"Welcome to the real world"

The first thing I did the morning after I saw myself for the first time was to call a mental health crisis line. Since my regular therapist is a student at Portland State and they were on winter break until January 9th, I found an emergency therapist and grabbed the first appointment I could get, which was two days later. I tried to keep myself safe by going to work and calling my friends and apologizing to Joel. A surprisingly large number of my closest friends are bipolar and my every other thought was the dawning realization that I probably am too, so I called and asked them all a million questions.

(It's been nearly a month and I still don't know whether or not I am, but let's be honest: no one is going to be shocked if Amanda P. Westmont comes home from the doctor with a bipolar diagnosis.)

Anyway, during the 48 hours after I freaked out on Joel and before my first therapy appointment, I didn't eat a single bite of solid food. Not one. This may seem like a random thing for me to point out, but I think it was important on a number of levels, most of which I'm still trying to figure out. What I do know is that I wouldn't LET myself eat. Food felt like a reward I didn't deserve. So I survived on liquid protein shakes and Tylenol to stave off the constant headache I had from not eating enough calories.

I also didn't drink a drop of alcohol. I was afraid it would re-awaken the beast.

Joel was surprisingly kind to me during those first few days. He had every right to push me away and I would have understood if he'd stopped talking to me altogether, but he just... didn't. Instead, he looked me in the eyes and held my hand and made love to me so tenderly I fell asleep with tears on my cheeks. What he DIDN'T do, however, was come to my rescue. That beautiful, bald motherfucker knows better.

Therapy has been... wow. I don't even know where to start. I've been in therapy for a year already, but none of it has been this deep and intentional. I went to my new therapist in a state of crisis, more willing to do the work than I've ever been before, and duh, it's working a lot better as a result. Good therapy feels a lot like childbirth: the better it's going, the more it hurts.

I think the easiest way for me to talk about it is to use a movie analogy, so here goes. That moment when I saw myself for the first time was also the moment I left the Matrix.

"After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes." (Morpheus to Neo, in one of my favorite movies of all time.)

All my life I've been believing the story I WANTED to believe, which, as it turns out, wasn't REAL. It was just the way I chose to see the world because seeing it that way made it easier to swallow. All year long, I've been steadily pursuing reality and trying to squeeze my way into it. Part of that process has included distancing myself from my parents so that I can figure out what I want those boundaries to look like. But the moment I saw myself as that crazy out-of-control woman screaming obscenities at her boyfriend, it clicked. I saw my whole life story for what it was: make-believe.

So basically, I took the red pill and now I can see my whole life as it ACTUALLY happened and my rabbit-hole is so deep and dark that I'm beginning to think I might never see the sun again. It's only been, what, three weeks? Four sessions? And I've already learned a metric fuckton about my anger. Joel has been super helpful with it, too (because he figured this stuff out for himself nearly a decade ago) and our weekly couples therapy has been the hardest/best thing we've ever done together. (I'm at two therapy sessions a week right now and starting this week, it'll be three. There is no such thing as too much therapy.)

So far I've learned that anger is at the top of the emotional pyramid. It's the easiest emotion for most of us to access and boy howdy, do I have access to that emotion. The other emotions? Not so much. I went into my first therapy session with an agenda: to find out whether or not I'm bipolar and whether or not I should be medicated like I've always wished my own mother had been.

I left my first therapy session with an unexpected, but meaningful diagnosis: I have a phobia of my own emotions. You know that thing I've talked about where if I start to think about my breathing, I freak out and have a panic attack? That happened during my first appointment with the new therapist. I warned him about it and he tried to walk me through a breathing exercise to help me calm down and I lasted all of three seconds before he made me stop. The more we talked, the more it made sense: I learned from an early age that emotions are scary and bad and that it's a lot easier to just show the world how happy and congenial you are instead.

You know, right up until you get angry.

It turns out that anger is always - ALWAYS - about fear. They are two sides of the same coin. Behind my anger is a giant, gaping wound of fear. I'm TERRIFIED that Joel won't love me enough. That he'll be just like Dave. That my needs will never be met. That I'll lose the best thing that ever happened to me. That I'll be alone.

