Approximate reading time: 14 min
Thank you for all the prayers….
Poppy is pooping again!
(It’s not quite the right colour mind you, but one must be grateful for small miracles. 😉
As I said in my post on Saturday
this poem took me almost two months to write.
Two months of continual fighting with the internal voices in my head.
As much as I would prefer not to post this one,
it was a huge turning point in my life in letting go a lot of the anger I had felt but never quite expressed as clearly as this,
so it stays
The bandaid is off….
21st March – 3rd May 2021
I don’t have many memories
from a very young age
To be honest, most of them
feel connected to rage
Growing up in a house
walking on eggshells
anxiously waiting
for the next incoming yells
In desperation
I burst into tears one night
was questioned by my youth leader
“Was I alright?”
I remember sobbing
“Sometimes I wish I could die!”
The first time I verbalised
my child’s inner cry
I’ll never forget
she simply
pulled up her sleeve
to show her wrist scars
abruptly to me
“Do you think you’re the only one,
whoever feels pain?”
Her contempt & lack of empathy
left nothing but shame
But I learnt my lesson quick
never assert
verbalising pain
only compounds the hurt
So my teenage years
I randomly cut
Perhaps someone would notice
That I didn’t feel enough?
It wasn’t very deep
I didn’t really want to die
It just brought the inner pain
to the outside
Relationships were terrible
more anxiety than I could bear
It felt impossible
to trust,
open up and share
My first long-term relationship
didn’t go well
I felt like I was stuck
in my own private hell
It’s the only time in my life
all my journaling stopped
I felt completely alone
emotionally blocked
Make no mistake
he could be adoring & kind
It was the other side of him
that baffled my mind
I wasn’t beaten
I wasn’t abused
But his emotional control
left me angry and confused
Random story about controlling ex
Let’s give him a name
I’ll call him Dex
I had a small dog
(that I completely adored)
I honestly don’t think
I could’ve loved a dog more
Dex hated my dog
(no, let me rectify that)
He LOATHED her
with every single inch of his gut
When he came to visit
she’d shiver and shake
It was seriously enough
to make anyone’s heartbreak
He once went to the kitchen
she yelped for so long
She weed the entire passage
when she was done
When I asked what had happened
he was furious with me
“I never touched that fucking dog”
He hissed angrily
If he found a single dog hair
anywhere on my bed…
(I swear the bloody man
had eyes of infrared)
He would refuse to sit
he would stand in a silent rage
I’d have to spend time
his feelings to assuage
I mean really
How can anyone hate a poor dog?
I’m genuinely asking
completely agog
Wait there is more!
My Matric farewell dance
(That should’ve frankly been
the end of the romance)
I couldn’t take him
he was already out of school
I chose to go with a friend
his jealousy fuelled
I invited him around
to see me before I left
I was so very excited
to show him my dress
When I opened the front door
it was clear he was pissed
All he simply said was:
“I can’t do this!”
So, he dumped my arse
on the night of the fucking dance
The rest of that evening
was a tearful hazy trance
I spent most of the night
a sobbing banshee in the loo
Honestly
to this day
I just cannot construe….
How he could be such a dick!
On a night like that?
Not a word of remorse
after his little coup d’état
Instead
He turned up at 11
to take me home…
(God, I’m so fucking angry,
as I write this poem)
Didn’t you just dump me
5 hours ago?
Why are you here?
I’d love to know
I remember standing
with my partner
in the photograph queue
When I looked across the hall
and suddenly saw you!
