Reflection: Teal Deer
The most important experience I had with the AOA last year wasn't anything that looked big to others from the outside. For me personally, it was a revelation and the completion of something I've been fighting to attain for nearly ten years.
One weekend this spring, we didn't have the church and so we had rehearsal at the UU. When we arrived my ex-step-mother was there cleaning.
And to go any further, I have to explain about my relationship with her. When she and my Dad were together, she was mostly pretty nice to me, sometimes manipulating me against him. After the divorce, she said the worst possible things imaginable about me, rarely to my face, often in court against my father, and she said worse things about him. When my brother was a baby, she smoked cigarettes with him in her arms. She would hold him while yelling at and hitting my father in their many fights. She lied to him constantly and did everything she could to keep him away from my father. I lost track of the spiteful, malicious things she did to my father.
For a number of years, I managed to be hurt by the various things she did without letting myself hate her. It was so, so, so hard, but I knew that hating her would be more damaging to myself than to her, and so I persisted and mostly succeeded.
Then it got worse, and for a full year she kept my brother and my father apart. I broke and I lost the strength. I hated her outright. And I was mad at myself for hating her. I tried not to, but she kept giving my new reasons, like saying to a cancer survivor that she hoped my father died of his cancer. I started to wish that she would die and thought very poorly of myself, because of it. I felt like a far worse person because of the feelings I had where she was concerned. I cut any interaction with her out of my life as much as possible and tried not to think about her. I might not be able to control my feelings about her, but I could at least try to manage the occasions that made me feel that way.
When I realized she was there in the same building with me, it was . . . alarming. I was having my AOA time. I was supposed to be around the people who made me better, and suddenly the person I reacted to in such a negative way was there. I hadn't seen her face-to-face yet, but I knew it was coming. We would have to interact.
I thought about one of the first readings that Liz had given me during the summer--Christine de Pisan and her writings about appropriate social behavior--and about the tenets, and I determined that however difficult it was I would be courteous to her. It would be hard, I thought, but I would do it. Cool, maybe, but courteous. Surely, I could do that.
The moment came, she entered the room we were in. I greeted her, she greeted me in return. We talked about my little brother briefly, and then she was gone.
It was easy. And I felt nothing.
I don't mean that I was bottling everything so deep down that I was numb inside. I wasn't.
I just felt nothing about her. All the hatred and anger was gone. I still didn't think much about her as a human being, but it no longer affected me emotionally. I could be courteous to her and it cost me nothing, not even effort.
It felt so good. Especially the realization that if I could let go of the hatred I had felt towards her, that it was easy to let go of lesser offenses, the teacher who had hurt me so deeply in fifth grade, and a hundred little things that meant nothing. I could let it all go. It was nothing.
For the first time in years, I was without hate. It was no longer something within me, damaging me far more than it could ever damage the people it was aimed at. My disappointment at myself for hating them, I could let go of that as well.
For me as a person, it may be the most important thing that has happened to me all year.
One weekend this spring, we didn't have the church and so we had rehearsal at the UU. When we arrived my ex-step-mother was there cleaning.
And to go any further, I have to explain about my relationship with her. When she and my Dad were together, she was mostly pretty nice to me, sometimes manipulating me against him. After the divorce, she said the worst possible things imaginable about me, rarely to my face, often in court against my father, and she said worse things about him. When my brother was a baby, she smoked cigarettes with him in her arms. She would hold him while yelling at and hitting my father in their many fights. She lied to him constantly and did everything she could to keep him away from my father. I lost track of the spiteful, malicious things she did to my father.
For a number of years, I managed to be hurt by the various things she did without letting myself hate her. It was so, so, so hard, but I knew that hating her would be more damaging to myself than to her, and so I persisted and mostly succeeded.
Then it got worse, and for a full year she kept my brother and my father apart. I broke and I lost the strength. I hated her outright. And I was mad at myself for hating her. I tried not to, but she kept giving my new reasons, like saying to a cancer survivor that she hoped my father died of his cancer. I started to wish that she would die and thought very poorly of myself, because of it. I felt like a far worse person because of the feelings I had where she was concerned. I cut any interaction with her out of my life as much as possible and tried not to think about her. I might not be able to control my feelings about her, but I could at least try to manage the occasions that made me feel that way.
When I realized she was there in the same building with me, it was . . . alarming. I was having my AOA time. I was supposed to be around the people who made me better, and suddenly the person I reacted to in such a negative way was there. I hadn't seen her face-to-face yet, but I knew it was coming. We would have to interact.
I thought about one of the first readings that Liz had given me during the summer--Christine de Pisan and her writings about appropriate social behavior--and about the tenets, and I determined that however difficult it was I would be courteous to her. It would be hard, I thought, but I would do it. Cool, maybe, but courteous. Surely, I could do that.
The moment came, she entered the room we were in. I greeted her, she greeted me in return. We talked about my little brother briefly, and then she was gone.
It was easy. And I felt nothing.
I don't mean that I was bottling everything so deep down that I was numb inside. I wasn't.
I just felt nothing about her. All the hatred and anger was gone. I still didn't think much about her as a human being, but it no longer affected me emotionally. I could be courteous to her and it cost me nothing, not even effort.
It felt so good. Especially the realization that if I could let go of the hatred I had felt towards her, that it was easy to let go of lesser offenses, the teacher who had hurt me so deeply in fifth grade, and a hundred little things that meant nothing. I could let it all go. It was nothing.
For the first time in years, I was without hate. It was no longer something within me, damaging me far more than it could ever damage the people it was aimed at. My disappointment at myself for hating them, I could let go of that as well.
For me as a person, it may be the most important thing that has happened to me all year.