I work in a homeless shelter. It is a place where people are worn down by their stories, day in, day out. They carry the load like a weight upon their shoulders, sitting at tables with hunched shoulders, rounded backs. They walk with shuffling footsteps, backs curled into their chests, their hopes gripped in hands buried deep down into their pockets, forever fearful of coming up empty handed. And every day they wait. And wait. For someone to rescue them. For someone to deliver an answer. An escape. A way out. Another direction.
When you’re down and out, living below poverty, on the wrong side of easy street, sometimes all you’ve got to make yourself visible is the story you carry to mark your passing. It is all you’ve got to tell. The only thing that’s yours and yours alone. It’s all you’ve created in a life of despair. It is all you fear losing. You don’t fear death — this is a living death. You don’t fear rock bottom. You’ve already hit it. You fear, losing your story. Without your story, where would you be?
We all have a story. Doesn’t matter which side of the street we walk, we carry our story — sometimes, it will lift us up. Sometimes, it will drag us down. We decide when and where and to whom we tell our story. How often. How loudly. How softly. We decide if it is a rant or a song. A dirge or a symphony of joy, of hope, of love.
We decide.
Once upon a time, I had a story. It was the story of being abused. Of being a bit part in another man’s creation. I thought I was his leading character. I wanted to believe I was and so in my mind, I painted my story of our relationship with me as the heroine. Me as the lead actor. I was strong and loving. I stood by my man. I could, as he told me, make him a better man.
I became so attached to my story that I couldn’t see it was killing me. Dragging me down into the pits of despair. Pushing me under. Drowning me.
I couldn’t let go of the story I’d created because… well because I feared if I let it go I would be lost. Where would I be without the story of me as a super heroine of such astonishing power I could make a mere man a better man? Who would I be without this story of love awakening in the rosy dawn of his happily-ever-after? I had waited my whole life for this fairy tale to come true, how could I awaken from it now?
Terrified of being the victim of my own creation, I told myself I was his, forever more, forever and a day. Ours was a love committed ’til death did us part. How could I claim my own story away from my one true love when I had promised to help him be the man he’d always dreamt of being? How could I claim my own power when he had already told me I had all the power I would ever need over him. I was all he ever hoped for. I didn’t need empowerment. I only needed his love.
Stuck in the diorama of the perfectly false creation of our love story, I could not face the nightmare of what he was doing to destroy me. Afraid his lies were true. Afraid his deciet was real, I closed my eyes to the possibilities on the other side of our happy ending that never was. That real story where I claimed my place in the sun for me, myself and I. I didn’t want to claim my power because I had already convinced myself, and anyone who would listen, that this love, this relationship, this perfect story with him as my knight in shining armor was all I had ever dreamt of, all I ever needed, all I ever wanted.
See, I’d always held onto the notion, buried deep within me, that I needed a man to complete my story. I needed someone else to make my dreams come true. Convinced that story where I was completed by another was the only one I could ever write, I became lost in the land of make-believe, telling my story again and again hoping for a different ending. No matter how many prince charmings came riding through, or how quickly they swept me away, the story never changed in my telling because I held onto the notion of needing their kiss to awaken me to life beyond my wildest imaginings.
We all have a story and sometimes, our stories keep us in the victim’s place because we cannot let them go..
Your story will be different than mine. But it will be the same. You will hold onto it, drag it out, hang it out to dry when times are tough or you’re feeling down. It’s the story you tell to explain why you feel how you do, why you are where you are, why life is just not fair.
It is not a story worth keeping, or even telling. But tell it we do because sometimes, like those who sit at tables in the shelter and wait for a better tomorrow, we can’t let go of the story we carried so far we’ve lost sight of where we were going and where we want to be.
I’ve created a different story today than that sad tale of an abused woman too scared to admit that what was happening to her hurt like the dickens. That story was a sad tale of two people where the best of times were only a figment of my imagination. I kept grasping for the golden ring of what wasn’t there so that I would not have to see what was right before my eyes –I was living in the worst of times. I was refusing to claim my power to write the story of my lifetime just for me, myself and I.
Sometimes we get trapped in our stories and have to give ourselves a shake and wake ourselves up, without waiting for the kiss of a prince of any name.
