#now for the bigger challenge of overcoming my own self loathing so that i no longer crave a validation that i am incapable of reciprocating | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

flypaperforfreaks · 7 years

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Sorry. You missed out on something wonderful.

From before I was born, I knew I wasn’t good enough. The testing, and the worrying-- I felt them. You didn’t think I could, but I did. You decided when I should be born, because when I was going to be ready wasn’t right for you. The doctor who delivered me declared me “perfect”-- a story you tell proudly-- setting an impossible bar I’ve been trying to get back up to ever since. I tried right from the very beginning to convince you: “See? I’m fine. I’m *better* than fine. I’m perfect.” But you had other ideas.

You’re very fond of saying that, when I was less than 2, you and I “didn’t get along.” This loaded statement haunted me for years, especially since you typically followed it with high self-praise about all the effort you put in to fix it. But as an adult, I’ve been able to unpack the idea, and I’ve decided that infants don’t have that kind of agency. Saying we “didn’t get along” implies I had some role in things; that I bear the responsibility for my infant interactions equally as much as you. This is false. You had a job to do. Your job was to meet my needs. You didn’t. Over and over again, you frustrated me, you left me hanging, you tried to behave as if I were a certain way or met a certain set of predetermined expectations. Even then, when I was brand new, you failed to approach me with a sense of curiosity and wonder. You failed to see the challenges I presented you with as a gift, as an opportunity to learn and grow and expand in a unique way. You did not want this challenge. You wanted me to fit into boxes and bend to your will. I was forced, repeatedly, to rely for my survival on a person who did not respect my right to individuality, my right to be anything other than what was easy or pleasant or desirable in their own limited view. These painful interactions bred anger and resentment before I could speak a single word.

Feeling deeply rejected and afraid, I forayed into childhood. I very quickly learned ways to please you, and did them smashingly. I wasn’t just good at school, I was the best. I was overly sensitive to the rejection of my peers, and whether I was actually singled out or just felt that way, I suffered from a great sense of isolation. But I persevered in my quest for perfection, because I needed you to like me more than I needed friends.

But then you added insult to injury. It wasn’t enough that you hadn’t been there for me, not in the ways I needed. Now that I was 8 or 9, you expected me to be there for you-- you needed a friend, somebody to lean on and confide in, when you were having trouble with my brother, or my dad. Not knowing why this hurt so badly, I listened. And the anger I had no words to explain got bigger. And the hole I felt inside every time you told someone we were “close” got deeper.

But I didn’t quit trying. I excelled at everything. I cried alone in my room with my feet on the wall because I knew you didn’t want to see it, because I knew you didn’t understand. Because you were uncomfortable with my emotions. How could you be close to someone whose emotions made you deeply uncomfortable? But you never challenged yourself in this way. You needed a narrative of closeness in order to heal your own tortured story with your own mother. I figured that out very early. It was never about me. It was only about you.

There are two specific instances, about four years apart, where the anger and pain bubbled over and became irretrievable. In the first, I vividly remember crying under your arm while you held me, vaguely attempting to offer some comfort, even though you were the one who had embarrassed me. “Is this even possible?” I wondered. “Can the person responsible for hurting you really make it better?” Without knowing it, I was beginning to be able to verbalize the frustrating pattern that had been in place since my infancy.

The next scenario we both know well. We’ve both relived it countless times. You’ve gone so far as to say that if you had it to do over again, you wouldn’t change a thing-- even though it devastated me, humiliated me, proved to me once and for all that you neither liked nor respected me. My perspective, my needs, my feelings-- those didn’t matter. They still don’t. You are unshakably, unquestionably right-- and being right is what matters.

And that was when I learned to hate you. I couldn’t be indifferent; you were still far too important. So that burning, pulsating, screaming yearning I felt for love-- not the oxytocin-induced, biological, take-for-granted kind of love you are forever flinging in my face, but a love based on respect, caring, and understanding, an active form of love-- dissolved into resentment, disgust, judgment, and most vitally, self-protection. That was the moment I finally realized: you were dangerous to me, and I would be wise to proceed with caution.

I suppose we can fast-forward through the last two decades of your alcoholism, codependency, and emotional abuse. Because it’s really all the same. I keep you at the top of my list for “filling my well,” for making me feel loved or lovable or worthwhile. And every time I go back to the well, not only is it dry, but I bash my head against the rocks and forget, so I can convince myself to come back again another day and get different results. Because I could never bear the thought that maybe, just maybe, you were never going to like me, or respect me, or be able to differentiate my needs from your own. That would have been a loss too great to bear, a loss too great to grieve.

But in the past year, I have started to grieve-- deeply. Only I’m doing that wrong, too. Instead of believing in myself and my accomplishments and the worth that I know to be inside me, I have fallen into a deep, suicidal depression. I struggle with the question, “Why go on?” even when wonderful things are happening in my life. In fact, I think good things happening to me make my depression worse, because they are so at odds with what I’ve come to expect from you, which I extrapolated into what I could expect from the world.

But all of that is changing. I am turning the tables, and taking my power back. I am making a list, a list of people who show me, through years of friendship, admiration, and mutual respect, that I am worthy. That I am lovable. Not just that I have something to offer them, but that they have something to offer me in return. I’ve spent thirty-three years with you at the top of my list. No more. Because you are unqualified. You were and are too limited to see what a gift you were given in a daughter like me. You were too broken and your own well was too dry. So now, finally, I am going to stop asking you for something you cannot give. I am going to quit defining myself the way you did. I am going to heal this hole inside of me and figure out a way to feel like life is worth living, and that I deserve to live it, and live it well-- as happily and emotionally and as crazily and as hugely and as joyously and as freely as I can. I am not just here to please you, or to help you define yourself, or to make you look good to your friends. I have my own agenda and my own needs, and even if you are not impressed by me, that’s okay. I have a wonderful skill set and help a lot of people. It might not be glamorous, it might not be what you expected, it might not even be something you can be proud of. But even if you are, it can’t matter so much anymore. Now, sadly, I have to disempower you-- I have to morph all the anger and resentment I feel towards you, and the loathing I feel towards myself, and transform it into empathy. Instead of feeling frustrated by your limitations, and longing to help you overcome them, I have to learn to feel a bit sorry for you. I have to learn to feel sorry for everything you missed out on, not just things that you couldn’t and will never share with me, but on things you couldn’t learn for yourself. I am sorry you are hurting. I know your hurt is deep; you’ve been telling me for years, and I’ve watched you struggle with various ways to slowly destroy yourself. I have to stop doing the same thing. Your pain is not my pain. And your pain is not my fault. Just by coming into the world, I gave you an extraordinary opportunity. And you missed it. And it’s time I accepted that, and quit being mad about it, and started to celebrate all the wonderful things I am and things that I do, completely irrespective of what you think or how you feel. I have to learn to fill my own well. Or maybe I have to dig a whole new one, I don’t know. But thirty-three years have gone by in which I have felt unacceptable, unworthy, and unloved.

Enough.

I say, enough. Enough meaningless suffering. Enough suicidal depression. Enough empowering a person who destroys my sense of self. I. Have had. Enough.

Let the self-love begin.

#depression #selflove #selfcare #healing #freedom

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