persona with the band, someone a little different with my fans, someone else entirely with my wife and daughter. Sometimes that persona is ‘good’ and sometimes it’s ‘bad’. I spent a lot of time exploring the bad sides of normal, everyday people, you know? Not serial killers or rapists or anything. I wanted to look at the things regular people like to hide from the people they know and, most especially, from themselves.”

                                                                                                                                Persona Non Grata (2012)

I have, at times, named some of my subpersonalities, though I wasn’t thinking of them within the context of IFS.

• Cissie is the sweet, blond girl who never seemed to be pleasing to her parents, no matter how hard she tried. She never felt like she was enough. She was also molested for years, and she spent a lot of her time agitated and afraid. She is an Exile.
• Quinn is the rebellious teen who learned to trade sex and secrets for affection, often in an attempt to protect Cissie. She has her own anger and hurt, but she will bear it all to protect that little girl. She is a Firefighter.
• Stephie is a loud ball of angry. She will erupt and tantrum and demand her way when she feels she is being ignored. She is potentially a special subpersonality called a Tormentor. (She secretly wears that like a badge of honor.)
• Sassafras Bombalurina O’Malley is the one who reminds me to be shiny and sparkly and to tell the world to go fuck itself if it doesn’t like it. She is an eccentric, outrageous Manager who knows how to call on the Firefighters to back her up.
• Wonder Woman is the Amazonian princess who does it all, because she has to. She handles the day-to-day business of life, and she is remarkable. She is strong and capable, smart and intuitive, and she can predict everyone else’s needs and desires before they can. She is a Manager.
• Stephanie Quinn Jackson is the writer who sees it all, who arranges it and espouses the shared perspective of the others, who bears witness to it all and gives them a voice when it seems that no one else will listen. She is a Manager.

There are others, nameless but all with some variation of my face. Each has its own role and purpose in getting Stephanie through her life. Not to be confused with Dissociative Identity Disorder, I am not claiming to have multiple, distinct personalities. These are simply facets of my personality, and each strives in its own way to help me be secure and healthy and safe—even when its influence result in dysfunction.

The sadness is tied up with the hurt, and it’s not just from this break-up. This is hurt that hasn’t healed in 40 years. This is sadness that helps me to keep others at bay, or to curl up in bed and sleep when I should be doing productive things, so that I don’t have to feel the hurt. So I don’t have to delve back into every haunting memory and question again why I was both too little and too much. Why I wasn’t worth careful, healthy love.

None of these parts can or should ever be exorcised. Each is valuable and necessary, both as its own part and as a part of the larger whole. But the hurt can be healed enough so that it doesn’t make more hurt, create more sadness, because somewhere in there is joy and beauty. Somewhere in there is a sad and lost little girl who desperately wants to be loved.

I have to find her and help her.

We have to find her together.

 

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Muchness and Light - But if you'd known how that would sound to me, you would've taken it back and boxed it up and buried it in the ground.

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Wonder if I'll ever bury the hatchet inside.

About the time Rango moved into the house with us, I started to realize that I was having a hard time with his past.

Due to the constraints of time and distance and the necessary logistics for the boys, he and I never spent a night in his apartment. He insists that the apartment was never more than a landing pad and that it never felt like home. While I do believe home for him became wherever I was within days of our meeting, part of me still feels like I never got the opportunity to... I don't know... mark that territory...?

It sounds stupid, I know. I feels stupid. Every time some ex comes up, I cringe.

I know part of my insecurity comes from my maladaptive attachment style, which was established in my childhood and then reinforced over and over and over (and over and over and over) in my adult dating life, especially in the two-and-a-half years after DH and I split. I'm a fragile cat, without a doubt, but so is Rango. Generally we are very careful and patient with one another's emotions, lovingly treading across the scarred battlefield of the other's heart.

But really, I have no idea why the hell I am so freaked out when some former relationship of his is mentioned. Because I took the brutally-open-and-honest approach while I was dating, Rango learned probably far more about me in those first days than maybe he wanted, especially my history with the fragile cats.

