What you deserve

Author's note: This is a personal reflection from a past relationship. Names/details changed.

It hit me suddenly as to why I can't let go of someone who deeply hurt me. Even though he said mean and terrible things to me, and about me, he also gave me moments I'd never experienced and so desperately longed for my entire life. He didn't love me but there were times he told me he did and it completely rewired my brain to keep attempting to get it back. 

My father didn't love me. Yes, we knew there were daddy issues here. He told me in many ways. Any love he felt for me was out of an obligation to being a parent, and to the God he worshiped, but he didn't love me as a person. I was told I was his least favorite child and he didn't like looking at me because I looked like my mother. I was hard for him to love and he felt a need to let me know this.

My ex husband was next. I do think he loved me briefly, when I was compliant and giving him what he wanted. That dissipated quickly. His actions were much louder than his words, and his words were rare. I wasn't never first in his life. Not even second place. I was a distant thought, an annoyance, and a paycheck. 

Then he came along and swept me off my feet. Said he loved me within days. Said I was perfect. One of my first journal entries after we met said. "I know by all standards it's too fast and I don't care. Yet there is this nagging thought that I'll care later." It was over a year of back and forth, epic fights with spectacular make ups. Though once he first discarded me it never got back to those first moments and my mind became laser focused on nothing but that. Called names, told everything was my fault, and I'm sure so much more behind my back. Yet I couldn't let go.

People like to say "you deserve so much more". Of course I do. We all do. Yet there is an implication that by being deserving you'll also get it. It's also said in a way that implies I don't believe I deserve it, and this is why it never happens. The parallels to my Evangelical upbringing "your prayers aren't being answered because you don't have enough faith" aren't lost on me. How exactly do you believe in this fairy tale magic when it's been shown over and over your entire life to never happen? I mean how could I not fall?

I love the poem by Louise Erdrich that talks about the search for love, the human condition, and that for some of us the effort is all we get. I can say this; my love was real, I did all I could, and I know none of this was my fault. Yet it's what I have to live with in this life.

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and being alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You have to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes too near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.”

― Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum

Tell her

Author's note: This is a personal reflection from a past relationship. Names/details changed.

In the end I could tell you'd stopped loving me by the way you fucked me. It was painful. But we were still so hot too. I could feel how you hated me. I'm such a masochist.

We burned so bright we burned out. Remember that lyric? Probably don't.

You wanted to discard me to hurt me. I saw you were on Tinder and didn't say anything. I'd walked by and saw the flame notification come up and my heart stopped. I'd never used your code to unlock your phone, wanted to, but I never did until that morning. I saw the message. She was blonde. I wiped tears and lied when you asked what was wrong. I later learned there were settings changed that kept me in the dark. Clever.

Even so, you won. You destroyed me. You broke me. This must delight you. You must be so happy for that. Probably in love again. I never felt that you really loved me and that's at the core of it all. I fell in love with you but didn't feel you actually loved me. Must have been entertaining to watch me love you and play with my mind. I haven't told anyone how deep it goes. How deep it hurts.

Have fun with whatever latest chick you have. And you always have someone. Call her pretty lady and study her carefully so you can tell her everything she's always wanted to hear. Tell her you could see she was insecure, and when she looks upset, say it's cute. Fuck with her a little to see how much she'll take. If you don't go too far, it will only be a little fight, with a passionate makeup, and then you can go back at it again. Cut her down while complimenting her to keep her off balance and longing for that next dopamine hit. Charm her while making her nervous. Tell her she's perfect, everything is perfect, and if she doesn't believe it then she'll ruin it all. 

It must be so good to be you. Above everyone. All knowing. All it takes is a smile and hey beauty and those weak insecure ones will fall all over it. It's so cute.

I felt you pulled me back for control. It was all a game for you and I'd come back because I loved you. But I'm not a victim. I did all of this willingly. I can only blame myself. My choice to keep longing for you while nothing was ever there.

When we were amazing, we were so amazing. Or maybe it was all in my head. I would have such ridiculous fantasies, especially at the casinos, and most of all in Vegas. Though you'd make sure to tell me before all occasions that I wasn't getting a ring. I knew I wasn't getting a ring but the need to level set expectations prior was a special blow. I pictured you winning big and saying we should get married. We'd buy expensive outfits or do Elvis and the showgirl like in Honeymoon in Vegas, and it would be fun and magical. Instead, I was told I was unlucky, not to pick any machines because when I did you didn't win, and why was I acting sad? 

I felt I would have never been able to please you. I couldn't exhale. If I let my breath out I'd have to accept you didn't love me. I stayed in a state of walking the balance beam wondering when I'd fall. We'd be having a wonderful time and then an accusation would come out of nowhere. Walking on eggshells kept my nervous system in continual panic. 

