I had created the very hell I lived in. I could not appreciate anything that I accomplished or the children I was blessed with. I spent entirely too much time working for something else, another level, or something bigger. This was what I now call creative avoidance. I did not know how to be tender, allowing myself to harden completely inside and out was a defense mechanism that began in childhood and became a bigger monster in adulthood. I was jaded and completely conflicted with the inner turmoil I never wanted to share with the outer world. I never felt comfortable with weakness, sharing my fears meant admitting that I was not as strong as I appeared to be. I had a double life, the one that played out inside of me and the one I lived in every day. The million thoughts that passed through my mind was one scene and the running I did to avoid facing any of it kept my outside world in chaos, my own living hell.
I hated my husband, I despised my mother, and I resented my father. I consistently blamed my life on those I had felt let me down and left me out to dry. "Victimization" at it's finest! I was upset with my father for not doing more for me, not saving me from my mother. Somehow I felt life for me would be different if he had just had the guts to fight for me somehow. It is amazing how a child creates these emotions that we drag along with us into our adult years. I would go on later to make peace with the fact that my father did the best he could, and that the most precious gift he had ever given me was unconditional love. But in the fog and darkness of hell one can hardly make out the twinkle of the light just beyond it. It is true when they say one can never see something in which they are not looking for.
I did not realize how deep I was into the darkness, one would have to understand what I had to compare it too. If I was doing better then my mother, in comparison to her substance, emotional, and sometimes physical abuse, then I was indeed doing better for my children. Many times through my life I struggled with the guilt and regret of not being part of my mother's life. The child that wished to please her mother and earn her love lived on inside of me. I would continue to abuse myself over the fact that I just could not have a relationship with my mother on any level. & the world around me continued to dig at this wound. The should's, must's and need to's we are all taught & brain washed with in our life dug deeply through advice such as, "She gave birth to you, you should forgive her." For me it was not about forgiveness, as much as it was about protecting my own children from her venomous ways. I have come to know that my children were not the only concern I had, I was also protecting that child inside of me.
My children were growing up before my blind eyes and I was missing so much. Even now I have the hardest time remembering the little things most mother's can recall with pride about their childrens' beginning years. I was so unaware and out of touch, I can hardly recall memories or emotions from that time in relevance to my children tinniest of years. I was detached from life, simply moving along on auto pilot.
As life continued to live around me, the shame that came with knowing that somehow I was failing my children and falling short of my plan to succeed in giving my children a better life threatened to be my breaking point. I began to detach myself from my marriage completely, and would demoralize myself by cheating and leaving with a man that would be my rock bottom.
My life mirrored that of a drug addict. There would be years where I built the empire I had dreamed of, in the physical sense of material possessions. By this time I had lost everything and started over twice. The same way an addict looses everything to their addiction. When I left the first two husbands it was always in haste & usually it left me to completely start over. The loud, chaos of a snap decision always allowed me to hide from the reality of my life. I was the apple rotting very uncomfortably close to the tree.
Hind sight is 20/20, so I may have these in depth perceptions today that I would never recognize when I was younger. When we grow, change, and mature, our eyes change. One may say, "How does she stay with him?" "Doesn't she understand how this keeps happening?" & I could go on. We are programmed to judge something in which we do not understand, that is why so many are silent about their stories. How can one share a peace of themselves so raw when it leaves them vulnerable to the world in which will never understand? Find God, grow up, let it go, get over it....I have heard it all. When one does not have compassion for the darkness, they become the darkness themselves. I would use the judgment of the world to fuel my anger towards it, my own little self fulfillment prophecy.
When a soul is in dis~ease there is no rational sense to freedom or wellness? The prison that one lives in can be even more restricting then the physical prison of steal bars. I was trapped in the darkness of my life, and I am uncertain if there is ever enough words to paint a picture of what it is like for anyone who has not been there.
At this point in my life my journey deeper into hell began to move with great momentum. The chapter ahead will prove to be the hardest chapter to share.
(More to come...)
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