Another Admission of Shame

I know I haven’t had time to write since I decided to make this huge life change and move all by myself to Arizona.  I miss it.  But, it doesn’t mean the chatter is any quieter in my head, I just don’t have the time to express it.  The last time I wrote, I shared about needing to forgive my mother, and then in a brilliant avoidance move, proceeded to talk about my father and the path towards forgiving him.  It was avoiding my mother issues, but I was hoping in learning how I came to forgive my father, I could learn something useful to forgive my mother.  I did learn some things, but I don’t know yet how useful it is going to be in my struggle to come to terms with my mother.  I do know I judge her very harshly, and perhaps it is interfering with my desire to forgive her.  I do desire to forgive her, and I think it is this desire compelling me to really look at myself introspectively because this has nothing to do with my mother in reality, and everything to do with me.  Here is what I know to be truth.  I know my mother deserves forgiveness.  She is a human being, and though I may not understand what led her to the life she lived, I am not her judge and jury.  She is still my mother, and deserves at least a small amount of respect in that regard.  I deserve to forgive her.  Those two simple facts are all I need in order to forgive her, and yet I struggle with it.

The things that helped me forgive my father are not available to me when it comes to my mother, so I have to forge a new path.  I don’t mind forging paths; I seem to have done that most of my life.  But in order to forge a path, I must have some idea of which direction I would like to go, and the best tools to take with me on my journey.  I only know where I want to end up; forgiving my mother.  In order to forgive her, I have to be clear on what it is I am forgiving her for.  So this will take some exploring into my memory and feelings, which is never a pleasant adventure for me.  When I have done this in the past, I never know what part of my memory will unlock.  Sometimes a memory returns and it is not so bad, and I wonder why I buried it in the first place.  I actually believe burying memories eventually became an automatic response after a while of using it as a survival mechanism.  Doesn’t matter if the memory was pleasant or horrific, my mind just locked it away because that’s what it learned to do.  I think I also locked the memories away because trying to keep three versions of the same event straight in my head was more than I could do.  Forgetting them meant I didn’t have to. 

The first reason I forgave my father was because the anger, bitterness and shame was destroying me.  I don’t know how much longer I could have survived and remained intact had I not forgiven him.  I still lived my life, but I was acting out my anger instead of dealing with it.  The thing my father valued above all was money.  I mentioned he was frugal, but it was more than that.  My mother was arrested once from stealing food and tampons from the Acme store.  She said she did it because my dad expected certain things to be purchased and never gave her enough money to do it with.  I don’t know if this is the truth or not, I don’t count my mother as a credible source of information.  Knowing how my father is, though, it is reasonable to think my mother was telling the truth.  Money was my father’s God, second only to his sons, who were in first place.  My father showered money on them, even while I was struggling to pay utilities and housing.  The few times I asked him to pay a utility bill for me was nearly unbearable as I had to listen to how irresponsible I was and if I managed my money better I would not be in this situation.  I don’t know how far he expected the $325.00 a month I received from welfare to go, but he felt I should have been able to maintain a household and raise my two daughters in luxury, if I just managed my money better.  Asking to get money from my father was always accompanied with a litany of hurtful and shameful remarks.  I never asked unless I could see no other way.  By the time he gave me the thirty dollars or so, I felt like crawling under a slimy rock at the bottom of a scum pond.  I also felt like I more than earned his help just in the verbal humiliation I had to tolerate to receive it. 

I don’t know how young I was when I first realized money was that important to my father, but I think it was around nine or ten years old.  That is when I starting stealing.  At first, I snuck into my father’s room when he wasn’t looking; searching through his drawers for the money I knew he had hidden.  I stole little bits at a time.  I didn’t want him to notice and I certainly did not want to get caught, but when I stole money from him, it felt like I had a tiny bit of power back.  I stole something that mattered very much to my father, his money.  At this time, I was completely aware of what I was doing, and I was aware it was wrong to steal.  It was also the only thing I felt I could do to hurt my father back.  It felt good to hurt him back, even if he wasn’t aware I was doing so.  I stole from him for a long time before he took notice, and when he did, he blamed my mother for the missing money.  I was never blamed for it by either of my parents, I guess it never crossed their mind I would think of such a thing.  I heard my father yelling at my mother for the missing money, and I did feel bad she was being blamed, but not too bad.  My mother did not treat me very well either, so while I felt a twinge of guilt, I wasn’t sorry she was blamed for my actions.  It did cause me to realize I would have to be more careful, and that is when I started to steal directly from his wallet.  I never stole a lot; just enough so I felt as if I was punishing my father just a little for the things he did to me.  I was so powerless in every other area. 

