How I Want it to Be, and How it Really Is...

I want to be okay.  I want to be strong and calm.  I want to sleep through the night.  Some days I am all of these things, and then I start to believe that I am through it.  I start to feel proud that I made it through.  I start saying it out loud.  I am okay.  I sleep every night again.

And then it changes.  Something throws me and I am back there.  The day my 6 months of no contact ended, I was back there.  Couldn't sleep through the night.  Then I saw my dad, out of nowhere while picking up my car from the shop.  It was so painful and so nice to see him.  He was happy to see me, and that gave me some peace.  It made me wish so hard that it could be different.  I told myself I was okay, but I wasn't.

So, maybe there is some kind of in between.  Where you are okay and then you are not, but when the pendulum finally rests, you will be okay.  I really want to be okay.  I want the anxious times to continue to become less frequent and last less time.  The anxiety is intense when it is there.  I don't remember feeling this way when I was younger.  There were times where I felt some anxiety.  I had one particularly rough patch, but it was about a thing and when I had worked through it, it was gone.  I kept on top of it back them, maybe.  I made a decision every day to not worry about all of the things I could not control.  And then I followed through and didn't worry.  I didn't want to be my mom.  I wanted to break away and be the opposite.  I wanted to live and love and feel free.  And I did, all of those things.  I want to go back there.

It is not just the stuff with my mom that is the problem.  I need to simplify my life.  Selling the cottage is one major step toward a more simple life.  I feel so good to sell it.  Now we just need it to sell.  I suppose patience is in order there, the hard part is done really in coming to terms with the decision.  Now it's just a transaction.

What else can I do to live a more peaceful and simple life?  Move away from sales.  Make sure the company gets stronger and provides a more consistent and higher income.  It has to be a priority to get on solid footing at work.

So, I have work to do.  I want to walk towards the life I want every day.  I want to embrace the life I have along the way and be patient with myself while I work on untangling such a busy, often overwhelming life.

Holding Steady

Re-newing my decision to keep the estrangement in tact has relieved so much anxiety.  I know it will creep back in as the meeting with them approaches, but having come to terms with the option of remaining estranged does feel like a relief.  I think I was feeling like I had to re-open the door.  Because I can't bear to go back to being stalked and pressured and because I know Ivy misses them.  But the potential pain and problems arising from that contact terrified me.  I love the peace of our household so much.  It means everything to me.

Quiet, relaxed and happy weekend mornings are still something I cherish.  There were so many destructive, angry mornings on the weekends growing up.  Loud and jarring mornings that led into quiet and dark days.  I still feel like all that was just yesterday.  It never feels very far away.  More than anything else, those mornings stayed with me.  That is why our quiet, happy mornings mean the world to me.  Before the estrangement and for much of the time that the stalking was happening, our mornings weren't happy.  They weren't the chaos of my childhood home, but they were sad and there was an underlying darkness and anger to them.  I tried so hard not to show any of those emotions in front of Ivy, but she knew.  She used to draw our family with sad faces.  Now she draws us happy.  She draws us pretty much every day at daycare, and every day we are happy.  I cannot take that away from her.  As a daughter myself, if I could have made one wish for my mom growing up (and even now), it would have been that she be happy.  I can never have a happy mother, but I can give that gift to my daughter.  I can recognize the things that are destructive for me, and stay away from them.  I can be the provider of happy mornings.  I can be the provider of a stable, consistent home.  I can love her without putting pressure on her to be responsible for my happiness.  I can be a role model for embracing life and living to the fullest.  That is what I want to be as a mother.  Strong, happy and supportive.  I can't be those things if I stay in an abusive relationship.  I have to keep reminding myself, so that I don't get tempted back in.  It would not be any different this time.  It would be exactly how it always has been.  Good spliced with gut-wrenching, awful times that change my whole life for weeks at a time and leave me each time, a little less okay.

Back to the Drawing Board

As my window of contact free time gets smaller, the stress is coming back.  Last week, my friend (and bookkeeper) called and said that my dad had emailed her about the books on our shared property.  At the mention of him, my body went into fight or flight.  Instantly.  It was like someone injected something into my veins that ran instantly throughout my body.  Then she called again yesterday and told me that her staff had been talking with my mom and my mom told them that I don't talk to her anymore and hung up on them.  It put me right back into the headspace I was in last year.  Feeling trapped.  Knowing that she's not well.  Knowing it is all about to start again. 

It took me by storm yesterday.  Any hopes of re-building a relationship with good boundaries went out the window.  I began bracing myself for the stalking, the guilt, the shame, the anger, the pressure and the pain of it all again.  And I know I can't do it again.  I can't go through any more.  

Today I realized, it's done.  I can't have them back in my life.  She doesn't understand that it is inappropriate to dump details of our situation on people I have a business relationship with.  It's not appropriate to hang up on them, creating drama even without having direct contact with me.  I knew that even if I could discuss that with her, she would not acknowledge that it happened.  I can't do one more conversation like that.  Trying to fight for reality, never mind for what about that reality is destructive.

