When we were kids, everyone had a Yo-Yo. For sure, we dreamed of making our toy do all the tricks they showed on TV, though most of us failed.
Yet we were happy just to keep that disc going up and down as long as possible. You could feel the initial energy in the string as you whipped the wooden disc downward, then felt that disc shoot right back up.
But eventually, the “energy” stored in the string would start to wane. The disc would drop down, but only return halfway, then a quarter, until finally, it just stopped and dangled there, inert at the end of its string.
Then you would either take the disc, rewind the string around it, and start over, or give up and put the toy away.
That was a good description of my life.
Cycles
“Surviving under such conditions puts a constant, draining demand on both body and mind. Each day stretches the limits of your endurance, siphoning your energy as if simply making it through is a battle you fight over and over again. The weight of this exhaustion is invisible, but it’s there…a cycle that leaves no room for rest or reflection…the brain, molded by the forces of environment and experience, turns its focus inward. The aperture narrows to the present moment, obscuring potential dreams and possibilities….blur any vision of the future, making it difficult to see beyond the pressing needs of now.”
Daria Burke, pg 72, Of My Own Making
My life was like a Yo-Yo. I’d push forward for a while, then just run out of steam and dangle helplessly. It was the cycle of being pushed to my limits and beyond, then collapsing. Each time, I thought it was the last and my life was over.
Yet, after a period of dormant despair, I’d feel the tug of a tiny spark deep within. I don’t know why it was there, but it was. Just a tiny ember of hope waiting to be fed kindling, then small sticks, until it was nursed into a real fire.
So, after a long period of giving up, just as in the past…and as would be in my future, I would regroup, pull me back together, and try again for a way to make things better.
The previous entry was one of the very hardest to write so far. Every fiber in me just wanted to beg off writing it. I could barely force me to the keyboard, and I felt such a heavy load of pure exhaustion.
My husband asked me, “Was the desire to avoid writing because I was afraid to show my shame publicly to my readers?”
I thought that was a good question, so I wanted to answer it here.
My mentor’s question
In reality, at my current age, I don’t really care if I share my moments of shame publicly anymore. What is the worst anyone can do to me? Think poorly of me?
And do I think I am the only person who has ever failed to live up to their ideals and ethics at some moment of their life? As a mentor once said to me:
“Did you expect to be perfect?”
If anyone thinks that this story is of me being the totally strong, ever pushing hard forward hero, who never slipped and fell or erred in choices, they will be disappointed. There are more shames to come, more poor choices. I was not perfect. I can simply say I did the best I could at any point, even in my mistakes. Sometimes our best is wonderful, and sometimes our best is flat-out poor. But I tried. And when I failed, well, in writing what it was like then, I can now see I was simply human, pushed too far.
By my mid-20s, I watched everyone around me move on into their adult life, relationships, and marriages. They moved in a world that I was denied entry to. I was an outsider who had nothing, no one, no hope of anything. I felt like a freak and an aberration of nature. Hiding my secret part of life left me feeling so dirty and shameful. I was just at my wits’ end.
And he was always leering at me, and after me. Even if I tried to reach for someone in my life, I just felt like no one could or would love me if they knew what I had to do to survive. So I gave up. I avoided him as much as I could until his rage was unbearable, then just let him have his way. I was the walking dead…
Painting by author
Facing “the failures”
Even though, as I do this and find it is necessary and worth it, there’s nothing like writing about the “failure periods” of your life to flood you with shame. The more you dig to heal, the more of those times that come up. Their sting still throbs, and maybe more intensely now, because revisiting them feels like you are freshly slicing open scarred-over wounds. They stand there before you in all their stark reality, with no way to sugar-coat what they were or escape what you felt. The only choice is to run but then never heal, or to face them fully head-on and just hurt as you look closer for what really happened, and wait for the understanding and acceptance that will transform them.