I continued to steal from my father until the day I left his house to live with my fiancé.  By that time, though, I was learning how to steal in other ways as well.  My memory was still locking so many things inside, so by now I knew I was stealing things pretty much everywhere I went, but I no longer knew why I was stealing.  I had become a thief, but I ignored that fact.  I didn’t try to justify what I was doing, I completely ignored I was doing it at all.  I stole something from everywhere I went.  I stole things that were stupid, without much value, and things I didn’t even need.  I separated myself from the act of stealing, because it was against my core personality and beliefs.  I knew stealing was wrong, but I couldn’t seem to help myself, and I didn’t know why I stole the stupid crap I did.  So while I stole something everywhere I went, I completely disassociated myself from the act.  It was as if someone else was stealing, not me.  That is how I framed stealing from others in order to be OK.  There were many times I had disassociated so completely, I didn’t even know I stole an item until I would find it days later.  I couldn’t remember actually stealing it, but I recognized it belonged to someone else.  Of course by this time, I was starting to feel shame for stealing, because even though I no longer knew why I did it, I was stealing and often from people I cared about.  Between being a compulsive liar and thief, it is no wonder I couldn’t keep any friends.  I am fortunate I was never caught and prosecuted, but that is where I think my angels interceded on my behalf.  Angels knew all my secrets and also knew why I did the things I did, though I didn’t understand it myself.  Angels had faith that one day I would become a person (I hope) they could be proud of, and worthy of their protections.  I don’t know if I have met their expectations, but I have made every effort to be a better person.  I hope I am worthy of all the protection they have given me over the years. 

So yet again, something begun in childhood as a result of the abuse I suffered at the hands of my parents had manifested into my adult life.  Though I did disassociate my core personality from the act of stealing, there remained enough of me who was aware of my actions that I felt deeply shamed.  As if I didn’t carry enough shame for the person I was, I created more reasons to be ashamed of myself.  Shame was about the only emotion I recognized anymore.  All the other emotions were faked because I no longer could feel them on a conscious level.  I watched TV and faked the responses according to what I saw.  I never had a single moment when I realized the results of stealing, and why I was doing it, like I did with the compulsive lying.  The stealing, like the lying had become an automatic response for anything that distressed me or caused me anxiety.  I couldn’t identify feelings; I just knew stealing made me feel better.  I quit stealing because even though it did make me feel better for a short time, the long term guilt and shame began to overpower the need to steal.  I also knew the kind of person I desired to be, and being a thief wasn’t a part of it.  I didn’t quit stealing overnight, though.  This was a learned response developed to feel power when I felt powerless.  Being in an abusive marriage did not afford me many chances to feel as if I had power. 

As I continued to work with a counselor, we did eventually put the pieces together as to why I stole.  I truly had no clue why I felt this compulsion to steal, especially stupid things, and things I didn’t have a need for.  Once she helped me to see I was stealing as a means to punish my father and regain power I never had as a child, I felt relief.  I felt relieved because in my heart I knew she was right.  It made sense.  Now I understood the why, I could work on eliminating the need to steal.  More importantly, I could begin the steps toward being the person I wanted to be, and not the person I was.  I was beginning to see hope.  It did take a while to eliminate the stealing, because by now becoming disassociated from so many things was something I did quite well and often without realizing it.  But just being more aware of myself went a long way toward preventing the disassociation which happened in times of distress or anxiety.  It was hard for me to remain conscious and relevant in the moment.  The dissociative states were a coping skill I needed to survive my childhood.  It had become part of the fight or flight response system.  It is also a negative coping skill when I tried to live my life as an adult in this society.  The very things which enabled me to survive the brutality of my childhood were having a very real and very negative impact on my adult life. 