Moving has become much more appealing again.  I would be happy to move to a different home here, even if it doesn't solve the issue of worrying about running into her at the grocery store.  It would provide peace in our home and eliminate the stalking.  Moving further would be even better, but maybe harder in other ways.  Worth consideration though.  

I called an agent who may have clients looking for a lot like ours.  I put it out there.  I am asking for it to happen, if it is meant to.  

So, that is where I will leave it for now. 

Anxiety

I am guessing I always had some anxiety.  I grew up in an environment where there was cause to feel anxiety and I internalized a lot of the adult stress in the house.  But I don't remember feeling like I couldn't take a full breath.  That, accompanied with a feeling of tightness in my chest and stress in my body is the most obvious way that anxiety presents itself now.  It started after I began my current career, about ten years ago.  I began to work a lot, I was happy, but I was also trying to manage a lot of things in my life.  It was years before I found out that it was a classic sign of anxiety.  

The root of why anxiety has become a part of my life is not really primary to me.  Maybe it was nature, maybe it was nurture.  Who cares, at a certain point.  I have it and both nature and nurture would have predicted it, so it's not worth further analysis than that.  What is worth analysis is that it didn't used to affect my life the way it does now.  The most major change was taking on a significant amount more responsibility, losing structure and routine and taking on financial pressures that were new to me.  I began making more money, but also making investments that added risk into the fold.  Previous to that, I had nothing, but I owed nothing.  I saved up for things I wanted and didn't spend when I couldn't afford to.  My life was simple.  I worked low pressure jobs.  I travelled. I didn't need more than a backpack full of clothes, a journal and walkman to be happy.  I rented a basement apartment for $192/mth.  I spent my time with friends, strangers, myself.  I had healthy distance from my family.  I read a lot, I wrote a lot, I played music. 

Fast forward to today.  I make more money than I could have imagined back then and have way more difficulty budgeting.  I have a stressful career that requires that my phone be on all the time.  I have such a fractured relationship with my parents that we are estranged.  I am a single mother 5 days a week with no family support.  I am a landlord, I am a wife, I am the head of our household.  I try to take breaks to re-coup, but often don't feel refreshed. Today I lied down for a bit because I was exhausted, but all I felt was stressed in a horizontal instead of vertical position.  I am wound so tightly.  

This is the beginning of truly acknowledging this, at least to this extent.  I have taken on more than I can handle.  I need to slow down.  I don't mean work less hours, I have already done this, and it has helped but not enough. I need less financial pressure and I need less responsibility.  I need to let go of trying to have it all.  It is costing me too much.

This realization comes at the end of a 30 day food cleanse.  Only clean eating for one month.  I didn't get the lowered anxiety and super boosted moods so many people rave about.  I improved my eating habits a few months ago and did see an increase in energy and happiness, but happiness is not the issue.  Anxiety is the issue.  And while the anxiety has been much better since my parents have left me alone, and with changes in diet in exercise, it still comes.  Less often, but when it grips me, it is so uncomfortable.  Having it less often is making it even more uncomfortable when it rears its head.  I am getting tastes of freedom from it and I want more.. 

I would like to see it continue to dissipate.  I believe that it can.  I didn't always experience it this way.  I need to create my own map, back to when it was less intense.

I need to simplify my life. 

What do I want?  I am going to think on that for the next little while.  The first thing that comes to mind is planting a garden.  Having more time and energy for Ivy.  Having my husband home more.  Spending time at the lake.  

I'll be honest, my mind quickly built a screened addition on our house, which would not go under the category of simplifying.  Ugh.  Okay, working on it (my brain erases the blueprints and blows the eraser dust onto the patio where the addition will not be going).

Calm Waters

It has been quiet.  The longer I am able to roam through my life free of my family, the more peace I am finding.  That is a sad sentence but also a liberating one.  I couldn't have said it last year.  I have healed a lot.  I have gained perspective I have never had.  I am finally getting strong again.

I reflect back on my years in their home a lot lately.  I struggled with depression in those days.  I didn't ever really realize how much it all affected me, I thought I was at fault for any of my shortcomings or struggles, despite being just a kid.  I was ashamed of my shortcomings, I was ashamed to be less beautiful than my cousins, I was ashamed that my dad drank, I was ashamed that our house was filled with so much secret darkness.  I felt like I deserved the darkness our house was cloaked in.  I found it difficult to enjoy happy moments without a sobering knowing that those were just moments, that I didn't actually have a happy life.

I remember in my late teens and into my twenties when I began to break away and find myself.  There was a point to it all.  The point was that moment when your heart is so full of peace and happiness, when there is music playing that resonates perfectly with what is inside of you.  When you're getting soaked by the rain and it is making you feel so completely alive.  Life was about those moments.  An early morning on a day where the sky looks like the colour of a stormy sea and you have a coffee in your hand and your heart is healing from something, that first taste of comfort after a painful time.  Knowing you are okay.  Sitting around a bonfire and being a part of instruments and voices and drum beats.  A train rolling down the tracks, taking you away, on your own to discover the world.  The sweetness of a sad goodbye.  It's in all of those things.  And all those other moments that are not so magical are just a part of life.  They are not what you live for, they are what you live through. 

