Tag Archives: relationships

FORGIVE ME

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I knew my parents weren’t like other parents. Every celebration, every event,every day included an excuse to drink. They met their friends at a bar the way others met up at a coffee shop and no 8 year old should know the phone numbers of those bars by heart ‘just in case’.

I also knew my mother wasn’t like other mothers. I grew up knowing there was something wrong but I didn’t know how to explain or express what was happening that didn’t sound like me complaining ‘It’s not fair’.

As a toddler my brother regularly bit me. One day I ran to my mother crying and bleeding, she stemmed the blood but showed no care or concern for the wound and said if he tried to bite me again I should bite him back. I was three and a half and took her at her word. My father stopped her beating me but was just as angry when he found out I’d tried to bite my little brother. My mother’s explanation for the marks on my arm, he bit me when I tried to bite him. It is still my first vivid memory of what my childhood would be like.

Like many narcissistic mothers she would spread her poison by expressing her ‘concerns’ about me. When the effect of my toxic home life became apparent to the point it couldn’t be ignored, fobbed off or explained as me just being a teenage girl. My mother arranged counselling. I lived by the spoken and unspoken rules for children in abusive families; keep silent, it’s no one’s business but ours, no one will believe you, if they believe you they will know it’s your fault, only tell the version of the truth that can’t be used against your parents, do not betray the family.

These sessions would be with someone she ‘trusted’ so I knew everything I said would find it’s way back to her. I said what people wanted to hear, despite her best efforts to control the process, it looked good on the outside but would do no good on the inside, it would be the start of her undoing.

‘Everyone’ knew I was stupid and I would never amount to anything until I got my head out of the clouds. At one point I was offered an IQ test, the results confirmed what I had always suspected, I was not stupid, in fact I was very intelligent especially regarding creative, imaginative intelligence. My head was exactly where my intellect needed it to be. From the day I got those results onward, no matter how hard she tried to discredit them, she knew she had lost complete control, would never get it back and would continue to lose what control she had left. Her ending came with my beginning to understand her abusive patterns, what they were and how she practised, refined and then honed them like a blade she used to fillet my very being with just a look, gesture or word.

My father died, my mother crawled deeper into a bottle, my brother realised I wasn’t joking when I said I would stab him if he didn’t leave me alone , I went my own way.

It was a way that included Al Anon, other groups, reading, counseling, self help therapies, marriage, divorce,marriage, children and putting a continent and an ocean between us.

Adult children of abusive parents grow up with so many horrendous emotional and psychological burdens. We’re raised with the idea you should love and respect your parents even when you know they are ,at the least, not fulfilling their roles and duties, at worst making your existence a nightmare. We’re raised knowing we are stupid, useless, ugly, hated, a burden, worthless, it’s all our own fault and it’s our job to fix it. We feel guilty and self shame for being angry, resentful and hating the situation we lived in and the people we lived with. My goal had to be to get myself healthy and break the habits that came with the conditioning I had received and example that had be set for me.

A recurring theme of my getting better was forgiveness. I struggled with other people’s definition of what forgiveness is, the pretend it never happened type of forgiveness, the idea that because she gave birth to me so I owed her my forgiveness. I had to forgive her even if; she never recognised what she had done, she never apologised, while visiting she tried to repeat her abuses with my children.

I learned what forgiveness wasn’t, what it could be and what it became to me.

In the weeks before she died she would ring and say things like;

  • she may have been wrong about me

  • maybe she didn’t give me the credit I deserved

  • it was possible she didn’t know me as well she thought she did

  • it could be I wasn’t really just like her I was probably more my own person than she realised.

Every comment was qualified and equivocal and the closest she would ever come to saying ‘I’m sorry’. 10 days after the last conversation she died, it didn’t matter. Did I forgive her? Not really but I had let go of my anger, resentment and even hatred towards her long before that. I’d been over her for a long while knowing she would never love me or I her as we might have.

It took many years for me to understand that my recovery wasn’t just about forgiving her it was also about understanding and internalising the oft repeated phrase, ‘It’s not your fault’.

