Relationships

There is one major thing that I've realized over the past six months.  A lot of my "symptoms" (personality flaws? Issues?) are the same as those who have a parent or parents that are alcoholics.  I relate to many of the characteristics of ACoA (Adult Children of Alcholics).  I find this very strange since neither of  my parents are even remotely drinkers.

But here you go... this is me and my reactions to life and relationships (borrowed from The Awareness Center - 13 Characteristics of Adult Children):

1. Adult children of alcoholics guess at what normal behavior is.
2. Adult children of alcoholics have difficulty following a project through from beginning to end.
3. Adult children of alcoholics lie when it would be just as easy to tell the truth.
4. Adult children of alcoholics judge themselves without mercy.
5. Adult children of alcoholics have difficulty having fun.
6. Adult children of alcoholics take themselves very seriously.
7. Adult children of alcoholics have difficulty with intimate relationships.
8. Adult children of alcoholics overreact to changes over which they have no control.
9. Adult children of alcoholics constantly seek approval and affirmation.
10. Adult children of alcoholics usually feel that they are different from other people.
11. Adult children of alcoholics are super responsible or super irresponsible.
12. Adult children of alcoholics are extremely loyal, even in the face of evidence that the loyalty is undeserved.
13. Adult children of alcoholics are impulsive. They tend to lock themselves into a course of action without giving serious consideration to alternative behaviors or possible consequences. This impulsively leads to confusion, self-loathing and loss of control over their environment. In addition, they spend an excessive amount of energy cleaning up the mess.

I have a lot of trouble getting close to people.  I tend to find myself unconsciously sabotaging my relationship with my husband by forgetting to pay bills, ignoring him, refusing him intimacy or things of that nature, becoming friendly with people then pushing them away by cancelling plans or not calling them back, unconsciously or consciously "forgetting" about plans, telling myself that I don't need them and preferring to be alone.  I nearly have panic attacks when it comes to meeting up with new people or people I don't know very well. 

I have huge issues following through on projects and responsibilities.  I'll be motivated for a while with a new hobby or job, then all of a sudden, lose my motivation and just... give up on it. I tell myself that I don't like that activity any more, or that I'm not good at it, and just move on to something else, but in the process, I despise myself even more because I just can't get over myself, if that makes any sense. I've tried pep talks, I've tried self-condemnation, I've tried forcing myself to continue and I've tried taking breaks from it, I've even tried medication, nothing seems to work to get me remotivated.

Right now I'm in the process of reading Struggle for Intimacy (Adult Children of Alcoholics series) by the author of the above list, Dr. Janet Woititz.  Even though I know that I am technically not an "Adult Child," books like these speak to me and bring me comfort.  This book is helping me to see that there were many "double bind" (or damned if you do, damned if you don't) messages that are commonly sent by alcoholic parents, but for whatever reason, I received from my parents.

Some of the mixed messages I received were:
"I love you.  Go away."
"You can't do anything right. I need you."
"I'll be there for you  - next time.  I give you my word."
"Everything is fine, so don't worry. But how in the world can I deal with all this?"

You know how they say that the first step to recovery is knowing you have a problem... well, that's what I'm trying to identify.  I'm hoping the book by Dr. Woititz will offer me some tips and exercises towards learning how to let people in and trust people more.  Especially my husband.  Because if there's one thing I realized so far during my journey, is that he is someone to appreciate and hold on to.  He is the last person I should be pushing away.  This journey is mostly for me, but he deserves happiness, too.

Suggested Reading

At a reader's request, I've added a "Suggested Reading" page.  These are books that I've read over the last six months.  Many of them have brought me a great deal of comfort knowing that I am not alone (and not that crazy, as it were).  Most of them were recommended reading from my therapist, and some are books that I read on my own.

She Became a Butterfly Suggested Reading

What I'm Not Saying

I slept well last night.  Dreamless sleep and didn't wake up all night. I did cave and take a Clonopin, though, which I know helped but I really can't stand taking those.  At least I got a good night's sleep though.  Yesterday was a fairly good day for me, I think. I kept myself very busy cleaning the house and playing with the kids.  I'll write more later tonight after the kids are in bed, but until then, wanted to leave you with a poem that I find very powerful.  It was in a book that I read in the fall and I think of it often:

Please Hear What I'm Not Saying

Don't be fooled by me.
Don't be fooled by the face I wear
for I wear a mask, a thousand masks,
masks that I'm afraid to take off,
and none of them is me.

