Growing up in the "Bible Belt" and in a conservative Christian family left me very confused about my own spirituality. For the record, I identify today as "new age", though many of my beliefs are more relative to what I believe is actually a more ancient form of religion. I'm finding that I'm not alone in this--my closest cousin spends much of her time studying Eastern theology and exploring mysticism, and my brother recently "came out" as a practicing Pagan. It is much more comforting to realize that I'm not the only person I know who experienced my own spiritual knowledge at a very young age, and certainly was not the only one to hide it from my family.
When asked my earliest memory, I never know what the proper answer is. In my true earliest memory, I am with someone else, and a third voice is speaking to us. It is dark, but familiar. I feel comfortable where I am, but I understand that something big is getting ready to happen. I am told that I have to take the next step alone, that my companion must go, and that I won't be hearing this voice again for some time. I start to feel confused, but I am assured that I will always be able to turn back to the voice for guidance. I am warned that the future is difficult, but am assured that I can handle this. The memory stayed with me every day until finally, at the age of four, I asked my mother why the other person with me--a brother, I felt--had to leave when we were born. She fainted in front of me. Turns out, I had a twin brother who was stillborn, and she and my father's family made a pact to never talk about it again.
I had spent my early years living with many different members of my mother's family when I wasn't with my father. My grandmother had become very sick since she had been widowed, and she and I lived together with an aunt. We spent our days with me at her feet and her telling me stories of her childhood. She was a Cherokee living outside of Oklahoma, a legal offense in the days of her parents. Because of this, they moved often, and they were not allowed to own property. Their primary home was a cave along the river that backed up to the farm where, coincidentally, my father would later grow up. In the winter, the family left the cave behind to rent a house in the city, but my great-grandfather's fear of the government would not allow him to keep the family there beyond the months of snow.
Grandma told me stories of her family, including her own spiritual encounters. This was not abnormal for her as it was for my father's white family, who speaks of spirits in the form of ghost stories. To Grandma, the other realm was as natural as the dandelions that grew outside our door. This open acceptance of spirits and little people would later draw me to my first serious boyfriend, a Cherokee boy from my Grandmother's clan who had grown up around traditional Cherokees in Oklahoma. I always felt drawn to the tradition of Grandma's people.
One night when I was eight, I fell very ill with a high fever. I laid on the couch as my mother and her boyfriend visited with friends. One of the friends came to me and laid her hand on my head, telling me that things would get better, and sometimes life just throws us icky curveballs. I answered her with "it won't get better, because my grandmother just died." My mother was appalled that I had said that--in her culture, you risk cursing a family member if you speak of their death or an illness prematurely. The friend told my mother to relax, that I was just delirious and probably had a bad dream. Shortly afterward, the friends left, and another set of headlights arrived in our driveway. It was my aunt, coming to tell us that my grandmother had died just an hour or so earlier. This wasn't the first time something like this had happened to me, but it would be the last time that my mother doubted my visions.
I believe that God is universal, that there is no one correct way to worship or envision him. I believe that all religions have something for someone, and therefore are valuable on some level for bringing people closer to God. Studying Cherokee mythology has made me understand that the stories of the Bible and the Quran are real, and that philosophies such as the Eightfold Path are relevant to all of us. I do accept that spirits continue to live with us after they leave the body, and I often wonder if hell is actually the earth upon which we live, with Judgment being the reincarnation we experience until we become fully enlightened. I don't question the use of crystals or incantations, and I believe that our souls are all deeply entwined in a universal realm that we cannot see or understand while we are still rational and analytical. These aren't beliefs that my occupation allows me to hold openly--I work in an area where I deal with very successful businesspeople and their money, so understandably, they want to believe I am fully grounded and rational. I balance my life very easily, as I am happy in my spiritual path and love my career. Since I don't believe in black & white living, it's not hard for me to hang up my crystal necklace and put on a pinstripe suit.