It felt like you despised me so much in the end, while on Tinder, while fucking me. 

I made coffee one morning and some grounds spilled all over. I'd swept and wiped but missed some. Of course. You started wiping up more and it felt like you couldn't stand me. Yet I stayed. 

I'm not your victim. I danced in the fire though I'm always burned. 

I wonder if we'll look back on our lives and think of each other. Or if it all will fade away like it never happened. I wonder if I'll smile thinking of the perfect moments, I'd always dreamed of but never thought would come true. Or if I'll feel deep sadness and shame that I didn't respect myself enough to stand up to you. 

Maybe some of us never heal. We do the work, we try so hard, but we never make it to the other side. Perhaps the effort just takes the weight off of the injury, like a crutch for your soul. I don't have much time left in life for lessons and nonsense. I'm building my crutch so I can at least go on. 

No one understands why I keep spiraling downward the more time goes by....

I will own my truth though. Even broken, destroyed, and beaten down, I always get back up.

I lost my voice

“We waste so much energy trying to cover up who we are when beneath every attitude is the want to be loved, and beneath every anger is a wound to be healed and beneath every sadness is the fear that there will not be enough time."

I recently lost my voice. Not my audible voice but the voice that tells the truth of who I am, what I feel, and what has happened to me. Someone I deeply loved, who I thought loved me, read my blog and said that I try to portray myself as a victim, I lean into it, but I'm not a victim at all. Years of writing where I was vulnerable, honest, and transparent were taken away with those few words. I lost the desire to write. I lost my voice.

I contemplated what was said to see if there was any truth. Though I have been victimized, I saw my writing as a way to work through it and show a life of someone that had overcome unfathomable things. Were there aspects of my experience where I still felt and behaved as a victim? Probably. Am I also crazy resilient and have created a life for myself that no one expected possible? Absolutely.

I live life out loud. I swore I'd never be silenced as I had in the past. A lifetime of being told I'm too loud, too opinionated, and too much, and I had decided that to be my authentic self, you could take it or leave it but I'm not changing. And then I got small. 

I would start to write and nothing came out. In my previous posts they came quickly, very stream of consciousness, with few edits. I just said it. Yet now judgement loomed large over me. My writing which I'd been proud of now felt embarrassing. I'd laid myself out there only to be told it was something I should have hidden, stuffed down, and certainly not shared publicly. 

This past year has been one of the hardest of my life for loss. I lost my baby kitty who loved me unconditionally and though scared of most everyone else, lived for me. It was a quick and tragic death that I still sob about daily while smiling when I see you in person. I lost my job that I loved. I'd never loved a job but I did love this one. I stupidly wanted to stay until retirement. But as so often happens in life, it was taken away. I lost the person I considered to be the love of my life. Month after month of having something that meant so much to me to be suddenly gone. 

I'm sad. I'm destroyed. Am I being a victim now? 

This post has been in draft form for months. I go to publish and I'm immobilized. Then I saw this quote from Alan Watts "Stop aspiring and start writing. If you’re writing, you’re a writer. Write like you’re a goddamn death row inmate and the governor is out of the country and there’s no chance for a pardon. Write like you’re clinging to the edge of a cliff, white knuckles, on your last breath, and you’ve got just one last thing to say, like you’re a bird flying over us and you can see everything, and please, for God’s sake, tell us something that will save us from ourselves. Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our brow and know that we’re not alone.”

My voice is back.

Redemption

My favorite movie of all time is An Officer and a Gentleman. I love the characters, I love the plot, I love how painful and beautiful it is. Though what I love most is the redemption of each person. In the final scene they are all repaired, restored and atoned. Each person was so terribly broken from their life circumstances, and their own actions, yet in the end they were redeemed.

How often do we allow those in our lives redemption? When do we give ourselves the grace of being redeemed? Where do we meet in the middle with our humanity and brokenness?

In my Evangelical Christian days, I loved the stories of someone who should have been beyond redemption, but their God saved them and turned a horror story into something amazing. Jesus telling the criminal on the cross next to him in his last moments of life "Truly I tell you today you will be with me in paradise.". I recall hearing about a mother who went to death row to forgive her son's killer and how we should all ascribe to that level of forgiveness. Redemption for someone nobody wanted redeemed. 

Yet it's such a fine line for each of us as to where our boundaries start and stop, where we forgive, and another might not. We speak from our own experience and feel whatever the outcome of our similar situation might be will also be that for you. We judge, condemn and assume, while believing our experience is the sole source of truth.

