My Inner Rebel Will Not Be Stopped

My family members were masters at squashing rebellion. It is what any good (or bad) dictator learns how to do before all else. It only takes one person to rise up against you, one bad link in the chain, and the empire can fall. Personally, I could not imagine depending on the fear in others to maintain the life I want. It sounds like a lot of work to keep that house of cards intact. But many are willing to try it because they think it is the only way to have power and control. And honestly, what can be easier than teaching children to fear you … especially if they are your children? I believe this actually works most of the time. I believe there are thousands (or more) of children who never speak of their devastating childhoods, who spend their entire lives deeply hating their parents while going through the motions of one big happy family, even arranging the perfect funeral for their parents in the end.

My parents were expecting everything to happen just like that. After all, it is what they had done for their parents. And who are we kidding? Their parents did it too. Unfortunately for them, they had me. I have a rebellious side. I have always had a problem with people telling me what to do. I told far more people about their abuse than they expected. They had to do far more cover up than they had planned. And then, at 38 years old, I blew the lid off the whole thing, denying them their self-ascribed right to abuse their grandchildren and keep the cycle going. I know they feel like the victims. I know because they told me. They told me I was breaking their hearts and that they didn’t deserve this treatment. They never expected this to happen. But unfortunately for them, they had me.

Evil is Complicated

The other day, during my presentation to an audience of medical professionals, one of the doctors asked a good question. “Many of these victims eventually become abusers, so what do we do when they start abusing others? How do we treat them when they are no longer a victim but a perpetrator?” I didn’t have an answer for his question. It is true that many victims of childhood violence will turn that trauma on others if they don’t get help. It is easy to focus on our victimhood. We have been wronged horribly and we deserve to be heard. As a matter of a fact, I believe most people spend a lot of their time focused on how they have been wronged. But there is another side to us. There is the angry, raging person who is fed up with this world. There is a criminal.

The Good Life

There’s a popular Zen saying in the self-awareness circles. “Before enlightenment, carry wood chop water. After enlightenment, carry wood chop water.” As with most Zen concepts, it seems like a simple idea on the surface. And as with most Zen concepts, it isn’t simple. It encapsulates so many challenges in my own life.

While I do my best to stay conscious as I move through my life, it is hard work. So, I find myself going through the motions. I wake up every morning and make breakfast for the twins. I make their lunches while they eat their breakfast. I drop them off at school. I write. I pick them up from school. I take them to activities. I make dinner. I put them to bed, clean the kitchen, do laundry and get ready to do it the next day.

I find myself asking if this is what life is about.

As We Start Our Family Tree

To my children as we start our family tree,

I cannot begin to describe the impact you have on my life. You are the blessings sent from the divine to wake me up. You are the little life tornadoes who never let me choose the easy way out of the pain. You are the epitome of forgiveness as I made mistake after mistake as a parent. You are the comic relief that comes just when I need it. And you are the reminder of how important the small, daily life events really are.

I have been hoping for a savior since I was born. I even found myself enmeshed with several people throughout the years who I thought might make things right. But of course, they didn’t. They didn’t make things right because the only person who could do that was me. And as I look back over the past seven years, I realize that I may have been responsible for my life, but I had help. I had two little saviors who came to help me figure it out.

You haven’t heard of parental guilt because you are only seven years old. When you asked me to tell you the hardest thing in the world, I wasn’t kidding when I said ‘raising children”. You laughed and said “no way”, but one day, you might be lucky enough to understand. And I do feel guilty for the bad days, the bad decisions. So today, I am going to apologize for the parts that haven’t gone the way I hoped. But I also want you to understand that I know I did so many things right. Parenting is dualistic like that. It is never easy. And it is never black and white. It’s just worth it.

Grieving Time

Sometimes starting a new life can bring up grief and regret for the old life. While I am happy to have new experiences without the pain and anxiety of the past, it makes me wish there had been more of it.

Time is such a tricky aspect of the human experience. We can’t control it. We can’t make more of it. We can’t get back what we think we have wasted. As the song says, it is like an hourglass glued to the table. And while we can figure out how to control so many aspects of our lives (which is not always a good thing), we can’t control time. It will keep on going, with or without us.

And 42 years is a long time. It is more than 22 million minutes. It is more than half the lifespan for Americans. And for me, it is the longest amount of time I have ever known.

My Brain on Trauma

I love to swim. I always have. It was healing for me. When I was in the water, nobody could get to me. Nobody could hurt me. I was in my own world, a world that flowed, a world where all the darkness and pain of my reality was far away. The physical pain stopped too. The aching in my shoulders, hips and knees didn’t weigh me down when I was in the water. The buoyancy was just what my beat-up body needed. And it helped that I was good, very good at swimming. I knew how to flow through that water. I knew how to win.

