The Lock on the Inside of My Door

Aleathia says:

      Often in life we require the unabashed courage of others to be on display before we can look inward to find our own. This happened to me this week.

      Yesterday, I finished the audio book of "Hunger" by Roxane Gay. This was a raw book about sexual assault and its lasting effects on the body and mind of a woman. Telling this story to the world had to be an excruciating, difficult task. The general public doesn't want to read about the ugliness that has happened to women, men and children. It makes them uncomfortable, and maybe, it should.

      Gay's story was preceded by the fact it was story about her body which she has struggled with since her sexual assault. She spends a lot of time drawing attention to her body and how others have treated it and still continue to treat it as a woman of size. But as I listened, I spent most of the six hours nodding my head. The trajectory of her life was oddly familiar to me.

     I have been suspicious all my life that my step-father (now deceased) sexually abused me, but I have no distinct memory I can reference. There were outward things he said like "you'd be really hot if you lost 20 pounds" or how he'd stare at me from across the room like I was a trapped gazelle he was going to rip apart with his teeth. There was his making a point to be naked around me in the common areas of our house or trying to get me to go to the nudist camp as a teenager with "the family." I did go, but I kept my clothes on in defiance. There was the eating disorder I developed and the hatred of my body that grew each year as it got bigger and bigger. There were later thoughts of suicide, body dysmorphia, and a distinct dissociation with society on a human level. There was the time he threatened the life of my brother and mother if I left the state. These were some of the things that shaped my life.

     I wanted to fit in at school. I wanted boys to like me, but in order for that to happen, I would also have to be simultaneously attractive to my step-father.  When I did bring boys home to meet my parents, my step-father would come down from his bedroom, dressed as Rambo, complete with a Bowie knife between his teeth as if he were marking territory. When I was fifteen, my own mother placed a lock on the inside of my door. This action, though a safety measure, crushed me more than anything because she knew what her husband was capable of and would rather risk my safety than be alone. I buried myself in food, books, writing and work. I joined every club I could so as to not be home because it wasn't safe for me.

     When I left home I became reckless with my body sexually and physically. There were several times I risked being raped or killed because I didn't care. I couldn't see any worth in myself beyond being a sexual object. I learned quickly that how I looked mattered to men. If I were willing to give up some of my morals, then I was worthy of their time. Except for the man I married and later divorced, I chose men who were not always kind. If they were kind, they were alcoholics and so severely depressed that they took up all my time. If I cared for others, it followed that I didn't have time to care for myself. Self care? What's that?

     I never spoke up because like all children, I didn't think any adults would believe me. When your own mother turns her head to look away then you figure the options to share your truth are very small. I wish I would have had someone to tell me it wasn't my fault, someone to save me.

     My last long term relationship devastated me. Living with a narcissist is not recommended. He still haunts me around unexpected corners, but over the last two years I have nearly exorcised him from my life. He took away my trust of men, but what he gave me was an unexpected openness to my own self. Surviving a man like that woke me up to learning how to find my voice and stand up. Through all of the personal traumas in my life I have always tried to find the lesson or the silver lining. If I had to suffer through something so scarring then I better damn well learn something.

     Several times during Roxane Gay's "Hunger" I found myself in tears. I was empathetic to her story though I feel my trauma was so much less than hers. I know trauma isn't comparative because they are personal events, but I still feel mine is less. Her story lead me to look at how much a person can achieve after such a damaging event. She says she is still healing herself in her 40's. I'm still healing myself as well. She is helping us all heal. She is making us visible. She is standing at the front of the line giving a voice to those of us who have been quiet too long.

     If you need help, someone is there at the National Sexual Assault Hotline

     Thank you for reading. Be kind to each other. Write. Read books. Share your story.

Aleathia

The Body Is Not An Apology: Unapologetic Inquiry #1

Aleathia says:

     Here I am again, random, as always with a topic that falls from out of the blue. I’ve had a week off from work and instead of going places like originally planned, I stayed home. This was no lazy week off. I have been cleaning out my house of the remnants of my toxic boyfriend. I have been cleaning out my soul. Personally, I am still reeling from the Philadelphia trip and it is hard for me to shake the feeling that even when I thought I was being still enough to unpack my lifelong luggage, I was still running. I am definitely afraid of the ugly I will find and have to claim with a flag of my country. No one wants ugly.