The secret to waking ourselves up is to step out of the characters we’ve created and ask ourselves, Is this truth or fiction? Am I the passive voyeur committed to watching the story unfold, letting it happen without my direction? Or, am I the active hero/heroine creating the story of my life as I direct each choice I make towards my goals, creating more and more of what I want in life with every passing day?
Recently, my twenty-three year-old daughter wrote,
“I want to race through the grass in bare feet,
and swim in the deepest part of the ocean,
and eat an apple right from the tree,
and fall recklessly in love,
and run with the bulls,
and find a cliff and dive!
Naked.
No safety gear or parachute to break my fall.
Straight into the great wide open.
Sailing fearlessly into life.”
Within each of us is that place where we want to leap. To soar. To scream to the high heavens, “I am alive!”
I am alive, in spite of and because of, that relationship from hell. I am alive, in spite of and because, having journeyed through the darkness, I have found the essence of me. That wild woman willing to risk it all for one delicious lick at life lived beyond the comfort zone of my fears that I will be hurt, or bruised or let down by someone, something, somehow.
There will always be someone who hurts us. Who lets us down. Who somehow doesn’t measure up to our expectations.
We will inevitably hurt someone we love. We will let someone down. We will not measure up to our expecations. We will not measure up to theirs.
That’s life.
But to live life in the shadows of our fears, that’s sad. That’s giving up before we’ve even begun.
So, accept it. He hurt you. He betrayed you. He was a rat batzard to you.
What are you going to do about it?
Let that experience trap you in fear of ever stepping out of your comfort zone again?
Hold you back from living out loud? Keep you down because you fear…. Looking stupid. Being silly. Being self-conscious. Being free?
Or, are you going to leap. To grab hold of life and shake it up. To colour outside the lines using every single crayon in your box?
Within each of us is this knowing that there is a great big amazing world out there, beyond the comfort of our fears, beyond the lines we’ve coloured in so carefully all our lives.
In coming through Pdom, I have claimed my right to live outside my comfort zone. To be the heroine of my own story. To live large. To colour outside the lines in bright bold primary colours of the rainbow, including purple. I have claimed my right to rescue me — because I know, no one else will. No one else can.
Just for today. Try it. Do something you fear. Step outside your comfort zone and leave yourself exposed to creating a new story of your life unfolding like you dreamed it always would, with you at the centre of your sun, shining bright, fearlessly creating the story of your lifetime. Colour outside the lines. Speak before you think. Act before you stop. Leap before you look. And live! It’s great to be alive when there’s not a letter of the alphabet that can stop you from flying free.
Hi Louise; I’m still struggling to know the truth of my own story – it’s like
a picture out of focus slowly getting clearer. And after reading your beautiful post, I’m wondering what was your own tipping point – was there
a specific event that gave you final clarity or was it a culmination of your
own feelings about this person (and yourself) that made you take a different, separate path. I’m sorry if you’ve addressed this already – I’m
relatively new and have read many of your posts before but would you mind sharing (possibly again) how you arrived at such a strong, unwavering sense of self? Thanks.
What an awesome post … you have such a way of describing the nuances of these relationships and the aftermath we are left to deal with. These relationships force us to confront many lies – those we are told and those we tell ourselves in order to maintain the facade of happiness and not bely the agony and chaos within.
This idea of narrative is very powerful. We are using narrative as a learning tool with young children. Rather than observations we take snapshots of learning called Learning Stories and we look in them for evidence that the child has a sense of Belonging, of Wellbeing, of Contribution and Communication and of Exploration. We look for them trying on different identities and realities in their play – the term for this is ‘developing working theories about the world’. Story is hugely powerful for adults too. I ask my students to delve deep and write Teaching Stories – about times when they flew as teachers and about times when they crawled or struggled. If students have a block I ask them to journal using handwriting and a stream of consciousness approach – they usually find whatever was sticking their development dissipates when they pay full attention to it. It’s powerful stuff.
There is also research that writing out pain helps to minimise the possibility of post traumatic stress disorder as people process their trauma and integrate it into their framework of identity and history.
You are dead right though that our stories also have the power to hold us in static positions. Many years ago I undertook the Landmark Forum, which has a lot of controversy around it. I recall a couple of things related to story though that were particularly important. One statement was
“The only thing stopping you from getting what you want is the story you tell yourself about why you can’t have it.”