Mostly, though, it's a fear of never being loved.

I'm learning to embrace that fear and just let myself FEEL it instead of turning it around and aiming it at the people I love. This is the hardest thing I have ever learned EVER. I've been doing okay (BARELY okay, but hanging in there), until I had a set-back earlier this week and kinda blew up at Joel during therapy and was pissy with Liza and...

IT'S SO HARD.

Of course, the anger and the fear suck, but unfortunately, they're not even the worst of it. The worst of it is that if the emotional pyramid has anger at the top and fear in the middle, the bottom of the pyramid is SADNESS (quoting Joel again...). So it goes like this:

I'm ANGRY that my needs aren't being met.

Because I'm AFRAID that they never will be.

But what's really happening is that I'm SAD that I have never had my emotional needs met in a meaningful way.

The only way for me to stop being angry is to grieve the crap out of my emotional past. It's to embrace the sadness of never feeling loved by my ex-husband or by anyone else. Ever. It's grief that even at 35, I'm never going to be good enough for my parents.

It's grieving that I never actually HAD parents. Not the ones I needed, anyway.

Let me repeat that: I'm 35 and I have never ever felt truly loved or accepted by anyone, ever. (Until Joel.) HOW FUCKING SAD IS THAT?!?!

Before I swallowed the red pill, I was convinced that I'd had a happy childhood. I used say things like,

“I have NO bad memories from my childhood.  As in, zero, zilch, NONE whatsoever.  Sure, my mom threw the occasional piece of dinnerware on the hardwood floor in anger and my brother cut the head off my Madame Alexander doll, but those incidents really only served to enrich the experience.  Seriously, my first two decades were disgustingly happy and I wouldn't change A THING.”

But that was my PARENT'S reality. That was the public foot we had to put forward to protect the family reputation.  Up until this year, I bought into that reality wholeheartedly. And now I've had no less than three therapists call me on my "happy childhood" bullshit because up until I saw myself, I still defended it as a good one. "Yeah, my mom threw dishes, but she was fun! I had a GREAT childhood!" Which is exactly what my mother convinced me to believe. Her reality was ever-so-compelling because believing it made me a good daughter. (This is why you've never seen me write an unkind word about her here: I WASN'T ALLOWED TO.) Protecting her self-image made me a good girl. It also made me weigh 309 pounds.

But that was the Matrix.

Which is a reality I no longer subscribe to.

Neo: Why do my eyes hurt?
Morpheus: You've never used them before.

My worldview now takes place in reality. It is not the Matrix. It's the cold, hard truth. It's nowhere near as pretty and no small part of me wishes I'd swallowed the blue pill instead and gone back to believing WHATEVER I WANTED because that was so much easier.

In the meantime, there is therapy and my therapist is fantastic, but he's also a cruel, evil bastard because every week he makes me cry. On purpose. He wants me to mourn the shitty parts of my story. When I gloss over them like I've done my whole life, he makes me stop and rewind until I'm a huge sobbing mess.

The hardest part isn't the grief that everything you thought was fine actually SUCKS, but it's the enormous grief that comes when you realize it'll never go back to being the way you thought it was. In my case, it's the realization that I'm never going to have a mother. I don't have a mother. I have Barbara. She was a lot of things to me, but she was never, EVER the mother I needed. She never will be. (I know she can't understand any of this and that she'll probably never talk to me again after reading this, but all I can say is that she never had a mother either. She had Virginia...)

I have to murder all of that. Every notion I ever had about my family, what love feels like, my own happiness. I have to live in a world where never seeing my mother again is okay with me. Because it might just be what's BEST for me.

Reality sucks so hard, you guys.

It's the worst thing ever.

My brain is just about the worst place I can possibly imagine being these days. I want to shut it off. The voice that questions everything and everyone. The voice that tells me it's all Joel's fault even though I know it's not. The voice that snaps at my children. The voice that knows I don't know how to nurture my children because I was never, ever nurtured by my own parents. (My therapist actually had to walk me through, sentence by sentence, what it would have sounded like if my mother nurtured me through things like having sex with my 30-year old boss when I was fifteen instead of just blowing her lid and getting angry with me. The words "Are you okay, Amanda?" sounded like Arabic to me. I'd never heard them before. Totally foreign.)

