I'm here, Rin...
I've been in ponder, sit and sorrow mode for a week. I think I'm coming out of it enough to relate this in a post now.
I believe you experienced something similar to what I did this past week, so I'm posting the cure, you might say, before the injury. Here's what reset my perspective.
When you're feeling back to square one, choose this belief, instead.
In our lives, we're not on a linear journey...a straight, long road...we are on a spiral staircase. It winds upward, supported by four or five main support poles...rising really high...
As we walk up, rung by rung, we circle around, seemingly, back to the same poles we saw from the ground up...we are further along, up higher than before, when we last came to face that pole...can feel the same and look the same, but we're in a different place altogether, inside and on a different rung. Do not let our emotions, in reaction to the same pole, remain the same.
We will meet these same issues, again and again, our core stuff, and be in a different place each time. Let us look to a wider view to realize we are not in the same place, at the bottom, facing that pole for the first time. We are not the same person, facing that same pole.
Helped me a lot...and it's an analogy I already knew. Somehow, I have to get that belief into place firmly, no backtalking or wishful thinking, because it greatly effects me.
Now, the cause...I have been living with a great fear of my parents disowning me again (after three times) for the last eight years. The first time was when I was pregnant--either give my baby up for adoption or never see them again...and I chose my son. The second time, I did not send a Christmas card; the third, I spoke with my sister's husband, during their divorce.
The first time, they told me in advance...no contact. After three years, they made contact. That lasted for four years, until the Christmas card incident. They told on my call on Christmas Day that they were too upset to speak to me again. A year later, they did. That lasted three years. Then came my call to my sister on her bday (which is today) and found out she'd moved out and was divorcing her H. I talked with him and we emailed three times. He told her of our exchanges and told my mother she was furious that I would do that and my mother disowned me for another four years.
Each time, I owned what I'd done...my part...apologized and committed to not doing those things again. My choices which were painful for others. So contact resumed eight years ago...until I yelled at my mother for the first time on 7/21...this was my fault, and I called the next day, apologized, talked with her and was again respectful. Made the promise not to do that again (and I have kept my promises)...and for the last three weeks (I call each Friday at a set time), my father has answered the phone. This was like the third no contact...took me three months to figure out my mother was at the store, a neighbors, etc. until I asked why she wasn't talking to me. This time, three weeks. Last Friday, I asked.
My father said I was too hard on her, that I wasn't safe for her to talk to and that I hadn't apologized. She was in the background talking as I asked. He said that she needed time to cool down and maybe in the future she would talk to me when I called. I said thank you for telling me, good to know, and I would call back in a few months.
I was at that pole again, Rin...my biggest fear come true, yet again...and I was back being 22-years-old again, pregnant and in an unwed motherhouse, all over again. When I wasn't really there. See?
I do think being adopted adds into this mix of feeling annihilated. I acted from my code and apologized, explained how I felt and listened and repeated after the harsh phone call. I kept an eye out to my own betrayal and what wasn't mine. I was suspicious, aware, and still unprepared. How is that? No wonder we feel fragile as humans.
And we're not.
What added to this feeling erased again was that a week ago, my H told me he was concerned that by not remembering OW when he thought about our first months at counseling was him distracting from OW; and that he was excited he hadn't thought of her in several days; and when I said that I felt pain, great fear, and that I believe we have a problem, he said, "You're assuming."
"You don't hear how painful those statements are to me?"
"No. There's nothing painful in what I said. You're taking it wrong."
He was running a fever and went to bed. I was okay with that because we'd been addressing stuff that came up within 24 hours. At about the 48th hour, I said, "When you're ready to explain further, I'll be ready to listen."
He said he heard, "You better explain yourself."
Another 24 hours and he asked me to talk (this was after finding out I was cut off again), and he said, "I have thought about those statements and I have nothing to add. I don't need to explain further."
"Why did you ask me to talk, then?"
"Because you wanted me to explain myself."
I was dumbfounded...not tracking...this was about 20 minutes after I ended the call to my folks.
I repeated what I'd heard from Tuesday, and he said, "I'm not good with words. I said what I meant."
I asked him to add me to his counseling appt for the following Tuesday because my deepest issue with his statements was that he couldn't see the harm, the pain in them, which greatly concerned me. I even said, "Had I said these things now, pertaining to OM, could you see the pain then." And he thought about it, "Maybe."
I waited to hear anything else and then told him about my mother. He was supportive and listened. I cried a lot.
Our discussion continued during the evening, stopping for a few minutes, getting food, talking, changing rooms...we ended up in the basement. The topics switched around...he read Jean36's posts with me and answered questions.
Towards the end, he said, "I fear talking to you. I don't know what you want me to tell you and what you don't."
I said, "I hear I'm not safe to share with."
"That's right. You're blaming me and it's like you're saying you're better than me when you said what added more pain was me not talking with you about Tuesday. Well, I wasn't ready. I don't know when I would have been ready."
And that was all she wrote, as they, in regards to me going inward to that place I feared most, twice in the same night. Believing I wasn't safe. Two people, same day...why post? I'm not safe. I was erased...and I did that. I focused on those words and kept stabbing myself with them.
