I know, I know....
It's been a long time since I've been here. In all honesty, life has been busy at best, crushingly so at worst. And I've found myself in this wordless place--probably because I've found myself in a place that has had life and circumstances swirling so madly around me that there has been no space to think a thought, let alone craft a sentence worthy of anything but a Facebook status update.
It's been awful, frankly--and something that I've come to realize I can't continue, because without contemplation, without awareness, without making space, there is no real life.
Not one that I'm particularly interested in living, anyway.
....which is one of the many reasons I called the EAP and set up five more sessions with Frank. Because I need a quiet room where I can go and just BE--where I can go to try to sort out the mess that is my mind.
The most difficult thing, I think, is that life had been pretty wonderful for several years--and then a lot happened that was so excruciatingly NOT wonderful that I had gotten out of practice as to how to handle the not-wonderfulness. I tried a lot of my new-found weapons against the suck in order to overcome it--optimism, fortitude, forgiveness, positive thinking...and those things did indeed ward off the worst of it, so that I didn't drop as low as I could have, considering the tsunami of horror in which I found myself. But not entirely--not as much as I was hoping for. There were times when, in my secret heart, I indulged in a despair so complete and so overwhelming that all I wanted to do was hop into my bed and stay there for several years--when I almost HOPED that my brain would visibly snap right in half and the decision to either stay in the real world or be shipped off to some tiny theraputic island somewhere to lounge on a beach and sip prescription cocktails would be taken out of my hands...
Of course, there was my mother's sickness and death to cope with, and all the myriad sediment that kicked up in my mind. One of the more disturbing aspects of that was stirred up when people would come to me and, with all kindness and sympathy, tell me what a sweet woman my mother was--how wonderful she had always been to them. Which should have been comforting, right? Which should have brought back good memories of the wonderful things she had done for me, right? But all it managed--and manages even now--to do is make me think about all the strangers that my mother was wonderful to at the very same times that she was being a pure-d bitch to me. How she managed to pull together a modicum of kindness and sympathy for people who, in the grander scheme, really didn't matter, when she was incapable of doing the same thing for her firstborn. And the longer this went on, the angrier and more bitter I became.
These people smiling at me and telling me that she was wonderful, while at the same time I was remembering that her last semi-lucid words to me were, "You're a LIAR!", when I tried to calm her and tell her that the doctors were trying to help her.
Then there was that whole Aunt Clara thing to cope with, too.
After awhile, my father's condition deteriorated to the point that he stopped eating and stopped taking his medicine, and he would call me at 6 in the morning to tell me he had shit the bed because he just didn't feel like getting up to go to the bathroom, and he needed me to come and clean him and everything else up in the aftermath...
There was one night, I had a car accident--a stupid accident where some asshat woman hit me from behind as I sat at a red light. It was just one more thing, yanno? So while I'm standing in the Wawa parking lot, trying to sort things with the cop, my cell phone rings and it's my Dad. I tell him what happened and that I would call him back. After the administrative sorting with the police and a trip to the doctor's office, I call him back. And he wants me to come over. Going on 8:30, with no dinner in my belly, I ask him what he needs, and he says, "Nothing. I'd just like to see you."
And so, like an idiot, I go. And he spends most of the visit watching the television and not letting me fix him anything to eat.
And not once did he ask me anything about the accident, or if I'm OK.
This went on and on--and most days, I found myself waiting for a phone call, with my Dad on the other end, telling me what was the next thing he needed me to do for him, and to let me know that whatever it was, it wasn't nearly enough. I got the distinct impression that nothing would be good enough, short of my quitting my job and leaving my husband and my home and coming in to take over where my mother left off.
Christmas was coming. My house was full--Jobe and Leahanne are still here, waiting on the bureaucracy. Work was still demanding more and more attention, wrapped in the stress of impending layoffs and the disaster that such a thing happening to ME would entail. And on top of all the things I needed to do, there was a building resentment over the fact that everything that needed to be done was eating away more and more of what I wanted to do. And I'm not talking about frivolities here--I'm talking about things like spending time with my husband and taking care of my own house and my own friends and the people who were important to me. My personal priorities were completely overthrown, devoured by the imaginary needs of an old man who had lost every sense of decency and kindness and who became a giant sucking ball of willing and stubborn dependence, enslaving a person he couldn't see as a human being, let alone an adult child that he cared about.