The voices.

I'll do anything to make them go away.

But the only way to make that happen is to dig so deep into my vat of grief that literally everything makes me cry. I sob ALL THE TIME. On the way to pick up my kids. Every time I'm alone. Between waxing clients. Between text messages. Between Pandora tracks.

It's almost unbearable. I HATE being sad. I've fought so hard against it my whole life that I don't know how to do it. It makes me feel like a bad little girl. In fact, every bit of this red pill business makes me feel naughty. Like if I'd just done what my mommy and daddy wanted and chosen the blue pill instead, none of this would be so hard. Seeing the truth makes me such a bad daughter. According to a recent e-mail from one of my brothers, it even makes me a bad SISTER.

I want to be clear here and say that I'm not BLAMING my parents for my craziness. I own it 100%. This is MY problem. Seeing myself just brought my past and present into a collision course with one another. To ignore the past or to continue sweeping it under the rug and playing nice (and not talking about it on my blog) would mean to continue BEING THIS WAY. And I'm not okay with that crazy screaming lunatic. My children aren't going to have that mother. They're just... NOT. The only way to deal with MY shit is to deal with my parent's shit.

There is no spoon...

Comments

[Cheryl]

I congratulate you on beginning the journey. Having been in your shoes, but with a father not a mother, I know the path SUCKS. The first time I went to a therapist, she asked me how I felt and I told her "I don't know". And I didn't. Actually that was my second therapist. The first one told me that I was too crazy for her to help. That was fun.

I can tell you that the hard work is worth it. It will never be the same again, but that's probably a good thing if you're anything like me. I'm very proud of you for doing the work to own your life and emotions.

[LT]

I can relate to some of this. A few years ago when I was around 28 I had to stop speaking to my father because I realized, FINALLY, that he was NEVER going to be the person I needed him to be to me ....

I admire your ability to talk about this so openly.

[Cheryl]

I identify with this quite a bit. I don't have a mom, I have Ruth. The only thing she ever really taught me was who I didn't want to be (and they don't make a mother's day card for that!). I went through my realization after a suicide attempt at 22, which led me to counseling and eventually Adult Children of Alcoholics. I've been revisiting all of this in the past few weeks since I found out I was pregnant. The kind of mother I want to give my child is very different from the one I had (which is to say, none at all). In fact, I've been avoiding her calls for the past couple of days. I don't know how much longer I will do that.

I'm glad you're working at it. Just wanted you to know I've been there and done that, and it's a lifelong process. Hugs (cliopatra).

[cindy w]

Wow. Reading this made my chest tighten up on your behalf, because I'm afraid of what kind of push-back you're going to get from your family for publishing this. At the same time, though? So, so proud of you for sharing your truth.

[David]

I completely understand. I'm in the exact same boat.. it's going on three years now that I haven't spoken a word to my parents. Not cuz they're bad people, but they were just wholly unequipped to parent, and the backlash is my PTSD which talking to them exacerbates. I still mourn. I hope it gets better for you.
(and also, welcome to Portland)

[Denise]

I'm so sorry you are going through this, but thank you for posting this because it makes me realize that my childhood was more fucked up than I realized.

[Canadian Rachel]

LOVE YOU MANDA. FOR SERIOUS.

This is so good. You are working so hard. I've been there (my own Matrix-breaking version of there, that is; we all have it). So many people go partway there and then chicken out. You have no idea. Yes yes yes to everything you're saying.

I'll tell you this: reality is worth it. I know it hurts now, and it will never stop hurting completely (those Grendel-voices come back, but at least you recognize them for the liars they are... after they kick you in the nuts a few times). But reality is worth it. YOU ARE FREE.

