Tag: pain

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The Lesson I am in Now

It appears to me that all of life is about learning and growing; deeply learning and internalizing some very deep truths.

This month (or however long it takes to take root) seems to be about fully letting go of expectations I seem to continually put on others. I have to say if not for my hubs I don ‘t know how I’d make it in this life, because it has been about one unmet expectation after the other. I have got to stop setting myself up for hurt. Doing a lot of journaling about this right now. Also thought I’d post about it so I can look back to it later on down the road.

I expected, at one time, that all people would treat me with dignity and respect. Shattered.

I expected that once I learned to love myself all of my pain would stop. Shattered.

I expected to be allll better by now. Shattered.

I am much better than I was; I kinda see me working my way around a sculpture (that is me) spackling and shoring up the broken messed up parts, but then I turn it slightly and there is another thing to fix, and another, and another. When does it end? Does it?

I’ve been in a really great place for a long time. I got there by a lot of hard (exhausting) work. Part of being there was in learning how to live in the moment. I am trying hard to stay there. Just when I think I have put every past thing back into the past, something new happens, a new painful (fresh) memory that I have to pull apart and analyze.

I think there is a powerful key in something I learned in one of my classes, and that is in learning to see our painful emotions when they happen (Oh! There you are–pain that I set myself up for–I see you. I see the little arrow sticking out of my heart.)  Then we’re supposed to acknowledge it. Then set it aside and move past it. This is the part I am still struggling with.

I told myself that it is kind of like my love for baked goods (that I rarely actually let myself have). I see you scone, calling my name. The chocolate croissant, the fresh-baked bread. I acknowledge you are there in the bakery case. I hear you speaking to me. But I am choosing to nod at you and move on past.

I’m not sure which is harder, passing the tough emotions by or the baked goods, but either way, it sucks. Hard. But this is where I am at and what I am dealing with today, See it, nod at it, pass it by. Sounds simple, right?

My physical health and issues do not allow for me to eat baked goods. (I can get by with a few times a year.) My emotional growth goals do not allow for me to wallow in sadness at a perceived slight or arrow thrown at me. AND I must remind myself that often, it is my own expectations that people will behave in a certain way, or a way I wish they’d behave, (and I know better). At least I should.

There’s an Alanis Morrisette song that talks about “the ever-elusive kudo” (her song Thank You) and another line about one word someone says (or doesn’t say) leaves her devastated… the little shots and arrows that are sometimes real and sometimes all in our head. (She sings my life, seriously. Love her.)

Anyway, I’ll be going along fine then suddenly I’m hurt over the smallest thing. (I believe they call that being “butt-hurt” these days. Only it’s my heart, not my ass that is hurting.) THIS. This I must conquer. I feel like if I can fully conquer that every single time, I will be the king of the world.

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Poetry at 4 that Flies by Day

 

At 4 a.m. I lay awake

Writing some of the best poetry of my life

Inside my head

Knowing it may flee by daylight.

Thoughts of my journey to here

To now—

Dark splinters in wood and bone

Digging them out

Tossing them aside

Old pain, old slivers

Buried so deep

From the shattering.

New growth formed over

Must dig them out

Must get it all out

Or else

The pain will never ease.

Years, it took

Working on me

Poking, scraping at scabs

Digging up bones

Others say to leave them be

But I know I cannot

Like the Princess and the Pea

I dig at them until they’re

All gone

All gone.

Now what?

What replaces the pain?

I know why some identify so greatly

With their pain

That it becomes them, and they become it.

Together by osmosis.

And everyone says, “Let it go.”

“Let it be scabbed over.”

“Leave it.”

And then that day

It happened that I had dug

The last splinter.

I slept for 10 hours.

I woke up empty.

What now? I keep asking.

I did the work,

Now what do I do

Who am I if not the pain?

If not the scabs?

Not one to ask for help,

I did.

And they did.

And I am learning to walk again.

Hoping one day to fly.

 

 

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Love Hurts. (Yeah, yeah.)

I wrote a poem about this that is published in the book Heart of Courage but I wanted to talk a bit about this subject, as it is definitely something that defines who I am and it’s something I deal with every day. The idea that, if or when you decide to love someone fully, go “all-in,” you do it knowing full well that, (unless by some twist of fate, you die before everyone else you love), that you will one day experience excruciating, mind-altering, life-changing, gut-wrenching pain. I’ve run from this my whole life in one way or another.

I think I’ve been trying to prepare myself for my parents deaths my entire life, (or from the time I learned of death). Not to go all Sylvia Plath, but for a sensitive like me, learning about and trying to grasp death, and not just your own, but dealing with the deaths of loved ones, well, it’s a daunting prospect. Maybe, even, it is part of why I moved far away from my hometown and put down roots elsewhere. (Deep self-analysis going on here.)

