Tag: conflict

I Wish They Knew

I wish my family knew a few things about me.  About the real me.  The person I am now, not the person I was 20 years ago. 

 

I am not perfect.  Not that anyone in my family was thinking that I was.  No one is perfect.  We are all flawed in our own ways.  My flaws are much different and were created through different life experiences.  Some experiences they know about, some they don’t.  And that’s okay. 

 

I love my family.  I would do anything to protect my family.  Anything.

 

I am not strong.  Everyone thinks I’m “strong like bull” and nothing can hurt me or phase me and I can take on the problems of the world.  That is not at all who I am.  I tend to take on the stressors of others.  I carry them like they were my own.  I try to fix the stressors, fix the ones that I love and fix those that are hurting.  This hurts me in the long run.  I have maxed myself.  There is nothing left for me to give of myself.  I am numb to the hurt and heartache.

 

I do not want to disappoint anyone, ever.  Especially, my family.  I feel like I disappoint others when I don’t do or say or act the way I am expected.  It was hard for me to break free from the prison of always doing the right thing.  The right thing was typically someone else’s idea of what was right, not necessarily my idea of what was right.  I put many very important relationships to the test by not following what I knew to be true in my heart.  Some relationships were lost, some are okay, and some are still struggling.

 

I have a problem standing on my own two feet and saying no.  The is very true when it comes to possibly hurting someone’s feelings.  I overextend myself quite a bit.

 

I would much sooner ignore problems that might be creating friction and wait for it to pass.  Of course, this ultimately causes more problems and creates something I like to call the cycle of guilt.  I’m sure I am not the only one familiar with this cycle.  

 

I am not cold hearted or mean. I care more than I should at times. I guess I can come off that way when I’m doing all I can to stay afloat in my life. I have donned my armor over the years to help protect myself. No one wants to hurt or be the reason someone is hurting. Pushing others away is far easier than continually hurting the people I care about.

I am different. I am semi-okay with that. I am not traditional, but I am also not a rebel. I think I fall somewhere in between. I like my short, edgy hair. I like my tattoos and I will get more. I swear, a lot. I am probably not always socially correct. I can behave when society requires it.

I have different views on life. I am intrigued by spiritual healing. I have always had a bit of an ability to feel or sense things. I want to hon that skill. I want to expand my mind in various ways and not feel like I will be made fun of.

I want to live freely, without judgement, criticism, or punishment. I want to agree to disagree and keep moving forward. I want the decisions I make to be respected. In turn, I will do the same for others.

The Brady Bunch, Partridge Family and the Walton’s were not REAL!  No family is perfect.  Let’s accept that imperfection and just love each other.

Marks

I see the marks, feel the pain from the marks. Marks that I never thought I would have. No one would believe that I would have these marks. I still can’t believe I have these marks. I never thought I would understand the marks I see on others. I now understand. I understand the extreme mental anguish and despair that evoke the marks. I always thought I could handle it, handle my emotional pain. I never thought it could get worse. It got worse.

Was that day my rock bottom? I keep thinking about that day. I see it clearly; I hear it clearly. I remember. I remember fear, hurt, regret, disappointment, pain, embarrassment, despair, hopelessness. What I wanted was the darkness. The darkness of nothing. Was that the answer? Nothing? I wondered how long I would need the darkness; need the nothingness to last. Would it be for an hour, a day, a week, a month, a year? Would it be forever? Should it be forever? What would it be like, the darkness? Would it be like floating? Seeing everyone I loved, but I can’t get to them? Would I feel nothing? Would I feel the people I loved? Did the marks keep me from darkness, from nothingness? Maybe the marks saved me in some fucked up way. Did they?

It was a week ago that the marks showed up on my body. A week is not enough time to answer all the questions or figure out all the answers. Some days, waking up is the best I can offer. Other days, I want to conquer the world and give a big fuck you to all those judging me for trying to figure out my world. Why am I not allowed to be me, EVER? Always dancing the line between acceptable and hearing the disappointed tsk. Live for me, live for them. Live for me, lose them. Live for them, lose me. Why are there only two options?

Fuck. Do you see? This is where the marks come from. The exasperation, the desperateness, the hopelessness. My marks are mine. I own them, I understand them. I needed my marks.

The Dance

How long have we been dancing the dance?  Do you remember?  I think the real dancing started about four years ago.  To be fair and completely honest, the dancing was always there.  It was in the background at times, but it was always there.

You do know the dancing I’m talking about, right?  It’s what has become our traditional relationship dance.  I think we unknowingly started this dance; it wasn’t intentional.  We did what we needed to do to, right?  Is that how you remember the dance starting?  There were times family interfered with our relationship.  We each pacified the other.  I know I felt stuck in the middle and I’m sure you did as well.  Looking back, I wish we would have had the ability to cope with the interference and stop the dancing.  But we danced around the problems, hoping they would just disappear.  While it wasn’t always looming over our shoulders, the dancing was still happening in the background; waiting for a weak moment to speed up the tempo, to make one of us feel weak, vulnerable, unsettled.  We did the best we could, right?