My own life diminished to Facebook status updates, because I didn't have enough time for anything more than 140 characters.
And this all kind of backed up on me one afternoon, when I found myself unable to stop crying.
My first call was to the EAP, where I scared the shit out of some poor shmoo who answered the phone and heard me say, "I just want it to end. I just want it to STOP."
And the next call was to my father's doctor, to let him know, "I need help. I need it NOW."
And the next call was to my father, to tell him to get his ass out of bed and get ready to go to the doctor, because he was going RIGHT NOW.
He went to the doctor. The doctor sent him to the emergency room, with malnutrition, dehydration and a fecal impaction that was likely MONTHS old. ALL of which, I can tell you now, were direct results of his own stubbornness and his own insistence that he was going to become as ill as mother had been, so that he would get that same level of attention.
I'm not being mean here--he has said those things himself. He was manipulating me and life itself to get attention paid to him, and he didn't care what he had to do to get it. He didn't take care of himself because he didn't WANT to--he has said as much. And he got rewarded for that with getting my attention, no matter what it cost me.
He went to the hospital for a week, where it took TWO rounds of Go-Lytely to get the impaction cleared, and where the poor nurses were the ones who had to clean him up as he lay in bed and shit himself, and now he's at Manor Care, where he's getting attention paid, but where he still asks me, every day, when next I am coming up to see him.
And I had my first talk with Frank on Thursday.
And when I told him all of this--the stuff that happened when mother died, the stuff that Aunt Clara said, the stuff that my Dad has been doing--he said, "You have grown up, all your life, in an environment of conditional love. And it's clear you have spent a good chunk of the last six months, if not your whole life, struggling to get the love you DESERVE, but in the only way you know these people will even think about giving it to you--on the basis of what you do for them. But in the end, you have worked this hard, and you still haven't gotten it--because you are NOT a Christian, and you cannot BE who they want you to be, for all that you DO. And so it isn't good enough." He paused. "But it's only not good enough in their eyes, because they are the ones who don't know how to love you. That's not your fault. But what is your fault is depleting yourself in your delusion that one day, you will be good enough for them to love."
And the penny dropped.
It is my delusional idea that someday it's going to dawn on them that maybe I'm deserving of their love, if I dance fast enough. But the thing is, there is nothing that I can do that is more important than the fact that I cannot--I CANNOT--be a Christian. It isn't even a question of will anymore--it's just something that I cannot do. It is easier to think about their rejection of me than it would be to give in and play the game and sit my ass in church every Sunday and pretend.
But that doesn't mean that the rejection isn't excruciating, on so many levels.
It's excruciating because it causes them to treat me this way--but it's also excruciating to think of what it does to THEM. It's excruciating to see them so wounded and so crippled up by this virulent and hateful belief in the bleedin' freakin' Jesus. It is excruciating to see that this belief--this hateful, horrible belief--twists and bends and crushes every human relationship they have, including the ones they have with their children, who they're supposed to love. And THEN they're told to "be fruitful and multiply", so that the damage spreads far and wide, and infects more and more children with this absolutely killing and painful attitude that they are always, ALWAYS deficient, unless they completely subvert everything they are and submit to the system.
And you know, I can't remember one single verse in the Bible that commands parents to love their children--only that children are commanded to honor their parents. Which means that every child born into this sickness is born into slavery. And that is a horror to me, because what I know--I KNOW--in my heart is that this is the exact opposite of how things are supposed to be.
So the deal is that I've spent all this time trying to function within this sick paradigm by my own rules--the rules that tell me, in my own logic and in my own system of ethics, that you treat people well and as lovingly as you can, and you can open up a love in their hearts, not just for you, but for everyone.
But those rules don't apply when Jesus gets dragged into the picture.
Jesus tells them that they are right to shun and hate the very people who love them, so long as they don't toe the line and submit to The Book, which is what is to be loved above all else--even your own blood.
And the longer this goes on, the angrier I get.
