Noticeable Chatter

I have something that is bothering me today.  In my blog, I talk about a lot of things, things that I am going through now with menopause and things that happened to me as a child.  And I am noticing something.  I am noticing I am being treated “different.”  It is a different from the different way people normally treat me.  I notice it not only in person, but there is a change in the communication on the internet as well.  I say all the time the internet is a strange beast because you can hide better from people there, but I think I have a heightened sense of emotion and feelings because of the experiences I have had in my life.  Sometimes this serves me well, sometimes not so much.  It is as if people don’t know what to say to me anymore.  I am not any different; you just know more about me.  I have not changed because your knowledge of me did. 

At first, I thought it is because some of the things I write about are shocking.  They are.  People don’t like to think about some of the things I have experienced.  It is a bummer.  For others, the things I have experienced and am willing to talk about hit too close to home.  You are getting along just fine in your life thank you very much and don’t need to think about things that are painful.  You don’t want to be reminded.  I get it.  I don’t like to think about them myself.  Here’s the thing.  Whether you want to think about it or not, it still affects your life in ways you may not understand or recognize.  This is fact.  But even writing about things in a blog, there is a level of trust.  I trust that knowing these things about me does not change our relationship.  I don’t want our relationship to change by creating a distance there doesn’t have to be.  You can talk to me.  We can talk over the FB chat, email, or phone.  Reach out.  I am here.  I talk about some of these things because I can.  Most people cannot, it is too painful for them to face each day if they have to talk about some of the things I do.  Some days, tears stream down my face as I write.  It is OK, I welcome them.  There was a time I couldn’t feel anything at all.  I was so blunted from my experiences, I did not have emotion.  I didn’t know what it was.  I never felt angry, sad, happy….I FELT NOTHING.  So, even though tears stream down my face as I write, I keep on writing.  I am only sad in the moment.  When the moment is over, I am back to myself again.  Myself is a happy person. 

I talk about some of the things I do to open up a dialog.  I don’t want any pity; I have spent enough time giving in to self-pity to ever want it from anyone else.  It is not productive.  I do not want to be viewed as a victim.  I was victimized, but I am not a victim.  I do not want to be treated as a survivor.  In many ways I did survive, but in others I did not.  I cope and deal the best I can.  Some of the things which happened to me in my life have hurt me.  The pain is still there, lurking.  I accept it.  I don’t have to like it, but I accept it.  Sometimes I cry for what I have lost.  Sometimes I cry a lot.  That’s OK, I need to do it.  I don’t want pity or special attention then, either.  It is what it is.  I don’t like feeling the emotional pain sometimes, but it is better to feel it for a little while and move on with my life than to stuff it inside and be miserable.  I know what I talk about makes people uneasy.  It should.  If you are uneasy it is because the things I have experienced are unacceptable.  There are a lot of things that shouldn’t have happened but they did.  If you are uneasy, it is because you are a compassionate human being.  Being uneasy in the face of some of the things I discuss is to your credit.  It may not set right with you, but it is because you are a decent person.  Top of Form

I know there are people reading my blog who have experienced similar or even worse things in their life.  I write about my life so you know you are not alone.  You hear the stories on television, you watch them on Oprah, but it is far different to know someone who has been through it too.  It makes it real.  It was real.  Your pain is private, and that is OK.  You don’t have to share it with anyone.  I share mine because I need to.  I share mine in the hopes that someone else does not have to feel what I have, or if they do, to know they are not alone.  I have lived a hundred lifetimes in just this one and it is not over yet.  I have come through my life and I truly like who I am.  I spent most of my life believing the lies I was told about myself.  I spent most of my life miserable because I did not like who I was.  I have a hundred lifetimes of stories to tell and I have not even scratched the surface in this blog.  As time goes on, the story of me unfolds.  It is a long and complicated one.  I promised you honesty.  It is what I will deliver.