Standing in the doorway
arms folded like a thug
I simply picked up my things
and left with a shrug
I had no good memories or photos
from that night
All I remember was that horrible fight
It infuriates me no end
that I could so easily submit
Put up with bad behaviour
when someone behaves like a shit
But you see, that’s my hook
it’s always the hook for me
Because I always focus
on the good
the good I do see
I make excuses
I rationalise in my head
this might be the reason
those things were said
Dex’s Dad was an alcoholic
who sat and drank all-day
During our 2 years of dating
he never once looked my way
He’d grunt when I greeted
(he never ever used my name)
My heart broke for my boyfriend
imagine
his pain
So, I focused on his good parts
there were quite a few
I simply had no awareness
that my worldview was so askew
He was the same as my mum
A Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Behaviours learnt at home
is what we abide
My mum wasn’t all bad
she could be so loving and kind
She’d help me for hours
if I was ever in a real bind
I mean she made every dance dress
that I ever wore
She was a good person essentially
at her core
But then there were times
When she was overwhelmed with stress
Her flip side was aggressive
and quite frankly a mess
I dreaded her coming home
walking through that front door
The one thing I could count on
Was yelling for sure
As I got into therapy
I started to understand
how this toxic dynamic
is much like quicksand
One minute you are fine
everything is okay
Then suddenly your small world
is in complete disarray
The yelling, the shouting
You are always doing something wrong
A never-ending game
of emotional ping-pong
The biggest problem is
if you are a tiny child…
there is nowhere you can run
when you feel riled
Children are self-centred
(As they really should be)
In their tiny child world
it’s all about me
Your parents are your everything
your whole entire world
You couldn’t possibly think bad of them…
So, your own reasons unfurl
You make up excuses
you quietly justify
you formulate your own
personal reasons why
Why your parents are never happy
why anger is all you see…
Of course, as a child
the logical reason
… it’s me!!!
Maybe I’m too ‘this’?
Maybe I’m too ‘that’?
We become our own
little judging bureaucrats
All you ever want
is to be valued, really seen
As a young child you’ll try anything
(Even at the expense
of your own needs)
So we create that damming belief
I’m just not enough!
Which keeps us chained
in emotional handcuffs
And along with this belief
we cultivate guilt and shame
I always felt like
I was the one to blame
My grandmother
(Bless her)
whom I absolutely adored
would reach out to me
and sadly implore:
“Please don’t fight with your mum,
have patience with her”
I promised I would
Of course
I COULD be the cure!
But that wasn’t my job
I see clearly now
Self-regulation wasn’t modelled
I didn’t know how
And why should I be the one
to take responsibility?
When frankly my mum
should have been teaching me….
Random neuroscience
(that I did not know)
That so aptly explains
how the teenage mind grows
Say you did a psychological test
(just for fun!)
One thing you MUST do
(when you are done)
Always check the age
(before it is scored)
because a teenager marked as an adult
could be psychotic for sure
They are not, of course,
that’s just the teenage mind….
erratic,
irrational,
often emotionally blind
So as angry as I was
filled with so much rage
Maybe I was a pretty normal teenager
for my age?
I mean,
I knew my mum loved me
there was never any doubt
She just didn’t seem
to enjoy having me about
She even wrote in her diary
that I read when she passed…
“I’m so happy at work
but coming home it never lasts…”
One of the things
I’ve slowly been learning with Gabor
The absolute necessity
of attunement & rapport
What children need most
to develop self-esteem
adults mirroring back their emotions
to help them feel seen
Acknowledging a child’s experiences
validating their pain
celebrating their successes
helps them feel contained
(But the saddest thing
if you can’t do that for yourself
How can you possibly
do it for anyone else?)
Time and time again
I have heard Gabor ask
“When you felt hurt, scared or humiliated
who’d you go to in the past?”
Over and over again
so many people proclaim
an answer that is almost
100%
the same
“I didn’t speak to anyone
I kept it all in.”
Without basic attunement
how can you even begin…
to open up and trust
to know you’ll be heard?
That your problems matter
your feelings won’t be deferred
A perfect example,
of this at first glance
Was how I never told my parents
about that horrible dance
With my mum all my problems
somehow came back to her
her struggles
her issues were all transferred…
on to her kids
because she couldn’t cope
She poured out her frustration
her fractured hope
I used to wonder why
my parents didn’t divorce
I have no memories of them kissing
or cuddling at all
Our Sunday ritual
almost without fail
anger and frustration
would so often prevail
Until we got to church
when mum stepped out of the car
watching her morph
was a little bizarre
Into this loving, affectionate
oh-so-doting mum
The rage inside me
often left me just numb
Who is this woman that other people see?