[Canadian Rachel]

(I remember experiencing my "vat of grief" as a room full of unpaid bills. Seriously. I had to open them one by one and pay them all in tears. It was a useful metaphor, though, because I could pace myself and file a few for later until I had sufficient "funds" to pay them off. I'm not sure this metaphor would help you, given how close it is to one of the scarier realities of the last year, but feel free to borrow it if it would help.)

[Attorney at Large]

Hugs. I've gone down this road.

The only thing that comforted me for years was the mantra, "Some people don't get good mothers." Also, therapy. May I recommend a book that helped me and gave me the strength to break up with my parents?

http://www.powells.com/s?kw=will+i+ever+be+good+enough&x=79&y=8

You'll get through it. Honest.

[Miss A]

Wowza! Probably one of the most honest article I ever read. It's brutal lady, brutal and awesome! I'm also 35. I'm also on the same road to bettering myself. That has also meant opening up and telling the truth, about my unhappy childhood, shitty parents, verbal abuse, physical scars. And somehow, none of my friends are surprised...
Not going to dwell on me, but offer you support here! You can do it. Yes, for your family, yes, yes, but mainly, mostly, for you. You deserve to live in an honest world. It's a much happier place. Thank you for sharing. It means so much!

[Cherie Beyond]

I'm so glad you are doing this hard, dirty work and that it is helpful. But a nagging little voice in my head is asking that I say this: do the work that you have to do, see the truths that you have to see, but remember to allow your parents the same grace that you would ask you children to give you. I'm not saying forgive if forgiveness is not due, but remember that they are people with their own pain. That's all.

Go you.

[Crystal]

I cried and cried and cried when I finally saw my childhood for the excuse that it was. I have made piece with my mother (after she finally admitted that she sucked as a parent)She taught me exactly how I WOULD NOT be!! Although for years I allowed myself to begin to follow in her footsteps, I have corrected it!!

I, too, worry about your family backlash! Remember, stay strong. You are not only fixing yourself, but you are insuring that Genoa will never to have to spend years in therapy "fixing" her mother issues!!

Lots and lots and lots of love!!

Crystal

[Valerie Willman]

This is why you and Joel are together. So he can hold you while you do this work. Maybe you wouldn't have ever felt safe enough to do this work if Joel had never entered your life.

You are right where you are supposed to be. Right now.

[Amber]

It's not for me to say how necessary all of this is. I will never be inside your head, never know what you know, never see what you've seen, never feel what you are learning to feel. I do know that no one anywhere ever had a perfect childhood. No one's parents ever gave them everything they needed or were a perfect fit. I think it's a very hard, but very good thing that you are wresting with your inner monster instead of letting it rule you. I just wish you didn't feel the need to burn your family bridges while you do. Fire burns at both ends of the stick.

[Canadian Rachel]

And a phoenix rises from the ashes. Burn what you've gotta burn.

[Rhonda Kennedy]

WOW! Over the last three days I have been dealing with the same issues. Feeling. We have been taught not to feel. Not just by our parents but by society. People don't want us to be sad. They want us to be happy. Even when we are grieving. We have concepts ourselves as to why we shouldn't feel sad, mad, depressed, etc. Our concepts don't help us. It is ok to FEEL!!!!!!! Good for you for crying! Do it! You have 35 years of crying bottled up! It may take a month to stop. Who cares! Get it out. Feel what you are feeling!! Then you will be done. We don't cry forever. (well, I think my mom cried for a year after my dad left...but she rarely cries any more!) We care too much what others think and so we act accordingly. I'm not saying be a butthead to everyone who pisses us off, but if we are nice law abiding people... who cares if we cry at the check stand buying peanut butter, or when we pay our bills, or pick up our kids!!!! KUDOS to you for figuring out at 35 what so many people never do. The answer is to feel what you are feeling and move on. Decide how you are going to deal with your newly found knowledge and proceed forward. You are just in the thick of it Amanda. It will get better. Just continue to feel. =) (hugs)

[Faraway Reader]

I've been there and it hurts like hell.

The year I faced my own childhood in therapy was shockingly painful. I had just moved in with my husband (then boyfriend) I thought it was all I had ever hoped for and then I just cracked the hell up basically.

