I saw you in that moment
The real you, the sick part, unmasked.
And I knew,
Knew of your weakness
And of your fear.
Our family dog, cringing as you raised your hand to hit her,
Cowered beneath your height.
And my heart broke then and there
For what I saw in her eyes
For not being able to stop you
For the man I no longer saw in you.
None of us would ever be the same.
When I was in my mid-20’s, my father made a revelation to me.
In the instant he told me, it was if suddenly, an off-feeling I’d had my whole life until that moment suddenly made sense. Something aligned within me. My relationship to the world felt different. It felt like the earth turned just a bit on its axis and snapped into place after having been off for so long.
I felt like I could breathe just a bit easier after a lifetime of holding it in just a little.
My Dad and my mother sat me down and the story unfolded. My father had been at a work conference in Galveston, TX at which he was to speak. As she always did, my mother went along.
She stayed in the hotel when he actually went to the event that morning. Before the event, there was a meet and greet in the front area of the arena. My Dad had on a name tag, as did the other guests and participants.
At a certain point he noticed an older woman looking at him form across the room. Later, she approached him, and he recalled thinking she seemed hesitant about talking to him. As they began to small talk, he looked down at her name tag, and commented, “Hey, that’s funny. We share the same last name.”
He said the woman sort of paused a moment as if considering what to say next, and then suddenly blurted out, “I’m Rose Curry. I was your father’s first wife.”
She went on to explain that she’d been married to my grandfather and that they’d had a son together, my Dad’s half-brother. They were long-since divorced, and agreed not to have contact or tell anyone about the child, but her son had always known of him had always wanted to contact my grandfather, his father.
She and her son both lived in Galveston, and she had seen in the paper that my Dad was speaking. She had not been sure of whether or not to come.
My Dad says he went into a kind of shock. He doesn’t recall anything else about the conversation or the event. He gave the speech somehow and then afterwards went back to his hotel room.
My mom said when he walked in the door, he was white as a ghost.
He recounted the story to her, and they posited that perhaps it was someone looking to grift some money out of him. He was sure that his father could never have been married before, much less have a child and not tell anyone about it. Surely they were just looking to demand some inheritance or something, claiming to be relatives.
But curiosity got the better of him. He looked through the phonebook and found the name of the man that Rose Curry had claimed was his half-brother, and he called the number. He spoke to the man, and they arranged to meet that afternoon in the parking lot at a McDonald’s.
And my Dad said that the moment he saw the man get out of his car and approach him, he knew that the story was true. He could see the resemblance clear as day.
He spoke with the man for several hours. It turned out that this man, my half-uncle, had tried several times over the years to re-connect with my grandfather. He’d gone to Midland, TX (halfway across the state) to his house and rang the doorbell, only to be turned away in the snow.
He’d even called my Dad’s house once, at holiday time, in the hopes of speaking to him.
He’d had a tough life, struggled with depression and alcoholism.
My parents told me that after they left Galveston that day, my father had talked to my grandfather about the man. But my grandfather wanted nothing to do with him. As he had turned him away so many times over the years, so he turned him away again.
I. Was. Floored.
Suddenly, my whole childhood made sense.
I’d always sensed an indefinable energy around my grandparents’ house in Midland. They were loving people. I loved to be at their house and around them. But they didn’t leave home much. And there was a tension that I could feel as a child, something I could not make sense of. I guess I always felt that something was about to happen. Something bad. It felt like we were always on hold.
Hearing the revelation of this first family of my grandfather’s, it all made sense. That energy was the energy of holding a secret together.
My grandfather had been married and met my grandmother and fell in love. He had left the other woman, and their son, and they’d divorced. My grandfather’s side of the family knew, but were sworn to secrecy. My grandmother’s family and the family she and my grandfather would make together were not to ever know.
My God, that takes a ton of energy, to hold that big a secret.
So every time there was a knock at the door…every time the phone rang…they must on some level had been thinking would it be someone who knew the dirty dark little secret?
