The Turd Under the Microscope

We either deny or strive to let go of addiction, but the real epidemic isn’t the booze, needle, food, spending or sex; it’s the mask of loneliness, isolation and depression, worn by Fear.

Consider this:  We enter the world as wondrous expressions of life’s miracle.  And, from then on—for about twenty years or eternity—we get scared and act out.  First our spirits get trapped in bodies, and then we have to depend on others for our very survival.  And, considering some of the parent figures I know, I don’t wonder where Stephen King gets his inspiration.  Even in healthy settings, humiliation, guilt, anger, and shame exist, and these are among the most toxic emotions.

So, we teach our kids to do what we think they’re supposed to (in order to hide the fact that we don’t know what we’re doing) and when they inevitably screw up--since we tell them contradictory things in the course of a day-- we inadvertently shame and humiliate them.  And yes, we anger them.  In my family, ladies didn’t get angry, so I learned to repress my anger, lest I seem unladylike. And, as I realized I was screwing up and disappointing my gods (mother and father), I sought to distance myself from the part that embarrassed, shamed or got me in trouble. Can you understand how fragmentation of the Self takes place?  I knew there was more than one of me (and I do not mean that I am schizophrenic) when I raised my hand to  narrate a passage from our reader in first grade.  I skimmed the paragraph first, to make sure I could read all the words and heard my own voice in my head, but when I opened my mouth to start the first sentence, a wholly different voice came out.  Why doesn’t she sound like me, I wondered.  I didn’t like this at all, and I certainly didn’t want someone else’s voice to speak for me.  (Right now, I’m realizing how many voices other than my own I allowed to speak for me over the years).

I had a strong sense of independence at a very young age:  Coming up the basement steps, my dad used to lift me to the landing, with a couple stairs to go.  Did you help me, I’d scream.  If he said, No, I’d move along, but if he said, Yes, I’d go all the way back down and come back up  all by myself!  (Funny:  As I write the words, all by myself, I think of how symbolic they are.  Until I found and reassembled the me I had abandoned at such a young age, I truly was all by myself).  Now I am by (meaning next to and the author of) my Self.  There would have been a time when my Rebel would have read what I just wrote and called it crap.  Who is this word splitter, who must think she is so deep and evolved that she can make meaning from re-arranging words?

I can tell youthat I hear one voice now, whether it’s in my head or coming from my vocal chords.  I still have many voices in my head—Critical Parent, Lost Self, Super Hero, Rebel, Nurturing Parent, Cheerleader—and I give them all voice, when they need to be heard.  But they speak through me, a person who seeks to come from the inside out.  What I want more than anything in life, right now?  To feel free.  I still live in my head much of the time.  Life taught me not to live in my heart.  It broke too easily.  So I taught myself to use my head . . . to figure out the answers to life’s problems, my pain, my sadness, my fear.  Only my head told me to find the answers by looking outward, instead of inward.  It rationalized that love had abandoned me, and I certainly wasn’t worth love.  I had been introduced to life by emotionally crippled parents who didn’t get love, so they had a fairly impossible job of modeling love.  So, I looked for my cure out there, where all the problems started.  It’s still my knee-jerk reaction, when I lose sight of my Utility Belt (which I wear on My waist, that carries My tools for My survival and thrival, the very one I came into life with but lost faith in and awareness of).

In retrospect, I think the worst part about living in a head full of voices wasn’t the crowded conference room; it was the cacophony of simultaneous screeching from parts of a divided self, longing to be integrated.

This realization/integration took place when, in an experiential therapy group I participated in, I was told by the therapist that she wanted me to plan my family or origin psychodrama for the following week.   I had been in group long enough to know what she meant.  In fact, I met her when I attended an Open to the Public, final session of one of her six-week Anger Workshops.  Having no idea what I was about to see and feel, I walked into a space about the size of a large conference room, with seating for approximately twenty-five spectators, who would witness six members of this graduating class enact one woman’s family of origin abuse.  She chose (from members of her group) her mother, father, sister and brother. She played herself.  When asked to give those in attendance some background, she told us her father had been alcoholic, rude and dictatorial and physically abusive to her brother on many occasions, which she, her sister and mother helplessly watched.  Her brother molested her for five years, from the time she was nine, until she turned fourteen and he moved out.  Her mother was a religious fanatic who was addicted to prescription drugs, and her older sister, the Perfect One, got straight A’s, never made a mistake and served as the example for her and her brother to never measure up to.

The woman enacting her story, told each character some lines to recite, which had served as mantras in this sick family, and it was going to be our main character’s job to confront the dysfunction (as her adult self, in a safe setting with the assistance of a trained therapist).  I could feel my emotions stirring while we were still in intellectual mode.  Once the drama commenced, each player became the member of that family, and as the insanity of five minutes reached its crescendo and our star reached her own crisis point, the therapist put a stop to the action, took this courageous woman by the hand and lead her to tell each member of her “family” what she needed to say.  As I mopped the tears from my eyes, I noticed the rest of the audience doing the same.  I, of course, thought I was crying for this poor family and figured the rest were empathizing, too.  The therapist had each member of the family de-role (my name is John, and I am not your brother) and then had each member tell the woman what her work invoked in him and her.  Finally, the therapist asked our star how she felt.  And one more thing, which is how I knew I had found what I needed to begin my own healing process:  Before thanking us for our attendance, the therapist told us that if we found ourselves moved by what had just happened, it was not because of our empathy but because it touched those parts of ourselves. As the Perfect One/Sister Glue, I said, “Where do I sign?”

Author Note:  I have no idea as I embark on this journey, if I will be able to convey the depths of the despair, sadness, co-dependency, idiocy, shame, guilt—FEAR—that ruled my life. I do have lots of the journal entries and anger or forgiveness letters I have written over the years, which I think I’ll be motivated to include as I unravel my life.  But I want you to know that there was a time when I didn’t want to pollute the world with me any longer.  There was a time when I was so self-absorbed that I thought I was beyond hope.  Those days are gone.  There are times when I get overwhelmed, doubt myself, feel paralyzed by the outside and need to get less serious with myself, but NEVER, EVER will I want to die again at my own hand. And never again will I feel alone.  That’s what finding myself gave me—my Self—and I promised I would never abandon me again.

Love,
Eve Ryman