Adventures in Anger

I have bitten back my anger most of my life and I am just now figuring out in my 40’s how to deal with it. I have found that spending so much of my time and energy suppressing my anger did not make it go away. It just went underground. Having it go underground was so dangerous… it still existed, I just chose to ignore it and by doing that I found myself exploding for no real reason and having this nest of hornets in my chest all the time was so anxiety inducing and cut logic and reason off at the knees. I reacted emotionally to everything and let my emotions determine my reality. If I “felt” it to be true then I believed it to be true. This is the danger of not dealing with your emotions – either you deal with them or they rule you. Case in point: I know a man who is just running scared from his true emotions so he would so much rather pretend every day that everything is ok rather than have a real conversation or face real fear/pain/doubt/anger… He has chosen to live an extremely self-righteous life – which is funny since he professes to be an atheist now. He has turned his back on his family, ruined his marriage, radically changed his entire world – but denies that there is any catalyst for these changes despite all of the evidence from his life that there has been traumatic horror that he refuses to admit to or to face….so all that pain, all that anger – it is still there and it manifests itself as a cold hatred and a barely contained contempt for the pain or emotions of others.

What I am finding that works for me is giving all that anger a direction and pointing it to where it actually goes. Where it belongs. I had to come to the realization that all I was doing by withholding my anger was letting my abusers off the hook and pretending that pain doesn’t hurt was only giving them a pass. All I really did was hurt my own heart over and over again while they got to believe that what they did must not have been so bad since I am obviously ok with it all. I don’t want to live that lie anymore. I invite everyone to stop living a lie…. If you aren’t living the truth and speaking the truth – whose lies are you telling? They have to belong to someone. Who are you lying for? Who are you protecting? Who are you serving by being false… being fake….? You may think you are serving yourself, but you can only serve your true heart by living and speaking the truth. Stop pretending. Just stop lying to yourself. Find your heart and let others see it – glorious, broken, scarred… every beautiful and every ugly corner of it. There is no other way.. otherwise that anger will just sneak up on you and it will come out when you don’t want it to.

The Death of a Tyrant

Who mourns the death of a tyrant? Do you mourn the loss of the person who caused you unimaginable pain? I recently found out that my mother died. Apparently she died back in May. I didn’t know how to feel… mostly because I kept waiting to feel all the things you are supposed to feel when your mother dies… I kept waiting for tears, for mourning, for pain, for confusion… What I mostly felt was … relief. The world felt a little safer to me… Don’t get me wrong, I felt pain… but it was largely the pain of my life…of every time I was abused, neglected, insulted, criticized, misunderstood, raped, hit… The pain of everything she could have been but wasn’t.

It feels scandalous to say out loud that I was relieved when I found out my mother died…but that is the ugly truth of it. I wonder if everyone that is abused feels the same… is this a truth that we all just don’t say out loud? We face polite society and cower in the face of judgement from others. I did. Honestly, I have been judged my entire life. I have lived in pain all my life and been judged for saying I hurt… been judged harshly for saying what you did hurt me… I have been flat out told that I had no reason to hurt. When I confronted my parents with the truth of my pain I was ignored, told that there was nothing wrong with me… when I asked for therapy I was told I don’t need it… I was told over and over that in so many ways that I was crazy…. So now…when I know she is gone – I feel relieved…. I feel like there is one less person trying to gaslight me. One less narcissist to go around pretending like we had this perfect little family.

I will not remain silent… I have been quiet for years – I backed into the shadows… This has brought me back into the light… this had made me feel a little safer in the world, a little more at home. The world with one less monster in it feels like a better world to live in… a safer place for my heart, my memories, my thoughts, my anger, fear, pain, triumph, hope…. safer for me.

I felt for the last several years like I just wanted to hide from everyone, from my past, from the world at large… learning about my mother’s death makes me feel invited back out into the sun…. I belong here. I am not going anywhere and just because the truth makes people uncomfortable doesn’t mean that I will ever stop speaking it and putting it out there. I realized that me shutting up doesn’t protect me – it just makes the monsters more comfortable and that is not the way I want to live anymore.

So…. I am accepting the invitation. I am going to walk in the sun and tell the truth and put my heart back out there… hiding it was not protecting my heart – it was only protecting their reputation… So here I am. In pain, broken, hurt, angry – but full of hope and enjoying the sunlight and not afraid of my own heart anymore.

Been a while…

Some days I feel like I don’t exist anymore… and in some ways I suppose I don’t.  I am not the girl I was  years ago… I am not the woman I was a few months ago.  I am changing all the time.  For the longest time I fought that tooth and nail…I thought that was a bad thing.  I thought that changing meant I was losing a piece of myself ~or worse ~ all of myself.  I thought I would not be me anymore.  Turns out – I wasn’t.  But that is ok.  I began this blog to journal my healing journey.  I have been runnin’ a lot lately.  I have been hidin’.  I have been sneakin’ around hidin’ behind syntax and proper grammar.  I have been flowerin’ up my language and tryin’ to be proper.  Truth is, I am so angry.  I am so dang mad I could scream…and have!  I have screamed, cried, prayed… I have felt lost and confused and abandoned.  I have felt needy and weak.   It feels like the deeper I dig the more junk I find and I feel like I will never be ‘done’.  Like I will always find more junk to dig out and toss away.  My current list – well, it’s loooong – but I am working on it.