Landmark also recognised that some stories were fake ‘fronts’ for other underlying issues. For example if someone was always moaning about not being able to lose weight, then there was definitely a pay off to the person for saying this all the time – being a victim absolved them of the need to take any constructive action about the weight and allowed their overweight self to be lazy and inert. However the cost to the person of carrying the unwanted weight was awesome – it might cost them self esteem, potential relationships, their overall health and ability to engage in things. The story told over and over could be anything but it is something a person consistently moans about.
I at times wondered if my moaning about my relationship was a racket or a front – it allowed me to stay a victim and in an unhappy space. I am glad though now that I understand relationships with the personality disordered are WAY more complicated than that! The idea never quite sat right with me … but at the same time I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t just leave this person who was treating me so badly 🙂 Now I have more understanding of the dynamics that were happening.
Several theories helped me to understand – betrayal trauma theory, shattered assumptions theory, the small kindness, altered states, brainwashing processes, learned helplessness, loss of identity and most of all perhaps loss of self efficacy. Self efficacy is a term that describes our sense of being able to impact and effect change on the world by exerting effort. A P or S or N relationship takes away that sense of personal agency and ability to change things and that has a huge, lasting and horrible impact.
Many thanks for this post. In the wake of recovering and trying desperately to avoid this in the future, it is also good to remember our playfulness from before we were hurt. You are a wonderful writer and your words are food to the wounded 🙂 Arohanui 🙂
I loved this article. Most 12 step recovery groups have meetings intirely devoted to listening to one member tell his story. The member attempt to tell, “what it used to be like, what happened, and what it’s like now.” It is enormously healing to do so. But, if you notice, it is a three point process, and is also helpful to the members listening.
Unfortunatly, many people get stuck in the, “What it used to be like phase, and never move on…………
It’s interesting that I woke up to this article this AM, because, I was thinking,last night, that if I allow myself to re-experience some of my most traumatic memories, I end up FEELING almost as hurt, abandoned, sad, helpless, hopeless, wounded, unlovable, as I did two years ago, when I recieved the final blow from the P I thought I loved.
If I focus on anger, I get stuck in anger….( which I had been for most of the relationship, and at least a year after it was over.) I feel I’ve worked through the anger, now and it’s time to move on………..
For me that is the hard part. I hit rock bottom in that relationship, and have sooooo much repair work to do, in all aspects of my life.
I have found that if I focus on how crazy the relationship was, I can experience gratitude. I’m grateful that it’s over, that I’m not curled up in a fetal position, feeling like my insides have been torn out, wondering where he is….when he’ll be back, and how on earth will I be able to survive another round.
Focusing on the crazyness also allows me to see my complicity. It allows me to see my denial, my desire to and belief in my ability to controll him, fix him, etc. etc. etc. ad infinitum.
I sometimes feel literally sick to my stomache when I remember the craziness.
Now, I need to work on me…..so this never, never happens again.
I wouldn’t say I’m in a joyful place, yet. But I’m in a hopeful one.
Thanks again, Loise. Great food for thought.
Hi Persephone, I’ve never really talked about ‘a moment’ when it became crystal clear — I’m still clearing my sights! But — and there is a but. Shortly after he was arrested, I made a conscious choice to heal. I had to heal — my daughters needed me, then more than ever, so that they could heal. In that choice — I had to consciously let go of any thoughts of him so that I could focus my thinking on me. And, I had to choose to keep any thoughts of me — loving, caring, nurturing, supportive. So, if a thought came through that was negative — I embraced it and let it flow free. I didn’t beat myself up with it. I didn’t hold onto it. I let it flow free.
for me, the choice of loving myself — Beauty and the Beast — was incredibly empowering. I quit judging myself for what happened — and I quit judging him. He was guilty — no doubt about it. I didn’t have to keep layering guilt on him — I had to quit thinking about him.
And — I chose to forgive. Me. Him. Anyone who had ever hurt me. To not harbour unforgiveness.
Now — forgiveness is a process — and it begins with the thought — I forgive. Everytime I wanted to repeat the story of how he’d harmed me, I simply stated — I forgive — and consciously let the story go.