I believe that karma and universalism are what got me here today. This doesn't make my childhood history of neglect and physical and sexual abuse right, but it certainly helps me understand why bad things happen to good people. I don't believe that I was always good. I make the best of what I am today in hopes that I can right the wrongs that I may not understand of yesterday. I am curious to delve into what lives have passed before this one, but I fear what I may see. Maybe one day. Today, I am just grateful for the culmination of this life.
Saturday, August 2
Tuesday, July 29
Neurosis
I know that, inherently, she isn't a bad person. It was just a few short years ago that I felt very close to her, for the first time in my life. We had about eight years of good after I moved away, talking on the phone weekly and visiting one another every few months. There were still moments of tension and even some arguments, but never anything like before, and not what we have today.
My mother is very ill, and always has been. I've known my entire life that she wasn't like other mothers, but it wasn't until I was an adult that I learned what manic depression is, and that my mother was what is called "bipolar I". It's been two years since she had her latest major manic episode, and she still has not pulled out of it. She left behind her job, her home, and her belongings to move hundreds of miles south and live on the beach. Even worse, my mother has hoarding disorder, a serious form of obsessive compulsive disorder. What this means is that my mother must always be surrounded by stuff, and since she can't afford to buy her own stuff, she is getting it from people's dumpsters and garbage cans. And that isn't the worst.
My mother has begun creating her own reality. She tells extensive stories about her life and the lives of people she knows. She's created life-threatening illnesses for me, illegal occupations for specific people that she doesn't like, and relationships that don't exist. Years ago, my friends and I would lightly joke about how we could be in one room and hear my mother having a conversation with someone in the next, but we would never see anyone with her. She would create characters and voices, asking herself questions and answering them. When we'd catch her, she'd embarrassingly laugh it off as just talking to herself, and we summed it up to her eclectic nature. Today, I look back on that and can't help but think that I could have stopped what I fear may be the culmination of schizophrenia, a disease prevalent in her family. Again, I naively believed that this disease required one hearing Satan and trying to kill family members, because no one educated me on the more common symptoms.
I have begged my mother for years to see a psychiatrist to get the proper medication, but her pride refused to let her listen. She was once in a relationship with a man who laughed at her for seeing a psychiatrist, and I remember him telling her that her head was shrinking and that she was a lunatic. It never occurs to her to remember that this same man beat her regularly and abused drugs, and how can you trust the opinion of a man who hits a woman every night? Eventually, I spoke with her new general practitioner after Mom was approved for work insurance. Her new doctor agreed with my observations and was shocked that no one before her had prescribed anything for my mother's condition, and my mother was put on an antidepressant, an anxiety medication, and an anti psychotic. Everything spiraled down hill simply because, one month, my mother decided she felt well enough to not refill the meds she had been on for several years.
As soon as I realized what was happening, I was doing everything I could from afar to get my mother emergency mental health assistance. I contacted everyone who had been around to witness her behavior and begged them to serve as a witness to her actions. I researched how to have my mother hospitalized under her employer's plan so that she would not lose her job while she was away. I spoke to her landlord and creditors, giving them a vague explanation that her health was not good lately and they agreed to give her some time. My family, though, saw my efforts as selfish on my part, and instead of my mother going to a hospital, she went to live with a schizophrenic sister. It has only gotten worse from there, as I mentioned before.
I still want to help, but what I see as help, her family sees as cruel. My mother needs to be somewhere with professionals and trained caregivers, she needs therapy and medication. My family willingly complains about her behavior, but ostracizes me when I try to intervene with my solution. They see my efforts as spiteful and unnecessary, though they are happy to explain her erratic behavior away with "your mother is very sick right now." Though it's not been said, I am sure that they are waiting for me to volunteer to take her on and let her live here, with me. I can't betray her and tell them the horrible things she says to me when we do speak, and when we are together, she makes a point to berate me, in turn causing an argument. I am told that I should just let her criticisms go because she is so very sick, but I want to stand up for myself to the person that should inherently want to protect me. I want to love her like I did before, but I am not sure if that will ever be possible again.
