I wrote the following nine months after the p formerly in my life was arrested. I was asked on another thread, was there a moment you ‘knew’? Knew that you would be okay. Knew it was okay to let him go.
Yes and no. In those first heady days of freedom, every moment was filled with knowing I was okay. And every moment was filled with the fear I would never get through the pain to find the light of love within me. I had to make a choice. Had to decide — what do I want more of. Lies and deciet. Truth and harmony.
I wanted to share this piece with you because it speaks to the power of one word to release us from fearing life without them so that we can surrender and fall in love with life within us.
As night settled into its soggy wet blanket, the pooch and I went for a walk. The rain beat a sibilant hiss upon the shiny black road, the streetlights glowed iridescently, casting golden orbs of light, punctuating holes into the dark shadows of the night. I was wrapped in the misty blanket of a rainy evening, my skin moistened by the water-laden air, my breath a frosty vapor leading me silently forward. The pooch pranced happily by my side, her tail a constant metronome displaying the tempo of her happiness as we journeyed forth into the dark.
It was a mystical, magical evening. A night for quiet thoughts that drifted through my mind as effortlessly as the raindrops falling one-by-one from the pearl clad branches all around me.
I thought of love found and love lost and moving on. Of new relationships and old. New found love and love that never fulfills its promise of growing old beside me. Of promises made and promises broken. Journeys taken and voyages lost because the voyageur could not see by the light of the moon and lost his way among the stars. And I thought of my brother to whom I had never said good-bye and the P to whom good-bye was just another word for the door is always open until I say so.
For such a little word, good-bye carries a mighty wallop.
Good-bye can mean, see you in a while, or see you in a year. It can carry us into the night on the hope of tomorrow or it can sweep all hope away as we look back and see there will never be a next time, another day, or a new tomorrow.
For those who have journeyed into the valley of the S or P or N, good-bye is a word fraught with the fear that once spoken it can never be returned. It lays frozen upon our tongues, our minds numb in the fear it might slide out on a breath of air and change our lives forever. Terrified we might slip, we pack our hopes and dreams into that one little word and stuff our pride and dignity into the cracks of our pain seeping in beneath the door held fast against our fear that he will leave before tomorrow ever dawns. And all the while, we search for the perfect last words that will either make it all right or make him hear us, just this once, before he slithers off into the dark from whence he came.
And as we flounder in the depths of empty words and promises, we pray that there will never be a time to say good-bye but rather, welcome back, I’ve missed you. Spiraling into the darkness of the painfully long good-bye they began when they said, hello, we silently hold onto the word that will set us free and stumble through the words of begging them to please not say it.
But in the land of lies, the door we thought we held so firmly closed is always open, no matter how hard we push against it. Eventually, when we have worn ourselves out upon the welcome mat of our desire to be all they will ever need, we must face the reality that we will never have the chance to say our fond farewells. They have already left. Gone in search of new tomorrows. Of some other happily ever after which we never saw coming.
In their passing, we are left holding the shreds of our battered hearts in the basket of our dreams, frozen in time. Alone, forlorn, we whisper, good-bye, into the empty space that lays before us, hoping they will hear the soft promise of our hopes they will find out there, that which they could never find in us. We peer into the darkness of the lengthening shadows, our tears puddling around our feet, forming a river into which we fall, in fear of drowning as we cry out for one last chance to say good-bye.
Good-bye. It’s such a little word but it keeps us stuck on the dream of wanting them back so that we can have the last word that will close forever the door to our hearts they so easily open.
In the end, the best good-bye is the quiet hello we whisper within our hearts as we pick at the scab of our wounds that never seem to heal as long as they keep walking through the door to our dreams. Good-bye lies. Hello truth. Welcome back to me.
In our good-byes that are never spoken we will never find the key that will unlock the secret door to their understanding. It resides somewhere in the dark, beyond the edges of the light. But, beneath the scabby, jagged-edge scar of our disbelief, new skin is forming with our welcome home. If we leave it alone long enough to heal from the inside out, we will understand that he could never hear our good-bye. He could never cherish our hearts because he was always and forever, a figment of our imaginations. He was never true.
In our awakening to the light of a new tomorrow without him we discover, it was only the darkness of being without him we feared. And without him, we have nothing to fear.
In seeing the gift of his departure in the light of a new day dawning, we lift our heads and see, the sun is shining. As it beckons, we step into the light of finally knowing, the only way to say good- bye to what never was, is to accept it never will be.
