I’m Okay

I’ve been saying that a lot lately.  Mostly to myself but once in a while to other people who check in.  I’m okay.  And really, lots of times I’m way better than okay.  I’ve had so many beautiful moments with my family this summer.  It’s been so fun to be rediscovering summer through the eyes of my kids.  Not only do I have an abundance of time with them,  I can afford to delve into their world in ways I always hesitated to do before.  I’ve been so worried about spreading my sadness or badness or brokenness that I haven’t been as flexible or as fun or just as silly as I can be now.  Everything inside me had to be so carefully controlled, especially during the unpacking process, that I couldn’t afford child-like carefree fun.  The cost was too high, the risks too great.   But this summer I’ve been marvelling at the endless stream of bubbles we’ve been blowing on the front porch, I’ve had so much fun playing hide and go seek tag in the park, and I’ve managed to remember a whole slew of pool games we used to play as kids because now my kids are swimmers. 

The best part of this is that I’ve been sharing it every step of the way with G.  He’s helped me join in with the kids’ fun, teasing me when I take it all too seriously.  But he’s also there to chat with as the kids run on ahead to reach the park or the lake or the beach or where ever it is we are going.  Our world together has been gentle and fun and slow.  All good things.  And we’ve started planning our future summers – when should we travel across the country, when should we canoe camp, when will we build the treehouse.  Because we have such a lush amount of time we can afford to dream and dream again and dream again. 

This is all very good. 

But there are some hidden valleys.  There are places that still require a little extra grace.  All the family and couple time realistically leaves almost no time for me as an individual.  There are no train rides into town, or lunch breaks, or meandering email conversations.  I most often don’t have my phone with me these days.  I have to choose carefully what I will do with the little alone time I manage to squeeze out of Family Summer Fun 2012. And that is hard.  I miss the space to just check in with my head and heart. I miss the time I had to write.  I miss the connections that came with those activities.  Having that space meant I could manage my world so that when trouble came I would be able to say – this morning you can write but you do have to work in the afternoon.  It was a luxury I didn’t fully appreciate. 

Because now there are some troubles. There are places that need my attention but with all the lovely, happy, joyful, Family Summer Fun, I just can’t figure out how to process them.  There are these dreams that wreck me night after night.  Not the horrid awful ones of flashbacks and locked closets.  But ones of such exquisite beauty and love my heart can’t seem to hold them.  Because they are myths.  Because a heart that can’t live in real life is living out her dreams and desires in my dreams.  Night after night after night.  And I can’t talk about them because….just because it’s not right. 

And during the day there are other valleys – my relationship with my mom, struggling to make some tough career choices and finding it infinitely hard to figure out where my ego fits into it all, all the endless housework (it’s such a totally unhappy activity for me that I’m including it in this section!) Not to mention that I’m supposed to be so much better and more put together and getting all sewn up that I can’t figure out how or when to ask for help.  And that help, in any case, is not nearly as accessible for a whole universe of other reasons. 

I’m getting better and stronger and more whole.  Isn’t it right that I should have to deal with the real world on my own now?

So that’s why I’ve been saying and I’ll continue to say I’m okay.  Because I am. And I will be.  Valleys or Mountaintops.

These Days

These days looking through photo albums doesn’t feel like following someone else’s life.

These days I avoid sitting in barely thawed spring lakes.

These days I don’t set my cell-phone alarm when I walk into the shower.  I know the same person who walked into the shower will also walk out of it.

These days I have Thai delivery on speed dial rather than the two save-me-please numbers I used to have.

These days I’ve taken up running as opposed to reciting the mantra one foot in front of the other.

These days seven minutes at a time is once again about my relationship with the treadmill rather than survival.

These days I can use a tampon without a flinch.  Or a pad.  Even a keeper.  These days I have a multitude of feminine hygiene choices.

These days I can explain the marks that appear on my body.

These days I can remember every minute of the day before.  These nights I sleep more often than not.

These days I throw up when I’m sick and only then.

These days I don’t tramp through snow on god-forsaken country roads late at night.

These days I can board a sail boat and love it.

These days I can say slow down, I’m lost, I was wrong, I need help, I cannot do this alone, and please don’t leave.  I can also say I want this, I’m trying, I’ll get there, I did it.

These days I like sex and feel pretty damn good about that fact.

These days the sight of an orthodox cross makes me sad but it doesn’t make me vomit or collapse.

These days I spend more time standing on my kitchen floor than sitting on it.  When I do floor-sit, I know and believe I won’t be there forever.  I remember that I will stand up again.

These days I want to go back to my old stomping grounds – not to uncover history any more but rather to see how time has kept moving forward.

These days I can wear a scarf.

These days I can pet a dog.

These days I can walk down the GI Joe aisle at the toy store.

