Transparency. Explanations. Part 1
Recently, I've had a lot of thoughts about what people will think of me. I wonder what they think when they meet me, and what they'll think when I'm truly transparent. I've always been a guarded person, and according to my family, I've been that way with them as well. And so, in an attempt to be less guarded and more honest (with myself as well as everyone else), I'm going to go through the crappier parts of me, and my life. I've always lived in the past, at least partially. It's time to let go of some of the baggage, and try this thing a different way. I do this, not so that you, whoever you may be, can know it, read it, dissect it. It is so that I will know that very little of me is left hidden. It is so I can trust enough to be transparent. And no, not everything will be told here. There are parts of my life that I've rarely spoken of, and displaying it on the internet just isn't going to happen. Maybe with time. What is here has taken much time, wrestling and editing before I finally got brave enough to just click the "publish post" button. I started writing this over a week ago. For those of you who decide to read this, it's like an insane "About me" section.
Tough Stuff: no crying, kid!
I've always figured that if I'm not tough enough to deal with what comes my way, then I deserve to be stomped on by the world. And, as a result, I've rarely not been tough enough. Case in point: at nine years old, standing in a funeral home looking at my father's body, I specifically remember telling myself that I could not cry. I saw my father there, and yes, I was hurting. Yes, I felt; yes, I understood. But in front of me was my sister, who had collapsed to the floor, crying in the arms of someone I don't remember. My mother was (as expected) in tears the whole time and barely holding it together. And at nine years old I refused to cry at my father's funeral. My logical brain said that if I fell apart, if I cried, no one would be able to take care of my family. Logic said, "I can't cry, because they are crying." I was the self-appointed family glue. And apparently, the hundred other people in the room didn't count. I think it was then that I started thinking in terms of 'us vs. them'. It was me, my mom, my sister. My grandmother, for a time, was a part of that as well. But that was it. Us girls against the world. Why was I so convinced we had to be against anything?
Morons abound
People actually criticized my mother for taking us to the funeral. They reasoned that if a child doesn't cry, they are too traumatized to fully accept the circumstances. And so in my mother's time of need and despair, they criticized her for allowing us to say goodbye. Friggin idiots. As if they'd been there.
Anyway... I've always done that. "I'll cry when everyone else is okay." Problem is, everyone is never okay.
You are so funny! Do that again!
I've always been the crazy one. I'm the quirky one, the goofy one, the loony one, the silly one, the kid that never grew up. I am the "most animated person I know". And, at my core, that's part of who I am. It's also my defense mechanism, though, and I'm not sure if anyone knew that. So, there. Aha! Take that, world! I'm gooooood. I mean, I could go months being completely miserable, and nobody knew it. How stupid with a group of people that would have helped if I'd let them.
No guesswork, no problems.
You know what was great about all that, though? I never wondered. I knew what people saw when they looked at me. I controlled what their impression of me was. Only the closest and dearest to me saw the other parts of me, and there were times when even they got only glimpses. Very few were really considered "closest and dearest", and they were, almost exclusively, my mom & sister and in recent years, Andy and Shawne.
Can I help?
I was also the group therapist. It just always was that way. My heart's desire is simply to help people, so when friends, coworkers, and family would ask my opinion, I'd do the best I could to help them. What's crazy is that some of them listened. What's crazier is that most of the time it ended well. I'd go out of my way to help solve other people's problems. After all, if I concentrate on your issues, I don't have to look at mine. And so I was a fixer. I'm still a fixer. I love to fix things. I like puzzles, problems, things to solve, fix, make better. Even if those puzzles are people. And when I can't fix it, well, I don't like that.
Who moved my hand sanitizer?! Die, death, die!
And so from this was born a hatred for things out of my control. In more ways than one. I hate death. It's touched too close to home, too often, and it doesn't follow a pattern. I feel like I have OCD sometimes. I like patterns, order, and everything should be like I left it.
Can I get out? How do I get out?
I get claustrophobic if I can't escape. I once had an incident in a grocery store in Florida, because I couldn't get away from the people. There was nowhere I could go, literally nowhere that I wasn't touching people. It was terrifying. I hated myself for it, too. Escapism became very important a long time ago. Some of it is influenced by things I won't put here. I always had to know where the exits were. When I finally stopped doing drugs, it wasn't because I'd seen the dangers, or made a mature decision. It was because the effects of the drugs made me incapable of defending myself, and I couldn't stand it. Now that's a reason I bet you haven't heard often. Yeah, you could say I was guarded. Ready for war would be more accurate.
