When Impatience Becomes My Friend

Same song, umpteenth verse. I sit down to write, and fight to put one word after the next. Crafting any kind of sentence is torture. (and then my inner editor harps yet again about how I write in a passive tone, with too many gerunds and when am I going to step up to the plate and write something good "blah blah blah")
The two combine and equal too many pieces of half finished writing. Story plots scattered in multiple files, 15 unfinished (read: barely started) blog posts. This is the point at which it would be easy for me to quit. To declare that I'm not a writer and walk away from it all. But I'm not going to do that.

One of my major character defects is my impatience with myself. There's little compassion or grace for this to be a journey - whether that this is healing and recovery or coming alive or finding myself and my voice as a creative. My frustration with myself, with my limits sets me up for failure every stinking time. But I don't stay there.

That same impatience that steals my words, fuels my judgements, is the same drive that keeps me moving forward. That impatience, when it's not running my life, it turns into being driven, in a positive way. It means I show up yet again to write, to put one painstaking word after the next on the page. Impatience doesn't allow those story plots and fragments to get lost in my file system. It continues to pull them up, to stare at them, to write 50 words that are complete and utter shit because that impatience it motivates me.

Impatience tells me that this is not all that there is. This is not all that I will ever be. Impatience reminds me that I'm worth fighting for.

Ugly Truths: A Rant and A Confession

I feel like the red-headed bastard child. The one that is tolerated, but no one actually bothers to converse with. The child being permitted just this once to sit at the table with the grown ups, the real women. 

I've chosen not to have children. It's not that we can't, we don't know, we've never even tried. I spent most of my relationship with my husband long-distance until 6 months before we got married. I wanted time for the two of us to live in the same country, the same time zone before we became responsible for a tiny human. Only now it's been 5 years and I'm still saying no - because of his addiction, because of mine. Because when I don't get enough sleep, I physically cannot function. Old mostly managed health problems flare to the surface under stress, sleep loss, poor eating habits - all the things that come with a newborn. Because I still can't see a doctor for a women's exam due to the flashbacks and triggers that set me back in my healing for weeks. Because I won't subject a child to his emotional neglect and abuse. Because of a million reasons all of which boil down to this - I can't be a responsible mother yet. 

I'm angry. I'm angry because I know I'm making the right choice for me, for my marriage. I know it deep in my bones that this is a not now. I'm angry because there only seems to be room for SAHMs in the church. Career moms feel excluded. Single friends feel excluded. I feel excluded, looked down on - because in the very needed push to affirm those women who have made the choice to stay home with their children there has been another message sent. One that says we will only see you when you produce a child. That declares that motherhood is the highest calling of a woman and what God has designed us to do. For those of us who either by choice or by circumstances outside of our control do not have children  - not only do we have to deal with the social and societal ramifications of that choice, we're told that you will never truly understand God's love for you, that your calling and life choices are second best, and that you can't love anyone unconditionally. 

People tell me it must be nice to have so much free time. The bold ones when they find out that I'm not a mother and I don't work ask "so what do you do all day?" I'm usually so taken aback by the accusation that I mumble something incoherent to justify why I'm not working, not parenting, not doing something with my life that you can deem as valuable before escaping the conversation. 

Here's the real answer: I invest in me and the people around me. I fight to deprogram my brain from all the lies and false teachings and brainwashing that I endured for 22 years. I fight to stay sober, to live my life un-medicated and to not just feel my feelings, but to honour them even when I've thrown up yet again from crying the tears that couldn't be cried then.

 Everybody loves to point out that I'm free now, that I've made so much progress in my healing, that I'm so strong. It takes a hell of a lot of work day in and day out to be me. To show up in a world that I do not understand. I've had to learn new cultures - first when I left home and discovered a whole new world that was radically different than what I'd be taught to fear about it. Then when I moved from Canada to the USA - and to a very conservative side of the state. I don't understand this world I find myself in. It makes no sense. I fight to hold onto who I am, when I'm constantly swimming against the current. 

I spend my days working, wrestling with trauma. Mine, others. My phone rings, chirps, beeps with messages of pain and panic from women who feel unseen, unheard. Women who are fighting to live, fighting the lies of their pasts, fighting to not medicate, to live one day at a time. 