My mother is very ill, and always has been. I've known my entire life that she wasn't like other mothers, but it wasn't until I was an adult that I learned what manic depression is, and that my mother was what is called "bipolar I". It's been two years since she had her latest major manic episode, and she still has not pulled out of it. She left behind her job, her home, and her belongings to move hundreds of miles south and live on the beach. Even worse, my mother has hoarding disorder, a serious form of obsessive compulsive disorder. What this means is that my mother must always be surrounded by stuff, and since she can't afford to buy her own stuff, she is getting it from people's dumpsters and garbage cans. And that isn't the worst.
My mother has begun creating her own reality. She tells extensive stories about her life and the lives of people she knows. She's created life-threatening illnesses for me, illegal occupations for specific people that she doesn't like, and relationships that don't exist. Years ago, my friends and I would lightly joke about how we could be in one room and hear my mother having a conversation with someone in the next, but we would never see anyone with her. She would create characters and voices, asking herself questions and answering them. When we'd catch her, she'd embarrassingly laugh it off as just talking to herself, and we summed it up to her eclectic nature. Today, I look back on that and can't help but think that I could have stopped what I fear may be the culmination of schizophrenia, a disease prevalent in her family. Again, I naively believed that this disease required one hearing Satan and trying to kill family members, because no one educated me on the more common symptoms.
I have begged my mother for years to see a psychiatrist to get the proper medication, but her pride refused to let her listen. She was once in a relationship with a man who laughed at her for seeing a psychiatrist, and I remember him telling her that her head was shrinking and that she was a lunatic. It never occurs to her to remember that this same man beat her regularly and abused drugs, and how can you trust the opinion of a man who hits a woman every night? Eventually, I spoke with her new general practitioner after Mom was approved for work insurance. Her new doctor agreed with my observations and was shocked that no one before her had prescribed anything for my mother's condition, and my mother was put on an antidepressant, an anxiety medication, and an anti psychotic. Everything spiraled down hill simply because, one month, my mother decided she felt well enough to not refill the meds she had been on for several years.
As soon as I realized what was happening, I was doing everything I could from afar to get my mother emergency mental health assistance. I contacted everyone who had been around to witness her behavior and begged them to serve as a witness to her actions. I researched how to have my mother hospitalized under her employer's plan so that she would not lose her job while she was away. I spoke to her landlord and creditors, giving them a vague explanation that her health was not good lately and they agreed to give her some time. My family, though, saw my efforts as selfish on my part, and instead of my mother going to a hospital, she went to live with a schizophrenic sister. It has only gotten worse from there, as I mentioned before.
I still want to help, but what I see as help, her family sees as cruel. My mother needs to be somewhere with professionals and trained caregivers, she needs therapy and medication. My family willingly complains about her behavior, but ostracizes me when I try to intervene with my solution. They see my efforts as spiteful and unnecessary, though they are happy to explain her erratic behavior away with "your mother is very sick right now." Though it's not been said, I am sure that they are waiting for me to volunteer to take her on and let her live here, with me. I can't betray her and tell them the horrible things she says to me when we do speak, and when we are together, she makes a point to berate me, in turn causing an argument. I am told that I should just let her criticisms go because she is so very sick, but I want to stand up for myself to the person that should inherently want to protect me. I want to love her like I did before, but I am not sure if that will ever be possible again.
Sunday, July 27
Detachment
There is no solid memory in my mind of my parents' relationship. I was a year old when they finally married, and it was a year later that they were filing for divorce. I do remember the weekend that we left him, the plane ride back to the U.S. with my mother sobbing over the Atlantic ocean as I cuddled with a new stuffed animal that I had come to adore. To cheer her, I would repeatedly hand her my companion and try to get her to hug him, but she would only sob harder. It is one of my earliest memories. Only when I was older did I realize that the bottom of one foot was marked "With love, Nora." She was the woman my father had been having an affair with, the woman who was pregnant with his son, the one who would marry my father exactly a month after the divorce would be finalized.