When you're divorced, or maybe it just happens at this age when you have a good deal of life experience, first date conversation inevitably turns to prior relationships. Were you married? Do you have kids? Why did you break up? First dates are basically an interview, after all—a chance to see if their fuckeduppedness will play well with your fuckeduppedness.

So he knew very quickly that I was living in the same house I'd lived in with my ex-husband. He knew my most painful ex lived just a few miles away and semi-regularly sees me in passing. He knew I'd had a very active dating and social life on the weekends before DH moved out of state and dropped regular contact with the boys.

Hell, I wrote a book about some of it.

In the semi-autobiographical Persona Non Grata, Tierney talks about how she has a hard time hearing about her husband, Sam's, relationship with his long-ago ex-girlfriend:

"I worried for years that you had loved her more than you loved me," I admitted one night.  I couldn't look at him when I said it.  I kept my gaze trained on the darkness in the woods behind our house.

"Why?  Why would you even think that?  Didn't I tell you every day that I loved you?  Couldn't you just believe that?"

"I believed you.  I still do.  But, Sam, you were so broken when you guys split.  I kept waiting for you to come home and tell me that she'd called, that she wanted you back.  I used to dream about it all the time."

I really didn't know that DH loved me more than he'd loved her until the day Max was born, more than seven years into our marriage.

And I know that love should never feel like a competition, but my head is sometimes a mess, and I sometimes feel like I am constantly at battle with the ghosts of the past. I am forever struggling to overcome my screwed up perceptions of how I think other people see me. Often this drives me to be bigger and better and faster and more. I feel like there is so much inherently wrong with me and about me, and that if I can perfect as many small things as possible then the huge amount of bad is still outweighed by lots of little good.

No one is harder on me than I am on myself.

I few weeks ago, I told Rango, "I won't feel secure until I've been with you longer than you've been with [your ex-wife]."

"But you already have."

I looked at him, puzzled. "You do remember that you were married for five years, don't you?"

"Yeah, but our relationship was over long before we even got married," he replied. "Emotionally, we were together for a week-and-a-half."

A few days later, we took our first trip together. Without the boys, we went to Texas for his sister's wedding, which also gave me the opportunity to meet and spend time with his family. We had a lovely couple of days in San Antonio, walking around Riverwalk and later dancing at the wedding, followed by a day in Houston.

 

Wedding Selfie #Sassafras #Rango #JenAndAli

A photo posted by Stephanie Quinn Jackson (@stephqj) on May 2, 2015 at 5:22pm PDT

DH and I had flown into San Antonio once, gone immediately to buy a car, and then drove straight home to Alabama. We passed through a section of Houston on the way. My 2012 trip to Austin by myself was my only real trip to Texas.

Rango spent his teen years in Texas, especially in and around Houston. He lived in various places before moving to Atlanta (to be with [his ex-wife]), but he still thinks of Texas as home. (Well, maybe until he met me.)

Although I'd never been to San Antonio, I set part of Persona Non Grata there. Tierney's life blows up (the climax without a climax) at the Marriott Riverwalk. I spent some time researching and wrote about what I'd never actually seen:

    I walked out from the hotel and turned onto the wide walkways along the river.  I knew there was a coffee shop nearby.  I ordered a frittata and took my coffee to a small table.  I ate slowly, trying to abate the nagging headache.

    I was tired but didn't want to hole up in my hotel room.  I spent a couple of hours exploring San Antonio.  I walked over little bridges and through lushly landscaped mini-parks.  I was impressed by the mix of modern and traditional, of historical and new. 

    I found a shady spot outside a coffee shop, sitting under a bright yellow umbrella.  It was still early, but the River Walk was bustling already with people ready for the new day.  I sketched the profile of a young woman sitting on a park bench, reading a book.  The face of the sleeping baby, parked in his stroller at his parents' table next to mine. 