WE hear about child abuse in the media, and it is outlined for us.  We see the immediate effects and it repels us.  I talk about it here because the effects of child abuse do not end when the abuse ends.  It can last a lifetime and affect the way we dress, how we present ourselves to others, how we treat our own bodies, and how we see ourselves in those quiet moments when no one else is looking.  It is pervasive and it is profound.  Only by talking about it can we be aware of just how deep the pain cuts.  When we talk about it, we bring it out into the open, and it is here we stop it from happening to the next generation.  You can talk to me about what you read here.  It doesn’t have to relate to you personally to have moved you in some way.  You do not have to treat me with kid gloves.  I know what my life was.  It wasn’t pretty.  I know what my life is now….and I love it.  I worked hard to get here.  I faced things about myself I didn’t like to become a person I can be comfortable with. 

As an example, in my family I had to have 3 books in my head at all times and I had to keep them all straight because if I didn’t, well, bad things happened.  The first book is the reality of what happened in my life.  That book had to remain top secret.  I wasn’t allowed to talk about it, and I wasn’t allowed to throw it in my parent’s face, though you probably know enough about me by now to know I did.  I got beat for it, but to me, maintaining the integrity of that book was worth the beating.  I believe in truth and my life was filled with lies.  The second book I had to keep straight in my head was the book about the same event as my parents told me it happened.  It is like the car accident and all of the witness accounts tell a different story.  My parents told me what they wanted me to believe about what happened.  I had to keep that book straight in my head to avoid being beaten.  The final book was the most important book of all.  This book was what we told other people about our lives.  This book was pure fiction.  It was also an important book to keep in my head so I would not be beaten. 

Having to keep so many accounts straight in my head about the same events is very confusing.  It is probably why I write so well, and my imagination is so fertile.  It is why I can convey in a sentence what takes another writer to convey in a chapter.  I lived three lives concurrently.  As a child, lying was the standard, so I learned to interact with other people through lies because if they knew the truth about who I was, even worse things would happen.  I never quite knew what the even worse things were, but I was afraid of it enough to continue lying into adulthood.  I lied compulsively.  I lied about things that didn’t even matter.  I am not certain I knew I was lying most of the time, because I believed in the lies I told.  It was how I was taught to live my life. 

Initially, people were quite charmed by me, and I loved it.  I loved the attention.  I craved it; actually, because the attention I got through my lies and animated behavior was positive attention I received hardly anywhere else.  The problem with it was it wore off so quickly.  People soon saw through the act.  People soon saw the lies.  I was so desperate for someone to like me, so desperate for the attention; I tried to become whatever I thought it was they wanted me to be.  There were some people who were so amused by me they stuck around a little longer, knowing I lied through my teeth and secretly wondered what in the holy hell was wrong with me.  But I entertained them, so for a while, they stayed.  Those people were not my friends, they were using me but I did not understand that.  I thought they were my friends and it hurt me deeply when they eventually became bored with me, or became tired of all the drama that seemed to follow my life.  I did not know any other way to live my life, because I had been taught the truth was something to hide.

One day I looked around.  I hated myself, had less than zero self-esteem if that is even possible, and even worse, I could not keep a friend.   The only thing I wanted in life was to be loved.  That was it.  I wanted someone to love me.  I thought I was a good person~~~and I was, I just didn’t believe it.  I would give anyone the shirt off my back if I thought they needed it.  I thought I was a good friend…there was no one more loyal than I was.  And yet I was desperately lonely and had no friends in my life.  Every single friend I had in my life eventually left, and I was hurt.  I didn’t understand it.  I did not see the lies I created, the life I created was a smoke screen.  I had no depth, and I had no character.  I had nothing of myself to give in a friendship because my entire life was built on lies.  By this time, I had forgotten about the first book I made in my head, the book of truth.  I no longer knew it existed.  I could not have friends in my life because I didn’t know who I was.  I only knew to create a person I thought someone else might like.