My father and Nora felt like a solid family to me. She was from a Middle Eastern family with deep-rooted family values and exotic traditions. I spent most of my very early years with them, and even came to call her Mom. While her family followed the tradition Arabic tradition by gushing over my baby brother, Nora never let me feel set aside. I never felt less important than my brother, and I never felt as though her love for us was different. It wasn't. Even when I did wrong, she never yelled at me, but instead took an intellectual approach. She was somewhat of a feminist, though she still took great pride in her culture. Our house was always filled with the smells of fresh tabouli and baklava, made for us with love. We spoke fluent Arabic, a language the kids around me couldn't understand, and it made me feel as though we had our own secret family language for just us. We were our own unit, a happy home, and I was loved.
Shortly after I started school, my cozy home was torn apart. Abruptly, my father was taking me back to my mother, saying only that his job had decided to send him back to Europe and that it would be better if I was with my mother during this time. It was not long afterward that he and Nora divorced, and I would only see him two more times before I was an adult, each just briefly. It was obvious when I returned to her that my mother resented what Nora had done--I had left a Cherokee daughter and returned an Arab child. Or that was what I believed the issue to be. It's amazing how children relate small issues like that.
In reality, Nora and my father had been trying to win custody of me, and my father had tried to convince my mother to let Nora adopt me. It wasn't sensitive of him, but in his young mind, it was the right thing to do. The fact that my mother had given birth to a second child, only to have a court remove him permanently from her, only validated my father's point. The problem was that, at some point during their marriage, my father had secretly become a violent alcoholic. The person who had been my safe haven from a negligent, mentally unstable addict had himself become an abusive addict. It was at that time that I began to understand that the only stability I had in this life was me. It's a heavy cross for a six year old to carry.
My father and Nora felt like a solid family to me. She was from a Middle Eastern family with deep-rooted family values and exotic traditions. I spent most of my very early years with them, and even came to call her Mom. While her family followed the tradition Arabic tradition by gushing over my baby brother, Nora never let me feel set aside. I never felt less important than my brother, and I never felt as though her love for us was different. It wasn't. Even when I did wrong, she never yelled at me, but instead took an intellectual approach. She was somewhat of a feminist, though she still took great pride in her culture. Our house was always filled with the smells of fresh tabouli and baklava, made for us with love. We spoke fluent Arabic, a language the kids around me couldn't understand, and it made me feel as though we had our own secret family language for just us. We were our own unit, a happy home, and I was loved.
Shortly after I started school, my cozy home was torn apart. Abruptly, my father was taking me back to my mother, saying only that his job had decided to send him back to Europe and that it would be better if I was with my mother during this time. It was not long afterward that he and Nora divorced, and I would only see him two more times before I was an adult, each just briefly. It was obvious when I returned to her that my mother resented what Nora had done--I had left a Cherokee daughter and returned an Arab child. Or that was what I believed the issue to be. It's amazing how children relate small issues like that.
In reality, Nora and my father had been trying to win custody of me, and my father had tried to convince my mother to let Nora adopt me. It wasn't sensitive of him, but in his young mind, it was the right thing to do. The fact that my mother had given birth to a second child, only to have a court remove him permanently from her, only validated my father's point. The problem was that, at some point during their marriage, my father had secretly become a violent alcoholic. The person who had been my safe haven from a negligent, mentally unstable addict had himself become an abusive addict. It was at that time that I began to understand that the only stability I had in this life was me. It's a heavy cross for a six year old to carry.
Thursday, July 24
Dogma
Among my family's many complications is the issue of God, religion, and church. There are many ministers in my family who teach a cult-like existence from the pulpit, complete with hell, fire, and brimstone. It's an all-or-nothing faith, meaning when you go to church, you give it 100%; however, if you decide to stop, you merely hang on to the fear and live the rest of your life on the wild side. I always felt as though my mother wished she could be in the former group, but put herself in the latter group when she confessed being unmarried and pregnant.