I remember being in one of those happy moments and wondering if it was enough because I knew it was fleeting.  I had had those thoughts so many times.  Happiness being squashed by remembering how fleeting it was.  But then one day, I realized that it was enough.  I remember seeing the shadows of trees dancing on the sunny sidewalk as I walked down Sherbrook Street and realizing that the beauty in that was enough.  As long as we can see it.  

And so, now as I settle back into my life, as I free myself from the shame of having left my family, I am able to see it again.  The beauty in the raindrops on the window and all of the little moments that bring peace to my heart.  I still struggle with it all, but I am able to breath in the beauty all around me and know that I will be okay.  

It also brings about a difference between my mom and I.  The good moments were never enough for her and my life was so wrapped up in her ups and downs that they really couldn't be enough for me either.  Feelings of 'what's the point' and 'never enough' were what I was brought up around.  It doesn't surprise me that I struggled so much with myself and with finding happiness in my younger years.  I finally have found empathy for myself in those years.  Living in that house was hard.  I could never feel confident that things were okay, that I could let my guard down and just enjoy life.  I didn't know what to do with myself so often, when she was so broken. I always thought that at least in a small part, that brokenness was a reflection of me.  And when I think back, I feel sad for not just her anymore, but for me too.  I don't feel shame or secrecy anymore.  I don't feel responsible for it anymore.    

I feel like last year, I dealt with a form of survivors guilt.  I had to leave people I loved in a burning building because I had a child in my arms and couldn't stay there any longer trying to convince them that the fire was real.  Saving yourself when it means leaving people you love in a painful place is hard to overcome.  To say the least.

I am so grateful for the distance between then and now.

A New Year

Last year finally ended.  I had forgotten that it could end.  It seemed like a long ball of twine, tangled and knotted.  Every now and then, I'd luck upon a small stretch that was not tangled, not knotted.  And then I'd hit a big ugly knot and I'd remember.  Oh, right.  It's still this..

But this year started out without a snag.  This year is not the year I spent begging my dad to leave me alone, defending my right to peace, defending my desire to not take it anymore.  This year is not the year where I put myself and those around me through turmoil trying to make peace with moving away to find peace.  

This is the year that I get to start making the rules.  This year, I woke up on New Year's Day and felt that familiar old feeling of a new year, new start.  The feeling I couldn't access last year.  I felt excited.  Free.  Happy.  

The stress isn't gone, it's just lurking a little less prominently.  I can see it in the way I am with my husband.  I am still being guarded, unable to give fully, unable to open up intimately.  It feels like that part of me lives inside of a much more carefree person that I have trouble accessing still.  First comes less stress, but I need to find a way to unwind more of it.  Heal more, find the space for some carefree with him.  

I am grateful for less stress.  For now, that is a huge win.  I just want to keep going.  Find more peace.  Accept more, worry less.  

The Sound of Silence

This morning I saw a cover of a song I have always known and never truly heard.  Until today.  It stopped me, sat me down and made me understand.  It told me about my mom's struggle, from a place of insight that my mom has no access to.  My heart broke for her.  From over here, instead of from inside of her darkness.

I heard it like she was singing, from a place where she is not ill.  She has never struck up an orchestra and let me into her pain, as a visitor like that.  She can't, as far as I can tell.  She has struck me with her pain in disordered attempts at sharing it, but there were no strings, no rich baritone, only emotional trauma.  She has punished me for her pain, and with it, but never taken my hand and shown me inside.  She has given it my name, among the others responsible.  I have never been able to see it entirely separate from me.  I live in it.  I find happiness despite it.  But it's always there.  It carries a weight with it that I can't describe.  I don't mean to sound like she didn't give me credit for her happiness too, she did.  The weight was just as much.

I have had some days, and even some weeks over the last year where I am able to walk away from her pain.  Most of the time, I can feel her pain, vibrating from my absence, so the distance was often only physical.  I could hear her words.  How could you do this to me.  You said you would take care of me.  You are breaking my heart.  After all we have done for you..  And then, every now and then, that tether would just release and I would be free.  Happy feelings without guilt for feeling them.  Lightness.  Peace.  These days, I have been free of that tether once again.  I have had this feeling before and then lost it, so I am not getting attached, but the freedom feels like such relief and I am soaking it in like sunshine.  It feels like I just put down something heavy that I had been carrying until my muscles were burning and shaking.  It feels like a warm spring day after a long, bitter winter.  I can breath again.

I have wanted to free her from her darkness my whole life, and even when I knew intellectually that I can't, my heart couldn't give it up.  Over the last year of trying to tell my heart it wasn't responsible for her, it couldn't stop.  It was involuntary.

And now as I hear it again, I realize it is me I am hearing singing.  It is the solitude I learned to understand life within that always divided us.  It is the difference between the darkness being a friend and a foe.  It is understanding the silence.  It is me freeing that tether and accepting that I can't make them understand. And accepting that I can't understand them either.  My desire to see my mother find peace is shifting from a mission to a wish.  Letting go has been hard.

"Fools" said I "You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you"
But my words like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence

- Paul Simon