     I took the rare Sunday off to take my son to the Ithaca Market. When I had weekends off we would go all the time. It was a nice little trip to share coffee and a pastry, conversation, and sometimes a walk. We’d soak up the sights and smells of an open air market and feel good about life for a little while. Our usual bakery wasn’t there and it gave me a little panic because things would not be “like they always are”. I scoured the market three times for them each time hoping they would appear until Kai pointed out that a place we passed three times had perfectly beautiful pastry. This meant I had to step out of my comfort and try something new. I’m not opposed to this concept at all because I love new things, but I had been testing my mettle all week and looked forward to the comfort of sameness. The pastry was delightful. The time was not spoiled.

     We went to the Commons and walked around. It was hot and we were overdressed with the hope of fall. We were sweaty and getting cranky. We stopped in the DeWitt Mall because Kai wanted to go to the guitar shop. He is dropping chorus this year in favor of guitar lessons. He wanted an instruction booklet to help him along at home. I picked up one for my Ukulele that sits sad and underplayed. I took a cue from his playbook. I need to dust off my life and make time for all things. We stopped in the Buffalo Street Books. I don’t go there often and I’m not sure why. It’s a very lovely shop. I also have been trying to not buy too many books since I have shelves of unread wonders already.

     A book immediately caught my eye: “The Body is Not An Apology” by Sonya Renee Taylor. It’s colorful and flashy but something in me made me tiptoe to reach it from the top shelf. I opened it and saw things in myself that made me cringe and I put it back on the shelf. I walked around looking at other things. I found a pencil sharpener for my specific pencils I found in Philadelphia. I found a poetry book. And then, I was standing in front of this book again with a feeling of dread and panic. Then I was at the register buying it.

     In the quiet of my house, I read the prologue and sobbed. Do you know that kind of sorrow that is mixed with the realization that you have been so cruel to yourself for a lifetime? Yes, it was that sort of sobbing. I recognized myself. I had forgotten what I looked like underneath the shame.

     I’m in chapter one and Sonya professes that she is not going to fix my problems with self-esteem or self-assurance, but she is waking me up to myself. She calls it radical self-love and maybe this is what I need after 40 years of putting myself down, hiding who I am, being something for someone else, harboring abuses not meant for me, and being quiet when inside there was screaming. There are “Unapologetic Inquiry” bubbles in this book. Questions to be answered honestly without worry of shame. Normally, I would keep such things to myself, but I feel like this process needs a wider opening. My average post gets 30-40 visits. That is wide enough. So without further ado, here is Unapologetic Inquiry #1:

“We all live in multiple intersections of identity. What are your intersections? How do your multiple identities affect each other?”

     I am a middle aged white woman, divorced, and single. I am a product of childhood trauma. I am a mother of a transgender son. I am an emergency room nurse, an artist, a writer, and a Buddhist. I do all these things living with a thyroid and an ovarian condition, arthritis, depression, anxiety, and adult onset ADD.

     The childhood trauma informs all my other identity intersections. It was the base of my life. It was how I learned to do everything. It steered me to choose a career that is filled with trauma everyday from strangers. These traumas change the way I look at the world as an artist and a writer. These traumas give me something to meditate over. The combination of my health issues help me with my self shame for being overweight. There are wheels that spin so fast I can’t get off without feeling like it will send me into a depression, so, I stay on the wheel. The childhood trauma made me strong and allowed me to stay alive and achieve, but it made me go about it in the wrong way. I have achieved goals without letting people in my life, without sharing the best parts of me because I don’t trust them to not break them and walk away.

***

      In the last month, I have started to see how these intersections behave with each other and this might be the key to recovery if I can be brave enough to keep looking. I am not going to profess that I will be any less random on this blog, but my hope is to share these Unapologetic Inquiries in case you can’t find the book or you don’t have access to it. Ask yourself the same questions and see what comes up. I’m tired of living in a world that is defined by others who don’t know me or care about me, and who think I should look, act, feel like something that pleases them. I’m not sure how many years I have left in the world, but I would like to know at least some of the time I staked claim to them.

Thanks for reading. This was a long one. Be Kind. Love each other.

Aleathia

Loneliness vs. Emptiness

Aleathia says:

Several weeks ago I was sitting in the coffee shop imagining how I could possibly feel loneliness when surrounded by people. I am not jealous of these people. I watch them and their behaviors while drowning out the voices with music blaring in my ears. This is an introverted life. Always gathering information; process-process-process. It is almost unending the amount of information I feel compelled to consume on a daily basis.

