Be the change you want to see.

You'd think, with how good my life is now, that it'd be easy to pretend.

Pretend WHAT? says the acidic voice in the back of my head...
Pretend that you were happy? Pretend that you felt loved? Pretend that you ever felt safe?

"Yeah," I shoot back at the Nasty. "Pretend that I had a 'happy childhood.'"

I'm an optimist now. It feels as though I have always been an optimist, and perhaps I have. I'm not SURE, though.

From a very early age, I remember... melancholy, and a sense of disconnect from the world around me. I remember deep suffering, and an almost equally sharp despair. I remember a fierce yearning to BELONG somewhere, or to someone, as I never did at home. Convinced that would never happen, I still determined I would somehow learn to be happy. I knew that people were happy, somewhere (though not my family, except in brief glimpses.)

Wasn't it Tolstoy who said that unhappy families were all different and happy ones were all the same? I disagree. I've met so many people from unhappy families, and we all have so much in common... It feels like Tolstoy had it backwards. The folks I know who had happy childhoods seem to me like visitors from another planet.

My own childhood feels as though someone else experienced it. It feels like a story I was told long ago that no longer apples to me, so I have mostly forgotten it.

It's no longer relevant to my current life, my childhood, but it's still true. And it's still a part of my story.
*thinking*

Joy staining backwards. That's how Lucy Maud Montgomery defined it... In her book The Blue Castle, the main character has a miserable life under the thumb of her family and the small minded society of the small Canadian town she lives in. Valancy has a brush with death, determines to make a change for herself in the short time she believes remains to her, and finds happiness for the first time in her life. Her joy in her new life with her new husband is so vivid and rich that she finds even her memories of the miserable grey childhood of neglect, control, and verbal abuse, seem happier as she looks back on them. Like looking on the past with rose colored glasses, her past did not change, but her present joy gives her a new perspective on the horrible events and the grim family that were all that she knew for most of her life.

Sometimes, nowadays, it does seem as though my life has only been contented, full of love, happy, and with my needs met. It's because the contrast between then and now, makes THEN seem completely unreal and distant. Now is what's real. This hilltop I live on now, these woods I ramble through with those I love and those who challenge me and make me laugh. I don't delude myself anymore that I was truly happy, back then. I was lonely, miserable, heartsick, and friendless.

But I am none of those things anymore. Even when I am completely solitary, I am none of those things anymore.

I am standing beneath the same moon as my childhood self, and it is a comfort to me... a comfort that I still have a childlike sense of connection to the universe, to the impersonal unending beauty of nature and the cosmos. I have joy, I have courage, I have friends and family and beloved community. I have plans and goals that draw me on to the next chapter, the next goal, the next adventure.

I know that this moment is just a pause to rest and refresh myself. Anticipating the next big adventure, like my heroine in The Blue Castle, doesn't mean I've forgotten my past, or am in denial of what life was like, then.

Now is different. These hiking boots don't come with a rear-view mirror. They do help me carry my permanent sense of wonder, along with all the other tools I now possess. Life is amazing, NOW.

And Now? That's where my focus is.




This has been my entry for therealljidol, week 11. The prompt was "recency bias."

I'm enjoying writing within this community very much. If you enjoyed this post, or got something out of it, please consider voting for me so I can continue to write with these amazing and supportive people. The polls are available HERE , and I'm returning back in Tribe One.

Overdid it at 5Rhythms tonight. Tried to stretch out before I'd properly warmed up and I think I strained my left hamstring...

 

the upside was, I was kind and gentle to it all night, and while I was kind and gentle to IT,I was also trying counter-stretches (quads and hip flexors) to ease the muscles' tightness, AND I found that I could *finally* stretch that little muscle on the inner thigh of my surgery leg... the one that spasmed so tight that I bruised my flesh badly trying to self-massage and make it relax... only then I still had to spend 30 minutes the day after, with my massage therapist and hyperventilating through the pain while he calmed the cramp.

 

that muscle actually stretched tonight!

 

but I still over did it. and now my back, butt, hamstring and knee are ALL tender.

 

ow. two steps forward, one step back... foxtrot? tango?
anyway.
time for bed. had one delightful partnered dance, but mostly danced alone tonight, and liked it.

 

ow.
I'll be better in the morning.

My ACoA meeting went great tonight. It was good to be back.

The "shares" went deep, scary, trusting places. One person shared that her sisters told her, six months ago, that her nickname in the family was "Doormat". WTF? How could they call her that, how could they tell her? But maybe it's for the best thatshe know now. Seems she's slowly transforming herself...

In spite of deep, scary places, it was inspirational & uplifting to be there. I keep realizing how incredibly blessed & lucky I have been on my journey toward wholeness and growth & love & honesty & compassion. And uplift, my own, and the pay-it-forward kind I try to do for others.

Blessed & lucky. I made connections tonight. I was seen, I was heard, and I walked out lighter than I walked in.

And I offer this: if you want to go to a local ACoA/Dysfunctional Families meeting and you live <two hours drive from me? I will drive to go with you. Because then we are no longer alone with the crazy inside our heads and habits. And together we can achieve something we could not do alone.