Pretending is an art that's second nature with me,
but don't be fooled,
for God's sake don't be fooled.
I give you the impression that I'm secure,
that all is sunny and unruffled with me, within as well
as without,
that confidence is my name and coolness my game,
that the water's calm and I'm in command
and that I need no one,
but don't believe me.
My surface may seem smooth but my surface is my mask,
ever-varying and ever-concealing.
Beneath lies no complacence.
Beneath lies confusion, and fear, and aloneness.
But I hide this. I don't want anybody to know it.
I panic at the thought of my weakness exposed.
That's why I frantically create a mask to hide behind,
a nonchalant sophisticated facade,
to help me pretend,
to shield me from the glance that knows.

But such a glance is precisely my salvation, my only hope,
and I know it.
That is, if it's followed by acceptance,
if it's followed by love.
It's the only thing that can liberate me from myself,
from my own self-built prison walls,
from the barriers I so painstakingly erect.
It's the only thing that will assure me
of what I can't assure myself,
that I'm really worth something.
But I don't tell you this. I don't dare to, I'm afraid to.
I'm afraid your glance will not be followed by acceptance,
will not be followed by love.
I'm afraid you'll think less of me,
that you'll laugh, and your laugh would kill me.
I'm afraid that deep-down I'm nothing
and that you will see this and reject me.

So I play my game, my desperate pretending game,
with a facade of assurance without
and a trembling child within.
So begins the glittering but empty parade of masks,
and my life becomes a front.
I idly chatter to you in the suave tones of surface talk.
I tell you everything that's really nothing,
and nothing of what's everything,
of what's crying within me.
So when I'm going through my routine
do not be fooled by what I'm saying.
Please listen carefully and try to hear what I'm not saying,
what I'd like to be able to say,
what for survival I need to say,
but what I can't say.

I don't like hiding.
I don't like playing superficial phony games.
I want to stop playing them.
I want to be genuine and spontaneous and me
but you've got to help me.
You've got to hold out your hand
even when that's the last thing I seem to want.
Only you can wipe away from my eyes
the blank stare of the breathing dead.
Only you can call me into aliveness.
Each time you're kind, and gentle, and encouraging,
each time you try to understand because you really care,
my heart begins to grow wings--
very small wings,
very feeble wings,
but wings!

With your power to touch me into feeling
you can breathe life into me.
I want you to know that.
I want you to know how important you are to me,
how you can be a creator--an honest-to-God creator--
of the person that is me
if you choose to.
You alone can break down the wall behind which I tremble,
you alone can remove my mask,
you alone can release me from my shadow-world of panic,
from my lonely prison,
if you choose to.
Please choose to.

Do not pass me by.
It will not be easy for you.
A long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls.
The nearer you approach to me
the blinder I may strike back.
It's irrational, but despite what the books say about man
often I am irrational.
I fight against the very thing I cry out for.
But I am told that love is stronger than strong walls
and in this lies my hope.
Please try to beat down those walls
with firm hands but with gentle hands
for a child is very sensitive.

Who am I, you may wonder?
I am someone you know very well.
For I am every man you meet
and I am every woman you meet.

Charles C. Finn
September 1966

Up

Let's see... it's 3:49 am.  I've been awake for almost two hours now.  Not thinking of anything in general... just annoyed that I'm wide awake.  Came down to the couch to read, but I'm restless.  I have one of those headaches - dull, achy pain in the back of my head, right near the base of my skull.

Angry!!!

For the longest time I've felt numb.  Like I was nothing more than a hollow shell.  Now that I'm allowing myself to feel, I'm really surprised at the anger I'm feeling.  Sometimes I almost wonder if I'd be better off numb again, but I don't think it's even possible to go back "there" now that I'm kind of waking up.  Other parts of me wishes that I could just have myself a good cry and be done with it.  But my eyes are bone dry.  So yeah, I'm mad. Pissed actually.  Really, really angry, and I have no idea whether my anger is rational or not.

