Second Epiphany - Burdens
I just fucking wrote the whole thing and now I have to write it again because I pressed a key just slightly and it moved to rich text mode and I lost everything I'd done so far. I could scream but I won't. I'll just try to rewrite what I just wrote before it's lost in my head.
Last July I had this epiphany. It was awesome in its impact and life-changing. I've just had another last Thursday. It took me a while to write about it because I wanted some processing time.
Pie has been looking forward to a trip away with HB for several months now. At first when she suggested it I refused outright to say it was ok for her to go. I knew it was selfish but I just couldn't handle it. After a while I forced myself to give her what she wanted. I didn't want to deny her. I knew it would be selfish to do so. So I said it was ok and they made plans. I hoped she knew how hard it was for me.
This past Thursday Pie was all packed up and ready to go next morning and I sort of picked a fight with her. We got into an argument that had started out as having nothing to do with the trip really but was. Pie was trying to get out of me what the real issue was. I cried and went back into circles over the same ground I always go, unable to articulate what the real issue was. Pie said she knew I've been working hard on the issues, but that she just didn't understand and no amount of me trying to explain could help.
I was crying very hard, trying to say how I felt and having a terrible time, feeling like I was getting to something really hard and finally it suddenly burst out. I didn't want to be a burden to her. I immediately remembered saying this to Sweetie many times. I remembered saying it to other people in which I had relationships. I immediately recognized that feeling as the same one I had in relation to my mother.
My mother never expected to be saddled with a child in a marriage she didn't want at the age of 21. What was worse, she hadn't even had the benefit of having sex with him (there was a mess and a towel and a very enthusiastic sperm involved - my family is insanely fertile). At the time abortion wasn't an option, really. I was a serious mistake with serious consequences. My mother left my father when I was 4, taking my sister and I to live in a tiny apartment with my grandmother and her roommate, who eventually moved out. We later moved into a bigger apartment with my grandmother and my mother took odd acting and modelling jobs to pay the bills. My mother hated my father with a passion reserved for evil villains. She hated having to deal with him to support us. She hated her life. She hated me for being the catalyst for that life.
I was my mother's burden... the albatross she carried around her neck. If not for me her life could have been so different, or so she often said. She grew a strong sense of entitlement out of her experience as martyr to my birth and her circumstances. I became her servant and housemaid. I did all the dishes, the laundry, the furniture waxing, the tidying, and I did it all because I wanted her to like and value me... to see me in a positive light, not as her burden. As I tried to reach out to her for physical affection she rejected me. I tried to get support from her for the troubles I was having with my schoolmates and she abandoned me. I was clearly not important enough for her to really try to love. (I know that's harsh but that was my experience at the time.)
Fast forward to more adult relationships. I repeatedly vied for affection and was taught I was clingy. I learned to represss the desire for human contact and become more socially appropriate about affection. I learned to repress my desire for love and let it free only when I saw it was being returned. Then as time went on and each relationship became more established, I started to feel childish and stupid and undesirable... and a burden. The power dynamic changed and I felt like a child trying to fight for feelings of self-worth and esteem. Not a healthy dynamic. Not a dynamic of equals.
Fast-forward to the night before Pie's trip. Upon the discovery of this powerful word - burden - I cried more deeply and was more wracked with sobs than I ever remember having been. I was literally choking on my sobs. My sinuses filled and I could barely breathe. Pie was worried and held me, offered to open a window or do something to help, but I forced myself to subside and gather myself together after a few minutes and let her know something major had just happened. She was supportive and patient while I recovered and worked on a way to articulate what I had learned. That was definitely not easy, but I found a way.
And then suddenly Pie "got" what I'd been trying to tell her. She understood what this had all been about. It wasn't that I'm not poly or that I'm jealous of her relationship with HB. It's that I wanted to feel like I matter and that I'm valued and important to her even when she's with him. I wanted to feel like I was more than just an obligation or burden to her. I wanted to feel wanted and needed. Once I was reassured, she could go and do whatever the hell she wanted, as long as I had that to bolster me through it.
We talked for quite a while. Eventually we went to sleep. I told her not to worry. I would be ok and her trip would be fine. Just knowing what the issue was made it easier to put into perspective. But you can't put something into perspective until you know what it is, and that was what had been taking us in circles for so long.
The impact of this discovery is quite huge. It touches nearly every single part of my life from my childhood forward. It touches the good relationships and bad ones, the self-destructive behaviour, the depression, the procrastination, the lack of self-care, the lack of interest in school, the family relationships, the friendships that came and went, the drive to feel useful and important, the long-misunderstood anger toward my mother and toward my sister for having been favoured by everybody, the trouble with authority, and conformity, and it even touches my sexuality and sadomasochism. It touched just about everything in my life. Everything.
I talked to Sweetie about it a couple days later. It was good to be able to talk it out with him and let him know how this came into play in our relationship. He seemed to understand what I was saying. He's always been pretty smart with being able to see things that should be obvious to me but aren't. I was too close to look into my own soul.
Now I feel like I can handle these things that I've been struggling with. Now that I know the issue I know what I'm dealing with and can be more consciously aware of when this comes into play, more able to articulate how I feel about things and why. I'm more able to put things into perspective and know what's real and what's imagined in terms of other people's behaviours toward me.
As I sit here re-writing this entry I'm remembering that throughout my many years of therapy, trying to address problems of self-care as simple as regularly brushing my teeth, I went through cognitive therapy and other types and was asked each time I explored this issue to say what I was thinking at the time I fought with myself, talking myself out of doing what would be required to take better care of myself. Each time I remember thinking, "It doesn't matter. It isn't important."
What I was really saying underneath that, and couldn't see, was that *I* didn't feel like I mattered or was important, so I wasn't worth taking care of. And why would I feel I was? After all, I wasn't wanted. I was a burden.