Because this is not what she’s like
at home with me
During these times
I was cold and mean
I loathed everything
about those scenes
And then often when the church service
came to the end
Going to the prayer chapel
was her usual trend
I’d see my mum crying
as people prayed for her
My internal thoughts:
You’re such a horrible girl!
Always so conscious
I felt to blame
Which years later has
manifested into my shame
For years I carried feelings
of sexual abuse
but no genuine memories
it just all felt so obtuse
Uncomfortable feelings
with random men, I couldn’t explain
But nothing tangible
that I could ascertain
So I did hypnotherapy
in hopes, I’d unearth…
long hidden memories,
perhaps I’d find my worth?
But alas nothing came
Nothing at all
I was still taunted
by those feelings of never being sure…
For years I felt like
the biggest fucking fake
yet it seemed impossible
these feelings to shake
So many people with genuine
trauma in the world
So why was I still stuck
with this broken inner girl?
When I opened up finally
confessed this in therapy
My therapist explained it
gently to me
When you don’t grow up with healthy boundaries,
When you are not held in a safe space
You can be left with these feelings
of being emotionally displaced
This impinging of emotional boundaries
from such a young age
is all that is needed to set the stage:
You can be left feeling violated
although never physically touched
(Honestly, for years
I thought his hypothesis
was a BIT much.)
I was stuck in my fears
there truly HAD to be more
(Of this I was at least
49 % sure?)
Surely something bigger
was needed to explain
These pervasive feelings
of overwhelming shame
To explain all my struggles
with simply being me
To validate my reasons
for all my anxiety
Last year in desperation
late one night
exhausted and frustrated
with my internal plight….
Hopeless and lost
could things get any worse?
I sent a desperate plea
out into the universe,
“Will I ever be enough?”
Was my random google search
Perhaps someone had the answer
somewhere on this fucking earth?
Low and behold
the universe heard my plea
And sent information
about a book to me
‘Will I ever be good enough?’
written by Karyl Mc Bride.
3 am I started reading
I just cried and cried…..
Example after example
of women just like me
who struggle so much
their own value to see
It was the first ‘cog’
in my acceptance wheel
That started to allow me
to validate what I feel
It helped me to stop
minimizing my own pain
to stand up and own
my own feelings of shame
Continually judging myself
looking for a ‘real’ excuse
Really and truly
wasn’t doing me much use
But my parents are both dead
their part is done
What is still stopping me
from moving on?
It was soon after this
that I started to explore
the many parts of me
that are sometimes so raw
I realized that if I truly
wanted to feel seen
then I’d have to learn
to love the-all of me
So, I started to write
I started to paint
in hopes that I could better acquaint
Myself with me…..
every single part
the good
the bad
the ugly
all that’s in my heart
My second ‘cog
in my acceptance wheel
All that Compassionate Inquiry
would start to reveal
Studying with Gabor Mate
The blinkers came off
on how I downplay my feelings
deny their source
As I learn about emotional trauma
and how it occurs
How it could explain why my childhood
was such a foggy blur
And how it’s filled me with
for all the people I see
Hundreds and millions
just like me
Struggling so much
with their own pain
Desperately seeking
to lessen their own shame….
for myself
as I make peace with my past
Understanding childhood trauma
and how the effects can last
How repeated emotional trauma
from a young age…
can actually cause structural
changes to the brain
An awareness that’s why
I struggle so to self-regulate,
Sigh of relief
I’m not such a fake
for my defence mechanisms
which are so ingrained
Gratitude that becoming aware of them
lessons the shame
Recognition that
patience
is what I must feed…
and that finding my words
is all I really need….