I’ve never had a 30-plus year relationship with anyone before, so there was a time when, after five or seven years with my hubs, I began to get antsy and restless. Noting that I thought I was “all-in” when I married him, there still came a time when that restlessness kicked in. I’ll never forget that time of my life. I really began to struggle, because I knew in my heart that I loved my husband, but trying to shove down my natural inclination to bolt after the new wore off (which I had done my whole life) was difficult. It was one of the very few, and the most powerful and life-changing time, I felt God or the Universe or something deep and profound, speak directly to me. It basically said, “If you leave him, you will cause your sons more unbearable pain, (they had already been through my divorce from their father), your daughter will suffer greatly and will be changed forever. You’ll destroy your husband, a good man who loves you profoundly. Your own life will be a series of failed relationship after failed relationship, leaving an earthquake of damage behind you, everywhere you go.” Something like that. (I was literally shown a mental picture of the flux-capacitor from Back to the Future. If you don’t know what that is, just picture a huge fork in the road.)

I had a good cry, and still knowing I was messed up inside, I made the conscious choice to stay and truly commit and make it work.

All of that to get to the point, that I am so afraid of being left/hurt/broken by others, that I tend to bolt. This has affected every single relationship in my life. Family, friends, boyfriends, husbands… you name it.

Back when I made that decision to stay, it seemed to come with a promise. A promise that my life would go much better and easier, if I just made the right choice then and there. I do believe that has been the case. My life has not been perfect since then, and like anyone’s marriage, ours has had its ups and downs, but I can honestly say that we are better today than we have ever been.

I’m an “over-communicator’ and if you know me much, you know this. I have made sure that he and I have open lines of communication, even though I often have to take hours or days to really dig out of him what is on his mind. (He, like a lot of men, is not an over-communicator.) But we are so close. On our 20th (I think it was) we were asked at a restaurant if we were newlyweds. The waitress had noticed how we smiled and laughed together and held hands across the table. (We still do this. It’s sickening, really.)

My point is, every month, every year, I go more and more “all in” with my hubs. Because I am learning more and more every day how to be whole and healed, which helps me learn how to commit and love just a little more, a bit deeper.

This scares the ever-loving shit out of me.

Unless I go first, I will experience the worst pain ever, if he leaves me or passes away. It will ruin me, I know this. I know it because I have never known love like this before, but I’ve been hurt badly by people I cared about, and I know this kind of pain will blow all of that away.

This is scarier than anything else in my life. I don’t want to know that pain, but it is absolutely part of going all-in. Love is amazing, but sometimes Love Hurts. Intentionally or not. Putting your heart fully out there is opening yourself up to immense pain. I still haven’t perfected it. But I am committed to trying. The only other relationship I know that compares is my love for my kids and grands. A couple super-close friends.

But I have spent years perfecting the “dine – and – dash” of relationships. Most recently (since I’ve been married) I’ve been doing it with friendships. I’ve been a very sucky bad friend. I’ve at times avoided people I care about. I’ve even seemed to be pushing them away. This year I realized this a bit more, because, well, I am continually working on me.

If you are a friend that felt any connection with me and have been hurt by me pushing you away, I want to apologize. I’ve been a scaredy-cat. I’m afraid of being hurt, so I hurt others first, even though it took me some time to realize it. I don’t want to be that person.

And, of course, that said, there are a very few people I have pushed away absolutely on purpose (boundaries) and this is usually men who are misogynists or anyone that I feel I just do not connect with and we are just too different. I don’t have time or energy left to try to explain to someone wanting to be my friend, why I am the way I am on a daily basis, so, often times, I just cut off that relationship, be at peace. Go find someone more like you, if that is what you need. (That’s a very small few.)

Yeah, Love Hurts, and sometimes stinks, like the song says. I love people. I don’t always like them. They don’t always like me. I am so cool with that. Not gonna change me so that you can like me, but I am going to try harder to be kinder and gentler and friendlier to those I do genuinely connect with. I’m fighting my own demons over here, so please be patient. I’m learning.

The book Heart of Courage is available on Amazon-you can search my name to find it. It was written by myself and three other amazing poets from around the country: Nicholas Trandahl, Fiona Summerville, and Kelsi Rose. Pick it up if you have a mind to.

Peace Out

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Pammy’s rant & ramble number 4004 (on life and men)

Blog post

I’m so glad I found a man I can tolerate. Let me explain.

I started out life with a great love for my father and I had (have) 3 older brothers and I chased after them for years just wanting to be accepted and loved by them. To be honest there is a deep-seeded part of me that blames them (my original fam) for failing me in some way, for failing to adequately prepare me for the thunder-dome of life). But the thing is, it wasn’t a thunder-dome for my mom so she didn’t know how to prepare me for all I’ve been through… not that she didn’t suffer hard times but very oh-so different than anything I faced, it was a totally different world for me. I can’t blame my father, he did the best he could, he worked a lot to provide for us and so he didn’t know what to think of 4 teenagers who began to act a-fool at a certain point, he didn’t know what to do. Parenting truly is the hardest job in the world and the one that we are the LEAST trained or prepared for. My brothers were kids themselves, so therefore free from any responsibility. So, the logical side of me knows I can’t blame any of them for anything.

