Month: June 2022

Something I never thought I would say, that all of this research led me to believe that my grandma is actually toxic. It also means getting away from all the toxic things that I have been taught. The more work I had done on myself the more I am happy to step away.

Even though there had been a real sense of compassion, and care-giving.

Because it hurt just as much when I realised the double-edged sword of what she was saying: When she told me that my parents had left me (can’t remember which post), she was also hinting at the fact that they had left me with her.

You have an instinct to keep fighting for those who aren’t fighting for you. This tells me that you have experienced a deep rejection, a primal hurt, and that it caused your body so much pain that you will do basically anything to avoid feeling that way again. You got burned once by a hot stove, and you don’t want to touch it again. You want to avoid being left behind, to avoid pain. The problem is, life comes with a lot of rejection. 

From Refinery29.

I feel like this primal rejection has always existed for me.

Always being attracted to unavailable men (and women) is a no-brainer for me. In fact I have to actively find a way to be attracted to safe people. There are often cues for me to be attracted to people who are not safe, as if they are the only option for me, really. I seemed to be only attracted to conditional love, and for a long time I had absolutely no idea what unconditional love was. I didn’t know what it looked, what its nose ears and mouth were.

It took a lot of work later on in life to figure out how to love myself, and I had to accomplish that as an adult just by herself. I don’t believe that if it wasn’t accomplished in childhood then it cannot be accomplished during adulthood, even if that was once what I believed. But with the good fortune of meeting so many people leading me down so many paths, I realised that that having a broken childhood doesn’t mean I don’t get a full adulthood.

Stop being enabled.

I realised that all this time my parents were enabling me. I wonder what kinds of cultural effects this has.

I also realised today that I’ve lived out of a suitcase for all of my life – something my therapist noticed of course.

My parents, rather than giving me strict ideals and principles, seem to enable a kind of helplessness that was borne from the things that they hadn’t done well. They weren’t really there for me, body and spirit. Growing up I had been constantly jealous of the people who had their parents with them, mentally physically and spiritually. But as I’m grown older I’ve also realised some important things, which is that not everyone had been loved the way that they ought to be loved. That for them as well there has been so many pieces that had been missing. In fact in my family it seemed that narcissistic traits were particularly strong.

And it produced in me a need to please people at all times. This is especially true when I am surrounded by people of both cultures, because then I have to do double the amount of people-pleasing that a normal people-pleaser would do. I could people-please within two cultures, and even though it was double the amount of work, it was psychologically draining.

And it comes from the lack of stability or at least not having had it in my childhood. But it was terrible the way that people also took advantage of this inherent lack of stability that I had had, and had always had. Because my life is inherently stable, and I’m able to admit that.

But the people-pleasing two different sets of people is weird.

Getting away from the dictation of the parents.

I don’t know when I started trusting people again, when the exact point of that began. Maybe it was when I decided to start living my own life. Being at home at my grandmother’s house felt like being inside a small prison. And it was never safe in the U.K., either. Feel like all this stuff together made me really troubled as a kid, a teenager, and into my twenties.

It’s interesting that our cultural narratives of abuse and neglect are so often portrayed in and around very hard topics like hard drugs or hard addictions.

And now, I’ve become… a ride or die chick.

I always thought that my grandmother would be that for me, but as I grew and worked through my issues I realised I wasn’t the victim.

Not knowing when enough is enough.

When I realised that I could cut people off, it was a great superpower.

THE TRUELOVE
by David Whyte

There is a faith in loving fiercely
the one who is rightfully yours,
especially if you have
waited years and especially
if part of you never believed
you could deserve this
loved and beckoning hand
held out to you this way.

I am thinking of faith now
and the testaments of loneliness
and what we feel we are
worthy of in this world.

Years ago in the Hebrides,
I remember an old man
who walked every morning
on the grey stones
to the shore of baying seals,
who would press his hat
to his chest in the blustering
salt wind and say his prayer
to the turbulent Jesus
hidden in the water,

and I think of the story
of the storm and everyone
waking and seeing
the distant
yet familiar figure
far across the water
calling to them

and how we are all
preparing for that
abrupt waking,
and that calling,
and that moment
we have to say yes,
except it will
not come so grandly
so Biblically
but more subtly
and intimately in the face
of the one you know
you have to love

so that when
we finally step out of the boat
toward them, we find
everything holds
us, and everything confirms
our courage, and if you wanted
to drown you could,
but you don’t
because finally
after all this struggle
and all these years
you simply don’t want to
any more
you’ve simply had enough
of drowning
and you want to live and you
want to love and you will
walk across any territory
and any darkness
however fluid and however
dangerous to take the
one hand you know
belongs in yours.