Invisible

I received some very nice comments and emails from you guys over the past few days. While I was responding to one of those emails this morning I began to think about why I waited 2 whole days before even attempting to say thank-you. Then I tried to explain it to the person to whom I was writing. But before getting into too much detail with her I decided that this blog was a good place for me to talk about it. It seems that I have some good friends reading this and I want you all to understand a little bit more about me. Trust me when I say that this isn't a narcissistic thing that I'm doing here. In many ways, it's the complete opposite. And it's something that I've needed to tell you all for as long as I've known each and every one of you, but that I never can quite find the words to say.

I don't do well with compliments, positive attention or anyone going out of their way for me. If you are my friend, you probably know this already. If you offer to come see me because I'm having a bad go of things, I may not even acknowledge your extremely kind offer. Or, if I do, I will politely thank you and then not mention it again. I most certainly won't let you go out of your way for me. I can barely even comprehend the idea of you doing such a thing. Not because I don't believe that you care, but because I am incapable of LETTING you care for ME.

I try really hard to not be this way. Had I recognized this major issue in myself years ago I could have saved myself the decade or so of totally unguided therapy sessions and focused on this very real problem. The problem that is most likely at the root of all my other problems. I am sad so often because I feel isolated from the world, like I'm standing behind a thick glass wall watching the world pass by me on the other side. But the truth is, I put the glass wall up to begin with. I was taught to put it up actually, but see, part of my problem is that I also have a hard time blaming others for my short comings- even when they deserve a share of the blame. And it all goes back to this core issue....

I don't know why I'm experiencing this domino-like effect of epiphanies right now, but I am. After getting out the post that I wrote on Friday it was as if I had cleared off a space in my closet so now I'm able to get to the box behind it. And here's what's in that box: The isolation that I experienced growing up? It ran much deeper than I talked about.

I told you how my step mom cut off my ties with my father, my real mother and even my brother for periods of time. I also talked about how she would go for months without speaking a word to me, only communicating through post-it notes left on my bedroom door. What I didn't talk about were the moments when she would be speaking to me. While the months of not hearing her direct a word in my direction were incredibly painful, often times the words that she would speak to me during those brief respites were much worse than any silence. I see now, as an adult, that she was further isolating me from the world even when she was speaking to me. I don't know if it was her plan, to ruin me as an adult as well, or if she was just a selfish and manipulative bitch who thought only of herself and only in the moment. Probably the latter is true.

What I learned from my step mom is that any kind of attention- especially positive attention- was very very bad. If I brought home a good report card and my father praised me, my step mom would invariably make a snide remark and then not talk to me for the next week. If it was my birthday and my brother and father would sing "Happy Birthday" to me, my step mom would hastily cut me a piece of birthday cake, practically throw it down on the plate, slap the plate on the table in front of me and then stalk out of the room. At some point in the day she would make a point of saying something incredibly rude or hurtful to me and remind me that, "Just because it's your birthday doesn't mean that you are the princess today!"

That was how she reacted to good things in my life or anything that brought praise and attention my way. If I was going through something difficult, such as the loss of a boyfriend or friend, she would make a point of telling me how unfair life was and that I better toughen up if I'm ever going to survive. She always managed to point out how these people never really cared about me anyways so I should have seen it coming. Wow, what an idiot I was, according to her. So, tears got me nothing in the way of sympathy either. She did seem to relish those moments that I was in pain though. It was her opportunity to tell me, "I told you so." But, should my brother or father try to give me any type of sympathy then I was back in the doghouse again. She just couldn't stand anyone directing any kind of attention on to me at all. This is why she worked so hard to make me invisible.

And this is why, over time, I tried to do the same. I was conditioned to believe that my emotional needs would be met with punishment. It's funny because, about the time that I "figured this out" (like a fucking pavlovian dog!) I began to put up the barriers. It's the same time (I can now see in hindsight) that my mother said I "turned cold" and that my close friendships began to slip away. From that point on I no longer had best friends (only surface friendships), yet I couldn't understand why. I haven't been able to figure out "WHY" up until recently. And now that I know why, I don't know how to repair it.

I just wrote that whole thing without tearing up, yet as I typed the words, "I don't know how to repair it" I suddenly feel weak and vulnerable and I want to cry. I guess because the act of repairing or reversing that type of conditioning means going against everything that the conditioning accomplished. And, while I hate what the conditioning has done to me and made me, I am even more terrified of leaving the safety of the isolation that it's created for me. Or that I've created for me. I'm using a lot of technical terms here to express my emotions which is probably another way of "buffering" my true feelings- of leaving up that glass barrier between me and you. It's the, "I'm in pain but I'm going to turn it into a "concept" that people experience and not what I'm actually going through." Making it an idea rather than my personal reality.

That's all that I can do for today. I'm going to sit on this and see what it means and maybe write more when I have more to say. I can see that I'm closing up and I don't want to do that. I think that I'm feeling all of this right now because I'm "cleaning house" before our son gets here. He deserves better than I got and I need to do some repairs before he arrives. And I guess that I deserve the repairs as well.

Comments

[IrishGoddess]

Hey, you. You are growing SO much. This is tough stuff, and you are doing it. You are right, Baby X deserves better than you got, and so do you. But you are getting there! I'm very proud of you... you say you don't know how to repair it, but I think you are beginning to repair right now, by naming, by prodding ever so slightly, by looking at it. You will get there!