Give me a padded room. Or a baseball bat and glass objects. Please.
I've always told people that I 'had a bad temper' when I was younger. The truth is, I've scared myself more times than once. I've put fists (and feet, for that matter) through windows and walls, I've broken and bloodied my hands, thrown entire rooms full of objects, and even set things on fire (when I was much younger). I've done things and had no memory of it. Most of the scars that I have are from those times. For Christmas one year, my mom actually bought me a punching bag.
You want to know why? Because it's YOUR fault!
See, when I lose it that badly, it is usually some true injustice that can't be undone. The only thing left in those times are anger, pain, grief. Hitting. Smashing, destroying, so that I don't explode. When things happen that are so wrong that it's outside my scope of rational thinking, I lose my mind. And what was I screaming, what was I thinking during those moments? God could have stopped it. God could have protected her. I blame you. That's what it always came down to.
Hypocrites! Liars! Who's got the weed?
So, here's to vulnerability.
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Tough Stuff: no crying, kid!
I've always figured that if I'm not tough enough to deal with what comes my way, then I deserve to be stomped on by the world. And, as a result, I've rarely not been tough enough. Case in point: at nine years old, standing in a funeral home looking at my father's body, I specifically remember telling myself that I could not cry. I saw my father there, and yes, I was hurting. Yes, I felt; yes, I understood. But in front of me was my sister, who had collapsed to the floor, crying in the arms of someone I don't remember. My mother was (as expected) in tears the whole time and barely holding it together. And at nine years old I refused to cry at my father's funeral. My logical brain said that if I fell apart, if I cried, no one would be able to take care of my family. Logic said, "I can't cry, because they are crying." I was the self-appointed family glue. And apparently, the hundred other people in the room didn't count. I think it was then that I started thinking in terms of 'us vs. them'. It was me, my mom, my sister. My grandmother, for a time, was a part of that as well. But that was it. Us girls against the world. Why was I so convinced we had to be against anything?
Morons abound
People actually criticized my mother for taking us to the funeral. They reasoned that if a child doesn't cry, they are too traumatized to fully accept the circumstances. And so in my mother's time of need and despair, they criticized her for allowing us to say goodbye. Friggin idiots. As if they'd been there.
Anyway... I've always done that. "I'll cry when everyone else is okay." Problem is, everyone is never okay.
You are so funny! Do that again!
I've always been the crazy one. I'm the quirky one, the goofy one, the loony one, the silly one, the kid that never grew up. I am the "most animated person I know". And, at my core, that's part of who I am. It's also my defense mechanism, though, and I'm not sure if anyone knew that. So, there. Aha! Take that, world! I'm gooooood. I mean, I could go months being completely miserable, and nobody knew it. How stupid with a group of people that would have helped if I'd let them.
No guesswork, no problems.
You know what was great about all that, though? I never wondered. I knew what people saw when they looked at me. I controlled what their impression of me was. Only the closest and dearest to me saw the other parts of me, and there were times when even they got only glimpses. Very few were really considered "closest and dearest", and they were, almost exclusively, my mom & sister and in recent years, Andy and Shawne.
Can I help?
I was also the group therapist. It just always was that way. My heart's desire is simply to help people, so when friends, coworkers, and family would ask my opinion, I'd do the best I could to help them. What's crazy is that some of them listened. What's crazier is that most of the time it ended well. I'd go out of my way to help solve other people's problems. After all, if I concentrate on your issues, I don't have to look at mine. And so I was a fixer. I'm still a fixer. I love to fix things. I like puzzles, problems, things to solve, fix, make better. Even if those puzzles are people. And when I can't fix it, well, I don't like that.
Who moved my hand sanitizer?! Die, death, die!
And so from this was born a hatred for things out of my control. In more ways than one. I hate death. It's touched too close to home, too often, and it doesn't follow a pattern. I feel like I have OCD sometimes. I like patterns, order, and everything should be like I left it.
Can I get out? How do I get out?
I get claustrophobic if I can't escape. I once had an incident in a grocery store in Florida, because I couldn't get away from the people. There was nowhere I could go, literally nowhere that I wasn't touching people. It was terrifying. I hated myself for it, too. Escapism became very important a long time ago. Some of it is influenced by things I won't put here. I always had to know where the exits were. When I finally stopped doing drugs, it wasn't because I'd seen the dangers, or made a mature decision. It was because the effects of the drugs made me incapable of defending myself, and I couldn't stand it. Now that's a reason I bet you haven't heard often. Yeah, you could say I was guarded. Ready for war would be more accurate.