On occasion, my mother would cave to the pressure of her brothers and begin sending me to church regularly. The rules were numerous and overwhelming:
*only dresses and long shirts;
*ask no questions about what you are told, just accept the "truth" as God has given it;
*no makeup, no fancy hairstyles, nothing to drive the men wild;
*women are to be submissive and accept their lot in life as wife, mother, and homemaker;
*no hospitals or doctors--if you are sick, come to your church family for faith healing;
*you may pray, but not meditate, for Satan lives for the moment he can jump into an empty mind;
*fear God, and love Him for breathing life into you;
*tithing is to be literal, and to ensure that you are giving at least 10%, you must report your income and assets in a formal report on a quarterly basis;
*God prefers poverty over wealth, for money is the root to all evil;
*children are to be seen, but not heard;
*the fruit given to Adam by Eve was from the Tree of Wisdom, therefore, anything that intellectually develops our minds further is an attempt to become too much like God, which is a disgrace and a sin;
*pain is our reminder of the suffering Christ endured to save our souls;
*the price of sin is death, and your sin shall be carried through the next seven generations--our children and their children will pay for the sin you commit today;
*your life hardships are the result of the sins committed by your fathers before you, so accept them with grace and live to not overwhelm your future generations with more sin;
*most importantly, never forget that we know the truth, and "they" are wrong--do not expose your mind to the teachings of those false prophets.
It amazed me and disappointed my mother that I rejected this theology as early as four years old. But I continued to endure it when she'd push the issue, not only because it was easier, but it was a popular faith among my friends. Society around me told me that this was the right way to live, but my heart taught me something different. I had too many questions, even as a child, that I was told were inappropriate to ask. I was degraded for being a thinking individual, and told that dealing with this intellect was the price I had to pay for my parents' sin. I would forever carry the weight of this, for being the bastard child of my family, a label that defined me, though it was something I never had control over. I would never feel as though I fully fit in with these people, many of which were my own flesh and blood.
On occasion, my mother would cave to the pressure of her brothers and begin sending me to church regularly. The rules were numerous and overwhelming:
*only dresses and long shirts;
*ask no questions about what you are told, just accept the "truth" as God has given it;
*no makeup, no fancy hairstyles, nothing to drive the men wild;
*women are to be submissive and accept their lot in life as wife, mother, and homemaker;
*no hospitals or doctors--if you are sick, come to your church family for faith healing;
*you may pray, but not meditate, for Satan lives for the moment he can jump into an empty mind;
*fear God, and love Him for breathing life into you;
*tithing is to be literal, and to ensure that you are giving at least 10%, you must report your income and assets in a formal report on a quarterly basis;
*God prefers poverty over wealth, for money is the root to all evil;
*children are to be seen, but not heard;
*the fruit given to Adam by Eve was from the Tree of Wisdom, therefore, anything that intellectually develops our minds further is an attempt to become too much like God, which is a disgrace and a sin;
*pain is our reminder of the suffering Christ endured to save our souls;
*the price of sin is death, and your sin shall be carried through the next seven generations--our children and their children will pay for the sin you commit today;
*your life hardships are the result of the sins committed by your fathers before you, so accept them with grace and live to not overwhelm your future generations with more sin;
*most importantly, never forget that we know the truth, and "they" are wrong--do not expose your mind to the teachings of those false prophets.
It amazed me and disappointed my mother that I rejected this theology as early as four years old. But I continued to endure it when she'd push the issue, not only because it was easier, but it was a popular faith among my friends. Society around me told me that this was the right way to live, but my heart taught me something different. I had too many questions, even as a child, that I was told were inappropriate to ask. I was degraded for being a thinking individual, and told that dealing with this intellect was the price I had to pay for my parents' sin. I would forever carry the weight of this, for being the bastard child of my family, a label that defined me, though it was something I never had control over. I would never feel as though I fully fit in with these people, many of which were my own flesh and blood.