I'm pissed at all the unrealistic expectations, the mixed messages, the guilt, the neglect, the assumptions that I have no right to feel the way I do, and people telling me how I should be or should act.  I'm f'ing angry at the 'damned if I do, damned if I don't' scenarios I keep being placed in against my will.  I'm sick and tired of my family not taking me seriously and taking me for granted, then being bent out of shape when I don't conform to their idea of 'perfect.'  I'm sick of the different standards for different people in my family.  I am so frustrated at my repeated attempts to stay the hell out of what's going on with them for the sake of my own health and sanity - not to mention for the sake of my kids and my marriage! -  and being made to feel like I'm being selfish for -gasp!- actually attempting to care of myself for once!

I'm so FUCKING ANGRY that for years I've been inviting them to my house - I can count on one God-damned HAND the amount of times they've visited in the last year - but when I tell them that I need space because I can't take the stress anymore, they'll show up on my doorstep without notice and throw these guilt bombs at me. 

This all stems from the fact that one of my parents showed up on my doorstep today and told me I should "forgive and support" my sibling with a drug problem, because this sibling chose to use under my own roof and then called me a liar to my face, because, oh, she's been clean for "almost two weeks" now. Well, la-de-fucking-da.  Forgive me for not getting my hopes up, since this whole scenario is like a broken record going on for ten years now, except for the fact that before I was always there to pick her up off the ground when she fell, and destroying myself in the process, and I've finally broken out of that cycle.

And part of this anger is at myself, because the whole time I've been ranting and raving while writing this post, the other part of my brain that just won't shut the hell up is telling me that my parent is right - I'm a no good, selfish, bratty, drama-queen of a daughter and a sister.  I knowknowKNOW that I'm right, damn it, that my parents are wrong to expect this out of me, so why can't I shut that annoying voice OFF?!

Okay, now that I've gotten that out, I'm going to call my husband and beg him once again to move to another country.  FRICK!

Gifts

Mondays are hard... hard to get motivated to start the week, clean up the path of destruction from the weekend, and get back into the "schedule" (or lack thereof) that is our week here in my household.   So before I head out to the dreaded gymnastics class (where I'm forced to plaster the smile on my face in front of the other moms), and then to the even more dreaded grocery shopping to pick out food that I have no appetite for and lack the energy to cook, I'm going to try to perk myself up with one of my favorite quotes from one of the most inspirational books that I've ever read:

"With a new awareness, both painful and humorous, I begin to understand why the saints were rarely married women. I am convinced it has nothing inherently to do, as I once supposed, with chastity or children. It has to do primarily with distractions. The bearing, rearing, feeding and educating of children; the running of a house with its thousand details; human relationships with their myriad pulls--woman's normal occupations in general run counter to creative life, or contemplative life, or saintly life. The problem is not merely one of Woman and Career, Woman and the Home, Woman and Independence. It is more basically: how to remain whole in the midst of the distractions of life; how to remain balanced, no matter what centrifugal forces tend to pull one off center; how to remain strong, no matter what shocks come in at the periphery and tend to crack the hub of the wheel."
— Anne Morrow Lindbergh ( Gift from the Sea: 50th Anniversary Edition )  

[Note to self: put together a book list of all of the books I've read and that my therapist has recommended]

I know

Here are some other things that I know:

I have an amazing husband. I honestly don't know how I ended up with him. He's put up with a lot over the past decade-or-so.
I love the Family Guy.  I have a pretty sick sense of humor.
I'm not as naive as I look or act.
My diet is horrible.  I have little to no appetite. 

Here's something that I just recently discovered about myself, that surprised me: I am a control freak. And not in the way that you'd think.  I control myself and no one/nothing else.  If I can't be perfect at something, I just don't want to do it. Like golf, for example, or cards, or whatever.

What scares me: I have an addictive personality.  This scares the crap out of me. I can play online mah jong for hours and can't seem to stop.  But on the other hand, I think maybe I play mindless games like these to escape reality.

I'm fiercely protective of my kids.  So much so that I'm terrified of returning to work.  This is something that causes a ton of anxiety for me, because I'm afraid that I'm going to have to go back eventually.  But then (and here's another on-going battle in my f-ed up brain), sometimes I wonder if they'd be better off without me.

But, okay, sorry... I really meant for this to be a positive thing... so let's see...