I remembered a man coming to my grandparents’ house at Christmas. My grandfather going out and talking to him on the front yard, coming back in angry.
(Now I know it was him.)
I was at the Thanksgiving dinner table when a man called interrupting dinner, asking for my Dad. My Dad came back to the table saying “some guy had just called and as said he was his brother, must be a wrong number, the guy sounded drunk.”
(That poor man trying yet again.)
Secrets are powerful things. They create an energy, they take up space. As you work to hold them in, it takes away from the living of your life. Every relationship feels that weight in some way or another.
As a sensitive child, I sensed it all. But no one would say a word.
I was close to my grandmother, but the one time she ever got mad at me or denied me anything was when I asked her in college for some family history. She refused to help me. I was so confused by her behavior at the time. It was so unlike her.
But once the big secret was outed, it all made sense.
My idea of my grandfather was forever altered on that day. My grandfather and my grandmother, but she had been dead for some time.
I never spoke to my grandfather about it. I had wanted to, but my Dad said not to, and I complied. I guess I have been conditioned to accept the weight of lies.
Sadly, he never agreed to have contact with the man who was his son, my half-uncle. I never met him either. All involved parties are dead now.
I remain. And I seek to be sure that I live life lie-free. Lies cost too much, and they can never be held forever.
I had a half-uncle. I wonder what he was like. I hope his children and their children have also broken the chain of lies. You can only hold the Truth at bay for so long.
Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: revelation
I developed a disordered relationship with food practically from birth.
Food and eating have long since been very complicated for me.
Food was never just food. Sustenance. A source of energy.
The act of eating was never just a means to satisfy physical hunger, fuel the machine, fill the tank.
It was security. A best friend. My lover. My mother. My father.
Relief. Comfort. Excitement. Joy. A distraction.
A way to protect my self. A weapon. A protest sign. A lockable door. A “Fuck you, world.”
It gave me a sense of well-being. It gave me something that felt essential to my very ability to exist on this planet.
But above all else, and most importantly, it have me an illusion of control.
And this, above all, was crucial to me.
As a child, my world was out-of-control. Everyone in it seemed out-of-control. Every thing happening seemed out of my control.
Inside of me, good gravy, things certainly felt out of control. Feelings, thoughts. Wants. Needs. All felt huge and to a small person who felt they had no voice and no power, they were simply more than I could comprehend or cope with.
Enter food.
The one area I felt I had any say in was with food. What I ate and how much.
Especially how much. Any hint of the slightest suggestion that I might begin to think about considering becoming open to the idea of portion control still brings up a deep revolution within me. A protest begins without my having to even rally the troops. Big signs flashes in my head: “Fuck you!” “Over my dead body!” “Not while there is still breath in my body!”
You’ve got to be kidding. I’m supposed to let someone else tell me how much I am allowed to eat? What?!
Seriously, I get so defiantly enraged at the concept I literally feel nauseaus.
To a non-disordered person, it may be very hard to comprehend. It may seem or sound absurd.
But trust me when I say that my being able to eat or not eat what, when, and how much of something I wanted was (and sometimes still is) of incredible importance to me.
Almost feels life and death to me to be able to choose and act as I want in this one area of my life. It looks very much like addiction and obsessive-compulsive behavior because it is very much both of those things.
As you can imagine, such a relationship is doomed from the start. It is not healthy. It is instincts gone awry. It is a coping mechanism that brings an initial and momentary satisfaction followed by an ever-deeper, never-to-be-satisfied longing.
Such a relationship with food and eating skews all other relationships. It is a poor substitute for a real solution to the problem. And the problem, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with the food or eating. They are merely the symptom.
So the solution, for me, has not and never will be portion control. I do not weigh and measure my food. (That still sends waves of dread through my body.) I do not label foods good or bad, or blame dieting or fad diets for my problem. Fad diets and the “diet” industry are only potential triggers or tools for my own kinked relationship to food and eating.
The problem was not and never will be my willpower.
The problem is how the funky-ass relationship to food and eating developed the first place. What was missing that led to the kink in my connection to regular eating?