 

Tierney is hanging out at the Riverwalk in San Antonio. #personanongrata #junkture

A photo posted by Stephanie Quinn Jackson (@stephqj) on May 2, 2015 at 11:21am PDT

Rango and I stayed at another Marriott a few blocks away. On Saturday morning, he happily walked with me to find the spot I'd written. We had lunch at a Mexican restaurant that was included in an earlier draft of PNG. (It was eventually cut and re-written because the scene was lifeless.) And while he knew this was a fictionalized account, that I'd never been to these places, he also knew we were living a moment from the fictionalized account of the events that triggered the metamorphosis that led, in part, to my divorce.

Never did he complain. Never did he express a jealous thought. Not once did he have to choke back an angry lump and leave the room to catch his breath and regain control.

But driving to Houston the next day, picked up by his best friend, some comment was made about an ex they shared. (Who am I to judge someone for dating their best friend's ex?) Sitting in the back seat of the car, I bristled at the mention, knowing full well that she was long, long before me, that the relationship was short-lived and didn't work for a reason, that he loves me more.

Days later, as we were talking about traveling again soon—something DH and I never did together—I told him I would never go to Sweden with him, because he went there to see a now-ex.

"But it's a beautiful country," he argued. "You would love to see it."

I'm sure I would, but I was never willing to go to New Orleans with DH (in theory, because we didn't travel together or take vacations) because India had lived there in her childhood and later gone on vacation there with DH.

I've talked before about how I am a hoarder of memories. Because I remember virtually everything, I hold onto a lot of shit on my big, broken brain. Combine that with my intense sentimentality, and my head is an emotional minefield that I can barely traverse—how the hell is anyone else supposed to get through?

What I realized is that I am more than willing to give Rango the chance to replace some of those memories. Sometimes, he does it and doesn't even know it. Maybe we're having an incredibly wonderful moment and a song comes on that would have previously tied me up in knots, a reminder of a past moment. While there are still songs I just can't bear to hear anymore, there are a few that are now associated with Rango. Maybe it's a trip to a place I've been before or only dreamt about with someone else.

His heart replaced theirs in that memory space.

His cautions that there are formative memories that cannot be replaced. Of course. No matter what he or I do, there's no possible way to replace everything, and I wouldn't want either of us to do that. What happened before is what has led us to here, to the place where our paths converged. It's all about the journey and not the destination.

Yes, I know that I am letting my own insecurities and fears get in my way. I loathe that I think and feel this way. I am repulsed by the dark, tangled emotions that swirl around inside me, ensnaring my thoughts and hijacking what should be a calm, normal moment.

The only way I know to fight the dark is with light. When I don't feel like my own, internal light is strong enough to illuminate the path, I turn into the disco ball, spinning and reflecting a broken, scattered mosaic of brilliance that can be as annoyingly blinding as it is charming in its kinetic chaos.

Through it all, Rango says he is more than happy to be in my shadow, to let me spin in the spotlight while he supports me. I want him to be where he is happy and comfortable. I don't want to ever lose him to the darkness that I refuse to face and enter.

But I really have no idea how to counter the jealousy. I don't know how to not feel like it's a competition, even though it's one I know I'd have won months ago. I don't have a clue how not to snarl back at any of his memories that I'm afraid are snarling at me.

 

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Let's have a disco ball, and let's be happy.

And I don't understand. You deserve so much more than this.

When I was a child and would misbehave, my mother would send me to my room, out of her line of sight, with the words, "I love you, but I don't like you very much right now."

I love you, but I don't like you.

I don't like you.

I love you, but....

I love you, because I have to.

I love you, because I am required to.

The more trouble I was in, the more of my name I would hear.  Just "Stephanie!" was a warning.  "Stephanie Karen!" meant I was treading on some pretty thin ice.  "Stephanie Karen Quinn!" meant there was likely a spanking in my immediate future. 

But when I was a good girl, when I was sweet and obedient and well-behaved, I was Cissie.

To this day, I'm not terribly clear on the origin of the nickname.  I know it was given to me by a close family friend.  It was not diminutive of my given name, nor was it reference to my being a sister; there was no sibling calling me Sissy, as is so common in the South.  (I was raised an only child, and my (step/instant/in-my-heart) brother came to live with my mom and stepdad when I was in college.)