The loneliness persisted and I text my friend saying I was lonely but didn't feel bad. The feeling so strange that I could mistake it for sadness if I didn't know better. Our conversation went quiet and I was left there with this feeling. It came to me that maybe what I was feeling was emptiness. By emptiness, I refer to the Buddhist idea of emptiness (groundlessness) where there is an absence of grasping for things, for ground to hold onto.

As life would have it, I went to renew a library book and came upon another called "Hiking with Nietzsche" by John Kaag. It was as if the book jumped off the shelf at me. I tend to not let those types of things pass me by. There was something in the book the universe wanted me to read. In a previous time and space I had tried to read Nietzsche with much hardship and eventual failure. I was not emotionally ready to see the world in the way he did. Maybe I wasn't crazy enough, I wasn't sure. The thought of having a middle man to understand Nietzsche made that failure feeling even larger, made me feel like a lesser intellectual, but sometimes you have to bite the bullet.

The book was very wonderful and did give me an insight into the man Nietzsche was and this perspective will open his work to me. In thinking about this blog and how I wanted to approach writing my experience on this topic I have fallen on blank slates. What I extracted might be different for another reader and for me to espouse that I can interpret it for you would make me foolish.

"Words reify (make more real) something experienced in motion, attempting to capture the forever unruly." John Kaag

So what I am going to leave with you in this blog, from this book, are the nuggets that pushed up something out of my soul and have made me look at the world differently. They might be ideas or quotes from the author and other philosophers. Here is what I learned:

1. "He who has attained to only some degree of freedom of mind cannot feel other than a wanderer on the earth--though not as a traveler to a final destination: for this destination does not exist." Nietzsche

For me, not being part of the mental herd does make you feel like a wanderer. I feel banished to the fringe often in which I will spend a life collecting information on a road that will never end. This is both exciting and devastating.

2. "For a child there is no such thing as a forbidden question." John Kaag

Oh. My. If you are a parent then you have experienced the boldness of children and their unabashed nature to ask questions that make people blush. But what do we do when these questions are asked? We shush them. We scold them. We divert them. I know have done this some of the time with my own kid, but I did my best to really answer the questions the best I could. I feel like this strategy has paid off because as a teenager, my child comes to me with hard questions knowing that I won't push them under the rug...that I will find the knowledge somewhere even if it isn't in my own brain. Let the children ask. Keep them curious.

3. "Distracted by two voices 'I' and 'me' and without a friend you could 'sink into the depths" J. Kaag

This shit keeps me up at night sometimes. When you are the only person you share information with you could drive yourself crazy. Communicate....often....out loud to other beings. Very important for clarity and sanity and mental health.

4. "Success in raising children is only reached after a life of battle and worry, meaning that it only ends in hardness when you die. Feeling like you want to run away means you're paying attention." J. Kaag

I have often felt that my desire to run away made me a coward and that I wasn't doing a good job, but this says to me that my innate feeling to run has more to do with the pain of realization and understanding that directing another human being through this insane world is hard business.

5. "Perhaps a pilgrim triumphs not in hardship but in the rare moment when they learn to accept something soft at home." J. Kaag

This was significant to me in the sense that as a "pilgrim" of finding information, in gathering understanding about myself and how to better navigate this world, the most important lessons are the quiet ones I allow myself when I take a moment to be vulnerable and open. The softness at home is me treating myself with kindness even if I make mistakes which I are inevitable.

6. "No price is too high for the privilege of owning yourself." Nietzsche

MIC DROP, exit stage left.

7. "We put limits on our children thinking we are protecting them but really we are avoiding coming to grips with our own anxiety." J. Kaag

Dear lord. This was the point where I felt bad for every tiny thing I didn't let my kid do because I was scared, not because he was scared, but because I let my own anxiety of the world build a barrier to curiosity and adventure.  That was how I chose to live my life, but it should not have been how I allowed my child to live his. This year I have dropped this thinking of limitation, not only towards my kid, but towards myself. Let's get living.

8. "How can one love in the right way while being so quietly dissatisfied with life?" Herman Hesse

I do believe I have spent my entire life asking myself this question, maybe not so boldly, but it has always been in the ether around my head. It isn't to say that there has been nothing enjoyable in my life, but there could have been more. I could have loved every person I ever loved, better. I could have given more of myself in a genuine way had my outlook not been so grim. Childhood trauma is a bitch that keeps on bitching.