So Frank says that my assignment for the week is to do as much good for myself as I can, and to love and defend myself the way I would love and defend a friend who is in the same position. To give myself the kind of advice as I would give them.
It's harder than you think.
Because, you see, I have been very carefully taught.
It's been awful, frankly--and something that I've come to realize I can't continue, because without contemplation, without awareness, without making space, there is no real life.
Not one that I'm particularly interested in living, anyway.
....which is one of the many reasons I called the EAP and set up five more sessions with Frank. Because I need a quiet room where I can go and just BE--where I can go to try to sort out the mess that is my mind.
The most difficult thing, I think, is that life had been pretty wonderful for several years--and then a lot happened that was so excruciatingly NOT wonderful that I had gotten out of practice as to how to handle the not-wonderfulness. I tried a lot of my new-found weapons against the suck in order to overcome it--optimism, fortitude, forgiveness, positive thinking...and those things did indeed ward off the worst of it, so that I didn't drop as low as I could have, considering the tsunami of horror in which I found myself. But not entirely--not as much as I was hoping for. There were times when, in my secret heart, I indulged in a despair so complete and so overwhelming that all I wanted to do was hop into my bed and stay there for several years--when I almost HOPED that my brain would visibly snap right in half and the decision to either stay in the real world or be shipped off to some tiny theraputic island somewhere to lounge on a beach and sip prescription cocktails would be taken out of my hands...
Of course, there was my mother's sickness and death to cope with, and all the myriad sediment that kicked up in my mind. One of the more disturbing aspects of that was stirred up when people would come to me and, with all kindness and sympathy, tell me what a sweet woman my mother was--how wonderful she had always been to them. Which should have been comforting, right? Which should have brought back good memories of the wonderful things she had done for me, right? But all it managed--and manages even now--to do is make me think about all the strangers that my mother was wonderful to at the very same times that she was being a pure-d bitch to me. How she managed to pull together a modicum of kindness and sympathy for people who, in the grander scheme, really didn't matter, when she was incapable of doing the same thing for her firstborn. And the longer this went on, the angrier and more bitter I became.
These people smiling at me and telling me that she was wonderful, while at the same time I was remembering that her last semi-lucid words to me were, "You're a LIAR!", when I tried to calm her and tell her that the doctors were trying to help her.
Then there was that whole Aunt Clara thing to cope with, too.
After awhile, my father's condition deteriorated to the point that he stopped eating and stopped taking his medicine, and he would call me at 6 in the morning to tell me he had shit the bed because he just didn't feel like getting up to go to the bathroom, and he needed me to come and clean him and everything else up in the aftermath...
There was one night, I had a car accident--a stupid accident where some asshat woman hit me from behind as I sat at a red light. It was just one more thing, yanno? So while I'm standing in the Wawa parking lot, trying to sort things with the cop, my cell phone rings and it's my Dad. I tell him what happened and that I would call him back. After the administrative sorting with the police and a trip to the doctor's office, I call him back. And he wants me to come over. Going on 8:30, with no dinner in my belly, I ask him what he needs, and he says, "Nothing. I'd just like to see you."
And so, like an idiot, I go. And he spends most of the visit watching the television and not letting me fix him anything to eat.
And not once did he ask me anything about the accident, or if I'm OK.
This went on and on--and most days, I found myself waiting for a phone call, with my Dad on the other end, telling me what was the next thing he needed me to do for him, and to let me know that whatever it was, it wasn't nearly enough. I got the distinct impression that nothing would be good enough, short of my quitting my job and leaving my husband and my home and coming in to take over where my mother left off.
Christmas was coming. My house was full--Jobe and Leahanne are still here, waiting on the bureaucracy. Work was still demanding more and more attention, wrapped in the stress of impending layoffs and the disaster that such a thing happening to ME would entail. And on top of all the things I needed to do, there was a building resentment over the fact that everything that needed to be done was eating away more and more of what I wanted to do. And I'm not talking about frivolities here--I'm talking about things like spending time with my husband and taking care of my own house and my own friends and the people who were important to me. My personal priorities were completely overthrown, devoured by the imaginary needs of an old man who had lost every sense of decency and kindness and who became a giant sucking ball of willing and stubborn dependence, enslaving a person he couldn't see as a human being, let alone an adult child that he cared about.