I found someone in my family decided to throw away a 20 year marriage, he has just thrown it away and utterly failed his wife and son.  He has been cruel and abusive and I am so disappointed in him.  He hurls insults and he is so hateful.  I doubt I would even recognize him anymore.  Not that we are close.  Those days are long over.

I am still working on my trauma therapy, having been beaten, raped, molested, abused…I just want to live, you know?  To really live.  I find myself tiptoeing around – literally.  I find myself trying to make myself small and not to be a bother.  I find myself waiting on the pain to rain down on me.  It is killing me.  It is killing my marriage.  My husband married me, but got this docile, hiding, timid woman instead.  I don’t even know who I am some days.

I am … well, not thriving… but hoping to thrive.  I am tired of living on bread and water when there is steak and wine.  I am ready to have my heart feast instead of hide.  I want to swim in the ocean of emotion … swim, and possibly, drown.  But I am ok with that.  I don’t want control anymore.  I want to be lost.

Codependence

Hi, my name is Becka and I am codependent.  I got a chip at my first CoDA meeting and I am taking things one day at a time.  I am step by step journeying back into my life ~ breaking free of this disease and learning to be healthy and whole.   I know I have a long uphill battle ahead.  I know this won’t be easy.  This codependency has seeped its way into nearly every aspect of my life and the depths of my mental illness has permeated me to my very core.  I go days, sometimes, feeling nothing at all.

Numb…such a hateful four-letter word.  I used to think it equated to safety but now I see it for what it is.  The destroyer of all my humanity.  My empathy, compassion, warmth, silliness, passion, anger… all faded to apathy and numbness until my world was all grey and I forgot what color looked like… what color felt like.  I forgot what love felt like, what warmth felt like… I even forgot the fierce red heat of anger, I forgot the beautiful blues of sadness and all the vibrant hues of desire.

I found the stair-case…now I am climbing out… Becka-Dragon Girl… hear me roar…

 

Not okay

I am so not okay… I am not going to be okay any time soon.  I am broken and lost and hurt and angry… I am lost and confused… I am so very tired… Did I say “fine” when you asked how I was… ?  Don’t worry… I just don’t know how to say how I am.  I am… not okay.  I am… so very… so profoundly broken.  

Feelings

I find it so hard to stay in my heart – to stay in my feelings… My default setting seems to be numb.  I feel so awkward most of the time.  I feel so much – but it is buried so deep I appear vacant.  My heart hurts.   I am so tired and so broken.  I carry this horrible weight that threatens to suffocate me at times.  I feel at war.  At war with my pain, at war with my heart, at war with the terrible pull of numbness, addiction, alcohol…. at war with my faith and my anger… at war with my passion and my passivity.  I can feel in one moment like a giant, like a force to be reckoned with and in the next moment I feel like I am not even real and I give in to my despair.  I fear I will drown in it.  I know I am all over the place and this may not even make any sense… but there you are.  Pieces of me.  Broken, fearful, lost, anguished, angry, confused, passionate, apathetic… My heart is a patchwork of pain and pleasure….but honestly, mostly pain.  I ache.  I feel heavy with the weight of my broken heart…  

Failure

I have been fighting my tendency to hide from my emotions…  I have been fighting to stay in my feelings and stop hiding from them.  I have hidden from my heart for so long…  I have felt like a chameleon.  I have tried to give everyone around me what I thought they wanted… in doing this I have failed to just be myself.  I have learned and am still learning that what the people who love me really want from me is for me to just be myself.   How can anyone love me if I never give them a chance to know me?  What do I do if I never figure out who I am?  I am so afraid of this… I feel like I have spent my whole life running away from who I am…I have spent my whole life hiding… I have spent my whole life afraid.  I feel like I lost this fight today….   Today I hid in TV… I hid in food.. I hid in entertainment…  I buried my feelings and totally failed to sit in my skin.  I was all alone and there was no one to please but myself…and I still hid and ran away from my pain, my fear… I sat in numbness… I desperately hope (and plan) to win more battles in the future… I know this one failure is not me losing the war.  I can do this.  I passionately love… I passionately fear… I am passionately angry and I want to fight injustice.  I did not do anything to deserve the abuse and pain I endured – but I do have control and responsibility in how I react to that abuse and pain now.  No more running away!  I will FIGHT!  I am beautiful, I am fierce, I am worthy, I am loved.

Emotions

I feel so much… My heart quakes within me.  I feel so overwhelmed and afraid…I feel so sad and angry… I feel so much love and longing… I feel like I am going to either explode or fall apart… I feel like I am never going to stop crying… but then I will suddenly feel like laughing… I feel like yelling, raging, tearing things…I feel like screaming… I feel so very lost.

Marriage

I foolishly assumed I would be good at marriage… I thought – through no fault or effort of my own – I would naturally be a good wife. I was so wrong.  I have been so lost.  I have been broken.  I have been arrogant.  I have failed so often I sometimes wonder why I try… I have believed lies… I have believed that I was helpless… I have believed that I did not have a choice in how I acted… no choice in how I gave/received love…. I have been so lost…  I have been lazy and uncaring.  I have been self absorbed.  I have been numb.  I have been just about the worst wife I could be.  I have made my husband feel unseen, unheard, unloved… He has felt abandoned by me… He has felt unlovable and unlovely.  I am so lost…

Late Night Anxiety

I hate those nights when the fear creeps up on you… when you are settling in to sleep and suddenly you find your chest tightening and your thoughts racing… when you find your breath catching and you can’t get enough air into your lungs.