9. "Life does not change, but the attitude you bring to it might. And this is not a trivial adjustment. It may be the only meaningful adjustment that is possible." J. Kaag

This year, as you know if you have followed this blog, has been all about attitude adjustment. Around every corner I have had to soften and soften some more. I have had to look at my stance on everything in my life to try and see where I fit in. But more than fit in, I have been trying to live an authentic life. This means something different for everyone.

10. "Some of us think that holding on makes us strong, but sometimes it is letting go." Herman Hesse

It is all about letting go. Facing fear and moving forward is the win. Letting go of the past that you cannot change allows you to build a life in the present as it is the only life worth living, in my opinion. It is challenging to say the least, but worth each minute.

What this all says to me that we are each in a state of active transformation for all of our lives. Not fighting against that idea has made life easier. Pick up this book if you like philosophy. Pick it up if you don't. It's a great read.

Thanks for reading.

Aleathia

To All the Single Ladies.....

Aleathia says:

This weekend at work was very testing. There was a fire, it was super busy and we worked short, and then the last day all the patients were dramatic and challenging. It about near sucked the life out of me. Each night before I go to sleep I scroll through the YouTube feed to see if anything interesting pops up. Sometimes I find great new music or an interesting TED talk. Sometimes I watch weird surveys or dance videos.

This weekend I came upon a video of a woman who was celebrating her 7th year of being single. Her definition of single being not in a dedicated, notated relationship that would be called a couple. She had gone on dates and had many situations, but still single. This woman was beautiful and thin and the first thing I thought was "I'm doomed". But rather than shut the video off, I kept watching to see WHY she was celebrating this milestone. She also has a website called The Problem with Dating.

She talked about having been in a string of ongoing or steady relationships for more than 10 years and all of which ended poorly. After the last one she realized that she had a lot of personal work to do on herself before she could be in a couple and maintain a healthy, functional relationship with another human being. She talked about how if you are wanting to be in a relationship to validate your existence in the world, you aren't ready. If you are in a relationship so you aren't lonely, you aren't ready. If you are in a relationship so you fit in with your friend's and family's expectations of you, you aren't ready.

This sort of hit me like a ton of bricks. I consider myself to be very observant and marginally intelligent. Why had I not thought of this before? How come I could not see this? It is very interesting to me how I could trick myself into thinking all my actions were valid in the past. I'm not going to be horrid to myself about it. I was young. I was without information that was vital to moving around in this world.

I grew up in a dysfunctional family and this isn't a singular badge. I know that so many of us do and in this day and age I'm sure dysfunction is the norm. But I also know that I grew up a child of trauma from living in a house that was full of alcohol and drugs and infidelity. There was little emotional money in our family. I learned to be invisible. I learned that being lonely is very painful. I learned that despite abuse you just shut up and take it because you don't want anyone else to know your business. This was the ammunition I left home with. It didn't feel natural or true, but it was all I had.

In all my relationships I think I have tried to show my true colors, but fear of rejection and abandonment have always loomed near the surface. All people want to be loved and accepted. If someone tells you otherwise then they are lying. Isolation is a defense mechanism. It takes away the opportunity for someone to hurt you because you are not present to be hurt.

This year has been emotionally challenging for me as many of you have read on this blog in previous posts. It takes a lot from me to be able to share my pain and my misgivings with whomever chooses to read about it and I put myself in this position because I want to grow. I do it because maybe I'm not alone in the world with the life I've lived and maybe, just maybe, I can help someone else not feel alone in their pain by sharing.

I have realized that I am not ready to be in a relationship. I really do have so much work to do on myself and that requires space and time. But the hopeful thing that woman said in her video was that she recognized in her journey of working on herself that she had attracted the most amazing and creative people in her life. That was something to be excited about and despite attracting all these great men, the one meant for her had not shown up yet.  I have always loved the quote "Good things come to those who wait." I don't take the waiting to be something idle, but more like a patient observation of the world; a gathering of information and self-education.

So I've been single for 16 months. I have learned a lot, but not quite enough to feel whole yet. Thank you to all who have read my posts and watch me melt down in a public forum. Thanks for coming back over and over again. I hope life treats you all kindly. Much love.

Aleathia