They aren't really mine. No DJs or AOs...no SD's...
And he did great stuff...he stayed, talked, listened, and said, "I know we can get to an understanding. I guess we need to talk about something until we get there." He was tired and had to work Sat morning, so this was him, choosing to do this. Did I hold that thought in my head? No, just the stabbing ones.
Discerning what is painful and what is hurtful...is important. I can feel pain when my H's words are not intended to hurt...they do hurt, no intention. During Friday night, many of his statements were hurtful...he wanted to hit my weak spots on purpose because he felt pain at what I was asking and saying.
We learned that one Tuesday morning...at MC.
<img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
And Sat? Sun? Monday? I got intensive care from H...talking, touching, sharing. Getting to that understanding took time and effort...and my sorrow, by Monday, was like watery air in my body...I had to keep taking deep breaths to try to dry it, to no avail. I had a humid heart.
I dried it out Monday evening...because I realized my own part in feeling annihilated...repeating hurtful statements to myself and not hearing the loving ones.
And by sharing what I wasn't sharing, though I tell you to, AmI and everyone else...that I missed his phone calls during the week; no emails, no more communication exercises, no more statements of his feelings...which was us seemingly changing back into our old stuff...where distance and smooth reigned over intimacy and conflict.
Pain feels like pain...and it well up inside me, mixed from FOO and H, myself and my expectations...that after eight continuous years, of being connected, that I wouldn't get the shut out from them...I knew at any time it could happen...my own expectation that it wouldn't. It did.
Too much for me...what began the yelling conversation was her asking me point blank when I planned my next visit to them. I had to say, I am not planning another visit to them. We were to have our first Christmas together in 22 years last year...and they cancelled by telling me she didn't feel up to it (health)...and on Christmas, my sister and her family called from their house (just the two of us), so I asked again, why not my family? And was told, they didn't want a gathering.
Then they both had serious health issues beginning in January, and I had previously promised in the past to fly out and take care of my Dad if had another heart attack (and he did); same for my Mom (different issue); my sister had done that for my Mom last year...my turn...and I was no told, no, not now...wait and see...up until April, when my Mom was saying, "Be ready for my call" and I said I was...and I told my sister in January and in April, "My turn, agreed?" Until she called mid-April from the hospital to let me know of my Mom's emergency surgery.
What a little girl I was that Sat morning, "But it was my turn!" and I cried...it was immediate--reacting to information even as it was being absorbed. My mother called me from her hospital room on my sister's cell later that day. Told me how she was feeling and not to worry.
I called every couple of days and about three weeks later, the last week of my sister's stay, they called me with each on an extension and Mom said we all had done things that needed forgiving so we should forgive and forget. Then my father asked if I was open to coming out some time...and I said, "I don't know. Maybe."
I learned those three legs of forgiveness...you state and own what you did...your part...then you promise to not do it again...and then the other person forgives you.
I have done this repeatedly for their forgiveness. My mom said she couldn't help the first time...doctor's orders...too much going on in her life back then, so I had to go, nothing she could have done; no promises ever made not to do it again...and I didn't ask for that. I could have. I will in the future.
I decided to stop self-betraying, and maintain a relationship by letters and phone, instead. Four months I let that Christmas exclusion take me down; and the second one, four days. I do improve, slowly.
The yelliing came from my mother acting angry when I told her I wasn't coming because of the two earlier times this years, as a boundary enforcement, not shutting her out. She said how much I had hurt her, hurt her terribly over the years, and that she didn't even know her children; and that she cancelled Christmas due to my H...she didn't want him near her (I shared with her what I shared here); and she didn't call me to come out for the caretaking position because she knew I was too afraid to leave my H alone for a minute, not knowing what he might do.
I said, "You did my thinking for me, is that correct?"
And we were off to the races...(my cliche meter is broken...I think I've exceeded my quotient here)...she repeated, "You don't know how much, HOW MUCH you've hurt me, to my bones, LA" and I said, "Same here. I know you've felt great pain--and I have, too!" First time I've said this...and I was ashamed...reactive...when she said, "Not like you've hurt me!" "You disowned me three times, Mother"..."I NEVER disowned you. Ever!"
We got to calm places...but where I stabbed myself was being the cause, the control and the cure of her pain...took me back to 9-years-old all over again, when she married my father...and I stayed that age, I think, for the last three weeks. That was me...poor choice. I had a perverse pride, though, raising my voice to my mother for the first time in my life...and then getting a grip, ending the call, I felt with grace, as we had each yelled...and calling the next afternoon because I was concerned for her emotional state, and apologizing and talking that through as well.
Growing up, she often said, "Pride goeth before a fall!" Seriously. She said that weekly. Even a taste of it, I guess, huh?
So there you have it...that erasing feeling, of being back to the beginning, alone, my fault, drowning in blame, feeling disconnected with my H and fearing him...that happens. What I did not remember was that we can re-connect again...took a few days...took a few to get there...reconnecting isn't hard work...it's brave work.
No wonder we experience ups and downs...connecting and disconnecting...how extreme is up to us...one day, one week...O&H statements, knowing all things come to pass...ebb and flow of relationships.
Thanks for letting me post all this to your thread, Rin.
LA