Tuesday, July 22
Scapegoat
When I was in middle school, my mother and I spent a few months living in housing projects while she tried to find a job in our new town. The year before, we had jumped states on a whim of hers--I had a 36 hour notice of the move--and came back to her childhood home with only $1300 and our last 7 years crammed into a tiny hatchback. It was the first moment in my life that I realized something was terribly wrong with my mother, and it would take another decade before I learned the term "manic depression." Instead of using our money to set up a rental house and find a job, she decided to enjoy her new found "freedom" and reverted back to teenage behavior, going to parties while leaving me with people I hardly knew. When she was short a sitter, I'd have to tag along, and we'd usually end up at a river party or a strange house, me sleeping in the car and her staying awake for days at a time. Since we had no address, I couldn't attend school, and I missed half of my fifth grade year.
So the projects were an upgrade of where we'd been. Cruelty manifests itself best in the minds of preteen girls, and is even easier to achieve when the housing projects are built directly across from the school. My classmates would see me walking from the apartments to class every day, and while I wasn't the only kid in school living there, I was the only one not already affiliated with a tough clique to protect me from the other kids. To make matters worse, I had a small inventory of clothing in my closet: three button up shirts, one pair of faded jeans that were a size too big, and a pair of cheap sneakers with holes in the toes and inner soles. Though she wasn't much bigger than I was, my mother made it clear that her closet was off limits.
I was quiet, nerdy, and hiding scars from the recent traumas I had endured. I was an easy target. First, there was the lunch room, every new kid's worst nightmare. Ours was clearly divided into groups: the popular kids took up one table, the brainiacs another, and the middle-of-the-road kids had several in a little group of their own. In the back corner was two tables of students who always dressed in black clothes and dark makeup, and who looked at everyone else with haunting eyes and threatening expressions. They didn't need two tables, but no one questioned them, ever. There were also young gang members--most of these people lived near me, but never spoke to me--who stood at two tables near the darkly dressed kids in a manner that dared you to look them in the eyes. In the middle was a space surrounding the lowest beings of all, the ones without a label who were clearly the "fair" target of every group's anger and meanness. This is where I was told to sit, but even then, there was always at least two spaces between me and the next person. I wasn't even good enough to be with the lowest of the social classes.
My classes were easy and I loved studying, but I hated the class change in between. This is where I would find people pointing at me and whispering, sometimes even laughing or daring to ask "don't you own anything else to wear?" It never helped to answer that question honestly, but instead seem to give many of them the right to push me into lockers, or push my books out of my hands into the ground. I was a tiny girl, much smaller than the rest of the girls my age, and I knew that fighting was not an option. Instead, I learned to stay quiet and endure the whispers and taunts. When I'd tell my mom these things, her answer was to either fight or stop whining. I couldn't win.
These few months have stayed with me the rest of my years. I look back at my later years at different schools, at my high school and college days, and I feel a sense of remorse for all those that I know endured the same treatment. I learned to develop a tough shell and a witty sense of humor so that, when we moved, I deflected this torture and thus managed to escape being a victim. My experience taught me to keep my nose clean, mind my own business, and always be the first to laugh at myself. But I wonder now, how many people like me did that tactic allow me to let down in the end?
So the projects were an upgrade of where we'd been. Cruelty manifests itself best in the minds of preteen girls, and is even easier to achieve when the housing projects are built directly across from the school. My classmates would see me walking from the apartments to class every day, and while I wasn't the only kid in school living there, I was the only one not already affiliated with a tough clique to protect me from the other kids. To make matters worse, I had a small inventory of clothing in my closet: three button up shirts, one pair of faded jeans that were a size too big, and a pair of cheap sneakers with holes in the toes and inner soles. Though she wasn't much bigger than I was, my mother made it clear that her closet was off limits.
