Good Lord, it's been years since I've visited and written.
I tried to start a public Wordpress blog on a couple of occasions, but I realize that I don't journal or write out my heart for public consumption or change. I write it because I need to get it out from swimming around my head.
While I could revert back to good old pen and paper journals, I get hand cramps whenever I write too long because I usually type everything. Plus, I'm much more likely to be near an online typing apparatus than the correct notebook at any given time.
So, what brings me back, you ask? Realizations and a new attempt to puzzle some life pieces together.
Since Doug and I have been together, I have started to see what a loving family can be like. While he, his parents, and his sisters have had some rocky years together, they are really strong and enjoy one another now. It's made me reassess my family and want that relationship to be better, too.
The problem is me.
I feel confident that my parents have both changed a lot from the people they were when I was younger. I'm sure part of it is that the daily stresses are completely different so their attitudes have naturally softened. And, my brother and I reason and behave differently than we did when we were children (and aren't underfoot 24/7) so my parents interact with us differently.
The issue is that I cannot get beyond the hurt that still exists from when I was growing up. It is a brick wall between me and them that keeps me from getting close. I realized this week that every memory I have from growing up is dark and tinged with hurt.
I'm sure some of this is due to my undiagnosed, untreated extreme clinical depression that I experienced until I finally started treatment in my 20s. But there is also truth to my feelings from that time.
Dad always made me feel less than. I was fat and needed to do better. I had good grades but needed to do better. I was supposed to be the good child antithesis to Lance.
Lance always had to be the center of everything. If it was my birthday, we celebrated his school achievement (like on my 16th birthday). Him becoming a father at 15/16 years old garnered the family going to therapy (where I was talked to for a grand total of 10 minutes about how I felt about my brother), but my checking out books about suicide and always preferring to sit in darkened rooms was ignored because it could be. Lance manipulated and used me as a sexual experiment then discarded me (not just sexually but in life in general) once he started his endless string of girlfriends.
Mom used me as her confidant since Dad was definitely not an emotional safe place, and Mom had grown up with a hardened family of her own. She wanted someone that she could get approval from, but she didn't really know how to deal with affection because I don't know that she'd every really had it. I vividly remember trying to spontaneously hug her as a kid and being told that it made her nervous or that she didn't really grow up hugging.
I have absolutely no doubt that both of my parents loved me and do love me dearly or that they always functioned in ways they thought were helping me. But, they both came from their own hurting backgrounds so I know that was some of why they couldn't connect in certain ways.
Still, though, I always expect everyone in my life to disappoint me, I maintain distance so I don't get hurt, I focus on the negative. I've obviously done this - because I was raised to - my whole life. I don't want to any more - I want to love my family.
I also want to keep from going down that same road in my relationship with Doug. I've already seen - while his drinking was worsening and worsening - how easily I can switch on the protective distance but how hard it is to remove it. As he's done better and as I've found that I can trust him again, I'm starting to feel more like I did when we first fell in love (only 6 years ago).
I truly do want to build a life with him, and as I am trying to work through my fear and suspicion of marriage so that maybe I can settle into a marriage with him, I'm also examining, assessing and trying to gain a different perspective on the family that is the foundation of those (and other) tortured feelings.
To be honest, I don't know how to do this or really how to go about this. However, I have made a lot of other emotional changes and breakthroughs in my life. They've all started with being honest with myself and allowing myself to open up to whatever finds its way to the surface. So, that's what I'm doing now. Often, writing and letting whatever wants to come out make its way to the page ends up being revealing and connecting dots.
So, I'm writing. We'll see where it leads.
