Today's Hurdles

[Gaining Strength]

I am suppose to be headed to a meeting with an asst. prin. at a school where I want to send my son.  I am having a hard time going.  This is so normal for me.  HUGE barriers for any plan I make.

I am seeing today how much the pain I have been living in has to do with this.  My level of pain is so great and the expectation of more pain heaped on it is overwhelming.  I am so rooted in the expectation of pain - that has completely controlled my entire life.  All of this is making itself known to me.  It is unbearably overwhelming.

The only way out is through.  I have wanted to go through for years and could not find the way until now.  But it is painful none-the-less and I long and need to connect.  That is why I am sharing here.  Reaching out, fishing for a lifeline.

[Hopalong]

I am very sorry about the recurring waves of deep pain, WK.

I know it must exhaust you.

How good it would feel to experience lightness of being, even for a little while.

I would like to make another suggestion for 3-D: a meditation group. Regular. Stick with it...

love,
Hops

[ann3]

Hi GS/WK,

I undertsand how you feel.  Best we can do is 'feel the fear & do it anyway'.  I guess what we need is courage, like the lion in Wizard of Oz (how appropriate!).

I have felt like the cowardly lion, but I felt the fear & did it anyway, so I guess that's courage.

Still working on the heart & brain.

[gjazz]

I've walked through that valley, WK, I know the geography.  The best thing I can say is that while it might not feel like you're making progress toward liberation, you ARE, just by putting one foot in front of the other (both literally and figuratively).  As Hops said, if there's any way to get some 3D support and peace, grab it.  It may be that there's nothing anyone can say that helps at this moment, but it may help when the sun rises again tomorrow.  Hang in there.

[Gaining Strength]

I don't mind the pain so much - not that it isn't unbearable in a way (I know that is a contradiction but hear me out) - because I do know that the only way out is to go through the pain, to experience it.  The funny thing of course is that I have never been without it - only I repressed it or zoned out so that I didn't incur more.  In fact this paralysis is in part an unconscious breaking down in order to not incur more pain.  That's what my isolating is too.  That's why I don't mind even though the pain is so great.

I asked for a lifeline and I got it.  No words can express my heartfelt thanks. It does make a difference - a big difference to come on-line and read "I'm sorry", "I understand", and "I've walked through that valley."  Boy does that help lift the burden.

Hops - just beat me over the head about meditation (I first typoed "mediation" - hmm).  You are right, I know it and I really must, must follow through.  Meanwhile I DO have a yoga group and must, must make myself show up each and every time.  OK I know YOU won't hit me over the head so I will have to do it myself.

Ann - You are so right.  and this is the first time I have ever been able to say that I can feel the fear about s.t. and do it anyway.  I love the cowardly lion and I am willing to feel the fear and do it anyway.

gjazz - I really needed to hear that I am making progess even though I do not feel it.  I already believed that but it is a whole different ball of wax to hear it from someone else.

What I got from you three is the very thing I needed through out my life and was unable to get elsewhere.  The stronger I get the more able I become to bring more of this into my life.  We all need it.  For some it has come with ease for others it has been more difficult.  For most of us who had to devise survival skills that later worked against us we have had to undo lessons and learn better ones.  This place has been supreme in allowing that to happen. 

Thanks for the courage and encouragement.  I am stronger and nourished and nurtured to fight on in my own little battle.  And although it is self-serving to say so here and now, I believe that as each of us grows in strength that we add to this world rather than take from it.  I know that as long as I live in vicitm role that I am taking from it.  It is what it is and I (we) am (are) basically incapacitated while in victim role (or in victim role while incapacitated) but as I (we) grow stronger I (we) can begin giving back and I have always wanted to give back.  Not time yet but it will be.

Thanks for your help.  It was sorely needed and greatly valued.

[ann3]

WK,

Yes, as I delve in to the effects of N  foo, I am really starting to understand what "courage" means.

Perhaps more than anything, other than love, which gives courage & self belief, what we need is courage & we get courage by just doing it, even if we are frozen  by fear.

love,
ann

[gjazz]

WK:

Awesome, your words about facing the pain head-on and about working to shrug that victim role off your shoulders for good.  Hey, you may feel like you need propping up, but I'm seeing someone standing proud on her own two legs. I believe very strongly as you do, that when we stop allowing anyone to make a victim (or for that matter, a victimizer) of us, we give back to the world.  Keep marching.

