I wrote hist post about 1,5 week ago but could not get myself to post it. Long story short: I was in a good place, called my brother and my whole world came tumbling down again. Family is good when it is good. Very destructive when it is not. I would assume that at some point I will get to the point where I can ‘let things go’ as in, create a sort of energetic Teflon layer which allows me to see destructive comments for what they are; projections of the other. Not there yet. 🙂 Self love first.
From 1,5 week ago:
Sobriety to me, currently, is very much about peeling off the layers and layers of unprocessed emotions and memories. Specifically now the subject of self-hate is on the foreground, a lot of old memories shift, are charged differently. During the day I practise not walking down the path of self-hate, perfectionism, self-loathing which is so standard, some might even say ‘typical’ for me. One of the IMMEDIATE effects of it, is that I have way more energy. You can not believe how much energy it takes to not like oneself continuously. Life just wants to live, and putting a stop to that every second of my day really takes huge amounts of energy.
Currently I can not yet apply that energy usefully. It very much seems like the neural network is not set up to do something without the continuous counterforce. As if I can only work, do something when I am on the battlefields in a state of shock. I seem to need this to make a new way of getting me to do stuff. For me this would connect back to my Basic Perinatal Matrice by which constant stress and the fight for survival where ingrained in my cells. I think I can say, I might have found a tiny space in which it might be possible to get some air from this rather destructive make-up.
But haha, healing hardly ever unfolds without a few traps. A few days ago I spoke with my brother on the phone. He asked how I was, I tried to explain about the newly found love and peace and before I was even 3 sentences in he got his say about it, trying to obliterate all what I had said. It reminded me that indeed the culture of the family is not one of self-care, not one of self-love but one of self-hate.
I want to say now ‘Not sure when I will learn he is not good for me.’ but I think I already know. I keep on being surprised on how this undefinable energy for which ‘family ties’ is a container word, make me go back and back again to people who, if we were to meet them in other circumstances would not even become acquaintances.
Back to the self-love; earlier that day I had been writing about apologies (not here) and for a few seconds dreamed that my brother would say this to me; “Sorry that I stood by when my friends molested you. Sorry that I egged them on. I was jealous of you. I was irritated by you, I did not know you anymore you were not my playmate anymore, you were changing into this girl-woman. Your newly developed body confused me, you did not even notice it yourself but I was older. I did not know how to react and somehow I was excited. When my friends reacted to that I stood by because I was excited and wanted to see what happened because I was curious. I did so because I wanted it even though I knew it was wrong. My drive to do so was bigger.” I can’t even finish this now because I spoke with him in real life again. I assume he will never, ever apologise. But.. ok for what it is worth, for a few seconds I imagined he might do so, one day. You can not believe how much stress fell away from me. Which was quite informative.
I was flabbergasted to find out how much resistance, maybe resentment or ‘moderated hate’ or ‘hate molded into semi functional family structures’ was present there. I have no other words for it than call it ‘That which floats between us’. And he is not even aware. Or maybe he is. I doubt it because it took him only a few seconds to realise he had to put me back into my self-hate space. That might not be something one does if one is aware of the dynamics. Unless one is really really evil. This is just non-conscious destructive behaviour. I see it everywhere, a lot of families and people in workspaces specialize in it because they have no way out.
EDIT about 1,5 week later: I can only assume that if I am so pissed off with my brother as I write here. He will notice that there is ‘something which floats between us’. Consciously or subconsciously. No need to diminish my own destructive part in this. 😦
I am thinking these destructive family dynamics in which I obviously had my own role too, were a big reason for me to drink at an early age. Did I ever tell you that for at least a year I bullied my brother for just, well, whatever reason did I need, I hated his guts for not speaking up against what happened in the family. Trying to stop the fighting between my parents. I did and I lost, time and time again while he ‘stood by’ – doing nothing. I hated him for that. He once said he hated me for always making waves. 😦
Again and again I find it amazing how these memories, experiences are so energetically charged and how this charge with changes and lessens with every new skill or insight I learn. Well, following my typical path everything first gets worse and then it gets better.
I keep up a lot of energetic walls within me. I specifically do so against my brother. With these few seconds where they miraculously fell away I noticed how much energy goes into maintaining them. Not good for me. Not seeing him, or not expecting anything from him would be a healthier option. I would never ever appreciate him as a friend or possibly tolerate him near me if he were not family. Or, in an afterthought: I could have not spoken with him about personal stuff, I try and try every time again and more often than not it leaves me feeling ill. I would place that trying under another one of those family dynamics, or?