There were a couple of people brave enough to see through all the lies, and to call me on it when I was being ridiculous.  What they said hurt me deeply, but I was so desperate for friends I quickly forgave them.  I didn’t see what they were saying to me was not only said out of genuine love and affection for me, but it was the truth.  Truth was the one thing I didn’t know you could live with.  Inside, the truth of what they said to me still hurt.  Because I was hurt, I found a way to make them hurt, too.  It might be by saying something mean to them, but I would hurt them the way they hurt me.  This is how I lived my life because this is how I was taught to live my life.  This was the effects of a pervasively abusive childhood.  I eventually shoved the people brave enough to tell me the truth out of my life.  The truth hurt.

And so I remained desperately alone and desperately in need of someone to love me.  One day the thought occurred to me.  There must be something wrong with the way I am conducting my life.  I wanted friends and I didn’t have any.  A couple of friends I did have sometimes did me more harm than good.  I looked around.  My life was very painful to live.  Other people did not seem to be in the kind of pain I was in, other people had friends.  What was it about me that I did not have the life I wanted?  Oh yeah, those few brave souls who loved me enough to tell me the truth had tried to show me what I needed to do.  Their words continued to echo in my soul.  They were long gone out of my life and probably thought good riddance!  But their words remained.  They had told me truths about myself I didn’t want to hear, didn’t want to acknowledge, and didn’t want to face.  How did I pay them for this gift?  I hurt them back and forced them out of my life.  That is the kind of friend I was.  I lied as easily as I breathed and if someone cared enough about me to want me to have a better life; I made them pay for it.  Huh.

That hurt.  That hurt worse than about anything anyone had done to me.  I was ashamed of myself.  I was ashamed at the person I was, and it was not the person I wanted to be.  I thought people believed the lies I told.  I thought people liked the person I invented just for them.  I thought that was who I was.  I didn’t know who I was; I didn’t have a clue as to who I was.  My parents told me who I was and I didn’t like what they told me, but it was all I knew.  I started to pay attention to people that other people seemed to genuinely like.  Not the popular people, I paid attention to the people who seemed to be happy and content in who they were, and who seemed to be happy with the way they were conducting their life.  I watched from a distance, afraid to get too close.  I was afraid I would scare them away like a frightened deer.  I paid attention when people were kind to me, I used to know when people were kind, but somewhere in my childhood I lost the ability to recognize basic human kindness.  I started to model myself after people who possessed the traits of the person I wanted to be. 

There were many days I looked in the mirror and didn’t like what I saw in the reflection.  I had no sense of self, my childhood never allowed me to develop one.  Today I am describing just one aspect of how abuse permeates every area of your life.  It started out by having to remember 3 books about the same event, and manifested in how I continued to live that way in adulthood.  I knew I was inside my body somewhere, and part of this blog is about my journey to find me.  My childhood was stolen from me, but that is not what my life is about, and it is not what defines my life.  I still have lasting effects from it that hurt!  But I do not allow that hurt to consume my day.  I might pay attention to it for a few moments, and then I go about my day living my life the way I want to.   I recognize the pain because it was real.  I refused to recognize the pain others were causing me as a child because I was helpless to do anything about it.  I am not helpless anymore, and I don’t want anyone else to see me that way, either.  If my pain is uncomfortable to you, maybe I touched something you are hiding from yourself.  I’m not going to come into your life and make you deal with it.  Keep it hidden or let it go.  That is your choice.  If it is something you would like to share, then talk to me.  I promise I won’t bite, but I can’t promise I won’t cry.  I cry an awful lot.  I need to cry, but do not mistake my painful tears for weakness, because I am anything but.  I may experience weak moments, but I am a strong woman who made it through a childhood which should have destroyed me.  It didn’t.  I am here, and so are you, so let’s talk.  Whatever you do, do not distance yourself from me because you think (fill in the blanks here.)  I have spent enough of my life isolated by lies.  Do not allow the truth to isolate me now.