I was quiet, nerdy, and hiding scars from the recent traumas I had endured. I was an easy target. First, there was the lunch room, every new kid's worst nightmare. Ours was clearly divided into groups: the popular kids took up one table, the brainiacs another, and the middle-of-the-road kids had several in a little group of their own. In the back corner was two tables of students who always dressed in black clothes and dark makeup, and who looked at everyone else with haunting eyes and threatening expressions. They didn't need two tables, but no one questioned them, ever. There were also young gang members--most of these people lived near me, but never spoke to me--who stood at two tables near the darkly dressed kids in a manner that dared you to look them in the eyes. In the middle was a space surrounding the lowest beings of all, the ones without a label who were clearly the "fair" target of every group's anger and meanness. This is where I was told to sit, but even then, there was always at least two spaces between me and the next person. I wasn't even good enough to be with the lowest of the social classes.
My classes were easy and I loved studying, but I hated the class change in between. This is where I would find people pointing at me and whispering, sometimes even laughing or daring to ask "don't you own anything else to wear?" It never helped to answer that question honestly, but instead seem to give many of them the right to push me into lockers, or push my books out of my hands into the ground. I was a tiny girl, much smaller than the rest of the girls my age, and I knew that fighting was not an option. Instead, I learned to stay quiet and endure the whispers and taunts. When I'd tell my mom these things, her answer was to either fight or stop whining. I couldn't win.
These few months have stayed with me the rest of my years. I look back at my later years at different schools, at my high school and college days, and I feel a sense of remorse for all those that I know endured the same treatment. I learned to develop a tough shell and a witty sense of humor so that, when we moved, I deflected this torture and thus managed to escape being a victim. My experience taught me to keep my nose clean, mind my own business, and always be the first to laugh at myself. But I wonder now, how many people like me did that tactic allow me to let down in the end?
Monday, July 21
Prologue
A little bit about me...Present Me, not the Past Me that you will be learning about here.
I am a happy, healthy 30-something living the American dream. I have a house, a marriage, a career, and a black lab. I drive a Toyota and set hair appointments 8 weeks apart. My friends BBQ and text message and Twitter on a regular basis. I have a retirement account and a shoe fetish. If you saw me in the mall, you wouldn't look twice at me.
This blog is a purge. Things have happened within the last few years that have caused the closet to fly open and family skeletons to begin spilling out. I had already dealt with most of these several years ago, when I packed my bags and moved nearly 1,000 miles from anyone who knew anything about me. I saw therapists and took antidepressants while I sorted through the pain of the two decades that had past.
It is my family now who needs the healing. To aid in this healing, I have needed to relive the pain of yesterday and stop protecting people in my life. The more I unleash, the more compelled I am to share these experiences with anyone who may also feel in their lives that they are the only ones who hear their own cries.
I am great today. I am happy. I am sure that this will not appear so as I continue to write, because I am writing from a place parallel to where I am now. I have forgiven, but before I forget, I must reveal. If it appears in my writing that I have yet to heal, then I will be proud, for that means that I have finally mastered the art of writing.
I am a happy, healthy 30-something living the American dream. I have a house, a marriage, a career, and a black lab. I drive a Toyota and set hair appointments 8 weeks apart. My friends BBQ and text message and Twitter on a regular basis. I have a retirement account and a shoe fetish. If you saw me in the mall, you wouldn't look twice at me.
This blog is a purge. Things have happened within the last few years that have caused the closet to fly open and family skeletons to begin spilling out. I had already dealt with most of these several years ago, when I packed my bags and moved nearly 1,000 miles from anyone who knew anything about me. I saw therapists and took antidepressants while I sorted through the pain of the two decades that had past.
It is my family now who needs the healing. To aid in this healing, I have needed to relive the pain of yesterday and stop protecting people in my life. The more I unleash, the more compelled I am to share these experiences with anyone who may also feel in their lives that they are the only ones who hear their own cries.