Lostnsad – I also did crazy things to ‘get even’ with my X S, I am embarrassed to this day, but I was in flight or fight mode, it was my home and I wasnt going to flee and he continued to take advantage of me, disrespect me and my home. I will never understand how he could stay here and say he loved me, the way I was treated him at the end. I am sure I appeared like the crazy one, he was the smart one working with his brain, I was working on emotions turned inside out and upside down. I could go on and on about the insanity, but I will spare all here the drama. LostnSad you have to stop checking his messages , knowing what he is up to etc. you have all the proof you need. NO Contact~~!!!
Yes, lostandfound, you can climb under the covers. Just take your feelings with you. They’re your friends.
I’m very philosophical. Partly it’s my nature; partly it’s where I am now. So I can talk to you like some white-haired auntie talking across a kind of chasm of time and living. But what I’m telling you is just to help you get a grip on the framework on what’s happening to you. There are a lot of people here who are going to be much more helpful in the here and now.
But I can tell you one practical thing related to what you just wrote. Five months is not long enough to get back to where you were before this started. (Actually you’re never going back there, because you’re doing some major evolutionary work right now. But let’s say that’s you’re goal, because it’s the best you can imagine right now.) In five months, if you’re really focused on getting well, you’re going to be in the angry phase and learning how to be a warrior in your own life. You’re going to be dangerous to anyone who crosses you, and learning how to speak your mind in ways that would have horrified you in the past.
So what I’m telling you is that you might need to consider that in your plans. You’re not necessarily going to be the helpful, agreeable, overworking, let-me-do-it-for-you and let-me-take responsibility-for-your-problems sweetheart that you used to be. If that affect your job — like if you were in some helping profession, customer service or consulting work — it might be a good time to take a hiatus, write a book about everything wrong in your industry, or get a disagnosis of PSTD and get on some kind of subsidy and get used to a downscaled lifestyle until you get through this. In other words, don’t underestimate the importance of what you’re going through.
A lot of us use the phoenix as a metaphor. We’re rising from the ashes of our lives and rediscovering who we are. Right now, you’re kind of in the ashes, thinking that the destruction is the most important thing. Pretty soon, you’re going to realize that the most important thing is what’s left. The part of you that doesn’t burn. That’s when things get interesting.
If you’re thinking about writing, write. I wrote all the way through my recovery. I highly recommend it, as do a lot of people here if you’re inclined that way. I didn’t call it journaling at the time, because most of what I wrote was (mostly unsent) letters to my ex, trying to work through it all. But journaling is what it was. It’s amazingly helpful to get this stuff out of your head, and some of us do write and publish books.
As far as your next to last paragraph, that’s evidence of another thing I believe. That we already know everything we need to know. We just have to undo some bad training, bad thinking, before we really grok it and can use it in our lives.
Considering where you are right now, you sound great. Really. You’re doing fine.
Kathy
Pollyannanomore,
Thank you I kinda needed that! well actually I needed that a whole lot!
Lostnsad and everyone else,
I let myself get out of control, Do and say things i never thought i’d do or say…its the crazymaking. It really does make me feel bad. On top of that i got so tangled up in his web that i distroyed my own character. Hopefully I won’t let it get that bad again, I’ll just get away from it.
Gotta get ready for an appointment! bye for now!
Kathleen…
Your poem sparked something in me… I haven’t written in such a long time not since high school… I just wrote this thinking of him and how he made me feel…
Stolen…
Silky almond skin
Warm inviting eyes
Luscious sensual lips
Arms wrapped around me
Filling me with love
Fingers gliding
Longing evoked
Tongue sliding
Releasing me
Words whispered
Promises made
Wishes spoken
Falling into bliss
Trusting so completely
Ignoring the inner whispers
Evil wrapping around my soul
Invading my essence
Ripping apart the fibers of my being
Realization of lost control
Awareness of guilt
Awakening of pain
Broken
Lost
Weak
Left drained
Tossed aside
Essence stolen
The funny (or maybe not so funny…) thing is that I have always been intrigued by vampires… I love the stories and I have read just about every novel ever written (and those that think Ann Rice is great — her stories really aren’t when you read some others such as Brian Lumley). But I digress… My point is I always thought they were myths…little did I know that they were real; they just don’t suck blood in order to thrive… they crave your soul and your utter destruction….
skylar, thank you for your kind and always stimulating words.
I didn’t mean to say that we’re defined by the people who harm us. We’re defined by what we think about ourselves. And as far as what other people see in us, that’s their stuff. We can change what we think about ourselves (that’s what this recovery is all about). As far as other people’s internal lenses and projections, those are the basis of what we didn’t cause and can’t fix.