Thanks for the words of encouragement. I will work on a post for next week on this very subject.
You are doing well Persephone. Make a list of all the things that are different for you today than when you first got out of the relationship. Celebrate how far you’ve come in your healing journey — and celebrate how much you’ve grown and learned and embraced the wonder of you.
Pollyannanomore — tee hee! My nickname used to be “Pollyanna”! I know exactly where you’re coming from!
I love the Learning Stories model. It is incredibly powerful — and isn’t it wonderful that you’re teaching children. If only I’d known then what I know now! 🙂
I looked into Landmark’s Forum while I was in the p relationship — he thought he could take it with me — maybe even teach it! 🙂 We both know what that was about!
The dynamics of these relationship do steal us of our sense of efficacy and impose a false structure upon our psyches. The challenge is — when out of them, we must shake the yoke of that constrictive web to survive and thrive.
Loving myself, beauty and the beast, is the key of my healing. I love myself for having gone through that relationship, and for finding the gifts beneath the trauma.
We are the stories we tell. When I tell a story of how he hurt me, or what he did that hurt me — I am hurting myself all over again and keeping myself in the victim’s role. when I reveal what I’ve learned from the pain and sorrow of that relationship, and grow and learn from it — I am creating my victor’s role.
In the end, I had to accept — I didn’t leave. Now I’m free. What do I choose to do with my freedom?
in the end, it became very simple — I could make my ‘racket’ one of being a victim of his abuse, or I could forgive and create the life of my dreams.
I am still creating — and loving — every moment of it! I am still having fun. 🙂
Hugs to you both, May your day be filled with wonder.
Nameste,
Louise
Hi Kim — Thank you. What you write is very powerful — you have learned a lot, grown enormously, and in the process, have a lot of wisdom to share.
And that’s the gift. Your wisdom can help others to learn and to heal.
There was no ‘purpose’ to going through that experience at the time. Now that I’m out of it, I have a choice — to let it kee me down, or to lift myself up with the learning — and to share my experience with others so that they can find ‘hope, strength and encouragement.’
What would it take for you to simply say, “Today, I feel joy.”
See, we have a choice every morning — I can say, “Today I feel sad.” or — “Today I feel joy.”
both sides of that equation are in my head — if I imagine myself one year from today — do I want to be saying — I feel sad. or I feel joy.
Why not start today. Start creating the habit of joy. If you can know you are not in a ‘joyful’ place — what’s stopping you from simply stating — this is the joyfullest place I am in today — I want to experience joy — and this is the colour of my joy right now! I am joyfully accepting this day… and then move into it with a heart full of the most joy you can ram into it! 🙂
You’ve come so far on this journey — you deserve to give yourself the gift of freedom from measuring where you’re at against that relationship.
Where you’re at is right here, right now — free.
Isn’t it wonderful to be able to choose how we feel without the yucky, murky waters of their deceit muddying up our thinking?
wow — I love being free. I love choosing joy every morning because…. I can! It is my choice.
Keep loving yourself for all you’re worth. You are worth every moment lived with joy.
Hugs
Louise
Loise, Yes this is the joyfullest place I am today, and I’m pretty happy with it! Thanks, and God bless.
Kim:
Make it a good day!
🙂
EB
Thanks, EB, and right back at ya!xxxx
Oh…I really like this!
Yeah, take big steps, laugh loud, and be free. Here I go armed with my purple crayon to enjoy life! Thanks…..
Louise: Thanks for your reply and encouragement – I couldn’t get online
last night or today so still wanted to respond to your kind words! I’m doing all right, not ready to really express myself tonight – reality of everyday life setting in and my own situation of staying afloat with finances and being available to other people and responsibilities – while staying optimistic and leaving room for being creative and re-inspired to do new work – and to just do it! Put together large package of work and mailed off yesterday to former customer so pray I get a nice new re-order. Time to just accept what is and deal with it the best way I can. I’m going to have to just be busy and creative in my solutions to some daunting challenges ahead but not overwhelm myself with the big picture – put it out little fire by fire.
Is nice to come back here for some juice and to give it back when I can. Thanks to everyone, and hope Lily continues to recover in a happy way – have not checked all threads to see about her progress – she’s still in my prayers and will be.