I remember being called Cissie until junior high school, when I demanded that both family and classmates call me only Stephanie.  While it may have been sweet inside the family, it was hard to explain this other name that made no logical sense to anyone else.  Eventually I rebelled against this thing I didn't understand and established myself fully as Stephanie Quinn.  When I went to the alternative magnet high school, no one knew Cissie had ever existed. 

Cissie was blond and blue-eyed.  (Stephanie has green eyes.)  She was smart and shy, though she could flourish as a chatterbox when she was comfortable.  For Cissie, it was important to be what Mama and Daddy and everyone else expected her to be.  If she wasn't, she was punished. 

Cissie - Age 3 or 4

But sometimes, no matter what Cissie did, she was just not enough.  She was tall but uninterested in basketball or sports of any kind.  She was smart but sometimes didn't want to do the tedious, necessary classwork.  Sometimes she tried to do it her own way, to challenge and entertain herself, but she would be chastised for doing it wrong, for not doing it how others wanted or expected it to be done. 

Cissie was also scared a lot.  Daddy had a sharp temper and would yell loudly at the least provocation.  Sometimes he would rear his hand back in anger, and sometimes it made contact.  Mama would nod and "Uh-huh" while Cissie talked, but she didn't always seem to hear those little girl words, especially if they weren't the words Mama wanted to hear.  And sometimes Mama would lash out in momentary anger and pop her little arm with the hard plastic hairbrush.  The oval red spot on the back of her arm might sting for hours, but it never felt as harsh as the pressing lump in her throat, the one she refused to talk or cry over. 

Cissie learned to spend time on her own, to entertain herself with imaginary friends and wishes for things that just never seemed to come true.  Cissie learned to bite the inside of her cheeks in just the right way that both kept her quiet and betrayed none of the anger she was harboring inside her little sweetheart mouth.  She had repetitious nightmares of witches and of vampires who lived in the back of her closet.

Cissie was also the little girl who was molested by a man who said he loved her, by a man who told her that if she didn't go along with it or if she spoke about it that she would be in trouble. 

It's no wonder that I didn't want to be Cissie. 

Stephanie - Age 14

 

But lately that little girl has been trying to tell me something. 

After another Fragile Cat skittered away, I was in a text conversation with Bounder (which is a whole different blog post's worth of fuckedupedness):

I'm tired of the hurt, you know? I'm tired of hiding in plain sight.  I don't want to be afraid of the shadows, scared of what seems to be there but isn't.  I feel again like my heart if wasting away.  I can't take another one who stays for days or weeks, with all of his fine words and implications.  I'm better with the balance, and I can't put these lessons into play without another person on the other side of that equation.  I want that safe place.  It's what I miss most, and I'm afraid.

And for all of my crazy, for all of my batshit and intensity, I'm a really good girl.  A guy could do a hell of a lot worse than me.

Very true statement dear...

I feel like being me will never be good enough.  I can either be myself or be what someone else expects.

And that little girl in me started to cry. 

It didn't matter what I did sometimes.  It didn't seem to matter that I was smart or clever or funny, loving or imaginative or curious, as long as I was doing what was expected of me.  As soon as I defied expectations, "I love you, but...."

There is no caveat for love.

There should be no conditions on love.  No one should ever have to negotiate the basics of their personality or their soul to feel that they are loved.  If a man tells me now that he loves me but he wishes I were quieter, less impulsive, less brash, more submissive, daintier, more deferential, I shouldn't accept those things.  I wouldn't accept those things, except I have accepted those things because it is what I learned as a child. 

Be different for me to love you, because what you are now is too much, is not enough, is wrong, and I cannot care for this defiant creature that you are.

All Cissie wanted was to be told that she was good enough, that it didn't matter that she wasn't perfect, that she defied Mama and Daddy's ideals in ways that still made her special and beautiful and acceptable and likable and lovable.  She wanted to know that she was good enough, that she didn't have to keep fighting and trying, that it was okay to be less than perfect.  And she wanted to know that she was good enough, that they would be proud of her for who she was, not for the accomplishments and the grades and the good choices she made that were really never choices at all. 