Give me a padded room. Or a baseball bat and glass objects. Please.
I've always told people that I 'had a bad temper' when I was younger. The truth is, I've scared myself more times than once. I've put fists (and feet, for that matter) through windows and walls, I've broken and bloodied my hands, thrown entire rooms full of objects, and even set things on fire (when I was much younger). I've done things and had no memory of it. Most of the scars that I have are from those times. For Christmas one year, my mom actually bought me a punching bag.
I didn't get angry, I went ballistic. I saw red. Quite literally: on rare occasions, the edges of my vision were tinged with red.
What did you do? WHAT did you DO?!
Though it doesn't happen often anymore, I still have a temper. The difference is that I am able to control it now, but there are still those times when I just can't. In my adult life, this has only happened two or three times. Once was when my grandmother died. The other time was more recent, when I found out that someone had done something horrible to a child that I love dearly. That one thing that I swore I would protect her from, and I couldn't. My head swam when I was told. I thought I would explode. I walked outside and was on my way to talk to the child's mother. I stopped halfway there, then I turned and ran. I ran as far as I could before I couldn't hold it any more, and then I screamed. I screamed and screamed and cried until my voice cracked and I was out of breath. I vomited, and dropped to my knees, and then, pounding the rock and earth with my fists, I screamed some more. I felt the raw grief that I've rarely felt since, but with it, I felt betrayed. It was just cosmically wrong. Not her, not this.
Though it doesn't happen often anymore, I still have a temper. The difference is that I am able to control it now, but there are still those times when I just can't. In my adult life, this has only happened two or three times. Once was when my grandmother died. The other time was more recent, when I found out that someone had done something horrible to a child that I love dearly. That one thing that I swore I would protect her from, and I couldn't. My head swam when I was told. I thought I would explode. I walked outside and was on my way to talk to the child's mother. I stopped halfway there, then I turned and ran. I ran as far as I could before I couldn't hold it any more, and then I screamed. I screamed and screamed and cried until my voice cracked and I was out of breath. I vomited, and dropped to my knees, and then, pounding the rock and earth with my fists, I screamed some more. I felt the raw grief that I've rarely felt since, but with it, I felt betrayed. It was just cosmically wrong. Not her, not this.
You want to know why? Because it's YOUR fault!
See, when I lose it that badly, it is usually some true injustice that can't be undone. The only thing left in those times are anger, pain, grief. Hitting. Smashing, destroying, so that I don't explode. When things happen that are so wrong that it's outside my scope of rational thinking, I lose my mind. And what was I screaming, what was I thinking during those moments? God could have stopped it. God could have protected her. I blame you. That's what it always came down to.
Hypocrites! Liars! Who's got the weed?
I got kicked out of a Christian school 2 weeks before graduation. Why? Because I was angry. Because I hated that school and I took a stand against what I felt was wrong. My senior class was dropping like flies. Everyone was getting kicked out. I understand having standards. But when did human standards become more important than obeying God?
Oh, I was angry. I was angry at everyone, especially God. But I still knew the facts. I picked apart the logic of their decisions. It made no sense. They hid behind the name of God and used his words to abandon those in need.
You see, the girls in my class were getting pregnant. And as these seventeen year old mothers-to-be were discovered, they were promptly expelled from the school. To me, depriving a teenage mother of her earned high school diploma is horrifically wrong. Where is she to go? What will she do now that she cannot claim a high school education? She'll work at McDonald's. In my eyes, this holier-than-thou school doomed that girl and her unborn child to years, if not a lifetime of poverty. It was wrong. Call me crazy, but the purpose of any Christian organization should be, primarily, to help people. Not to have a good image by purging all who have been caught making mistakes. It's ridiculous. Christ hung out with hookers and drunks! And so I stood up for them. I stood up for them all, and while I did that, I got to take a shot at the school, the administration, and even God. Don't get me wrong, I still believe that the decisions they made were wrong. But I also know that I was just as much a hypocrite as they. I ripped into the men responsible, and was asked not to return. I then went to my friend's house and spent the rest of the night high.
That's just it. I learned a lot. I knew a lot about God and Christianity. I even believed it. But in my anger, I refused to live it. Which makes me wonder how much I really understood at all.
More to come.
That's just it. I learned a lot. I knew a lot about God and Christianity. I even believed it. But in my anger, I refused to live it. Which makes me wonder how much I really understood at all.
More to come.
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