Fast forward to my own little family and it is predictable that I want to continue that swimming experience vicariously. Unlike many parents who dread long swim meets, I don’t. I breathe in chlorine like some breathe in a field of flowers. It is relaxing and healing. My twins are new to swimming this year. And I would be fibbing if I told you they were rocking their strokes. They usually come in last or disqualify, but I don’t care. And they don’t seem to care much either. I really am blessed with kids that enjoy everything they do.

And so we are making our way through our first swim team season. And I am loving watching my kids swim and participating as a strokes and turns judge. I could not be happier with it. I am focused. And this part of my life is completely unfettered by my past … until last week.

Where Do Bullies Come From?

I don’t write about my experiences with bullying very often. Maybe I have internalized society’s beliefs that I should have stood up for myself in middle and high school, especially when my peers were doing the bullying. Maybe the shame is more significant because this time, the abusers were my age. Maybe the messages about “asking for it” are still driving my interpretation of the situation.  Sometimes it is even hard for me to believe that I could be subjected to so much cruelty by so many heartless people. I felt as though I was a magnet for abuse.

To be fair, I believe that everyone experiences some bullying. Everyone is called names. Everyone has at least one friend who talks behind their back, whether they know it or not. Most experience boundary invasions from pushing, shoving and other physical experiences that seem harmless to school children. I certainly experienced this.

Many bullies stop there. Why? The subject stands up for themselves. They say “no”. They get angry. They stop speaking to the “friend” who is not treating them well. They tell their parents or teachers who get involved. These are all perfectly acceptable answers to bullying. And most of the time, the bully moves on. It is too much trouble to target that kid.

The Healing Power of Sharing

When I first started recovering memories from my abusive childhood, I had no idea what to do with them.  I felt like they were stuck somewhere inside of my body and that’s where they would stay.  I started journaling my memories and found it to be very helpful, but I still felt like something was missing from my healing journey.  I would visit my therapist, look her in the eyes, and tell her that something was very bad.  But I could not say what happened.  I could not verbally recount the events of the memory to another person … even a person I trusted.

It was as though a lifetime of shame was stopping my words.  They were stuck in my throat and I could not get them out.

But there was something else stopping me besides the shame.  I was absolutely convinced that nobody would believe me.  As a child, I was told by my family that nobody would ever believe me.  This wasn’t a suggestion.  It was repeated thousands of times.  It was brainwashing.  And I had no reason to doubt it.

Losing Others, Losing Me

As I have struggled through some very dark days of trauma recovery, I have come to understand some universal laws that have helped make sense of my chaotic life.  The most basic law is that the inner child will recreate the challenges of the childhood until the challenges are resolved.  To the inner child, the perception of resolution may be very different from the adult’s logical brain.  But I have learned that the resolution can come in many forms.

For a sexual violence survivor, this law holds no more true than navigating the intimate relationships of adulthood.  Sometimes, this law is referred to as “women will always marry their father”.  But it manifests in other ways too.

This law would be easy to address if it wasn’t happening in the unconscious realm of our being.  Unfortunately, we rarely know we are recreating our childhood.  In the case of memory repression, it is worse because we don’t remember the events we are recreating.  Sounds like a losing battle, doesn’t it?

When I first reached adulthood, my self-esteem was non-existent.  I was convinced that I was not worthy of a partner who had the potential to love me or make me happy.  I was convinced of the opposite.  I was sure that the only partner for me was an abusive addict who would eventually leave.  Of course, all of these beliefs were unconscious.  In my conscious mind, I was convinced that I was deserving of a great partner.  Unfortunately, the unconscious ALWAYS wins.

I Forgot What?

A couple of weeks ago, my external life took a back seat to my internal life.  Although my external life is pretty good these days, my internal life is pretty ugly.  It is a series of traumatic experiences with emotions to match.  When it is time to pay attention to the internal life, it means my childhood memories are coming back.  And I had better pay attention.  I had better be ready for some depression, some sadness, some anger that rivals a toddler’s tantrums, some anxiety and some intense exhaustion.  Needless to say, the external life starts to slow down a bit.

Don’t get me wrong, the basic stuff still happens.  The kids eat.  They go to school.  I go to work.  But phone calls get missed.  The emails pile up.  And obviously, the writing just doesn’t happen.  There are entire nights of staring at the wall.  There are a lot of naps.  There are many self-care visits to therapeutic practitioners.  Over the years, I have learned what it takes to face the memories.  These coping mechanisms are critical to my recovery.  If I don’t do them, there will be one result.  I will get sick.  I will get so sick that there will be no external life.  Everything will stop.  And as a single mother, that is simply not an option.