So for that little girl, to that little girl, I say, "Cissie, it's okay.  You are a good girl.  You were always a good girl.  It's wonderful that you weren't perfect, and it's good that you made mistakes.  You watched and learned, and you helped get me to here and now.  I'm sorry you didn't feel safe and protected and loved like you should've.  You deserved that, not just because you were a little girl but because you brilliantly, spectacularly special, and you were you."

Tonight, I will let her cry all she wants, to let out what is hurting her heart still, and I will tell her as often as she needs to hear it that she was worthy of all of that love, even when she wasn't always shown that. 

Going forward, I will do my best to honor that, to remind her and remind myself that Stephanie is resilient and sensitive because of the bullets Cissie took, that I learned to rebel because of the deference she endured and the secrets she kept, that I deserve healthy love now just as much as she did then. 

We are both worth it. 

 

I am extraordinary, if you'd ever get to know me.

After Bounder and I broke up, I realized that not only was I ready but I was willing to date.  That is perhaps the most daunting aspect of my new, single life—finding someone to go out with.  The whole notion of "finding" someone seems so stupidly foreign to me anyway.  I didn't date much, in any traditional sense.  The guys I was with before I was married were all friends before I was with them.  They were in my circle, and it was natural to just start hanging out together all the time.  I don't know that I've ever had the experience of a new guy picking me up, taking me out, and bringing me home.  For that to happen, though, I'll have to step out of my neighborhood and into new places with new people. 

The chick with the pink-striped hair? That's me.

For years I identified myself as an introvert.  For anyone who knows me now, that's pretty hard to believe.  Looking back, I realize I wasn't introverted so much as I was shy.  Once I was comfortable with someone, I could easily talk to them and be my normal, boisterous self.  It just took me a while to feel at ease enough to open my mouth.

I'm still that way, for the most part, which is why it's hard for me to meet new people.  I'm also 40 going into this life.  After being with the same man for twenty years—a man who really was an introvert—I have no idea where to go and what to do, especially if I'm by myself.  There's free time now when the boys are with their father.  I don't have to fill all of that time away from home, or even with someone, but it is nice to have someone different to talk to once in a while. 

Having been fortunate enough to have some remarkably special men in my life, it's going to be difficult to find someone who really turns me on.  I can be a lot to handle, and I'm very picky.  It seems that any man who comes close to what I want and what's good for me will have be a very rare breed of human being.  I deserve to have someone that special—and that person will deserve me—but I also know I'm unlikely to encounter them at the same grocery store I see five times a week. 

Queen Frostine encouraged me to go out and try a few, specific new places.  A couple of male friends have volunteered to be my wingman on a night out.  All of that will be happening over the next few weeks and months, and I'm sure I'll meet some great people, along with the ones who aren't so great.  And just meeting someone, even if I like or date them, doesn't mean I want to love them. 

But the day will come (again) when I fall in love.  As I wrote recently, the bar for me has been set very high.  I know I can't compare one man to another—though women do that shit all the time.  It's not about finding someone as good as or better than somebody that I used to know.  However, because I've had some exceptionally profound experiences, I won't be settling for mundane.  A new relationship doesn't have to be full-on excitement all the time, but it also can't be so lacking in real chemistry that I have to constantly overlook flaws in an attempt to be content. 

I've been thinking a lot about what this as-of-now imaginary person might be like.  If they're important enough to me to really pursue something more serious, I can give them a copy of Persona Non Grata, though it's a little strange to hand a would-be the Zagat Guide to Stephanie.

Here's the Cliff's Notes version:

They have to understand that I am a mom.  My kids are always on my mind, and they are usually in my custody.  Although I do get time without them, they are my main priority right now and will be for quite a while.  Anyone who comes into my life has to be willing to accept them as a part of me, and vice versa. 

They have to understand that I used to be a fat girl.  I often still think like a fat girl.  More than a hundred pounds ago, I was miserable.  The weight loss brought the surgeries, which brought the scars.  And I'm still no small thing and never will be.  I am very cognizant of my body, and I'm still trying to adjust to what I see as myself. 