I love country music, skiing, coffee, hoodies, bare feet, the beach, making my kids giggle, hearing them sing, my in-laws, cats, romantic comedy and corny jokes.  I suck at small talk and feel more comfortable around guys. 

I find it really hard to trust anyone, and until very recently (as in, last Friday), I didn't even trust my own husband with a secret I had been carrying around for almost 20 years.

Verbal um, well, you know...

What do I do when I have small children that depend on me and I'm so depressed? By all accounts people tell me that I have every right to feel this way when I have what I have going on in my life.  But my life is not about 'me' anymore. It's about these two angels that love me and need me to be strong.  When my kindergartner comes up to me and snuggles on my lap and says, "Mom, I know you're feeling bad.  It's okay to feel bad sometimes. But I'll help you to feel better," I know that no matter how hard I've been trying to keep the pain out of my expressions and step, I've failed.  And that somehow makes me feel even worse.  These days I feel like I've failed everyone.  And that I'll never be good enough.  Believe me, one half of my brain tells me that these feelings are ridiculous and the standards I set for myself are too high.  But the other side, the depressed me, seems to swallow up the rationale.

A lot of times, I can't sleep at night.  I toss and turn and end up downstairs on the couch.  Other times, I spend the whole night waking from nightmares and symbolically charged dreams.  It's no wonder, then, that I'm always tired and can barely keep my eyes open by the time noon time comes around.  This is a problem because although my daughter still naps (I wonder if she really still needs the nap, or if it's me that needs it), my son does not.  So while I'm napping on the couch, video games are babysitting my son.  Which is just another one of the many, many things I said I would never succumb to as a parent.  Shame on me for being so selfish. But I can't seem to stop needing that nap.

And, by the way, the drugs. Oh, I can't stand the fact that I'm currently weaning off of one antidepressant for another, and taking an anti-anxiety drug to help me sleep (although most of the time I don't allow myself the anti-anxiety med, because I can't stand the thought of it).  I have a family member in the deepest darkest depths of drug addiction. I've cut myself off from my family because of it.  Does it make me a hypocrite to be taking drugs myself?! Doesn't matter that my "drugs" were prescribed to me, whereas hers are gotten illegally... these are the things that I beat myself up over. I mean, what kind of lesson is that teaching my children?

A well-meaning person told me yesterday that she thinks my son is going to be hyper.  And I can't stop obsessing over this. I'm fighting with myself over it. I just know it's my fault (It's just a stage, he's a boy, it's winter and he's stir crazy in the house). He plays too many video games (Well, yeah, he would play all day if I let him, but normally I only allow him an hour a day).  He doesn't get enough exercise (he does - he takes Karate, goes to pre-school three days a week, will be starting swimming soon, and will be doing T-ball in the spring).  I don't read/play/cuddle him enough (he gets so much more attention and love than most kids his age, I'm sure).  He has too much sugar in his diet (I guess could do better in this regard, I guess, but really, who couldn't do better with a finicky five year old?).

Anyway, to end this long, rambling post that probably doesn't make sense to most rational people (but I never said I was rational), I'm writing all this crap down to get it out of my head.  I'm literally visualizing myself bundling up all the thoughts floating around, sweeping them up, and pushing them out into this journal. And now I have a nice, clean, blank space in there and I can move on. Theoretically anyway.

About this blog

I've created this blog at the suggestion of my therapist, so that I can record my thoughts, feelings, dreams, fears, anxieties, steps forward and steps back in my journey towards finding myself. 

Here is what I know:

I am a mom of two.  A wife.  A sister, a daughter, an aunt, a grand-daughter. A friend. 

But I am also an incest survivor.  A codependant.  I suffer from pretty severe depression, as far as that goes.  I am extremely shy and have little self-esteem. 

And I am apparently a very good actor, because if you knew me "in real life" you'd never know I was anything but a happy, well-adjusted, confident, bubbly person.  Over the years I've even managed to lie to myself. 

I started therapy several months ago with the intention of learning how to deal with certain things that were going on in my life, but in the process I've started to realize that I need to focus inwards and figure out who I am outside of all the usual labels that society and I have put on myself.  And what scares the living hell out of me is that I have no idea who I am behind this mask. 

So with this blog I hope to discover who I am, the good, the bad and the ugly. I want to fill in this empty shell with something more concrete. And for once in my life, I'm doing it for me.