There were circumstances. Maybe something ancestral, genetic, sure. But truly, there were circumstances and my response to them. My best solution for coping happened to be really distorted and led to many years of suffering.
Around all of that, I have done a great deal of work. But in terms of healing, it has come down to this: addressing the part of me that developed such a relationship in the first place.
What did that part really need? How can I help that part trust other ways of meeting those needs? (The second question is almost more important and takes a great deal of patience to answer and to implement.)
I began asking these questions, and learned to really listen for and then to the answers.
The needs and wants came first.
The answer I heard most is that part of me wanting something for herself, just for her, that no one and nothing can interfere with. In unlimited amounts.
This seemed key to the whole thing, this need.
This longing for something just for me, that no one else can have, that only I can have, that no one can take away, mess with or hurt.
Woah. Logically, it is clear when I really lay it out like that that food and eating never had a chance at solving that problem. They do not contain the ability to solve it.
But that part of me was working from a different logic that makes total sense to the information it had at the time. Given the limited resources and the level of maturity of that part of me at that time, I can see how the dots were connected to the one thing that was available and that seemed to work.
Problem is, that part is hungry for something that food and eating can never satiate.
But that is where the real work lies. But as in all things, hard work does pay off. Yes, it does suck to have to do anything at all about a problem that I wish had never started in the first place. But that is just reality and once I accepted that, things began to get better.
That is my job now. To give myself that indefinable…something…and to give it in unlimited amounts.
Sometimes it is my own attention. Support. Kindness. Comfort. Bolstering. Appreciation. Soothing. Excitement. Stimulation. Fulfillment. Fullness. Rest. Recovery. Quiet. Peace. Stillness. A sense of being ok. Safe. Whole just as I am.
These I can give myself whenever, however I want in whatever quantities that part demands, cries for, deserves. I get to pour unlimited amounts of these things into myself, and no one and nothing can interfere or mess with that.
But what about the act of eating? What about that part of it all? That part of me wants to consume, wants to be filled, wants to take in and become one with something.
No, I cannot actually physically have the experience of filling myself with something, taking a substance into my body and becoming one with it.
That is the physical aspect of the whole, and there is another series of solutions to address that part. That I can satisfy in other ways. That is a different blog for another day, perhaps.
But the rest of it, I got in spades to give. Unlimited amounts.
It took some experimentation to help that part of me trust that letting go of the old mechanism for the chance that something new would ultimately be better and actually, really work, for real. That is where patience and gentleness and compassion pay off.
But it is all worth it. The meeting of those needs of my self by myself — that, my friends, I am in control of.
At long last, I have the power that I have so craved.
Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: portion
For JC and anyone else who hates the idea of fucking “portions.”
Sorting through the photos from my past
Looking for clues of who I was meant to be
Before the Great Divide sent pieces flying
Seeking remnants of my essence
Like the blind reading Braille
I touch as if to read my own soul
The twinkle in my baby eye
The curve in my 2 year old’s smile
Was I quick to laugh?
Did I welcome others from a sound sense of safety?
That playful 4 year old with the “Dare Me” head tilt
Did she feel held by the universe?
If I trace these shapes now
Can I create a new form
To slip on like an easy cloak
Made of former me’s?
Or will the lines disappear to take another shape altogether
Made of the me that I have become?
Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: trace
When I was around age 20, my life exploded. My entire world literally blew out from its center.
Looking back, I suppose it was destined to detonate at some point or another.
I oscillate between feeling sadness that it did not happen sooner and gratitude that it did not take longer to happen.
Spiritually-evolved and wise people would say that it happened “right on time. ”
I say “Bite me.”
(OK, I got that out of my system. Sometimes I feel sorry for myself. Maybe we all do. We all have our crosses to bear in this life, right?)
No, seriously, I guess it did have to happen sooner or later.
At that point, I had been away from home for several years…the deep truths that had been bubbling molten hot at my core had had time to gain strength unencumbered by parental presence.