[Gaining Strength]

Thank you both again for your words of encouragement.  I am going through something very strange indeed.  It is definitely a battle and there is no question that love is needed here.  I will never understand the darkness and meanness that  exists in this world and power of evil that is given life when people refuse to acknowledge it and stand up to it.  That will always surprise me.

[Izzy_*now*]

hi GS
I recognized me in what you wrote in your bginning posts. Being left out, being ridicluled and all the the painful things instigated by your FOO.

I'm trying to remember your words...painful, abandonment, rejection, "black horror" embarrassment, humiliation.....

It is beyond me how a person, and adult person, a parent , can cause these feelings in his/her own child, but I have been there as I have said.

The thing with me is...do you remember?.....I don't feel my feelings as do the rest of you. I have a 'black box' that sucks them in before I have a grasp on them. I built that 'black box' likely before age 2. So I know my feelings but don't feel them.

I was at my therapist's yesterday and I told him that I was not going to take all that time (like 20 years...when I'm 69 now) just to peel the onion and end up being overwhelmed with the full impact of all my feelings. I said I would do fine this way, because (and I mentioned you, as a woman who posts where I do) there is no way I want to feel this pain you are describing, and it comes from your FOO, just as mine does.

My granddaughter is now 19, the age my D was when she thought she loved an N, and married at 20. I don't want to hear that G'd is pregnant or getting married and not continuing her education, when she is so smart, just like her mother. BUT if I do hear these things, I won't feel the crushing blow....it will be a disappointment but the rest goes to the 'black box'. I've been like this all my life.

I don't want to here that my grandson, 16, is taking dope for the above reasons, but I will endure such things without fallling apart.

This is what has made me so strong and independent all my life and able to accept what happened, know where it came from and now just shove everyone over a fence and block the toxic people from me. I used to go around looking for their love and approval and never got it. I don't want it now and they can stay over the fence, in the weeds, where they belong. No Contact!

xx
Izzy

[Gaining Strength]

Izzy, I completely get your point.  It is definitely a choice, a decision.  If I were content with my life that way it seems you are then I would probably make the same choice.  It is definitely painful BUT the thing is that it actually alllows me to bear other pains more easily.  Let me give a for instance.  I was walking back to our car today with my little boy after a hike with Cub Scouts.  He was crying because we couldn't invite a little boy over afterward.  Another time I would have had been impatient with him even angry.  Today I was able to feel a loving, kind, compassion for him and his sadness. 

My point is - that even though it is painful it is not excruciatingly painful over a long period of time.  The pain is deep and sharp but not long lasting.  But the big thing is that it relieves so much pain in the normal day to day.  And that is what makes it worth it for me.

[Gaining Strength]

Resentment - woke up to huge wall of resentment, been brewing.  Time to dace it and deal with it - really don't want to. 

As I write, I touched into a memory - of betrayal.  This is the second time in as many days that this memory has returned.  In the experience, I shared something with someone about a painful experience I had had.  What I needed was some sympathy and caring, what I got was that this memory I shared was turned against me. 

I suspect this memory comes now as a reminder and as something to be dealt with.  Deep woundings cannot be shared willynilly - too dangerous.

[Gaining Strength]

I am researching "resentment" and I found a site that is helpful to me.  among the 9 pages in a document is this line:

Resentment is emotional suicide, it is like a hole in the heart that drains away our life

This reveals a truth that echos in my heart today.  It speaks to where I am and encompasses much of what I have recently written to describe my understanding of what is going on in my life today.

[Gaining Strength]

Resentments:

"Even little children are better able to handle grief than deceit." Leslie Weatherhead
Wow - huge resentment - remember mother/family not telling me of a pet's death (more than once) under the guise of protecting me and yet my not knowing was laughed about for years.  The resentment and rage to boil underneath these memories is HUGE.  When my husband died, I took my infant son to the funeral and asked 3 people who knew us both to come and photograph him there.  When I read the above line I knew instantly that this concept was so powerfully impressed in my long ago that I wanted my son to know that he had been there to participate in the way that infants can only participate in life in a way that will be submerged in their unconsciousness.  I wanted - in that dark time - for his unconsciousness to be imbued with inclusion and the opposite of deceit.