I definitely do this in our current political climate. I'm enraged with no room for an experience other than my own or that of what I've witnessed. I feel the same about religion and refuse to make space to hear anything otherwise. Not a good look but it's the truth of this moment for me.

On the flip side I hate being told what I should or shouldn't forgive. I read years ago "You don't have to forgive" and it was one of the most powerful statements of my life. One of my favorite author's, Anne Lamott, says, "Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past." So where do we draw the line? And do we allow others the autonomy to draw their boundaries outside of our own?

I don't believe in absolutes. I believe change is always possible. In yoga we say, "everything can change with your next breath". I've seen the worst humans turn their entire being around into amazing people, and I've seen heroes and saints plummet. We make the best choices for ourselves, sometimes redeeming the unredeemable, with the hope we might one day be extended the same grace. 

"We're all just walking each other home." ~ Ram Dass

Why I Share What I Do

Glennon Doyle wrote in her book Love Warrior, "I'm purging in the dark to a screen, so I never have to see anyone's confused or embarrassed reaction." 

I was recently given some negative feedback on my blog that I'm putting everything out there in a way that this person wouldn't do. Though told "it's not a cut", it so clearly was a cut. I accept this. I share intense things, I dump my trauma out for all to see, I expose myself in ways that make people uncomfortable. 

Words on the internet are forever so once it's out there I can't take it back. Along with the words are the trolls, haters and those who only want to gleefully cut others down. Yet my soul (if I even believe in such a thing) can't turn back now.

So why put myself through this? I openly share my deepest pain, regret and sorrow because I believe our stories heal each other and ourselves. I know when I see myself in another I am changed. I know we all want to know we are seen and that we aren't alone. I know when I share my agony that it lessens the pain. When a light is shone into the darkest places, and we stay breathing, our resilience is strengthened. 

Though I lean more than a little towards nihilism; I do want my life to count. I want my distressing moments to show another a way out. I want all my own self-work to mean something. I wasn't gifted with a ton in terms of talent but I'm loud, brave and I can say what someone needs to hear.

I will continue writing and sharing the things that most people wouldn't want others to know. I will share my feelings, and expect they might change through time, as I live and breathe through this moment. I won't get small to make you comfortable.

TELL YOUR FUCKING TRUTH

I have seen miracles happen, when people just tell the truth.

 Not the ‘nice’ truth. Not the truth that seeks to please or comfort. But the wild truth. The feral truth. 

The inconvenient truth. The tantric truth. The ‘fucking’ truth. 

The truth you’re afraid to tell. The horrible truth about yourself that you hide in order to ‘protect’ others. To avoid being ‘too much’. 

To avoid being shamed and rejected. To avoid being seen. The truth of your deepest feelings: The rage you have been concealing, controlling, pasting over. The terrors you do not want to speak. The sexual urges you’ve been trying to numb. The primal longings you cannot bear to articulate. 

Finally, the defenses break down, and this ‘unsafe’ material emerges from deep within the unconscious. You can’t hold it back anymore. The image of the ‘good boy’ or ‘nice girl’ evaporates. The ‘perfect one’, the ‘one who has it all figured out’, the 'evolved one', these images burn. 

You tremble, you sweat, you come close to vomiting, you think you might die doing it, but finally you tell the fucking truth, the truth you are deeply ashamed of. 

Not the abstract truth. Not the ‘spiritual’ truth. Not a carefully-worded truth designed to prevent offence. Not a neatly-packaged truth. But a messy, fiery, sloppy human truth. 

A bloody, passionate, provocative, sensual, untamed and unvarnished mortal truth. A shaky, sticky, sweaty, vulnerable truth. 

The truth of how you feel. The truth that lets another person see you in the raw. The truth that makes one gasp. The truth that makes your heart pound. 

This is the truth that will set you free. 

I have seen chronic depressions and life-long anxieties lift overnight. I have seen deeply embedded traumas evaporate. I have seen fibromyalgia, life-long migraines, chronic fatigue, unbearable back pain, bodily tension, stomach disorders, vanish, never to return. 

Of course, the ‘side-effects’ of truth aren’t always this dramatic. And we don’t step into our truth with a result in mind. But think of the massive amounts of energy it must take to repress our animal wildness, numb our feral nature, suppress our rage, tears and terror, uphold a false image, and pretend to be ‘okay’. 

Think of all the tension we hold in the body, and the damage it does to our immune systems, when we live in fear of 'coming out'. 

Take the risk of telling your truth. The truth you are afraid to tell. The truth you fear will make the world run. Find a safe person – a friend, a therapist, a counselor, yourself – and let them in. Let them hold you as you break down. Let them love on you as you weep, rage, quake with fear, and generally make a mess. 