These days I can teach about Justinian and Theodora.

These days I can listen to the Bach Double Concerto for Two Violins.  And I can almost feel its richness again.  I can almost feel the way its beauty used to bring tears to my eyes.

These days sometimes I slip into sad places.  Sometimes I feel shame creeping back up my body to wrap itself around my neck.  Sometimes I feel abandoned.  Sometimes I panic when I can’t reach those who stand with me in these places.  But these days I know that tears tarry for the night but joy comes in the morning.

These days I believe God became human.  And that matters.  These days I spend a lot of time talking to that God-part.

These days I’m grateful.  These days I’m humbled.  These days I’m in awe of commitments that have been kept by those around me, by God, by myself.

These days I don’t feel quite so much like a maze.

These days I feel the stitches getting stronger, creating a more solid me.

These days I know myself.

These days I have hope.  These days I have life.

These days are full of promise.

Regrets? I’ve Had a Few…

He asked me yesterday if I had any regrets.  I looked over at him, barely able to see his face because of the bright sun behind him.  What did he mean do I have regrets? About anything, I asked?  I assume you’ve had some along the way, he answered, but no, I was wondering if you regret telling your parents about the abuse.  Your mom hasn’t exactly handled it well.

He’s right, of course.  About both things.  I do have regrets. A lot of them frankly.  And he’s right about my mom.  She hasn’t handled it well.  She hasn’t said the ‘right’ things.  She’s found a way to position herself as a victim and to make me feel responsible and guilty for that fact.  She has lost herself in her own pain, connecting it to any other pain she’s ever experienced.  And through this dense cloud of ancient pains, she now approaches me.  And barring a miracle, this cloud will forever surround us.  She has no way of letting go of pain and hurt.  She knows (nor desires to know) no strategy for working through it.  She resists taking responsibility with everything in her.  She holds her hurts so tightly because through them she controls herself and, perhaps more importantly, those around her.  Because it’s hit her in her truest vulnerable place, she responds with her most primitive, self-protective instinct.  If she could be pulled out of herself and asked to observe her life (perhaps in disguise), she would be horrified by what she sees.  She knows better. But somehow she cannot get to that place.  And so she continues to nuture her pain and mine.

Yet still I answered that I don’t regret telling them. I’ve written before about how the process has been incredibly freeing. I feel like I’ve been healthily separated in ways I’ve long yearned for.  I don’t feel responsible for her decisions, reactions, emotions, etc.  And that very difficult but well-executed conversation has done more to assure me of my healing journey than almost anything else. 

But yesterday I was able to explain something else.  Another small gift from that experience.  Like probably every other person who’s been abused, I believed in very deep (though inarticulated) places that I deserved the abuse, that something was wrong with my body, with me.  It was a framework that structured my entire world.  Because it was one created in brokenness and in naivete, it was a framework of lies, or a false framework.  One of the very first and hardest steps in my healing journey was acknowledging the falseness and then stepping outside the framework and building a new one. Saying to myself (in all my selves) that I did not deserve to be hurt that way and that I should have been protected somehow released me to feel the pain, to acknowledge the ways I was broken, to let go of feeling responsible for the destruction. 

And the process of telling my parents and living through their initial reactions (I acknowledge that there will be delayed reactions as well) has revealed another false framework that I’ve held onto.  It was built and created at a much later date but it has held a pretty firm grip on me.  I’ve believed that I was wrong for keeping these secrets from my parents as a child.  That I should have told them.  That I allowed my victimization to continue because I did not tell them.  Because of course parents would help.  Because of course they would have stopped the abuse.  Because of course they would have held me and told me it wasn’t my fault.  Because of course they would have found help for my wee heart and they would have pursued justice on my behalf through official channels.  And I’ve tortured myself in the past months and years because that has felt like another, very reasonable version, of ultimately being responsible for the pain and hurt and destruction. 

I can’t go back in time and redo that decision so I can’t be totally sure.  But the reason I didn’t tell them my secrets,  the reason I kept it hidden was because deep inside it didn’t feel safe.  Yet that framework I just explained said that I was wrong, that I was just too little to understand, that I made a mistake that cost me years of pain.  But yesterday I realized that maybe this was just another version of a false framework.  It wasn’t 100% false because they would have stopped the abuse.  That I firmly believe, but in the words of G, it would have been brutal and so messy for me.  It would not have been a haven of safety.  There are very real reasons I felt they were not safe.  Because they were not and still aren’t safe.  They have not spent their lives protecting my heart (or my body) and I understood that at some unconscious level even as a wee bairn. 

And so, even though she didn’t respond with Cleaver family perfection, the experience opened my eyes (and heart) to new and ancient truths.  So nope, though it hurts, I don’t regret it.