But when we’re hurt, we look for reasons, people to blame. The truth is, I should only blame those who actually hurt me. The broken hot mess human people who took out their broken-ness on me.

If you’ve known me any amount of time, if you’ve read any of my rambles over the last 9 yrs especially, then you know I’ve been working through some shit. There were a handful, a few, incidents in my teenage years that totally changed who I became in my early adult life. I’ve talked about this before. They destroyed any small self-esteem I might’ve had as a young child. I withdrew so deeply into myself that I had ZERO concept of who I was. I became a chameleon of sorts, I tried to fit in with whatever group of people I found myself with. (I have this skill today in that I can fit in with many maybe even most people, IF or when I want to. I can get along with most. I’ve become a negotiator and peace-maker.)

But thankfully, over the last several years I’ve fought hard to work through all the pain, I figured out that I can’t live life continuing to stuff everything down and pretend it didn’t happen. Ya gotta go through it, ya gotta FEEL it. Let it hurt, let it break you… then you begin to rebuild. I think my trauma is or was at the very root of my health problems as well, along with not being breast-fed (that’s another whole issue, all about Natural Killer Cells and not having them and what causes one to NOT have them… another blog for another time all about the immune system. I’ve learned so much.)

I was unprepared, that’s the point. Totally unprepared for the lion’s den. I had no idea that all boys/men in the world were not basically good, moral people. That some were broken and perverted and plain evil in some cases.

As a result of my trauma, I developed a deep distrust of men and particularly teenaged boys (likely because I was hurt by them.) I still have that. I have tried hard not to allow this to affect my relationship with my own sons. If I was then (when they were small) who I am today, I would’ve raised them a bit differently, but as my parents before me, I did the best I could with what I knew at the time. Which wasn’t much.

So, back to explaining what I said about finding a man I can tolerate. Due to my trauma, I distrust men in general. It’s kind of surprising, even to me, that I didn’t turn to having relationships with women because of this… it happens sometimes. People can be born gay or circumstances can turn them towards it. I’ve met both. (And, of course, there are many other nuances when it comes to a person’s sexuality.) Likely because of my extreme conservative upbringing, the thought never occurred to me.

And so, yeah. I married super young. Just after turning 18. He was and is a decent guy. We had some core issues we couldn’t resolve. I ultimately divorced when my younger son was a baby. At this time, I still had all of these un-resolved issues with men, but one thing I had figured out in my first marriage, was that I would never become someone I wasn’t in order to please a man. During the seven years of that marriage, my insides were churning, the trauma roiling around and causing havoc. I was desperately unhappy.

God or the Universe was watching out for me, because I met my Bill at the job I got when I divorced, working at a hotel at the front desk. There was something about him immediately. He had a youth and innocence about him. He’s three and a half years younger than me and indeed was way more “innocent” than me. I guess this was so different to all of my past experiences with men, and that, combined with his sweet and loving nature, drew me to him. We became best friends quickly.

Now that we’ve been married 32 years, I have found my instincts about him were true. He’s a good guy, the best. He’s one in a million. Such that I know that I will never love another man (if anything, heaven forbid, ever happened to him), I feel sure that there’s nobody else out there like him.

In all of those personality tests, I always show up as fiercely independent and unlikely to marry. I’d say, all things considered this is true. I just happened to find someone perfect for me and I willed myself into making it work and not fleeing when things got too good (because that was a pattern of mine, too.)

That’s what I mean when I say I found a man I can tolerate. I’m not a “man-hater” in the feminist sense, I’ve just been traumatized by the males of the species. I’ve seen and known some of the best men, (my sons included), and I’ve seen and known some of the worst. I probably gifted my sons with some baggage they didn’t deserve. But I love them fiercely.

And Bill and I have a beautiful daughter who grew up with part-time brothers. I’m sure I gave her her own fair share, or more, of baggage, too. But despite this, my children are good people with big hearts.

I’ve (finally) come to a place where I know ME. I know who I am, what I’m all about, what I will tolerate in my life and what I won’t. I have strong boundaries. I will not be “the victim” but will instead be this fierce lioness, the person that was so hard-fought-for, the real me. I will protect me and mine, at all costs.

I haven’t said much about God or religion in this particular post, but my spiritual walk has been with me on this journey and it has been rough. I don’t see God as others do and most days do not know if there is a God. I feel strongly that there is something at work in my life, something I cannot explain and maybe that is God, maybe it’s just the nature of this experiment (life). But I am not the woman I was twenty years ago, or even ten. I’ve grown and I cannot go back. Whatever is for me is ahead of me, and I think… I think this is gonna be my best year yet.

 

 

 

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Witness

I’ve felt at times like a small child, carrying a bundled napkin in my hands, holding it out in front of me
and inside that napkin is my stuff, my trauma
and I’m walking the world looking
seeking for someone strong and true
to open and view what’s inside the napkin
and not tell me I’m crazy
or a drama queen
or looking for attention
or that it was my fault
or that I need to get over it
or just to bury it deep inside my pocket
and never take it out again
I’m looking for witness
I’m looking to be heard
Pam Swyers–copyright 2019