I'd like them to be bigger than I am.  That seems kind of silly, but I was often heavier than my boyfriends and even my husband.  Still an Amazon, I'm not usually attracted to men who are shorter or slighter than I.  I want someone whose hands and feet are larger than mine, who can make me feel physically small when he holds me.  There's a comfort in that, and I've only really felt it with one person. 

They have to be smart and funny and a little unconventional.  I am impatient and easily bored.  I constantly look to be amused in my life, but I have a dry, bawdy sense of humor.  I do not think or act like other girls.  And I talk a lot.  They have to be able to converse with me and laugh with me. 

They have to see me eye-to-eye.  It was recently brought to my attention that one of the reasons I can make people uncomfortable is that I see them for who they are pretty quickly.  I have always read people well, but after two years of really examining myself and others around me, I have developed the ability to hone in on the truth of people with relative ease.  Turns out a lot of people don't like it when others see through their facade.  But that special person has to be honest both with me and with themselves about who and what they are.  That's how I live my own life, and I expect nothing less from my partner. 

They have to be considerate of me.  My time and attention are finite.  I have a lot of responsibilities.  One of my pet peeves is people who are perpetually late or absent who can't be bothered to let you know.  It's not so hard to call or send a text to say you're running late.  Things happen; just keep me in the loop. 

They can't be an addict.  I've dealt with too many men who use substances as a crutch or even a wheelchair to manage their lives.  I can't handle it.  It's not that I'm opposed to drinking or other people's use of occasional recreational substances.  It's the addictive behavior and emotional stuntedness that are unacceptable to me. 

They have to accept that I can be emotionally high-maintenance.  I feel everything—for myself and my friends and my children and the others I love.  I can be insecure and temperamental.  I need emotional validation and attention, though it can be quiet and subtle.  A squeeze of the hand, a murmur of, "I hear you," is sometimes all it takes.  Sometimes I need someone to listen to me rail and cry for a few minutes.  It's not constant, and I'm always willing to reciprocate. 

Maybe this is a lot.  Maybe not.  I don't have a great frame of reference.  If I'm too particular about what I want, it's because I have years of having exactly what I didn't want.  I refuse to live that way ever again, if I can help it. 

So, whoever you are that may capture my heart next, know what you're in for.  This is only the tip of the iceberg, I promise, but start here; we'll see where this path leads us. 

And chances are that guy you saw me with is just my wingman. 

If I fall through that hole, would you pick me up, if I lose my control and break your loving cup?

Sometimes life hurts.

This is something we all know.  Hell, the mere act of being birthed is probably painful—being squeezed and pulled and prodded into a less comfortable, brighter, louder, more chaotic new world.  (Plus, I think gravity just has to suck after being a relatively freefloating form for the entirety of your previous existence.)

Pain is a natural response to damage.  It's the body's way of telling us something is not right.  We are injured or in danger or did something outside the scope of our normal limitations.  Pain is a necessary device of physical form.

But I'll skip the physical pains associated with being human; I'm pretty sure we're all well-familiarized with bumps and bruises and accidents—the inflictions and afflictions that become our personal histories, filled with anecdotes of our agonies. 

It's the emotional pain that is so often the most debilitating and longest lasting.  Whether it be pain from an outside source or from inside ourselves, our souls are molded by both the nature of the damage and the way in which we react to it. 

Jealousy, anger, sorrow, grief... all signs of emotional pain and some kind of damage.  Betrayal, malice, negligence, parting, death... all naturally occurring events in virtually everyone's lives. 

But it is how we face these pains that determines if and when and how we heal from them. 

Sometimes the damage is minor—your best friend canceled dinner plans with you, again, to see her sometimes boyfriend.  Sometimes it's more substantial—the death of a beloved pet.  And sometimes the harm is so great—betrayal by a lover, death of a close loved one—that we find ourselves paralyzed, both physically and emotionally, in that injury, unable to escape the constant gnaw of harrowing discomfort. 

Just like it's physical counterpart, emotional pain is a necessary part of life.  If we are to move forward on our paths—whether individually or with another—we must encounter hardships.  To never feel the deepest despair means we will never feel the greatest joy when the pendulum swings back the other way.  And it will; it always does. 

