One of the wonderful things about my relationship with my Love is that he not only pushes my buttons, but also provides a safe, loving place for me to work through what comes up. I provide the same in return, though I don't really push his buttons, per se. It's more like nagging gently pushing him to think and talk about his feelings instead of covering them up by going all quiet and stewing in anger for days.
Woo hoo! Fun times!
But this is why I was able to have my epiphany the other night after sobbing for nearly 4 hours straight. As it is with epiphanies, it is always hard to explain them in real language afterward because understanding just seems to zip through in non-words, in a mysterious sort of comprehension that my former therapist called "the penny dropping." I can know something intellectually for years, but it doesn't make any difference until I have one of these moments where the knowing pours into every single cell and I just "get it." This process never fails to amaze me.Here is what I've learned about that: you have to be willing to go through it. In other words, completely lose your shit. But in a good way.
When you start crying to you have to let the feelings come and not be scared that you're disappearing into the dark hole again, to know that there must be some reason, something that you need to see, and so you just let the tears come and don't fight them or rage against them or try to distract yourself, you just sit in the dark and stare out the window at the cold stars and feel the sorrow in your aching heart and cry and cry and cry. And you let whatever thoughts come up, come up, and look at them with curiosity and wonder what they're trying to tell you.
I just realized that this sounds a lot like meditation but with sobbing. Wonderful. Crying meditation. Leave it to me.
My Love had gotten angry with me about one of my anti-social quirks and this set me off on so many levels. His judgment, the undeserved anger directed at me, his lack of attempts at understanding or empathy, his inattentiveness to my hurt. But these things are all about my Love and also not about him at all. What this was really about, I came to realize, was my own shame.
As I cried, a memory came into my head and wouldn't leave. It's one that I'd thought about many times over the years and, intellectually at least, recognized as the original wound that years of subsequent, similar hurts kept reopening and enlarging. I didn't realize that there was yet another layer.
I am two or so. My parents are fighting and I run into their bedroom because that's where my crib is, I have no room of my own. I hide between the side of the bed and the wall, a space of about 18 inches, and I am crying, very scared because they are yelling so loudly. Dad comes in the room to grab his car keys, yells something like "You better stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about!" and leaves, slamming the bedroom door. That's all I remember.
But since then that's what I've always done when hurt. Hide and cry. Usually on the floor, huddled up against a couch or bed. The Penny Drop therapist suggested that this is probably how I learned to comfort myself. Perhaps that's why Crying Meditation works for me.
So I'm crying the other night--where? on the floor!--and my heart is literally aching so bad and I come from a family of weak-hearted people and I thought for sure that it was going to just burst apart right there. I even invited it to. I thought, if this is all I've got, if I distill down into nothing but that moment, that 2-year-old girl (sad, negative and scared), then just let me have a heart attack right now. Because I don't want that to define me.
And I realized then that it sure enough did define me. In my efforts to run from it, to ignore it, obliterate it, separate from it, it controlled me.
I surrendered. I said to my Love, but not really to him, "I can't be the person you want me to be. I tried. I tried to be someone else, but I can't." Over and over. "I tried, but I can't."
Snot and slobber and hiccups and tears. And he was there and listening and trying to say comforting things because he doesn't yet understand that he just needs to listen and be there with me as I work through it myself.
Yessireebob, after this episode, I do not need a wedding ring to know that he truly loves me.
I understand now that this is exactly what I've been doing--trying to be someone else. Self-improvement at the expense of self-acceptance. I am so ashamed of the feelings exemplified by that 2-year-old girl, of feeling and showing hurt and vulnerability that I have tried to separate from her in what John Bradshaw calls "toxic shame." Toxic shame breaks her off and hides her, but here's the kicker--I'm petrified that she'll be discovered, so my life is ruled by a desire to keep her hidden, trying not to be her. And as I'm separated from myself, I separate myself from others. I'm working at cross purposes until I accept the part of me that I am so deeply ashamed of because I was "told" at 2 years old and many times since that I am not supposed to feel hurt and sad and scared.
And once I make this connection, the crying runs itself out. I am completely exhausted and drained but relieved. Because I know that with this recognition, and with having shown my most secret and vulnerable part to my Love and him giving me only love in return, that the process of self-acceptance has already begun.
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