That was another one of those mirror moments.  I looked in the mirror and I saw a compulsive thief, and a recovering compulsive liar.  It didn’t help the shame and disgust I felt about myself already, and I wasn’t proud of this person I was.  But there was something interesting happening, and I didn’t even know it at the time.  I began my journey to be a better person because I desperately wanted friends and to be loved.  I still wanted that, but it became more important to me to like the person I saw in the mirror, having friends and being loved were starting to take second place in my priorities.  When I looked in the mirror, I not only saw physical ugliness incompatible with living, but there was a spiritual ugliness as well.  I did not remember yet my encounter I had with God when I was six, but I did know I had a destiny in my life to fulfill, and I needed to start with regaining the truth of the person I had hidden so far away.  I wanted to find me, and not this character I had become.  I was living a false truth, and I had a glimmer this was not who I was meant to be. 

It took time to erase the lying and the stealing, because like I said, it had become an automatic and disassociated response.  It took work for me to remain present and not ignore what I was doing.  I was proud of the times I succeeded, and like I still do to this day, was way too hard on myself when I felt I failed.  The hardest part was not in stopping the behaviors I didn’t like about myself, but if I stopped lying and stealing, then I had to come face to face with real feelings I wasn’t used to having, and couldn’t identify.  It was a very uncomfortable place to be, because if I couldn’t lie and I couldn’t steal, I had to sit in my own shit for a while.  My heart hurt and I didn’t know why or what to do about it.  My soul was dying, and I didn’t know how to save it.  I had no idea if I could continue to live without lying and stealing.  Lying and stealing hid some very powerful and painful emotions.  For someone who had ceased to feel emotions, this put me in a very vulnerable state.  How do I function now?  I didn’t have a clue.

My counselor worked very hard with me, and she was often frustrated because I didn’t know how to do what she was asking.  By the time I became an adult, my feelings rarely got hurt anymore because I had no feelings to express.  I didn’t know what they were.  I would relate something that happened and she would say, “How did you feel when they did that?”  I looked at her like she was stupid, because I didn’t feel anything at all; it was just something that happened.  She tried using a facial chart, filled with dozens of faces expressing specific emotions.  I could not relate to any of them except anxiety and fear as I let go of the lying and stealing.  I was in a constant state of anxiety and it did not feel good to be there.  But I was determined to become a better person, and especially to be a better mother.  I wanted above all to be a good mother to my children, and being a thief and a liar was not compatible with this goal.  I wanted to be someone not only I was proud of, but my girls could be proud of as well.  My counselor was even more determined.  She would say later she didn’t know what she saw, but she did know how hard I was working.  She knew I was someone that had a chance at being saved, so she jumped in with both feet, determined to bring out the person hiding inside.  It wasn’t easy, and she would move before her goal was realized.

She used a variety of tools and techniques to get me to acknowledge my feelings, be able to identify them, and learn ways to cope with what came out.  It was a slow process I fought every step of the way.  Feeling things was painful.  But I had to face the root causes of not only the negative and unproductive coping skills I learned as a child, but recognize the impact it was carrying into my adult life.  These are the things I talk about when I say we need to deal with the pain of our past, because like it or not, we are acting out that pain every single day in a hundred different ways.  It is holding us back from being the person we know we can be.  It is robbing us of any happiness we might have.  I don’t like to admit to even myself in the privacy of my own home I lied compulsively as well as stole anything not nailed down.  Yet here I am, admitting it for the world to see.  I am using myself as an example of how our pain manifests throughout our life.  I am also using myself as an example that though I am by no means a finished product, I am a work in progress.  Somehow, I should have been a statistic, and I am not.  And that brings me back to the beginning.  I had to forgive my father in order to stop stealing.  I was stealing to regain power my father stole from me, only many people played the part of my father.  I was stealing because I was angry at what my father put me through.  I had to forgive my father to save myself.  That was the first step toward forgiving my father.  And I just learned something about the first step toward forgiving my mother.  There were things she did to me that manifested in my adult life.  Because those things were not as obvious as lying and stealing, I did not give them much credit, nor did I see the source as my mother.  I don’t have all the pieces yet, but I know what I must tell you about my mother.  That will have to be another day, because writing takes a very long time, and I need to pack for my adventure.  I have so much to share with you.