I’m not making my step-father innocent mind you, by no means he played his part.  He was awful.  But he has asked for forgiveness and admitted his wrong and by now time and again.  AND he has CHANGED.  For the most part he’s doing things completely differently.  No one that has been that broken and is changing deserves to be beaten on.  No one deserves to be harangued and demoralized when you’re the other person that played as equal a role in the mess.  But this is what she has done to him in a very demoralizing manner all these years.  

Let me give a couple recent examples:

Example 1: Remember when I had gone home a few years back, to try to achieve some form of establishing a basis for us to move forward from, in a healthy manner rather than just enduring the periodic forced phone calls she had pushed on me for the few years prior? (click here for post) Well, during this very meeting she said, “I regret ever marrying him.  He ruined my life and my children’s.  He was the reason for all the problems…”  Then, through tears, she went on to ask, “How could you just forgive him after he destroyed our family and lives.”  

I was so so shocked I said, “I can’t believe you.  He’s sitting right here.  How can you do that?  Not to mention this is the man you have been married to for over 40 years.  You played your role or have you forgotten?  My God you’re awful.”  
Her response was tearless with a small care-less shrug she said, “Yeah, well.”

Example 2: She had told my brother the week before that I had “called” (the !BLAM!) and, “Theresa was extremely rude and mean to me.  Here your father had caused all the problems and ruined everything and she treated him like royalty and me like shit.”

So, it’s pretty simple to put two and two together even if you don’t know a lot of history.  She’s been bullying him to carry all the blame for years…and it’s obviously worked.  Look at his reaction to me.

Well, anyways, there was no way I was getting cornered like this.  I had compassion for him but I’m sorry this wasn’t happening.  My mother needed to stand on her own two feet.  Be an adult.  Own her stuff.  I wasn’t getting bullied anymore.  That call/!BLAM! I had made was serious to me.  To my life.  To my growth.  To my experiencing real healing.  And no one was going to take this from me.  I had already been through the issue of her backing me into a corner a few days earlier (click here to read that post),  I wasn’t going back.  No sir.  And frankly all I could think was, what on earth has that woman done to you???  I felt his pain.  I felt the shame she had foisted on him.  I felt more love and compassion.  AND I KNEW how he felt.  My mother had done the very same thing to me for my entire life.

This call gave me exactly what I had cried out for for the days I was stuck in that corner…
Strength to stand up for myself and never go into my corner again.
Giving me even more resolved to not back down.
To stop the sadistic cycle my mother had created:
The fear,
the control,
the intimidation,
the psychological torquing she had done to my brain,
to stop concerning myself with what she might do to me or herself if she were pushed in any way.  (since I was young she’s threatened, “I wish I were dead.”)

Monday morning I began to be equipped to take my life back in a new way.
To beat that iron mask of worthlessness into a new shape…
Night, love ya,
Theresa Jane
-more tomorrow

For years I’ve pretty much been doing the same thing over and over again with my parents and expecting different results.  !BLAM!ming them was doing something different.

By not ever dealing honestly, openly, and calmly with the past and being straight up with them I swept everything under the carpet.  The result was I continued to get walked on and held responsible for their guilt and pain.   This allowed them, but honestly mostly my mother to continue with a lot of her/their hurtful ways.   The most recent examples: the card and phone call to the hospital mentioned in the prior posts.

She’s been bullying me my whole life in similar and much, much harsher ways.  She’s made me responsible (and her husband and son) for her wrongs and guilt.  I finally came to a point where I felt no guilt for what she had done in her life, or to me, or what she ever would do.  I decided that I was giving the guilt and pain back.  I had been bullied long enough…So the !BLAM!

Once I did this I set myself free.
Since I’ve been experiencing freedom, more self-confidence, much more clarity.
Some of the clarity has come in the form of being able to see myself clearer.  Remember my posts on “Peering Down the Rabbit Hole” and I talked about feeling worthless most of my life?  And how now that I see it I can 1) heal it and 2) must to be on the look out for slipping that mask back on?  Well after the hospital phone call I discovered that when it comes to my mother I tend to put that mask on right away.