Now the truth is, I was doing the best I could at any point; it’s just that it wasn’t enough to measure up to what life demands of an adult. And maybe “failure period” was an unfair judgment rendered by my critical self. Maybe it wasn’t so much “failure” as the obvious outcome because of what he’d taken from me all those years. But either way, the reality is that I had a golden opportunity with the job at the UCONN Health Center lab, a chance to build a solid career path, and I blew it. There’s no other way to say it – I wasn’t measuring up…I couldn’t…
I was talking with a friend one day who knew of my background, so I felt safe. But her question froze me, then filled me with shame.
“Did you move back home after college?”
She meant nothing by it, just an informational question more than anything. But for me, I hated the answer, and myself for it. I couldn’t even look at her.
Before I get into what happened next in my life, there is the obvious…and to me, for so many years, the embarrassing question to address: Why, if I was being abused, did I go back home after graduation?
In one way, anyone could understand initially coming home, if only to regroup and figure out where to go next, now that college was done. But why did I STAY? That is the part I found so hard to accept without shame, for most of my life.
Not a “whole person”
But the truth is, I couldn’t do anything else. I wasn’t ready. And I was doing the absolute best I could at each moment in time. It’s just the way it was.
First, despite my age, I was not an adult. I was not even a “whole person.” He had seen to that. He brainwashed me from the beginning to be compliant and to be what he needed and expected. I had been denied the right to develop into a fully functioning, independent adult. I was always focused on “not hurting the family or him.”
So much I didn’t know
So, I learned how to sustain from one day to the next, versus how to live a life. How to survive one “Dad outburst” to the next. And the reality is that when you’ve grown up in that mindset, you don’t even know there is another way. So, while I knew how to focus on the goal right in front of me — getting through college, obtaining school and car loans, finding a job — I had no idea how to navigate life. And society further interfered because, for financial things like loans, I needed him to be a co-signer. So to be an “adult?” I had no clue what that even meant.
And as to the sexual abuse, frankly, I still didn’t even understand that this was “abuse.” I had no idea I wasn’t alone in this happening to me, or that it had a name — incest. I just considered it all a shameful mess that I wanted to leave in the past, and so I hoped that with college done, he would stop.
My thinking was that, after all, how long could he expect to continue this? I was an adult…at least in age. Certainly, he had to see that. What I didn’t understand then was that I was his addiction, and why would a man with all the power give up his addiction?
Dreams vs financial reality
Instead, I expected that I would move on into greater and greater independence like my peers. Dating. Travel. Maybe marriage and kids sometime down the road. I had gone to school. I followed his command not to grow up to be a stupid woman. I followed my own mantra – don’t grow up to be my mother. I had a profession, a job, a car, and dreams. But my dreams were about to hit a hard reality.
First, there was the reality of my paycheck in 1977. I was going to make $8500 a year. While I thought that was a fortune after being a poor student, the truth is that even for that time period, it was a pitiful sum. After income tax, Social Security, the car loan, taxes, gas, and insurance, student loans, and a hundred other small bites that I had no idea were coming, and some money to my parents for living at home, I was about broke. If I could barely give my parents a small amount of “board money,” how could I afford rent?
Where would I go?
Then, even if I could afford it, where would I go? My hometown was a small community, and apartment complexes were rare. I think there was one in my town at that time — except for something in a 3-family house, which was way more than I needed or could afford.
Also, at that point, most women lived at home until they got married. That was just the norm, between society, the immigrant culture, and the church. About the only exception was if you lived out of town, a rarity, and maybe had roommates. But I had no friends at that point or idea of how to find a roommate…or even the awareness that I COULD do that. I was raised to follow the social norms. And, the truth is, I was emotionally unprepared to move away permanently and start my own life. I might have been an adult if judged by age, but emotionally?
The “pre-adolescent”
As to “maturity,” I was a mixed bag. Certainly, for some things, I was a responsible adult. But in so many ways, I was “pre-adolescent,” to use the description of a counselor years later. I was an emotional child, operating in a grown-up body and world, with limited awareness of how to do “life.” My whole existence up to that point was – survive Dad, get through school, get a job, and the rest would “just happen.”