Oooh, to top it off he ended his ‘you shut up and don’t change my view of the world’ with a rant on how my mother’s only position in life was that of a victim, that she liked that and that it was “just the way the feminist of the second wave looked upon marriage and sex: sex could not be enjoyed because men were bad”. When I reminded him that she spoke with me about rape and my father also told us that is what she told him…. he backfired that she too had “she said that she liked sex”, “once too”.
I was there, that conversation. I thought: mom, you are lying through your teeth. I was too young to really understand what was going on but shit, she was lying, I knew that for sure. She forcefully continued telling us in a very ‘woman of the world way’ that “Obviously there are women who deny their husband sex because they want things their way. But that is just childish behaviour.” Again, lying through her teeth although I had NO clue as to what part she was lying about. Message? The message of this conversations was: Sex is horrible but it is not politically correct to say no and not popular or mature either. Or in other words, what my childhood brain made of this: sex you don’t like is how it should be.
I am guessing some of you, specifically American people who read this might be horrified about this openness. From my mother, from me possibly (likely :-D). There is another point to this. I need to write unedited because a lot of my addiction had/has to do with the pressure of thoughts and feelings like this I can not bear. They are crushing my soul. Often, I do not dare to care. Even now, after drowning in the memories of that darkness I suddenly think that loving myself is useless. Who am I, even. To think I could.
“I don’t want to have to fight anymore.”
“That is exactly it: don’t fight, just be.”
“I CAN NOT!!!”
“Feel how you feed the aggression against you.”
“I am tired. I have to learn sooooo much.”
“Hmmm….”
“This is it, nah? Cutting loose, not hating on me, cutting lose the negativity?”
“Huh huh.”
Practising staying in that non-hating part :-). I am not at the point where I need to take care that the hating does not go underground again, take an extra hidden route as in: “See how glorious I am, I am FINALLY OK now I am not hating on me. Do you see me not hating on me?!!!” This need to hold on to old patterns…. And also: gosh it is hard to let go.
Another thing: I feel, well, before writing this post I felt ready to go do something again. I was in contact with social security on possibly getting my unemployment insurance money etcetera. Then darkness passed and I did not answer any of their correspondence with me. Guess not answering is not going to bring me browny points, money or help. And I am/was too ashamed to speak about it with friends and in other moments I thought I had it all ‘under control’. It is ‘just’ (?) another version of self-hate and self-destruction. It is unimaginable, even for me who, at some point I feel bystander to my own life, which level the darkness takes on when it hits me. I know it is always darkest before the dawn but shit. These attacks. Getting lost in them, then realising it is me. Then letting go. Finding peace. Living in peace. Walk into a full-blown attack out of ‘nowhere’ – it is never nowhere btw and letting go again. Quitting drinking was easier for me. But maybe that is so because it felt more as an external thing I had to avoid.
“Ok, you can write about not hating or let go and not hate.”
“Sigh…. Yes :-)”
When quitting drinking it is at first Very Handy and advisable to externalize the addict within. To give him/her a name, to separate oneself from that danger. To turn it into the enemy.
After a while, when my brain calmed down a bit I realised obviously… that it was me who was addicted. So I started to explore my ties to the addiction and changed the name to ‘the addict within’.
With unlearning self-hate behaviour I am trying to change the soil, the air and the water within so the darkness and light within can balance out and can shape a constructive environment for me.
I find what I need to do is to learn more about self-hate and self-love, and if this gets too cheesy maybe something about self-neutrality too but for me that would border on love already. That is all. I need to read and paint. And go to bed on time. 😀 I love going to bed on time and waking up really early and since a few months I don’t anymore. Maybe this too is punishment of me?
Sorry for the long read, if you even made it this far. Undoing lifelong patterns is difficult.
I am grateful-ish that I quit drinking. And in the back of my mind this voice says; “Really, you would have been dead already if you had not. That would have been much easier. And more appropriate than this scrambling.” And I agree to that. Amongst many other reasonings and attacks, that is what self-hate looks like. Lots to learn if I give myself a chance. 
I am not happy that I quit drinking but that is because I stay up too late here. I need to change that to become happy again and I feel it does not interest me. Ok; READ THE BOOK. Just sleep, wake up and try again.
Today is the first day of the rest of my life.
xx, Feeling
feelingmywaybackintolife 