If it ebbs, it will flow.

If there is no counterbalance, if we are always in the middle of the road, we can never fully appreciate the wonderful without fully understanding the terrible. 

When emotional hurdles are tossed onto our paths, we do have options:

Stop.  Become still in your life and never get past that place in time. 

Go around it.  Pretend it wasn't there and keep moving forward.  Any time we look back, that hurdle will still be there.

Destroy it.  Smash it.  Bulldoze through it.  Throw it into the briars.  It's still there, even in bits and pieces, but now we're exhausted from the exertion.

Go over it.  Jump, climb, crawl or step—whatever works best.  Conquer the insurmountable in the way that suits each of us best.  It can still be tiring, but the force of energy needed to deal with the hurdle is manageable. 

Regardless of how we choose to deal with the obstacle, it's still an obstacle.  It warrants respect and reverence for being important enough to alter our path, no matter how long or short its wielding of influence may be. 

The key to healing from the damage that's causing such anguish is to feel it, to recognize and accept that we cannot go up until we hit bottom.  We must let our feet touch the hard depths in order to get our footing and push off again, bounding to the top.  Floating freely and erratically in our pain may feel comforting for a while, oddly reminiscent of being in utero, but it will not end until we push hard toward the light at the end of the tunnel that is still squeezing and contracting around us as we go. 

It's incredibly difficult to watch someone you love live their pain.  We want to protect those closest to us from harm, but it's impossible.  The acting of even trying to protect them can inflict more damage than we can imagine.  Everyone has to deal and heal in their own way and in their own time.  Sometimes the best we can do is to offer help—a bandage, stitches, or a hand to squeeze when the pain is too much.  Sometimes a lullaby or a soft shushing will be support enough.  And sometimes all we can do is mutely watch them fall, waiting for them to hit their bottom and come bounding back, rushing toward their light.  Our love may cushion them, but it can never fully break their fall.

Sometimes pain leaves scars.  My physical scars are like a topography map of what I've seen and where I've been, but they are a manifestation of healing from deep trauma and heartache that was inflicted by others but mostly by myself.  At the core of me, I am the same person I've always been, but that old Stephanie isn't exactly the same as the one I am now.  I am grateful for the comprehension of joy and love and truth in ways I'd never experienced before, even if it comes from having my world and my head turned upside down.  I am sometimes disgusted by the proof of my own self-inflicted carelessness, but I also understand that it's made me better able to pause in my journey when needed, to ask myself if the choice before me is healthy or unhealthy.  It's all proof that I was, and still am, ready and able to move forward, no matter what obstacles lie ahead. 

I'll make it to the moon if i have to crawl.

I've talked before about the idea of the Truthiness of Me and of my drive to honor my truths—good and bad—regardless of what the vast majority of people think.  Muchness and Light is, in some ways, a public exploration of that.  I talk very openly about a lot of things—from my fears and failures to my triumphs, my body image and weight loss issues and the subsequent surgeries.  Early in my process of reawakening, I determined that is was viscerally important to me to be as honest with my readers as I could stand.  I am very often this way in my offline, day-to-day life, as well.

Turns out, apparently I'm not so much like other people. 

"You're willing to embrace your scars and show them," Mandypants said.  "You're willing to embrace the scars of other people, of the people you love.  And that is brave and beautiful, but it is not like 98% of people."

My therapist nodded emphatically in agreement when I told her. 

When I saw Tiff for Pretty, Pretty Princess Night a couple of weeks ago, she saw the edges of the brachioplasty scars peeking from the backs of my arms.  "Those scars are kind-of cool," she remarked.  "They're really pretty badass."

Most of my female friends feel the same way.  Interestingly, most men ask if and when the scars will fade, or if they can be hidden.

Tiff and I went on to talk about this idea of baring my scars proudly, like a badge of honor. 

"I get why that's important to you," she said, "but I am a very private person.  I would be mortified to bare everything so openly."

Wharrrrrgarrrbbbble?!?