My own life diminished to Facebook status updates, because I didn't have enough time for anything more than 140 characters.
And this all kind of backed up on me one afternoon, when I found myself unable to stop crying.
My first call was to the EAP, where I scared the shit out of some poor shmoo who answered the phone and heard me say, "I just want it to end. I just want it to STOP."
And the next call was to my father's doctor, to let him know, "I need help. I need it NOW."
And the next call was to my father, to tell him to get his ass out of bed and get ready to go to the doctor, because he was going RIGHT NOW.
He went to the doctor. The doctor sent him to the emergency room, with malnutrition, dehydration and a fecal impaction that was likely MONTHS old. ALL of which, I can tell you now, were direct results of his own stubbornness and his own insistence that he was going to become as ill as mother had been, so that he would get that same level of attention.
I'm not being mean here--he has said those things himself. He was manipulating me and life itself to get attention paid to him, and he didn't care what he had to do to get it. He didn't take care of himself because he didn't WANT to--he has said as much. And he got rewarded for that with getting my attention, no matter what it cost me.
He went to the hospital for a week, where it took TWO rounds of Go-Lytely to get the impaction cleared, and where the poor nurses were the ones who had to clean him up as he lay in bed and shit himself, and now he's at Manor Care, where he's getting attention paid, but where he still asks me, every day, when next I am coming up to see him.
And I had my first talk with Frank on Thursday.
And when I told him all of this--the stuff that happened when mother died, the stuff that Aunt Clara said, the stuff that my Dad has been doing--he said, "You have grown up, all your life, in an environment of conditional love. And it's clear you have spent a good chunk of the last six months, if not your whole life, struggling to get the love you DESERVE, but in the only way you know these people will even think about giving it to you--on the basis of what you do for them. But in the end, you have worked this hard, and you still haven't gotten it--because you are NOT a Christian, and you cannot BE who they want you to be, for all that you DO. And so it isn't good enough." He paused. "But it's only not good enough in their eyes, because they are the ones who don't know how to love you. That's not your fault. But what is your fault is depleting yourself in your delusion that one day, you will be good enough for them to love."
And the penny dropped.
It is my delusional idea that someday it's going to dawn on them that maybe I'm deserving of their love, if I dance fast enough. But the thing is, there is nothing that I can do that is more important than the fact that I cannot--I CANNOT--be a Christian. It isn't even a question of will anymore--it's just something that I cannot do. It is easier to think about their rejection of me than it would be to give in and play the game and sit my ass in church every Sunday and pretend.
But that doesn't mean that the rejection isn't excruciating, on so many levels.
It's excruciating because it causes them to treat me this way--but it's also excruciating to think of what it does to THEM. It's excruciating to see them so wounded and so crippled up by this virulent and hateful belief in the bleedin' freakin' Jesus. It is excruciating to see that this belief--this hateful, horrible belief--twists and bends and crushes every human relationship they have, including the ones they have with their children, who they're supposed to love. And THEN they're told to "be fruitful and multiply", so that the damage spreads far and wide, and infects more and more children with this absolutely killing and painful attitude that they are always, ALWAYS deficient, unless they completely subvert everything they are and submit to the system.
And you know, I can't remember one single verse in the Bible that commands parents to love their children--only that children are commanded to honor their parents. Which means that every child born into this sickness is born into slavery. And that is a horror to me, because what I know--I KNOW--in my heart is that this is the exact opposite of how things are supposed to be.
So the deal is that I've spent all this time trying to function within this sick paradigm by my own rules--the rules that tell me, in my own logic and in my own system of ethics, that you treat people well and as lovingly as you can, and you can open up a love in their hearts, not just for you, but for everyone.
But those rules don't apply when Jesus gets dragged into the picture.
Jesus tells them that they are right to shun and hate the very people who love them, so long as they don't toe the line and submit to The Book, which is what is to be loved above all else--even your own blood.
And the longer this goes on, the angrier I get.
So Frank says that my assignment for the week is to do as much good for myself as I can, and to love and defend myself the way I would love and defend a friend who is in the same position. To give myself the kind of advice as I would give them.
It's harder than you think.
Because, you see, I have been very carefully taught.