I get it. I'm fat. I'm socially awkward. I don't have the right clothes. I loathe small talk and getting to know you ice breakers. I no longer cover my scarred arms and that makes you uncomfortable. My story of being abused in the Church, by the Church makes you look at how you parent, raising ugly hidden questions you'd rather not see. 

I go to these events that are supposedly for all women. I watch you fawn over each other's perfect outfits, make-up and hair dos. I listen through speakers that assume that we are all wives and mothers, all white conservatives. I hear about events and opportunities - none of which fit my schedule, all of which require extra money that I do not have. You spread a little Jesus over the top, to go with your matching napkins and table centrepieces. I walk away feeling unseen, unheard, and unwelcome. 

And yet, I'm showing up again, protecting that small ember of hope that this time will be different. This time it's something I'm passionate about. This time, maybe there will be women there who are willing to be real, authentic and look past all the things I'm not to see who I am. To see my heart and my passion for women to heal and no longer be bound by the chains that have been wrapped so tightly that they are choking to death. I'm summoning every last scrap of brave that I have and putting all the tools I've learned in the last 8 years into my bag to take with me because I believe that one day, one of these times I will look around that room and see you. 

I will see your heart trying not to spill out of your eyes because your husband is addicted to porn and you have done everything you can to make yourself be enough for him. All the perfect clothes, and make up, are you trying to fill that ache inside of not being enough for the man who vowed to love, honour and cherish you. I will see you, the frazzled nerves from it being a miracle that you made it there and didn't forget a child at home because your husband is deployed yet again and the only way you have to cope with the loneliness and the fear is to form your life around your children. I will see that behind all your stories about your daughter is the remembered years of interviews and inspections, invasive questions and dashed hopes as you struggled through the adoption process. I will see the loneliness that hides behind your too cheerful chattering words. Your voice begging to be heard; your heart begging to be nurtured.

I show up hoping that today is the day I can see you and realize that none of us feel enough at these events but we show up, holding onto hope that we will be seen. 

Temper Tantrums and Next Steps

Like most people I have patterns of behaviour in my life that are relatively predictable.  One of those patterns is my temper tantrums.  Every time I do something new, take another step forward or am placed in a situation that requires growth I inwardly throw a tantrum.  It goes something like this:

You can't make me.  I won't do it.  Nuh-uh this is stupid and it doesn't fit me anyway.  I'm too broken for this.  I'm further along now in my healing and I don't need this.  I don't get it.  I don't see the point.  YOU CAN'T MAKE ME!! YOU CAN'T! YOU CAN'T! YOU CAN'T!

I usually then plop down right where I am in a storm of angry tears.  See I resist because I'm afraid.  Every new step brings up all the fears.  I don't do well being pushed into things.  I sniff out unvoiced expectations like a blood hound.  Even when I know that one step comes after where I am, I still resist at first.

In my first time through the Twelve Steps, it became quickly apparent that every time we moved onto a new step my response would be "You can't make me do this."  I was blessed with leaders who were willing to stand out of the way and affirm that they weren't going to even try to make me do it.  I desperately need to know that I have a choice, one without strings attached to it.  I didn't have choices as a child and the choices that I made got me hurt even more.

The pattern is still here though.  Every time I run into something new, something that stretches me I throw myself down for a good old-fashioned tantrum.  God is so patient with me.  He's never shamed me for my tantrums.  He knows I'm scared.  He knows that I need the space to feel free to choose to take the step in front of me.

I get frustrated that this is the way that it is.  Too often I'm standing over my scared little girl-self screaming at her to grow up, stand up.  Telling her that is no way to behave and would she just do as I say because she's embarrassing me.  I'm a grown up and she doesn't get to carry on like this.  It's just not done.  I heap insults on her.  Rarely do I stoop down into her dirt and see her.  Often I grab her arm and drag her behind me, still kicking and screaming.

It doesn't work.  I always have to go back to her and make yet another amends, praying that God would please show me how to make her do what I need her to do.  It's the wrong kind of prayer though.  This time I'm asking that He would show me how to get down in the dirt with her and see her - her fears, her rage, her beauty.  She is fierce. Truth is, I need her.

Can I learn to touch her with gentleness, compassion, tenderness?  Can I learn to stop heaping judgement on her and instead wrap her in mercy?  I need to learn.  I must learn.  God help me learn.

