If the purpose of this story was to paint a picture of heart ache and pain, I could go on to tell you countless examples of terrible occurrences. I could tell you about the time I took the three of us on a trip to Belfast for the weekend in hope of restoring my dream of family, only to be told he’d wish he’d never met me. I could tell you of the time his girlfriend crashed our sons Baptismal party, I had planned, even though I wasn’t Catholic, and he left in temper and I bought her a drink to save face. I could tell you about the dirty looks she would throw my way and the conflict she created between me and the extended family. I could tell you about being uninvited from family functions because “it was only for family and friends” (excluding mothers of family members apparently). I could tell you about the limited finances I had to live on and the feeling of being trapped, alone and afraid.
I imagine that alone gives you a clear enough picture, but this isn’t a story about heart break and pain. This is a story of survival and faith. This isn’t a black and white story meant to depict me as some endless victim of maltreatment. This is about my journey from believing myself not to deserve any better and allowing, to finding freedom through my own personal power. This is about me taking responsibility for the situation I was in.
Time seem to pass without any real change or direction. The record stayed spinning for a very long time. I tried my best to blend with the community even though it remained clear I was an outsider or a “blow in”. I had people I called friends. I dated men and even had some boyfriends. I worked and raised my son. It was a life. I had made my bed and now I was laying in it. This was it. Or was it? I had been put back on antidepressants when my son had stopped breast feeding. Days turned to years and the bleak cloud of numb confusion resided with me always. When my son was gone, I hit the pubs with vigour almost as if to prove that I was still fun. He told me once, he left because I was no longer fun and I believed that. I believed I had to try even harder to prove I was the best craic* in the place. The sexy clothes returned and I tried to prove I was desirable. The problem with trying to prove something to someone else is clearly you don’t believe it yourself.
I left myself wide open to be hurt. I became a magnet to people who were emotional vampires sucking me dry of confidence and trust. I might as well have stood there with my front door open and said, hey come use and abuse, because I have no self worth and a desperation to be loved. I am gullible, and foolish. I am a dreamer and a good soul come feed off me. I had friends gossip about me, stab me in the back, and betray my trust and I stood there wide eyed, confused and took it. You see the catch 22 with not loving yourself, is no one else will do it for you.
One night, after I removed yet another knife from my back thrown from a supposed friend, I picked up my journal and started writing. I wrote with a fervour and I just kept on tearing though pages in scrawling writing as tears streamed down my face. I couldn’t take it anymore. Why was life like this? Why was I like this? I needed to know. I needed to understand. How far back did this programing go? My whole life I struggled with relationships. Here is was over thirty and I was still struggling. I had to make it stop. I had to understand from a logical perspective so I could break this record. I realized the skipping song was not just this part of my life, is was my WHOLE life. Playing repeatedly until I would finally listen. Not listen to the tragedy of the melody, but listen to the lesson of the beat. If the melody is the external circumstances or story you believe is your life then the beat is the sound that lives within you. I wouldn’t realize until later, change the beat and the melody is forced to adapt to a new rhythm. I could barely hear it, but in the distance it was there. Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! I wrote until 6 am and crawled into bed exhausted.
Now, what happened next, is no lie or exaggeration. As I lay there drained emotion I heard an exceptionally loud CRACK. It made me my heart jump and skip a beat. I thought perhaps someone had thrown a rock at my window but there was no one outside. I sat and looked up and down the street, the morning sky began to brighten and I saw no one. The world was still. Taking a breath, I went to sleep. A couple of hours later, I arose to discover the cause of the crack. Above my kitchen table was a large mirror and there in the center of it from top to bottom was a large crack splitting the mirror in two. When I looked at myself in the reflection I saw not one of me, but two, staring back at me. I was mesmerized by the very discernible sign that I was no longer one but two. The victim and the empowered. The story and the free. The ego and the spirit. I would not understand the implications of this split for some time, but I did know I no longer needed to be that person that believed the negative programs and tapes I heard in my head. I could choose to walk away and leave them there in the other half of the mirror. I could choose to focus on this other image of me, the image of me that was at a soul level; free. So began the disassociation of self.
I don’t want you to think from that moment on, everything miraculously changed and I can finish the story with “and she lived happily ever after”. This isn’t the end of my story. This is only the beginning.
I began a phase of social culling. I took a long hard look at the people I was allowing to influence me and saw the toxicity I was willingly accepting. I told a good few people to “fuck off” I am sorry if the profanity offends, but in times like these, it works. I wasn’t going to be a doormat any more! Some people were easier to let go of then others. In fact, when it came to the ones closest to the situation it was difficult to break completely from them as cords connected through children are trickier to sever. I started with the weaker bonds. I began constructing personal boundaries. Boundaries like self respect.
As I watched people responding horrified that I should dare stand up for myself. I felt a small twang of guilt. Self defence, was not something I was used to. My resources had in years past gone into appeasement and now here I was taking my sword of dignity and slashing ties left and right. It is not easy to walk away, let go, and say goodbye. If you want to get unstuck you have to detach yourself from the ties that bind you.
When learning to communicate and stand up for myself, I didn’t always do a great job of it. Sometimes my words came out to harshly. I had to learn the right degree of defence before it turns into an offence. People would have always described me as assertive but when it came to protecting me, I bounced between passive and aggressive without any control. Kinda like wild horses pulling a runaway carriage. The lesson of effective communication would take time to break in and tame. It is a lesson, I still struggle with from time to time. It is also a lesson I am repeatedly tested on, but I am fine tuning now.
My new me was beginning to form. Lessons of self protection, boundaries, communication, and letting go began to transform that person I no longer was. It was scary. Change always is. It was empowering. I look back at this time as the beginning of the cocooning process. The journey to discover what was inside that cocoon had yet to begin. I felt in me a courage like a soft spring breeze not yet able for the necessary thunderstorms of the summer, but ever present and warming the cold landscape of the winters past.
*Craic = is a Gaelic word, with no exact English translation. The closest you get is “fun.”
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