I was also living a breakneck speed: I was a full-time acting student, working a part time job and stage managing productions for the acting company associated with my acting school. I was busy 24/7 and running on fumes.
And then, one day in a bookstore, I was drawn like a magnet to a particular book. (This is the book that was to teach me that I do not chose books but rather they choose me.) It was Alice Miller’s The Drama of the Gifted Child.
I bought it and read it as quickly as I could, and shortly thereafter, the volcano of my psyche erupted.
This book seemed to be explaining things about my experience growing up that I had long since hid from myself. It was as if in reading each chapter, carefully placed barriers were loosed around the nucleus of my being.
In the days following reading it, I felt like the ground I was walking on was constantly shifting and moving underneath my feet. It was unsettling.
Pressure within me began to build, until one day, one Sunday shift in the restaurant where I worked, my internal world just exploded.
Shards of self flew from my core, and in an instant, a horrific revelation from within flew up through my body from my gut into my consciousness in a searing flash and the fairy tale fantasy that I had been living inside my own mind of a perfect family and a perfect childhood turned to ashes.
And, just like that, I was forever changed.
From that day to this one, it has been a whirlwind, rollercoaster ride filled with astonishing kindness, loss, addiction, danger, self-abuse, despair, hope, comedy, tragedy, loneliness, desperation, shock, torment, friendship, mentorship, recovery, love, joy, bliss, confusion, celebration, emptiness, wholeness, perversion, goodness, synchronicity, luck, terror, horror, wonder, adventure, growth, overwhelming gratitude and grace, forgiveness, miraculousness, passion, sexuality, understanding, caring, shifting, healing, working, giving, taking, receiving, being lost and being found, again and again and again.
(I suppose that is simply a life being lived.)
I would not change one moment because if I did I would not be right where I am today.
Don’t get me wrong. Right where I am today is not puppy dogs and moonbeams.
In some ways, I feel like I am only now rising, like a phoenix, out of the ashes of that apocalyptic day.
And as uncomfortable, often terrifying and unsettling as that feels, to be in totally unfamiliar territory in my own surroundings once again, I know that I am indeed in the process of rising, like a phoenix, out of those ashes, and that knowing, in and of itself, is pretty amazing.
I don’t know where I will land, or even if I will. But I know that this is my journey, meant just for me, and I am rising to the occasion.
Prompted by The Daily Post Word Prompt: detonate
I have been thinking a lot lately about trusting life.
I have come to realize that I have been living, but not trusting, life.
What does that mean?
It means that when I was six, things occurred that were so traumatic that decisions were made on an unconscious level that 1) the world was not a safe place, 2) I could trust no one and nothing, and 3) life was not meant for me.
Fast forward through decades of living from the decisions of a wounded child who felt that what had happened was on some level her fault and who also thought that she carried responsibility for the whole world as she knew it.
What does that look like?
It is exhausting to live but not trust life. I am exhausted. I have been dragging my soul through all of these years, cheerleading myself every day to show up despite feeling on deep unconscious levels that life was not meant for me.
It has been a strange dichotomy: wanting to live so badly, to work so hard to have a happy and meaningful life, yet to have an equal and opposite drive in my telling me that life is just not for me. That I was not meant to be happy. To live “in spite of” not feeling as if I deserved a good life or even was a worthy or necessary part of the world.
I have loved life. Needed life. Wanted life. Fought life. Almost killed my own life. But I have not trusted life.
And not trusting life, it has been hard to trust myself. I mean, if you do not trust the very force that sustains you, what can you really trust anyway?
I did, indeed, survive. Miraculous, indeed, because when you live from unconscious wound-influenced decisions from a child’s psyche, you tend to make some very, very poor and unhealthy choices.
I look back at all of the choices I made from those 6 year old’s decisions today, and I am truly in awe. I used to be embarrassed, ashamed even, at how poorly I have managed for some times in my life. But today, I am astounded at my resilience and my ability to bring myself through it all. I survived, and I live to write this.
But I have not yet truly thrived.
I have healed so much. But here I am, having cleared away so much wounding, seeing these decisions that were made about life and my place in it, and I am exhausted.