So, for many reasons, I had to return home…and at least for some time to come, I would remain there. While it was crushing to see my financial reality, it was nowhere near as crushing as the rest of reality that would come crashing in almost immediately…
Just a heartfelt Happy Thanksgiving to all reading this! I wish each person a peaceful day and much love.
After a lovely 70th birthday celebration and visit with my immediate family, I will resume my writing journey. There will be one last “gift post” tomorrow (Friday) along with a new memoir post.
Thank you for your patience, and again, Happy Thanksgiving!
Today’s Gift Quote:
You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.
Attributed to C.S. Lewis
The explanation for this, from the previous posting:
A celebration of life in the present
I have been sharing many deep and painful things. And it is helpful for me to speak openly and feel “worthy.” But I also do this process while staying grounded in the present and celebrating life’s current gifts.
A current gift is that this month is my 70th birthday. I will be taking the coming week off to share time with my family and savor the joys of each other’s company. AND celebrate that I have my wonderful family.
As important as this writing process is, it needs to be paced well for my health, and it needs to be connected to the joy of my present life, filled with love.
My “gift posts”
While I am away from my desk, I will leave “daily gift posts” for all.
The gift post will include this post’s text (for context to anyone new). But at the top of each new day’s post will also be a quote — one of the many I keep handy to feed my soul as I write. That will be my gift to all while I am celebrating.
The painting is also part of the gift posts. While I worked at the museum, there was a small puffer fish in one of the aquariums. When I needed a moment’s break from things, I would stand by the tank. The puffer fish would always come right up to the window and hover there. I don’t know what it was thinking, but I hope it was happy. He seemed to linger longest whenever there was a group of happy children waving at him. So one day I took his picture and painted him. So, as part of this gift, I leave you with the puffer fish.
When I return, I will resume my memoir posts.
In the meantime, a reminder of the purpose of this blog:
This blog is my way of honoring what I lived through and had to do to reach “today” in as healthy a way as possible.
Start by doing what’s necessary, then do what’s possible, and suddenly you’re doing the impossible.
St. Francis of Assisi
The explanation for this, from the previous posting:
A celebration of life in the present
I have been sharing many deep and painful things. And it is helpful for me to speak openly and feel “worthy.” But I also do this process while staying grounded in the present and celebrating life’s current gifts.
A current gift is that this month is my 70th birthday. I will be taking the coming week off to share time with my family and savor the joys of each other’s company. AND celebrate that I have my wonderful family.
As important as this writing process is, it needs to be paced well for my health, and it needs to be connected to the joy of my present life, filled with love.
My “gift posts”
While I am away from my desk, I will leave “daily gift posts” for all.
The gift post will include this post’s text (for context to anyone new). But at the top of each new day’s post will also be a quote — one of the many I keep handy to feed my soul as I write. That will be my gift to all while I am celebrating.
The painting is also part of the gift posts. While I worked at the museum, there was a small puffer fish in one of the aquariums. When I needed a moment’s break from things, I would stand by the tank. The puffer fish would always come right up to the window and hover there. I don’t know what it was thinking, but I hope it was happy. He seemed to linger longest whenever there was a group of happy children waving at him. So one day I took his picture and painted him. So, as part of this gift, I leave you with the puffer fish.
When I return, I will resume my memoir posts.
In the meantime, a reminder of the purpose of this blog:
This blog is my way of honoring what I lived through and had to do to reach “today” in as healthy a way as possible.
When writing the story of your life, don’t let anybody else hold the pen.
Harley Davidson
The explanation for this, from the previous posting:
A celebration of life in the present
I have been sharing many deep and painful things. And it is helpful for me to speak openly and feel “worthy.” But I also do this process while staying grounded in the present and celebrating life’s current gifts.
A current gift is that this month is my 70th birthday. I will be taking the coming week off to share time with my family and savor the joys of each other’s company. AND celebrate that I have my wonderful family.
