One of the biggest reasons I seem to be having trouble finding who I am, peeling off the layers of the onion, is that my father practiced character-erasure from the beginning of my life. It was one of this favorite pastimes, in fact, removing anything that we loved and cherished and replacing it with ridicule, belittlement and his better, smarter choices.
When this happens to a tiny child over and over again, she really does lose who she is completely. The possibility of her ever finding out who she is without the influence of the emotional (and physical) abuse her father placed upon her becomes quite small. The onion started building itself up based upon layers that were not my own from so early on. And peeling my onion down to the bulb doesn't seem practical on some level, or even possible really, at the age of 52.
If I am anything like my father, then I want to be someone else. He was repugnant to me because his love cost my individuality.
So, what I have to do is un-peel layers and layers carefully, without the entire structuring collapsing, and examine *every* emotional response I have to anything I experience as intense. How else can I figure out which layers are mine among all the many layers that create me? It's all a big mystery still, and I feel I am just beginning to work my way inside myself, even after all this writing. Just recently I internalized something that had essentially nothing to do with me, and I knew it even as it happened. I'm exhausted from it, and want to rise above that level of existence.
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| Source: https://www.facebook.com/pages/After-Narcissistic-Abuse-There-is-Light-Life-Love/114835348601442 |
There is a reason for the saying "you can't teach an old dog new tricks," for people like my father and brother, but I also believe it's possible to do so for us old dogs that aren't wrapped up in some false image of ourselves, and, given the right set of circumstances, the right environment, the right support.
It's almost a time-travel story in the sense that I must work backwards through time to really figure it out, because I can't always find the original unless I work through more recent emotions. And then I have to figure out if each emotional experience was 1) actually mine, 2) an adaptation of my father's or mother's, or 3) my survival tools for the emotional (and the threat of physical) violence I grew up in. And then once I figure that out, I have to figure out what to do with it now. Whether to toss it, because it's creating dysfunctional behaviors for me; whether I want to keep it, or adjust it, and even whether I want to have a single shred of my father in me or not, he's in there. Extricating him will be delicate and difficult and probably lengthy work.
It's all very confusing and head-spinning. But I do feel I'm on the right path here. One thing my father did was intellectualize everything. Some things cannot be intellectualized, particularly emotions of the heart. My father taught me to listen to my head, with all its cacophony of voices, and to ignore, even suppress my heart. But it is with my heart open for the first time that I peel this onion.
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| Source: https://www.facebook.com/BKTYMovement?ref=br_tf |
One thing I'd like to address is anger. It's a very common occurrence for me and over things that don't even involve me. When they do involve me, it's worse. I can't seem to shed my anger at my parents. I was angry before I had spoken truth about living with them, but now that the truth is spoken, I am still angry. And I guess that's okay and part of the process, too. But anger is tiring and uses up spoons I don't have. My father was a hugely angry person, as was my mother. Now my brother is the same way, quickly and easily angered. My sister has learned to contain hers (being a doctor requires this), but I know she felt it too early on. She used to say to me "Angry people get things done."
Perhaps so. But in what state of mind does that leave the bearer of this anger? And for me, who's never been allowed to express that anger to my parents or brother or his wife without serious repercussions, that anger turns in on itself, toward me. I note all my insufficiencies and what the world could judge as failures. I insult parts of my body and my mind. I am the meanest person I know to myself, now that I no longer contact my family.
My father erased each of us. Our natural strengths were either pushed to extremes, judged or summarily dismissed/ridiculed. Only dad could make accurate and true judgments about people and the world. Only dad could hold the moral high ground, as he sent his youngest daughter into a prison-setting school to be raped every day. And he was always right, which meant I deserved everything I got.
My earliest memories of me remind me that I am a very sensitive person. That I can miss certain social cues while I see others that many miss. I am deeply intuitive and perceptive. I absorb the feeling of others. I have a wonderful imagination. I can make visual wordless stories happen in fractal-like patterns when I close my eyes. I can perceive infinity and when I do, the ground disappears out from under me and I hold on to the nearest bit of matter, knowing the universe is so much bigger, vaster, wider than my human mind can perceive. I know I am kind and empathetic, crying at the stepping on of a bee. I know I am deeply woven into justice. Although justice is a swift kick in the knees as my father would have it. I think maybe I might be able to do a bit better, by adding empathy to justice. I know that at the root of my being is nothing but energy, chasms between the particles of the atoms that make up my body. I know that I am a wave frequency, because that is how animals have always read me.
I know some pretty interesting stuff, actually. Just me.
So I guess the core of the onion is still there and I just need to reconnect. And maybe the layers of the onion that need to fall away will as I continue this process.
Very stream of consciousness. Thank you for reading.
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