She hung up on me and I felt worthless.  Unvalidated.  Wrong. Wrong for telling her she hurt me.  That it was wrong what she/they had done to me…  Typically in the past I would have gotten angry and spewed it out.  This time however, when I felt these feelings rise up I stopped.  I began to observe…calmly.  And that’s when I got in touch with “something different…”  I saw the little girl inside me.  She had backed into a corner, drew her knees up to her chest, put her face between her legs, and hid. 

I continued to watch.  She didn’t know how to come out.
I’m 45 for heaven’s sake and I’m reacting as if I’m a child.  Good God who knew?
…Later, the little girl was still in charge and was nervous on the phone with the man in her life that’s showing her love, kindness, and acceptance and hasn’t a problem in the world with her, yet she felt he did and she began to say things that questioned this.  But this time I/the adult saw what I/the little girl was doing.  I/the little girl was creating a situation where he would get upset with her/me, thereby proving to her/myself that I was indeed worthless.  Worthy of the worthless mask.

Once I saw it I countered it by being honest and admitting exactly what was going on, that I was going to do all I could to overcome this illusion, and I needed help.  And I received it    I received love.

Since I have wobbled around coming out of the corner.  But I’ve been observing. Learning things about myself.  Healing and growing and creating new realities.  Happily I haven’t created a mess with him, my children, or my ex as I would have in the past and wondered how it happened.  Instead I have dealt lovingly with myself and strove to not let the past effect my present.  I’m an adult, my mother can’t hurt me this way anymore.  I have value.  I have worth…

Night, love ya,
Theresa Jane
-whose finally leaving the past behind and beginning to really live in the present    because I did something different… I !BLAM!med…

Overcoming worthlessness is a journey.
I’m on it, with my eye on the prize.
I want to heal me.
I want to do what I can to assist healing for what I’ve caused in my children’s lives…

So here goes… a story of when I sort of won in the battle against worthlessness and really almost not at all…

My adult child that wants little to nothing to do with me, much to my complete surprise, showed up in the same small shop that I was in.  I was ignored.  Others, that we both knew, were spoken to with niceness– with me a few feet away.  Then I was approached and asked, “What are you doing here?”  With a slight edge that implied I was purposefully intruding and had no right to be there.  Startled I said, “I have things I need to do.”  Then, feeling rather blank I reached for all I could think of and tried to be chipper/silly and said, “What are you doing here?”  I was given a look of puzzled disgust and a very short mumbled sentence I couldn’t make out.  Then I was left, for the “other” people, in another area.

I began to slip that mask on the moment she walked in and ignored me.
Shame.
Humiliation swept in with WORTHLESS on their heels.
I felt the age old feeling, that until recently couldn’t have formed into words: worthless.
Followed by: Worthless people don’t have their children love them…
Tears sprung to my eyes.  I blinked them back.  I tried everything I could to balance myself.  To distract myself.  Tell myself that I caused this.  That I need to be loving.  Keep my distance.  This may aid the situation.  It may create some healing… Just take care of my business and not let this get to me.  But that mask settled on all the more in spite of my efforts.  I was looking down, unable to hold my head up.  I felt anger at myself.  Anger that I created this.  That I did things to deserve this.  The very thing I swore I would never, ever do to any of my children.  The tears threatened to overflow my eye lids and the breath in my body ceased.

After “they” left through the heavy glassed door and disappeared into the night all I could think was: the worst part is that one of the things this child can’t stand the most about me is that I’ve functioned from the place of worthlessness and messed my life up.  They don’t want me poisoning them with my mentality.  And the entire time I battled that very thing…

The only reason I can say that I sort of won was I really applied myself to coming out of the depression that worthlessness sweeps over the person it torments.  I made myself smile.  I talked to my friend rather than just leaving.  I called my friend after I left to continue in conversation in order to not sink any lower.  After I kept reminding myself I created this, I can uncreate it.  All is not lost we have good days.  This is just a bad one.  It’ll pass.  Maybe the next will be good.  I have value.  I have worth…  Maybe this one will get to where they can really let me know what has hurt them and do what John and I are calling Blamming.  Now that I know will help.

Night again, Love ya,
Theresa Jane
-tick,tick,tick goes the clock, it’s 2:39 a.m. good night I was going to get to bed early…