As important as this writing process is, it needs to be paced well for my health, and it needs to be connected to the joy of my present life, filled with love.
My “gift posts”
While I am away from my desk, I will leave “daily gift posts” for all.
The gift post will include this post’s text (for context to anyone new). But at the top of each new day’s post will also be a quote — one of the many I keep handy to feed my soul as I write. That will be my gift to all while I am celebrating.
The painting is also part of the gift posts. While I worked at the museum, there was a small puffer fish in one of the aquariums. When I needed a moment’s break from things, I would stand by the tank. The puffer fish would always come right up to the window and hover there. I don’t know what it was thinking, but I hope it was happy. He seemed to linger longest whenever there was a group of happy children waving at him. So one day I took his picture and painted him. So, as part of this gift, I leave you with the puffer fish.
When I return, I will resume my memoir posts.
In the meantime, a reminder of the purpose of this blog:
This blog is my way of honoring what I lived through and had to do to reach “today” in as healthy a way as possible.
When you’re in a dark place, you sometimes tend to think you’ve been buried. Perhaps you’ve been planted. Bloom.
Christine Caine
The explanation for this, from the previous posting:
A celebration of life in the present
I have been sharing many deep and painful things. And it is helpful for me to speak openly and feel “worthy.” But I also do this process while staying grounded in the present and celebrating life’s current gifts.
A current gift is that this month is my 70th birthday. I will be taking the coming week off to share time with my family and savor the joys of each other’s company. AND celebrate that I have my wonderful family.
As important as this writing process is, it needs to be paced well for my health, and it needs to be connected to the joy of my present life, filled with love.
My “gift posts”
While I am away from my desk, I will leave “daily gift posts” for all.
The gift post will include this post’s text (for context to anyone new). But at the top of each new day’s post will also be a quote — one of the many I keep handy to feed my soul as I write. That will be my gift to all while I am celebrating.
The painting is also part of the gift posts. While I worked at the museum, there was a small puffer fish in one of the aquariums. When I needed a moment’s break from things, I would stand by the tank. The puffer fish would always come right up to the window and hover there. I don’t know what it was thinking, but I hope it was happy. He seemed to linger longest whenever there was a group of happy children waving at him. So one day I took his picture and painted him. So, as part of this gift, I leave you with the puffer fish.
When I return, I will resume my memoir posts.
In the meantime, a reminder of the purpose of this blog:
This blog is my way of honoring what I lived through and had to do to reach “today” in as healthy a way as possible.
At the end of the day, it’s not about what you have or even what you have accomplished…It’s about who you’ve lifted up, who you’ve made better. It’s about what you’ve given back.
Denzel Washington
The explanation for this, from the previous posting:
A celebration of life in the present
I have been sharing many deep and painful things. And it is helpful for me to speak openly and feel “worthy.” But I also do this process while staying grounded in the present and celebrating life’s current gifts.
A current gift is that this month is my 70th birthday. I will be taking the coming week off to share time with my family and savor the joys of each other’s company. AND celebrate that I have my wonderful family.
As important as this writing process is, it needs to be paced well for my health, and it needs to be connected to the joy of my present life, filled with love.
My “gift posts”
While I am away from my desk, I will leave “daily gift posts” for all.
The gift post will include this post’s text (for context to anyone new). But at the top of each new day’s post will also be a quote — one of the many I keep handy to feed my soul as I write. That will be my gift to all while I am celebrating.
The painting is also part of the gift posts. While I worked at the museum, there was a small puffer fish in one of the aquariums. When I needed a moment’s break from things, I would stand by the tank. The puffer fish would always come right up to the window and hover there. I don’t know what it was thinking, but I hope it was happy. He seemed to linger longest whenever there was a group of happy children waving at him. So one day I took his picture and painted him. So, as part of this gift, I leave you with the puffer fish.
When I return, I will resume my memoir posts.
In the meantime, a reminder of the purpose of this blog:
This blog is my way of honoring what I lived through and had to do to reach “today” in as healthy a way as possible.
Soul Mosaic 