Jarring

What I am experiencing right now is one of the most emotionally jarring and mentally taxing periods of my life. Silenced, invalidated, discredited, exploited. I feel all of those things. Beaten senseless on a Monday... denying anything happened by Wednesday, then being accused of dramatic insanity by Friday.  And so the cycle kept repeating, over and over and over again. Intentional or not - I had to tap out, come up for air and get a reality-check. I can't remember the last time I ever felt emotionally safe around my own family. From a childhood of navigating mom's temper and dad's passivity - to an adolescence riddled with an intense desire to please/perfect/pacify my family's pain - to a young adult period of extreme drug use in a desperate attempt to escape the chaos.

I remember thinking as a 13 year old that if I just had a 4.0 grade point average, got to be under 100 pounds, and kept my mouth shut (no matter what) - I would somehow "bring something valuable to the table" - I would somehow ameliorate my mom's pain of having a severely handicapped child, compensate for my older sister's poor academic performance and complete disinterest in life, and fill the void of my father's absence due to working in NYC. I did get under a 100 pounds, 96 to be exact. I got a near-perfect score on the SATs and graduated with over a 4.0 GPA, placing me 3rd in my class. I also kept my mouth shut.

Although I had my fair share of positive recognition for my "good girl behavior" and high-level performance and was labeled the "overachiever studious" one - none of it effected any meaningful change in the people around me. And the recognition was superficial and transient - it came with more expectations and more demands and more of the "this is not enough" attitude. which gradually transformed in my mind to "I am not enough."

I got to college a little jaded and a little thrown by my lack of impact in my own family. At the same time I felt pretty empty - not feeling refueled, loved, supported by them. I felt a little slighted, a little resentful that despite not giving me what a child needs they had ongoing demands of me...and even when I did fulfill those demands ultimately it had no impact anyway. The goal post kept moving, i could never quite reach it. So where did that leave me, I thought?

I remember feeling so empty. Lacking motivation to "be" someone. I struggled to find shreds of my old identity but nothing sparked. The efforts felt futile and meaningless. My once reflexive compensatory behavior of starvation felt so far away - instead I started bingeing compulsively. I put on 20 pounds in a few short months. I was disgusted with my appearance, disgusted by my lack of drive, and depressed by the isolation. I went from "wanting to conquer the world" to fantasizing about jumping in front of a moving train. Each day on my way to class I would watch the trains go by - wondering how easy it would be to end this pointless existence. I was just another blip on the map of humanity. by the grace of god I was spared from my own lack of insight - the painfully dark 6 months came and went. 

Looking back now I feel compassion where there was self-directed hate, I feel grace where there was self-directed disgust, I feel the growing pains of a young person struggling through the haunting loneliness of late adolescence. Nearly two decades later I see it for what it was. I can choose how to feel, think, and act. I can’t choose that for anyone else.  I don’t have that power and it’s not in my control. 

Had I been more grounded in spirituality - perhaps the anguish would have been less violent, perhaps the damage would have been less deep. And yet without that pain - I could not have learned what i know now, with conviction: put one foot in front of the other and do the next right thing...because this too shall pass...

bells & whistles

xoxo

E.Vas