Now that I know what the real issue is, I intend not to be a burden anymore... especially not to myself.
Last July I had this epiphany. It was awesome in its impact and life-changing. I've just had another last Thursday. It took me a while to write about it because I wanted some processing time.
Pie has been looking forward to a trip away with HB for several months now. At first when she suggested it I refused outright to say it was ok for her to go. I knew it was selfish but I just couldn't handle it. After a while I forced myself to give her what she wanted. I didn't want to deny her. I knew it would be selfish to do so. So I said it was ok and they made plans. I hoped she knew how hard it was for me.
This past Thursday Pie was all packed up and ready to go next morning and I sort of picked a fight with her. We got into an argument that had started out as having nothing to do with the trip really but was. Pie was trying to get out of me what the real issue was. I cried and went back into circles over the same ground I always go, unable to articulate what the real issue was. Pie said she knew I've been working hard on the issues, but that she just didn't understand and no amount of me trying to explain could help.
I was crying very hard, trying to say how I felt and having a terrible time, feeling like I was getting to something really hard and finally it suddenly burst out. I didn't want to be a burden to her. I immediately remembered saying this to Sweetie many times. I remembered saying it to other people in which I had relationships. I immediately recognized that feeling as the same one I had in relation to my mother.
My mother never expected to be saddled with a child in a marriage she didn't want at the age of 21. What was worse, she hadn't even had the benefit of having sex with him (there was a mess and a towel and a very enthusiastic sperm involved - my family is insanely fertile). At the time abortion wasn't an option, really. I was a serious mistake with serious consequences. My mother left my father when I was 4, taking my sister and I to live in a tiny apartment with my grandmother and her roommate, who eventually moved out. We later moved into a bigger apartment with my grandmother and my mother took odd acting and modelling jobs to pay the bills. My mother hated my father with a passion reserved for evil villains. She hated having to deal with him to support us. She hated her life. She hated me for being the catalyst for that life.
I was my mother's burden... the albatross she carried around her neck. If not for me her life could have been so different, or so she often said. She grew a strong sense of entitlement out of her experience as martyr to my birth and her circumstances. I became her servant and housemaid. I did all the dishes, the laundry, the furniture waxing, the tidying, and I did it all because I wanted her to like and value me... to see me in a positive light, not as her burden. As I tried to reach out to her for physical affection she rejected me. I tried to get support from her for the troubles I was having with my schoolmates and she abandoned me. I was clearly not important enough for her to really try to love. (I know that's harsh but that was my experience at the time.)
Fast forward to more adult relationships. I repeatedly vied for affection and was taught I was clingy. I learned to represss the desire for human contact and become more socially appropriate about affection. I learned to repress my desire for love and let it free only when I saw it was being returned. Then as time went on and each relationship became more established, I started to feel childish and stupid and undesirable... and a burden. The power dynamic changed and I felt like a child trying to fight for feelings of self-worth and esteem. Not a healthy dynamic. Not a dynamic of equals.
Fast-forward to the night before Pie's trip. Upon the discovery of this powerful word - burden - I cried more deeply and was more wracked with sobs than I ever remember having been. I was literally choking on my sobs. My sinuses filled and I could barely breathe. Pie was worried and held me, offered to open a window or do something to help, but I forced myself to subside and gather myself together after a few minutes and let her know something major had just happened. She was supportive and patient while I recovered and worked on a way to articulate what I had learned. That was definitely not easy, but I found a way.
And then suddenly Pie "got" what I'd been trying to tell her. She understood what this had all been about. It wasn't that I'm not poly or that I'm jealous of her relationship with HB. It's that I wanted to feel like I matter and that I'm valued and important to her even when she's with him. I wanted to feel like I was more than just an obligation or burden to her. I wanted to feel wanted and needed. Once I was reassured, she could go and do whatever the hell she wanted, as long as I had that to bolster me through it.
We talked for quite a while. Eventually we went to sleep. I told her not to worry. I would be ok and her trip would be fine. Just knowing what the issue was made it easier to put into perspective. But you can't put something into perspective until you know what it is, and that was what had been taking us in circles for so long.
The impact of this discovery is quite huge. It touches nearly every single part of my life from my childhood forward. It touches the good relationships and bad ones, the self-destructive behaviour, the depression, the procrastination, the lack of self-care, the lack of interest in school, the family relationships, the friendships that came and went, the drive to feel useful and important, the long-misunderstood anger toward my mother and toward my sister for having been favoured by everybody, the trouble with authority, and conformity, and it even touches my sexuality and sadomasochism. It touched just about everything in my life. Everything.
I talked to Sweetie about it a couple days later. It was good to be able to talk it out with him and let him know how this came into play in our relationship. He seemed to understand what I was saying. He's always been pretty smart with being able to see things that should be obvious to me but aren't. I was too close to look into my own soul.
Now I feel like I can handle these things that I've been struggling with. Now that I know the issue I know what I'm dealing with and can be more consciously aware of when this comes into play, more able to articulate how I feel about things and why. I'm more able to put things into perspective and know what's real and what's imagined in terms of other people's behaviours toward me.
As I sit here re-writing this entry I'm remembering that throughout my many years of therapy, trying to address problems of self-care as simple as regularly brushing my teeth, I went through cognitive therapy and other types and was asked each time I explored this issue to say what I was thinking at the time I fought with myself, talking myself out of doing what would be required to take better care of myself. Each time I remember thinking, "It doesn't matter. It isn't important."
What I was really saying underneath that, and couldn't see, was that *I* didn't feel like I mattered or was important, so I wasn't worth taking care of. And why would I feel I was? After all, I wasn't wanted. I was a burden.
Now that I know what the real issue is, I intend not to be a burden anymore... especially not to myself.