In the Weatherhad book there is a story of a little boy who is thrown from his horse and runs crying into his house to be met with reprimand by his father, "Stop snivelling. Boys don't cry.  You should be ashamed of yourself."  When he goes to his mother she brushes him off because she "couldn't be bothered just then" as she was on her way to her afternoon bridge party.  Later that night when his mother came to put him to bed it was discovered that his arm was broken.  The doctor was summoned and a cast and sling were put in place and his parents and siblings took on a very solicitous attitude towards him.  That broken arm afforded him more attention and love than he had experienced heretofore and ever again.  Throughout his early adult years he would unconsciously resort to pain and illness to generate the much deprived love he once experienced as a wounded child.

[Boy - this struck home.  When I was 10 I fractured my arm jumping on a trampoline in the neighborhood.  I only knew my arm was hurt.  When I got home my brother was outside and needed me to play a game of ball with him.  When I told him my arm was hurt he belittled me until I gave in and did what he asked.  When our mother came home she was not interested at all in hearing about my arm, she and my father were going out to a party that night.  That evening my babysitter helped me put together a sling made up by tieing two of my father's handkerchiefs together.  Throughout the evening my brothers made fun of me and belittled me for exaggerating the hurt.  I was in physical agony and the next morning my mother reluctantly agreed to take me to the Dr.  I will never forget the extreme pain I was in.  I recall every bump in the road and her anger and exasperation with me over my complaints and pleas that she drive more carefully.  I also remember that she stopped for gas along the way.  The gas station was less than a mile from the Dr.'s office.  Looking back it is more than obvious that she could have delayed that stop until after taking me to the Dr. (she never lets her tank get below 1/4 full).  She was unapologetic.  She had absolutely no sympathy and no concern for me.  It is nothing short of a miracle that I was taken to the Dr.'s office at all.  The x-ray revealed a fracture just by the elbow and a cast was put on my left arm.  I also remember forms of torment that my brothers were permitted to perpetrate on me during the weeks I had my cast.  The pain of it and humiliation is still sharp.  My brothers would mete out their cruelty without admonition right in front of my parents and grandparent.  Not a word to curtail it.

[gjazz]

Ah yes.  It all rings a bell. 

I have an arm story too.  When I was about five my parents went to Hawaii. They'd barely gotten on the plane before my brothers "let" me play with them, convinced me to climb to the top of a jungle gym, then promptly shook me down.  My arm broke clear across.  My aunt was called and came right over and took me to the hospital but the doctors wouldn't set it until they got my parents' consent (why, you ask?  it's a good story.  involves money.  don't they all.).  So I had to wait there as the plane crossed the Pacific--and what I remember is, the doctors were so nice to me, I almost didn't mind the pain. 

Later, I twice tried to kill myself--once when I was 11 (pills) and again when I was 14 (also pills).  When I was eleven, I had no idea what I was doing, made myself violently ill but was probably not in real danger of dying.  However, nothing was said about what I'd done--to me.  It was clear my parents and the doctor had discussed it but no word whatsoever to me.  I was compelled to go back to my life as though it hadn't happened.  When I was 14, I came closer to "succeeding."  The doctor was of course called to the house (no public displays of indelicate behavior, please), I was treated, and again all talk happened outside my earshot.  I was far too terrified to bring it up.  The whole point had been to free myself, and I'd only made things worse.  This time I was now old enough to make the occasional command appearance at my parents' cocktail parties, where little inside jokes were made about pathetic people who offed themselves, during which my father and his friends would cross one loafer over a knee, lean back and snigger into their Scotch.  I remember being unable to breathe, I was so mortified.  To this day, nobody has ever acknowledged either attempt directly.  So very, very odd.

[Hopalong]

Gjazz,

How did you survive this indifferent, neglectful parenting and become insightful and wise?

I would NEVER have left a 5 y/o to head off to Hawaii. Damn.

Did you find nurturing people later in your life?

Hops