The hardest lesson to implement was acknowledging I had become my own worst enemy. Perpetuating the the pain and hurt as a self inflicted punishment for betraying my Mother. I had to cultivate a new inner voice, one that spoke calmly, kindly, that didn’t scream and berate with accusations, insults, didn’t minmise, disparage and inflict guilt. A voice that assured me my responses to the cruelty and abuse; anger, a sense of betrayal, resentment, hate, thoughts of vengeance and revenge, was understandable, but, the destructive and/or hurtful behaviours to myself and others weren’t acceptable. Understanding the root of the feelings and how they fueled the actions made it easier to change what I was doing, apologise and mean it where necessary.

Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday and the yesterday you can’t change tomorrow. Forgiving myself has allowed me to value the today I have, no longer overshadowed by my yesterdays and and worrying about my tomorrows.

THOSE PEOPLE 4

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CRITICS

I want to mention three sorts of critics.

The Hyper Critic who no matter what will drill in like a dentist on the minutiae of what you have said or done. It doesn’t matter how trivial or obscure the detail is they will rag on it and rag on it like a terrier on a rat. You begin to realise their actions have nothing to do with you it’s all about creating an opportunity for them to talk about what they think and what their opinion is.

They will pull other people in, misquote and misrepresent you and what you have said, so not only do they have a platform they have an audience for what they want to say which is basically a personal attack on you and how the Hyper Critic is right and you are wrong.

The Sniper Critic starts out with you thinking they are going to comment on the opinion, the art, the work, the performance but ends up doing nothing but attacking the person. I remember once reading what was supposed to be a gig review of a well known performer bY a journalist in a respectable, as respectable as they get, newspaper. Three lines in and you realised it was nothing by a vitriolic attack by one woman, the reviewer, on another woman, the performer. 800 venomous words that never mentioned the gig except as a place the writer went.

The Know It All It doesn’t matter what you say or what you do, this person knows better, knows why you are wrong because they know everything about everything. Even if you present them with evidence contrary to what they say, your facts and proof they must and will find a way to remain right.

I don’t mind criticism if it’s warranted. I remember once someone being asked if they had read any of my blog. I knew what was coming so it was no surprise when the person responded they read as much of it as they could stomach and when asked what they thought responded with one word, obnoxious. I do not mind having my work critiqued if the person doing it can show me why they are saying what they are saying and how they think it will help me improve what I’m doing. I do mind when it’s all about attacking the person not commenting on the work.

You often won’t realise you are dealing with one of these until it’s almost too late and you have been sucked into their vortex of negativity and shaming but it’s never too late or too early to sing them the ‘You’re Right’ song ( you’re right, you’re right, you’re very, very right, be happy, be glad and never ever sad becuase you’re very, very right) smile, strike that match, burn that bridge and walk away.

THOSE PEOPLE 3

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THE MISERY

Stay away from negative people, they have a problem for every solution.

Albert Einstein

In my experience there are two basic sorts of Miseries, the Passive and The Active.

The Passive Misery is the person who has that mind set where nothing gives them any joy. It’s hard to know if they are born with this attitude or it is a learned behaviour but it’s like their sunshine is constantly hidden behind a black cloud that hangs over their head. They are the sort of people who’s presence can cause other people’s head’s to drop and shoulders to slump. They automatically find the bad in any good news, their own or other people’s.

‘Congratulations! You’ve just won £5,000,000 on the lottery’

‘I suppose I’ll have to pay taxes on it so most will be gone before I see it.’

or

‘John has booked a holiday in Mexico’

‘Let’s hope he doesn’t get sick over there or shot up by drug traffickers’

It’s impossible to get a Passive Misery to see anything but the negative connotation, effects or results of any given situation or action.

Sadly these people tend to be completely unaware of what they are like and the effect they have on people. They don’t understand why people lose patience and lose interest but just accept it is the way life is giving them one more thing to be miserable about.