Am currently developing a theory wrt pain (or at the least discomfort) and me learning something new.

The educational term is Cognitive Disequilibrium. That means your brain gets all shaken up when you encounter a new concept or paradigm that you didn't have room for in your prior worldview, and so you need to move everything around a bit to make room for the new (assuming true) thing you have learned or are learning. It's a bit like that trick to suitcase packing, where an already-full suitcase (or especially duffel) can be made to accommodate more stuff by jouncing it on the floor a little, so the existing stuff settles down, packed tighter, and there is then a bit of room at the top of your bag to add something else.
And of course the Extreme Version of Cognitive Disequilibrium would be, the Unpack-Everything-Add-the-New-Thing,-Repack-everything-Up-Again mode of repacking.

I think I've been doing some of that Extreme Version, myself, along with some of the more convenient version... hmmm.

Many people aren't, it seems, even willing to jounce their duffel-o-self a bit to make room for the more-stuff, or to reprioritize their packing lists and omit items that are less useful on further examination. Many people are probably pretty content to pack like they have always packed, assuming they have what they need to meet their needs for the next trip or emergency...

But I'm finding that I want and need some very different things now. When I used to pack my Travelling Bag and my Emergency Bag, I used to include a lot of things my Mom and Dad always included. For example, mom likes to have a shower cap. Dad had diabetes meds. I also used to overpack... "What if I want to wear THAT? and _that_?" I might say. So I would schlep a lot of extra stuff around with me, on the off chance that I or someone else would want or need that particular stuff.

You know what though? I can count on the fingers of ONE HAND the times that someone wanted one of those extra things I packed. Including me wanting to wear THAT or _that_... Life is a lot easier when I decide to pack light, when I rewrite the old packing lists.

Now rethinking The Way We've Always Done Things, well, that's a bit of work. And it's not always comfortable, either. You have to ask Why Have We Always packed the shower cap, and since I'm not diabetic and Dad's dead now, Why are diabetes meds still on the Packing List? Also, realizing, that Later When I Come Home I can Wear THAT, or _that_, and I sure don't need that, which is My Personal Unnecessary Thing I Always Have Brought On Trips, and admit to being embarrassed about the fact that you are only just now admitting that you don't need it, and whyever did it take so long to Figure That Out?

Translate that to my Physical realm and add the element of Will.
Yes, you have to hurt yourself a little, every day, to avoid Harm. That means, work the muscle that's cramping, to the point of discomfort. Bend and stretch even when the joints are creaking and the other muscles complain. You wanna be strong? Re-examine how much damn time you're spending killing time on the Internet and figure out how to make a comfortable space to do your back PT exercises in the house. And then do some yoga or bellydance, and then, seriously, you can use your Power of teh Internets to GO FIND A CLASS because you know that is how you learn best, when forced to be accountable to other people in a class (and particularly to be accountable to the Teacher, if I respect him/her...)

it is gonna hurt, at least a little, to climb back up this rock. And I won't climb in the same way as I did when I was 25 and took for granted that rock climbing was easy. It's also a totally different rock... the river's washed me downstream a significant bit. *grin* (Yes, I like metaphors and parenthetical statements, why do you ask?) I've got some new tools and, as mentioned above, have lightened my carry-load considerably; my muscles are weaker than they once were, but I know that with steady effort I can make them and me, stronger. (Literal AND figurative, here.)

Emotional Disequilibrium
Thing about Emotional Disequilibrium is that you cannot tolerate very much of it and still learn effectively (witness kids' grades dropping with parents fighting, bullying in the classroom, illness of whatever kind, etc etc etc.) However, often the process of Cognitive Disequilibrium PRODUCES Emotional Disequilibrium ... (duh) ... being uncomfortable while having to learn something new, having to admit that You Don't Know Everything, that you can be Surprised, you can be Unprepared... *gasp* quelle horror! in our culture it is often preferable to lie about what you know/don't know than to admit any kind of ignorance and willingness to be educated... We often will take hit points IN our ignorance Because we are Unwilling to admit to our ignorance... (witness most folks initial sexual experiences... and oh yeah my own *regret*)

But Emotional Disequilibrium can, when managed carefully, be the source of Learning, also. It's not MetaCognition, to think about your feelings and whence they came and what your triggers and patterns are, but it's damn effective even if I don't have a nice jargony name for it... I've been referring to it as Pathwork, healing work, Family of Origin work, Clutter-clearing, Reconstruction, and Shadow work. There's probably as many names as there are people doing the Work.

Many call it Recovery. For me, Reconstruction is a better metaphor.

ReDesigning. ReDrafting. ReWriting. Keep feeding yourself and caring for your own needs and making sure you are warm and dry and loved... as much as is possible in a chaotic world, and that you help others to be fed and warm and dry and loved... and you can probably lighten YOUR load, and help others lighten THEIRS.

Feeling useful and loved and secure in the world, yeah, that's the path to recovery/reconstruction/health.

The Path to Peace.