We just have choices about what we involve ourselves with, as far as other people’s projections go. The telling part of that poem — for me — was the part about courage. I am not my history. Sorting it out is just one of the challenges of my life. It’s how I’m handling that challenge and the meaning I assign to it that are the interesting things about me. This is what I want people to see. Because I want to be with people who live with that kind of internal vocabulary.
That guy’s fascination with hatred was just icky. (My very sophisticated term for the feeling of “get your ass out of here, now.”) He didn’t define me. Nor did my father, though I kind of regressed momentarily into self-pity when faced by another self-indulgent user.
I’m interested in some of your book recommendations, and some of the terminology you use. Mimetic something? I have to look that up, and learn what you are describing.
Thanks for all you write.
Kathy
Kathleen,
In a way we are our history and the lenses through which we choose to see our history. The evil we have encountered is a vaccination against other evil. It creates a sort of immunity but it leaves us changed.
I began thinking about Joseph Campbell and this series on the transformative powers of myths. I had the entire series and watched it on PBS years ago. The things he discussed resonated with the kinds of things that you and I have experienced with the P’s. Subconsciously, I realized that there was a connection between these experiences and mythology. So I started googling and learning about Joseph Campbell. That lead me into another direction:
I found “Violence and the Sacred.” And I found another called “The myth of irrationality”
Freudian psychology touches on mythology but doesn’t quite hit the mark. There are better models for understanding and these include the study of memetics.
I’m out the door right now but I’ll try to get back on this topic later.
(hug)
Ok, I’m back from lunch.
Kathleen,
You and I could talk about this forever and a day. There’s soooo much to uncover and discuss.
Most of my reading has been in trying to understand the monster rather than myself. I don’t think I can begin to understand my part in this experience without first understanding what the monster is and why he came to be.
As I continue to read to learn about the monster, I come across interesting correlations in mythology, philosophy, art, religion, theatre, psychology, sociology. It all seems to connect somewhere at the point where the infant brain begins to develop its identity in relation to the society it is raised in. In other words, the point where genetics interacts with the environment to create the human personality.
The book Violence and the Sacred seems to take these connections and tries to make sense of it. It is really hard to understand, though, partly because of the way the french author uses language, it doesn’t flow with the way I think.
Here is a good “review” on it:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_n36_v113/ai_18962919/
Here is a large portion of the book, in google books:
http://books.google.com/books?id=z0vO6ctw3E4C&dq=violence+and+the+sacred&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=NTPiSpHPIY6sswPmjcWzAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBcQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=&f=false
“The myth of irrationality” is a much easier, more “fun” book to read.
I, sometimes, feel so glad that he is out of my life.. I am now available to go forward in a true relationship.. even though I have a fear that no one is true.. that they are all out to use me in some way and on some level.. then I feel sad and alone and miss the constant contact .. the over contact of his calls and texts and interest in me.. when he was really only interested in himself and his control of me… I will never let this kind of a con into my life on any level ever again.. I will see clearly and act on my instincts. I will know that what I feel and see is the truth.. I will never doubt me again.
skylar,
I read the article. I probably won’t read the book. The older I get, the more grateful I am that my life was shaped more by estrogen than testosterone. The whole rationale strikes me as very male, and a valiant effort to explain the issue of violence. I have compassion for the inclination, but it doesn’t resonate with me.
Here’s what I find more useful. There was a book called “The Great Cosmic Mother” that was written about 30 years ago by a couple of Scandinavian feminist archeologists. If you can get your hands on it (and I think there are used copies floating around), I think you’d enjoy it.
These two women present the proposition that, before organized religions, there were cultures that were very integrated in terms of family-community and sprituality-behavioral standards. They were essentially run by women, but not in the heirarchical structure that is the familiar power structure today, but more according to principles that honored life and gave women status as life-givers.
Their theory is that that agriculture made these tribal cultures successful and they started to accumulate enough wealth to carry it over from one year to the next. And men were given the task to protect the wealth from less fortunate or predatory enemies. A guardian class evolved which gradually promoted the virtues of control, hierarchical power, and individual wealth.
There were several results from this. One of the creation of an underclass of expendable, replaceable labor for wealth creation and fighting wars. Another was a shift in way spirituality was practiced and viewed.