Tell your fucking truth to someone – it might just save your life, heal you from deep within, and connect you to humanity in ways you never imagined.

~ Jeff Foster ~

 

 

 

Not Funny

While doing a Google search for something I likely don't need I came across a list for women. Whether in magazines, web articles, or Facebook memes, women are continually being given lists of what they should and shouldn't do. And at the core of these lists, it's typically to do what men want. Men don't get these type of lists. Maybe a random "What women like men to wear on dates" but men aren't bombarded with this constant critique of their every move the way women are. 

This latest list was called "17 Traits You Think Men Find Attractive, But They Actually Don't." Now I was expecting the usual stuff about too much makeup, or not being on time, but this one had a throwback to more misogynistic times and said "Being Too Funny ~ Guys want to be the funny ones. If a woman is a born comedic, a man might feel threatened. Having a funny female friend is fine, but a girlfriend should be the one laughing at his jokes."

I wish this were the first time I heard this. And those misogynistic times I spoke of are not a thing of the past; it's real and present every single day for women. 

Things I've had said to me by men since becoming a comic:

"I'm really funny...I should do that!" {While never asking anything about my comedy."

"Are you funny?" (If I say that's a stupid thing to ask to someone who just told you they are a comic, I'm told I don't have a sense of humor.)

"Women aren't funny." (Again, if I don't laugh then I can't take a joke.)

"You aren't funny." (Said by men who have never seen me perform....you guessed it...this was another joke that I was supposed to laugh at.)

"I'm funnier than you!"

"Do you have to sleep with people to get gigs?" (No more than your mom used to.)

(From a guy I was starting to date) "I know it's a show, but after seeing your performance, I'm not the guy for you." (Correct sir, you're not)

Women are socialized to laugh at men's jokes whether funny or not. We smile and nod even when it's atrocious. We know for our safety we should be polite and not upset them in any way. I've stopped laughing at what isn't funny and they notice it. A lot!

It's not funny. None of this is funny. But I'm all good.

Letting them go

My former spouse texted me pictures yesterday of the barn outside the house we'd shared that had collapsed. I initially hated that barn. I didn't want to live in the far suburbs, didn't want to be so remote, hated everything there, but I'd given in as I always did just to keep the peace. A barn next door to me meant I wasn't in the city, wasn't living the life I wanted, and felt like isolation. Hated it so much. But a few years in I woke up to a spectacular sunrise which showcased that old barn. The barn became something peaceful to me. I enjoyed having coffee and looking out at it, with the raggedy old windmill next to it, and being able to take a few deep breaths which were rare for me. 

I started to think of who of my friends I should text to talk about the barn collapse as it felt significant for me. I scrolled through all my texts and found there wasn't a single person I knew that had seen that barn. There was no one because most of the friends from the first part of my life, my life then, have left me. It's been over 5 years since I left that home, over 5 years since I divorced, and of these people only 1 reached out early on to talk to me, and the silence ever since has been deafening. 

I don't actually know why they are no longer my friends. These are people I've known for over 40 years. I spend every Christmas at their homes along with bringing my husband and son. I knew their entire extended family. I felt I was one of them. The one that called me in the beginning of my exit I'm seeing was just looking for information, gossip, and didn't really care about me. I was there for her babies being born, I was at her wedding, I was there when she became a meth addict, and I was there when she found recovery. I thought it was more than friendship. I've guessed that they didn't like my divorce, but really suspect it's because of my loud and proud statements about no longer believing in a God, no longer a Christian, and being highly vocal about the abuse that happens in churches. 

Ending a friendship is like a divorce; you think it will last forever, you feel disbelief at how this person now treats you, you grieve. It also makes me look back and ask some hard questions as to whether they have ever supported me as a person and lifted me up. They didn't. I've truly been grieving this for years now. I noticed they never liked any of my Facebook posts yet were liking those of my family. Felt like a statement. It's true I could have reached out also but admittedly I was standing back to watch actions. I saw my friend remarry, I saw grandchildren being born, I saw their vacation pics, and I liked everything both as genuine care but also to say I see you; do you see me? 

I've spoken before about releasing what no longer serves me. I'm usually speaking about negative thoughts and bad habits, but releasing a friend is different. They truly don't serve me anymore. Between religion, politics, and life, we are no longer compatible people. I would likely be pretty rude about my feelings on a lot of things, and I wouldn't serve them either. The friendship has collapsed without chance of building it back up.

I'm living a big life. My choices are my own, I look daily towards happiness, and I do whatever I want. They will not in any way benefit my future, nor I theirs. I wish them well and am letting them go.