I am great today. I am happy. I am sure that this will not appear so as I continue to write, because I am writing from a place parallel to where I am now. I have forgiven, but before I forget, I must reveal. If it appears in my writing that I have yet to heal, then I will be proud, for that means that I have finally mastered the art of writing.
Gluttony
I was watching a documentary on DHC last night and heard a doctor say that our food habits are developed as early as infancy. We learn how to eat by how our parents feed us during early childhood.
Last week, a relative mentioned to me how worried they are about my mother and her new eating habits. She eats constantly, can't seem to satisfy herself, and, consequently, has put on an unhealthy amount of weight. They asked me, "didn't your mother use to eat like a bird?" Understatement, I'd say.
Since I can remember, my mother has suffered from a mild to moderate case of anorexia, depending upon how out of control her life was at the time. No one ever labeled it, but she explained the lack of food in our house with "well, I never eat much anyway, and Rain gets free lunch at school." We received food stamps, but when they'd come in, she'd sell of a good portion of them for discounted cash, which she'd use for cigarettes and alcohol. We never ate breakfast at our house, we never had milk or bread out of the rationalization that they'd go bad too quickly. Mother always had a case of Dr. Pepper that I was not allowed to touch, and we kept a supply of off-brand boxes of macaroni and cheese--only margarine to prepare it with--and hot dogs, maybe a few cans of tuna for the macaroni and some bags of beans to be made in a crock pot. To this day, I can't eat any of those things, except maybe a really good tuna salad.
This all had me thinking about how these habits may have affected my adult life. Since she couldn't--and didn't--cook, I read every cookbook I could find to master this art. I still collect cookbooks today, it's one of the few gems that will ever attract me to a flea market. I frustrate my other half by always insisting that I clean my plate in a restaurant, even though the portions are notoriously oversize. I battle the weight, fluctuating from a 2 to a 14 in dress sizes, mostly because I just love good food. A food counselor asked me once what need I was trying to feed, and I told her "the need to eat." She was extremely unhappy about that. I don't relate food to emotion, I relate food to the wonderful sensations on my tongue. Moving away from home was like exploring a whole new world to please the senses, and I added to my hobbies "trying new cuisines."
If one tried to analyze this, they could read any number of euphemisms desired.
Last week, a relative mentioned to me how worried they are about my mother and her new eating habits. She eats constantly, can't seem to satisfy herself, and, consequently, has put on an unhealthy amount of weight. They asked me, "didn't your mother use to eat like a bird?" Understatement, I'd say.
Since I can remember, my mother has suffered from a mild to moderate case of anorexia, depending upon how out of control her life was at the time. No one ever labeled it, but she explained the lack of food in our house with "well, I never eat much anyway, and Rain gets free lunch at school." We received food stamps, but when they'd come in, she'd sell of a good portion of them for discounted cash, which she'd use for cigarettes and alcohol. We never ate breakfast at our house, we never had milk or bread out of the rationalization that they'd go bad too quickly. Mother always had a case of Dr. Pepper that I was not allowed to touch, and we kept a supply of off-brand boxes of macaroni and cheese--only margarine to prepare it with--and hot dogs, maybe a few cans of tuna for the macaroni and some bags of beans to be made in a crock pot. To this day, I can't eat any of those things, except maybe a really good tuna salad.
This all had me thinking about how these habits may have affected my adult life. Since she couldn't--and didn't--cook, I read every cookbook I could find to master this art. I still collect cookbooks today, it's one of the few gems that will ever attract me to a flea market. I frustrate my other half by always insisting that I clean my plate in a restaurant, even though the portions are notoriously oversize. I battle the weight, fluctuating from a 2 to a 14 in dress sizes, mostly because I just love good food. A food counselor asked me once what need I was trying to feed, and I told her "the need to eat." She was extremely unhappy about that. I don't relate food to emotion, I relate food to the wonderful sensations on my tongue. Moving away from home was like exploring a whole new world to please the senses, and I added to my hobbies "trying new cuisines."
If one tried to analyze this, they could read any number of euphemisms desired.
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