Breathe In, Breathe Out

Breathe in

Breathe out

Breathe in

Breathe out

This seems to be what I can do today.  I can breathe.  A couple conversations over the course of my day have brought some cracks in my walls.  I risked being seen and was welcomed with love.  I am grateful.  Grateful to have women in my life who see me and love me.  It's still so new and I'm continuing to learn how to open up these deep places in myself to others.

Letting go of the judging mind feels like letting go of knowing what could hurt us, surrendering our most potent weapon for survival.  If we stop judging ourselves and everyone else so rigorously, how will we know what is true? How will we protect ourselves from harm? (p64 - Legacy of the Heart, Wayne Muller)

 I've been re-reading Muller's chapter on Judgement and Mercy this afternoon and finding hope.  I'm hearing my own voice and seeing the damage that judgement has caused me over and over.  I'm hearing my own fears of letting it go.  It has been so important to me for so very long.  I'm brought back to Steps 6 and 7.  Once again I'm being asked to be entirely ready to allow my Higher Power to remove this from my life and then humbly asking for it to be removed.

Cultivating nonharming toward ourselves is a tremendous step toward allowing healing love into our broken hearts - especially for those of us who, feeling the sting of physical or emotional pain as children, have internalized much of that judgement and violence in our souls.  We are so in need of mercy and care, and so clumsy in allowing it to be born in our own lives. (p69 - Legacy of the Heart, Wayne Muller) 

I have a place to start. A place that begins with allowing myself the space to simply breathe in and breathe out.  In this way I can release my judgement and welcome mercy with every single breath that I take.

Detaching and Protecting

I've been detaching from people all week long.  Part of it stems from having been overwhelmed with people last week.  The weekend helped to balance that out.  But I'm detaching still.  My heart is behind my walls again.  I'm protecting myself.  But why?  What the hell is going on that my instincts for self-preservation have kicked in?  

My reaction is disproportionate to the present circumstances, which of course means this isn't about the present, but is about the past.  22 years of trauma tend to make for a hell of a lot of triggers.  I know the big ones, but this one? 

What is it about re-framing how I see that is setting it all off?  Is that even the trigger?  It seems to have started there, but it could just as easily be held over from last week.  Sometimes I wish this was easier.  Right now I'd settle for a book or an idea or even some good questions.  My questions just seem to keep my brain spinning in circles right now.  

Here's what I do know.  

I'm homesick.  I miss President's Choice Blue Label products and their decadent chocolate chip cookies and deluxe white cheddar mac and cheese.  I miss my chosen family - it's been 5 1/2 long years since I last got to hug them.  It's an ache that never goes away and I don't want it to go away.  Because loving them is worth hurting every day that I'm not there doing life with them.  I'm building something incredible here - and I know this is where I'm called to be.  This space, this time has been carved out for me to have all the pieces that I need for me to do the deep healing that's necessary for me to even live day to day life.  For my marriage to even have a chance at lasting or being healthy, this is where I need to be.  Maybe one day I can have all the people that matter most to me living in the same country, or at least on the same side of the continent.  

I am grieving still for the marriage that I thought I would have.  The one where my husband isn't an intimacy anorexic.  The one where recovery was something that was there for other people.  The one where I didn't have to gear up and fight every day.  I knew marriage was hard.  I knew for us it would be horrific - it's all kinds of messy when two abuse survivors marry.  But I didn't expect it to be hell for the first 5 years.  It's better than it's ever been and I'm impatient.  I hate that he has to chose every day to be brave and connect with me.  I hate that connecting with me requires him to be brave.  I hate that he was hurt so badly, abandoned and neglected to the point that no one is trustworthy.  

I am wrestling with God, faith, belief and what that all looks like in my life.  I am still de-programming from the toxic abusive bullshit I was taught in the name of God.  It's hard, painful work.  I am still questioning how an all-powerful God allows abuse, especially that done in His name.  

I'm tired of being patient and waiting.  I'm tired of everything taking hard work.  I'm tired of continuing to pay the price for the sins of others.  

I am tired.  I don't know how to even begin to re-frame any of this.  I don't want to let go of my judgements.  yes they hurt me, they hurt people that I care about.  But letting go of one more thing?  I already feel stripped of my defences.  And yet I know this is what I'm called to do - to live with my heart wide open. This week I'm running away from that calling and that's why I'm detached.  That's why my walls are up and I can't seem to engage with my course.  This week requires an openness of my heart that I'm not ready for yet.  I'm learning - and I'm not there.  Not yet.