I don't understand.  Really.  I mean, I get it in my head that not everyone is so tolerant of such self-examination, even when the forum isn't so public.  That is, ultimately, the own to each.  But in my heart, I have some ingrained block against comprehending why it would be bad to point out your own journey via the roadmap of your scars.  It seems ludicrous not to be embracing of the good and the bad, to see and accept the awful as equally powerful and enlightening as the splendid. 

Scars, whether literal or figurative, are simply reference points, like landmarks of a person's journey.  They're invariably the product of wounding.  Usually that wounding is unintentional and painful.  More often than not, it is from injury that was inflicted, whether by someone else or by ourselves. 

I have a small scar in my eyebrow from running into a television stand twice when I was very young.  I have faded silvery lines that came from exploded fireworks and bicycle accidents and stretch marks from growth.  There's a small indentation of missing bone in my right ankle, where it was chipped away by the angry, pointed toe of an abusive ex-boyfriend's cowboy boot.

Scars may also be the unintentional consequences of good things.  Nearly every mother I know has either an abdominal C-section scar, or a scar from where her natural vaginal tear (or perhaps her episiotomy) healed after birthing her precious baby.  I have the new, lengthy scars from my own series of surgeries, trading in the old emotional baggage for something more (and less) physical. 

And, as Mo roundaboutedly reminded me last night, tattoos are a great example of almost-always chosen scars.  "The truth is like a tattoo.  It accurately represents who you are at the exact moment it is revealed."

Maybe all scars are like that.  Maybe they pinpoint not only where you were when you got them, but also how and why you were—all of which make up the Who of You. 

So what should be so wrong in talking about that?  What is the problem in discussing and showing how and when and why you came into being Who?

The problem, as I understand it, is two-fold:

1)      Talking about your trauma and damage and all of your little anecdotes of agony can make other people uncomfortable.  Apparently men are especially likely to feel off-put by such honesty, based on anecdotal evidence.  According to my therapist, the greatest or most common fear of men, generally, is shame.  There's something there are about self-respect and identity, of reputation and persona.  (For women, the prevalent fear is being killed.  It has to do with safety and feeling unprotected and vulnerable.)

2)      Injury is so often inflicted by another person.  To tell your own story is fine.  To discuss the parts of your story that intersect with others may open their wounds, or cause them inadvertent discomfort. 

It doesn't seem that talking about the damage that's already been done should be inflicting.  There's not necessarily onus to your action; discussion isn't malicious, by default.  It's bleeding edge versus cutting edge.  At most, it's a matter of pointing out the wound and addressing it in an effort to help it heal.  Debriding might hurt like hell, but it's ultimately a much better alternative than leaving the wound to fester, never to have the opportunity to scar in healing—or worse.

So what to do, when your life is words, and you're all about this Verisimilitude of Self?

It's a fine line, really.  There's a right to publicity and right to privacy that overlap.  Am I talking about someone else's immoral or illegal behavior?  Is what I'm saying true?  Is it potentially embarrassing but cogently honest? 

And it's hard sometimes, to know when to share and when to hold back.  I have to tap into that place inside me, the Wellspring of Verity, where I find what is unequivocally right, regardless of whether or not is right for me or anyone else, specifically.  At the very least, it is what is right right now.  If I find that Point Me shifts to another place and time, what is right today might very well turn out to be wrong tomorrow.  But tomorrow isn't guaranteed, and all I can be sure of is this moment and the ones from which I came. 

Just because something hurts, that doesn't mean it's bad.  Growth can be painful.  Sadness and anger can hurt like fucking hell, but they usually bring us closer to some new understanding of ourselves.  That is what is so sublime about the raw power of self-cultivation and transcendence.

So here are my scars.  Here is the proof from whence I came.  Some of you came from there with me, though some of you can't admit that.  Somehow, in your own arrogance or sadness or anger, you have valued me as worth less than your own shame.  That is on you. 

I do have worth and value, for who I am and the things I have endured.  The web of scars, both apparent and unseeable, is the Substrate of Stephanie.  It is the topography of my life, at least to this point.

For all that I have done and seen and felt and lived, in ways that may have been profound only to me, I am defensible.  And I will defend my self and my worth at all costs, because it is always more precious than shame.