I think there was a time, and it probably was about four years ago, where the dancing pattern we are in now started.  I would talk to you about needing help with decisions, kids, money, day to day stuff.  I would talk, you would listen.  I would get frustrated and stop talking.  You waited me out, at least that’s how I felt/feel.  You waited until I could no longer take the awkward silence, the no talking.  I would break my silence, and everything would eventually go back to our normal dancing.  It’s odd now that I think about it.  I couldn’t stand living in the awkward silence, so I broke.  But there was still silence, just a different kind of silence.  It was the silent song of our dance. Our dancing pattern happened when, like every three or six months?  The dance always started and ended the same way. I feel like I tried over and over again.  Do you feel that way?  Like you tried over and over again?  I guess it doesn’t matter. 

We are still dancing.  Now we dance around each other.  We dance around talking, touching, feeling.  What happens when the dance ends? What happens when one of us stops dancing?  What if it’s you?  What if it’s me?  Does it look different or feel different?

Do we continue to live in the comfortable uncomfortableness that surrounds us daily because living in the comfortable uncomfortableness is easier than moving our lives into the unknown uncomfortableness.  Is that anyway to live?  How do we continue to avoid what is right in front of our faces? 

I feel like you are living in the shadows of the three wise monkeys; see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.  If you turn a blind eye to what is happening to us, you don’t have to worry about anything.  If you refuse to hear what I am saying over and over, you don’t have to worry about anything.  If you refuse to speak to me about what is happening to us, you don’t have to worry about anything. 

But I have a question.

What happens when one of us steps off the dance floor?

Food, please and thank you

So, it’s 10:00 AM.  I have been at work since about 7:30 AM.  I have checked my email.  Nothing there for me to do.  I put six bottles of water in the conference room refrigerator.  I took two letters to the mailbox and put the flag up.  There have been no phone calls to answer.  I have heard one of the “professionals” in the office being passive aggressive and complaining about the temperature of the office (that person has a thermostat in their office).  I know one female and two males have gone potty.  I have shuffled and reshuffled the same papers around my desk about four times.  I have organized the wheat thins that I am eating into pairs.  I have hated myself 127,568 times for my many faults.  I am currently considering getting more wheat thins to eat, because……………why not.  If I do get more wheat thins, I will be able to hate myself like 54,789 more times before noon.  At noon it’s lunch time.  I have fresh, local black raspberries (my favorite) and vanilla Greek yogurt.  Totally healthy and good for me.  And as I eat that, I will PROMISE myself that this is it.  This is the time I make the change.  The time is now.  Stop procrastinating and making excuses.  How do I know that will happen?  Because it happens every day, at least once a day.  And then the rest of the day I eat my feelings, I eat my mistakes, I eat my unhappiness, I eat my loneliness, I eat my excuses, I eat my fear, I eat my inadequacies.  I eat.  The way I see my current situation, there is no reason not to eat.  I find my comfort eating, I find a long-lost friend eating, I find my emotional support when I eat, I find everything I need when eat.  Food isn’t going to leave me. I can’t disappoint food, I can’t hurt food.  Food gives my fat suit.  I have and will continue to pay dearly for that fat suit.  It will help me shut people out, let people see what they want, let people think what they want.  With my fat suit on, no one is going to get close enough to see the real me, to see the truth no one wants to see.  And, so you are aware, I did not get more wheat thins to eat.  I got goldfish.  I ate them in pairs.  

 

Emotional Conflict

As a self proclaimed super mom, there are days/weeks/months/years that I feel like a complete and total failure. I am not looking for a pat on the back or a “but you’re doing great” comment. I’m being honest. I can’t imagine anyone that is a parent/guardian/caregiver/whatever hasn’t felt like a failure at some point. And it’s not so much an outward failure where my kid showed up at soccer practice with no cleats, shin guards, water bottle or ball; more of an inner failure. The struggles we feel daily. The times when we question our decisions and the answers we gave to important questions. The times when I say to myself – I have no fucking idea what I am doing.

As horrid and awful as it sounds, I am having a moral and inner fight about suicide. I feel an overwhelming sadness washed over me the last few years. I have a nagging voice in the back of my mind that keeps saying “what if”. What if I am wrong to try to convince my daughter to stay in this world? How can I tell her over and over again that things will get better, but they haven’t? How can I know what she feels? When she tells me she doesn’t feel connected to anything in this world or she finds it impossible to feel any amount of happiness. Who am I to tell her she has to stay and fight? Am I being selfish in keeping her in my world? Am I being selfish to allow her to continue to feel the daily pain of her life? This feels so wrong to put into words, but I question my decisions daily.

I sob when I have dreams that she is gone, that I can never see her smile or smell her hair when I hug her. But what about her? Is she holding on because she feels guilty? Have I made her feel guilty? She finally has an actual diagnosis of what she has been fighting, but I keep telling her the diagnosis doesn’t define her. I am begging her to get the therapy. I am asking her to give her life one more year to see the change the right therapy can make. But she has to want it, she has to accept it, she has to embrace it. Can she? Will she?