The Active Misery knows they are miserable, is quite proud of the fact they never think anything good of anyone and see nothing positive in life. Life for them is a hard, harsh place and all their energy is focused on proving it to themselves over and over again and they scan every possible horizon to find things to be miserable about. What’s more if they can’t be miserable for their own sake they will seek out someone or something else they can be miserable for. These are the sort of people who follow tabloid and gossip magazine stories and take up arms on behalf of some C list celebrity because of a supposed insult levelled at them by another C list celebrity.

An off shot of the Active Misery is the Aggressive Misery. Not only are they miserable in their own right but they are determined to make others around them just as miserable. They will do this by; being difficult and disagreeable to get along with, questioning and arguing every little detail in a day, relaying information they think will upset you in some way making you either angry or sad, gossiping about you and even outright personal attacks. Often this sort of thing is done under the guise of ‘For you own good’ because if there is one thing the Aggressive Misery can’t tolerate is the idea of other people not being miserable.

There is not much you can do for A Misery, they either lack the self awareness to know there is a problem or revel in the problem and see no reason to change it. The best thing to do is smile when you strike that match and walk away as that bridge burns.

DON’T LET YOUR PAST STEAL YOUR PRESENT

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Why do I feel this compulsion to write and blog and vlog?  Like Eric Blair aka George Orwell I always knew I wanted to be a writer and despite detours into the real world the urge and the need to put pen to paper and use words to create, describe, express, question and explain my world never left me. No matter how hard I tried to quash it. I don’t do writing I am a writer. Writing is not a hobby I can put aside when it’s inconvenient and it’s part of who I am.
I grew up in an environment of constant criticism and disparagement.
At home I was stupid, ignorant, childish, naive. Instead of answering questions I was told to stop asking them, instead of showing and teaching I was mocked for not knowing. Most of all it was made clear that no one wanted to hear what I had to say, my thoughts were too stupid to be worth hearing and no one cared what I thought anyway because I was of no worth to anyone except as a figure of fun.
The school system I was educated in had very strict ideas about what constituted good, worthy and worthwhile art. Most of all art in any form had to be acceptable within the confines of the social mores and morals of the school system,comfortable and unchallenging. If you refused to straightjacket your work it was deemed unacceptable and given a failing grade. At the same time you were expected to strive for greatness. The idea of creating art for the sake of expressing yourself or worse still because you simply enjoyed it was almost heretical. If you couldn’t be the next Betjeman, Shakespeare, Lawrence, Olivier, Rockwell or Michelangelo what was the point?  To be an artist you must be want to be ‘successful’ which meant critical acclaim and fame and hopefully wealth.
The weight of these arbitrary rules, expectations and conditions were used to crush budding artistic personalities into conformity.
Combined this with the demons of self doubt and self loathing instilled by my home life and you have a perfect recipe for self sabotaging behaviours.
Which brings me to now.
I have always had the courage of my convictions. I’ve never feared standing up and speaking out for what I believe is right and against what I believe is wrong. It’s time I was as convicted and courageous about myself as I am about other issues. It’s not so easy because I can’t do research or find facts to support this cause but I know what is right is I must continue to string words together to tell stories, to ask questions, to explain my world view. What is wrong is my continuing under the crushing weight of my past which stops me from doing what I am compelled to do.
My work may be for me but it is also for the people who view it, part of creating art in any form is you don’t know what the consequences of putting it out there for people to see. I hope people who encounter my work might be entertained, find something thought provoking maybe even begin to ask their own questions,perhaps I will make someone smile or spur them into action. I’d like to think seeing something I’ve done will help someone not feel so alone or misunderstood and give themselves permission to believe in themselves and their value as a person.
I know I will be judged and there will be people who take pleasure in criticizing others and their work. If people do feel the need I hope they will do so in an educated and knowledgeable way regarding my work and not simply attack for the sake of being negative. I have finally developed the skills to see when an attack is on the person not the work and to give them the short shrift they deserve. I’ve also finally accepted that there really are no rules and you don’t have to confine yourself to the diktats of others. Society will not crumble and the world won’t stop turning because I’ve decided to make it up as I go along according to my own artistic intent and shake off the shackles of my past.