Where people were previously connected to their own source of God, the new order placed priests as intermediaries between people and God. This was important as a control mechanism, because people with private understanding and connection were free. When the priests were able to create the rules of access to grace or heaven, people were separated from their sense of belonging and entitlement. In particular, they created a lot of rules around sexual behavior, making women subservient to men and outlawing activity outside of marriage and procreation, in order to create psychological blocks against intimacy and the type of orgasmic spiritual openings that were the simplest way for anyone to get in touch with their private spirituality.
I’m giving you a very condensed version of a long and very interesting book. And though there is no way of knowing if any of this is accurate (though we do have modern-day knowledge of the toxic impact of Western culture on the emotional health and spiritual impulses of indigenous cultures), I find the whole idea really interesting.
Particularly since it provides an elegant explanation of what Jung would call the dark side of our characters, the repressed, denied and hidden aspects. This power-based reorganization of human culture would have created immediate damage to the psyche of the people who lost their entitlement to self-determination and fruits of their own labor, when they became defined as “human fodder” to be used in accumulation of power or wealth. And equivalent damage to the psyche of the masters who would have had to block any real awareness or compassionate responsibility for the life conditions of the people they were using.
And so we have the beginning of sociopathy as a cultural phenomenon. I should note here that, as an ex-Catholic turned sort-of-Buddhist carrying of a private awareness of God inside of me, I have an idea of what a difference that makes when it comes to acquiescing to cultural rules designed to keep me in my place. It was a long haul for me to get here, and I was angry for many years, though today I just roll my eyes. But I still get angry at the waste of human potential engendered by cultural formulas designed to convince people that suffering and submission will be rewarded by some record-keeping boss in the sky.
Which is why, not surprisingly, my life’s work is really about helping people discover who they really are.
But to get back to the story, which is almost finished. Many years after reading this book, I discovered two other essential resources. One is the books of Stephen M. Johnson, a psychologist who synthesizes childhood emotional development, trauma processing theory, and the personality disorders. He offers ideas about how the timing and nature of early traumas cause blocked development of human capacities, and overdevelopment of others. His theories exactly match my knowledge of the narcissists, sociopaths and certain addicts I’ve known. And I should add that the book “Strategy of the Dolphin” does a very good job of turning some of these ideas into practical life philosophy.
But the thing that most recently provided a huge leap forward to my thinking is the study of non-violent communication. Developed by psychologist Marshall Rosenberg, NVC is an mind-bending discipline of communicating with compassion. You wouldn’t think that would be so hard, until you realize that these cultural trainings have replaced our natural compassion, even toward ourselves, with punitive rules. So to do this, we have to become compassionate toward ourselves.
Rosenberg, in one of his CDs, calls NVC a revolutionary method. This is because listening and talking with compassion must be done from a position of openness a willingness to know and understand other people’s needs, as well as our own. But we are not responsible for anyone’s feelings and needs, but our own. That is a fairly evolved perspective. And he talks about earlier states, when we feel responsible for other people’s feelings, as emotional slavery. We have to move beyond emotional slavery to interact with anything like true compassion.
All of this corresponds with therapeutic approaches to treat PSTD and other trauma related issues. Ultimately, we must process through the trauma, until the influence of the outside thing is resolved as an event that happened to us, but is not us, and we recover our own knowledge of our own deep integrity (wholeness) and our power over our lives.
All of this sounds so theoretical until we look around us at the hatred, resentment, feelings of powerless and victimization, truncation of our ability to feel connection with other people or the world, the acting out of repressed feelings, the big extravagant culture dramas built around fear, security, loneliness and alienation, our belief in inherent evil in people, etc.
These are my big influences today, though I profited from a lot of books during my healing process after the sociopath. Someday we should probably start a thread here just for book recommendations and reviews. What was helpful, and maybe at what point in our process.
As you can probably gather from this long (sorry!) post, I think the enemy is us. Yes, there are broken people out there who have completely blocked capacity for bonding and anything like compassion. But those of us who deny or are unaware of our own power over our lives and the world around us are existing in the other side of that pathology.
The stories of the victims are heart-rending, but the big question is why are we victims? What is it in us that makes us value security over freedom? This is not simple, either the question or the many factors involved in answering it. We need something like order in our lives simply to survive. But that does not mean that we have to give our souls away to get it.
I think your Frenchman and I are walking the same territory, if not the same path. The culture has to change, because we are consuming ourselves. But I don’t view violence as the cause, but rather an immature understanding of what is good over the long term. My ex once sent me a quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald, something like “The quest for dignity is the basis of all human endeavors.” That seems like a good place to start.