Moments of Understanding and Sadness
Sometimes I get a moment of understanding of thing in totality. Omniscent. Not “moving towards” or “moving against.” I get a moment where I’m not spinning a story to make an impact. A moment where I just see what I’m working with. I’m not thinking. Not judging. Not trying to make a silk purse out of a sows ear. Not trying to villify anyone. Not trying to martyr myself. At these moments I simply see the whole hand of cards that I’m playing as my life. My strengths and weaknesses, assets and vulnerabilities, relationships, fears, spiritualities, masks, patterns, intelligences and needs.
In those moments, I cry.
I cry with tears of sympathy for a child wronged. A child neglected. A child who just wanted to feel safe and loved. A child who was told she had everything, who found out, much too late that she had been mislead by so many people, but centrally by a selfish, insecure, shallow woman who was her mother.
When I see what patterns of thinking and behaviours I’m working with; the patterns that seem “normal” to me and what seems “right”., I feel that I am lost. I feel I will never be able to get past my own patterns of self-destruction. That I will ultimatly be my own death.
And I’m trying. At every step I keep trying to undo my traps and pitfalls. I try to detatch from the unhealthy. Affirm that no matter how much I want to love my mother, that she is potientially my biggest poison. She is the one who taught me to hate myself, to destroy myself. That I’m an unnecessary burden, a bother, a drag and a bore. If it weren’t or me, my mother could have had an enjoyable life, but I had all these tedious problems. I was complex, too sensitive and I “made things up” to get attention.
I remember hitting my arm with a sledgehammer to try and break it so I could give my mother a big enough reason to break away from her party and notice me. She didn’t. She gave me some ice in a baggie and told me if it was still swolen on Monday we’d call the doctor.
I dissassociate to cope. People like my aspects more than they like me. I don’t blame them. Who would like the small one?
I’ve been taking care of myself for 18 months now. Practicing how to heal and be kind to myself. How NOT to invite the ugliness in, nor tolerate it to continue.
But when I crumble; when I fall to dust and debris is when my daughter Medea, when Medea experiences a frustration in feelin because she doesn’t know how to act. And I realize that I’m her mentor and guide and I’m there to help her figure out her world and interact and participate effectively in her environment This is when I realize that I don’t have much to give her. I just hope and have faith that it will be enough for now and that I’ll learn as we go along.
Because we have to. It has to be enough
It’s all I have.
And I am really, really trying. So it has to be enough.
But I still don’t really believe there is much hope or me.
Part of me thinks that I shoudl just teach her how to get independant from me. That I’m so fucked that the best thing I could teach her would be how to stay away from your MaMa. I don’t want my internal trouble to weigh her down.
She came to me today at breakfast and told me that some kids in her class didn’t want to play with her and are begining to tease her.
I asked a few questions about the situation and determined that her bossiness, her “directing” other how to do things; what games to play, who goes first and what comes next, what color marker to draw with, how a horse is colored, might lead to some kids feeling that she’s bossy and a “know it all” and not want to play together.
I asked her to consider a different approach. To be quiet and to listen to other when they talk or offer a suggestion to a game. Letting other have an opportunity to be “the boss” for a while. Let other make decisions. She said she would try. I also asked her to consider what she would feel like if someone who was acting just like she was, told her how to draw a unicorn and told her that she couldn’t color it pink, because “unicorns are orange” and was bossy. She said she wouldn’t like it.
Being a kid is tough! Being a parent is tough too. Teamwork. Together we can do it Padawan Polliwog! I’ll always be there for ya!