And it is time. Time to finally trust life.
I have blamed Life for what happened to me when I was six. Life and God. But mainly Life. And I understand why. The pain and shock of what happened was just overwhelming to me at 6. I just could not trust after that.
One of my favorite lines from a play is from Other Desert Cities by Jon Robin Baitz. “Most people don’t have to make a step-by-step decision to stay alive, most people just basically want to live. I am not one of those people.”
I have always deeply identified with that. It has taken me work each day to push through the energies around those early decisions to find the strength, courage and hope to face another day.
But I want to address that. Really see if I can forgive Life — it was not Life that did anything to me. Life is not to blame.
Life has held me through. Life has loved me no matter what. Life has always just been there, offering me breath, love and trees.
I don’t know how I will heal this or how long it will take but I am ready and willing to try.
I can start by making a list of what I think that might look like. If I were someone who trusted life, how would I act? How would I talk? How would I make decisions? How would I love?
Will my smile be different? My laugh? Maybe my very breathing will change.
I am eager to live in these questions, this exploration.
To take my six year old lovingly and gently by the hand and take over the reigns. Give her a soft place in my heart to go play in and reassure her that I got this now. Yes, my child, it is time.
Here we go.
Rose spit into the dirt, disgusted with herself, so mad she could barely see straight.
What jerks. She hadn’t been doing anything. Why did they hate her so?
She picked herself up off the lawn, peeling away the blades of grass that were stuck to her knees one by one, fingering the long dent-canals they left behind on her skin.
The kids had already moved on down the block, their laughter taunting her as they looked back, turning the corner.
She felt the hot flush of shame rush down the back of her neck and through her body, her fingers tingling, tears flooding her eyes.
She choked it all down and thought about what she could do. There was no where to go. No one to tell.
“This is just temporary, honey. You’ll see. In time, they’ll get to know you, you’ll find friends.” Her Mom tried, but she had no idea of the way things really were.
She folded her pain and confusion back into the loneliness that she carried with her always, and with lips pressed together with determination, she walked back home to the numbing relief and friendship to be found in oreos and chips.
At least she had that.
#bullying #therootoftheproblem #foodisnotlove
Inspired by The Daily Post word prompt: temporary
I was clearing out papers and photos from my life –
An envelope my Dad had given me after my Mom died
She’d saved every note and card I’d ever written her
And the truth staring me in the face
As I read through them was this:
I have never been OK with myself
Always searching for answers – why me, why not, what if this, what if that
Working to improve my self – this dress, that diet, walk this way, talk that way
Every day a struggle, so hard to get through
The bitter pill of life I just could not swallow
It caught in my throat, choking my voice
And I grasped at the ever-dangling carrot of a better me
And wore myself down to nubbins and grace
Today I will Just breathe
I will live in the questions
Stop searching outside for the answers
I will wear life like a loose garment
Listen to the breezes blow
Seek comfort in my own heart
And choose to forget whatever it was I was fighting so hard to be
There are no more truths to swallow
It is time to simply be
This time, I was gonna get it right.
I waited in the bathroom stall
until the other girls were gone
and I silently prayed as hard as I could.
Please, God, make me be better.
Please, please, make me like Katie.
She is so perfect!
Her long, brown hair so straight
she can sit on the ends if she wants to.
She’s so thin and pleasant and neat.
Not like me – plump, awkward, shaggy-haired.
If I pray hard enough, it will happen:
I will become her. On the count of three.
One — Fingers crossed tight….
Two — When you wish upon a star…
Three — please please please please please…
Ok. Here I go. The new me. I am Katie Koening now!
I open the stall and look in the mirror.
I seem taller. I smile her smile and think Katie thoughts.
Head out into the hall, head held high,
floating on my hope.
I get to the classroom
and enter, waiting for heads to turn.
My heart dives back into my stomach.
No one notices a thing as I go to my desk.
I am just same old me.
God has failed me again.
Inspired by The Daily Post word prompt: better
Beyond the Skinny Branches 