I found a therapist and it was seriously hard as hell. I remember the crying and dreams and processing, even on a sub-concious level and how it all came out. The more I remembered and realized the worse it felt. I felt like I was on another planet. When you are going through hell....keep going. I faced all my shit and made peace where I could and let go where I couldn't. I still have my crosses to bear but that year (almost 13 ago now) I knew I was fighting for my life in some ways. Or at least the kind of life I knew I deserved.

I still wish the past was different but I know now only I can decide how many of my present days I'll ruin because of it. There are still days stuff comes up but I can see it and have empathy for my "ten year old self". Now that I am a parent I also have some empathy for my own parents.
We are all flawed.

I'm rooting for you. And Joel and the kids. Stay safe and keep hanging on.
xxoo

[A]

YES. GOOD. This is what good therapy feels like and looks like. You are re-arranging your spiritual and mental closets. Keep, toss, release, repeat.

I'm the one who pasting about being bipolar on the last entry and how it was properly diagnosed for me- over a long period of time with the pattern of rapid mood cycling being charted and watched by competent professionals who knew when to push and when not to. Now that I've gone through the hard work you're experiencing and found the combination of medicine, the ups and downs look like ordinary life.

You will know peace. You will be able to sit with your sadness instead of burying and denying it. You will be able to take fair and equitable partnership for granted and accept that you deserve nothing less while also being present enough to cherish Joel in big and small ways every day. You will be able to be present for your children, to say to them, "Are you okay?" and it won't sound like Arabic to them. You will get there.

You just have to trudge uphill for a little bit longer before you get to coast back down. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Apparently Finding Nemo quotes complement the Matrix...?

[Lori]

I think my therapist is trying to get me to face my childhood--hell, my whole life--with my authoritarian father. She just asked me today, at the end of my session, whether I feel like my parents valued me, and I completely fucking fell apart.

I'm terrified.

I feel you, dearest. Hope we can get together soon.

[heather]

I've read your blog for a long while, our girls are months apart in age or thereabouts. I've been hoping you'd get to this point for a long time---not the misery and breakdown part, but the self-honesty place. Your doing good work. Never stop. love to you and J and the kids.

[Ashley]

Thinking of you. Hard to sleep last night...your post was the last thing I read before turning in. You've opened Pandora's box, and I know it feels overwhelming but, man, it really feels necessary. Be patient, take care of yourself, and please keep sharing with us. Sending you peace...

[Elaine (Tencati) Sweet]

Amanda, I knew your family when you were little but have not seen you for years. All families and all parents are imperfect. Through my own therapy on family issues I learned that I truly did deserve more an a child, more love, more guidance, more skills with which to negotiate life. Every child deserves these things. However, since our parents don't get an owners manual with parenting advice, they mostly do the best they can. Is it enough? No. All parents fail in lots of ways but they also doa lt of good that needs to be acknowledged. I encourage you to be grateful for the parents you had and to be honest with yourself about what was positive long with what was negative. Certainly, both were present. I wish you much luck on your journey of discovery and hope you can avoid the "all bad" thinking. Life is about finding the balance. Your parents love you dearly and are proud of you, even if you don't believe it. Finding your own truth doesn't have to mean abandoning your past.

[Rachael]

I'm watching someone very close to me go through a very, very difficult journey right now with stuff from his childhood. It's so, so hard. I hope that this happens as painlessly as possible (which will still be kind of awful) for you, and that every day is a better day.

[Jules]

I'm really proud of you for tacking this head-on. It's so easy to just hope things get better on their own. Obviously-you have a lot of support here-even your detractors can't say much to this post since you're doing exactly what they would generally "advise" you to do! Good luck and feel free to call/msg me if you need to talk/vent/whatever. Hope to see you guys soon!

[janet]

I had a very similar journey to yours, and apparently, to many of your other readers. Since mine started about 20 years ago, I have seen this journey take many unexpected turns, go through some pretty long tunnels, and have found some amazing vistas along the way.

Your journey will be different from mine because you aren't me, but one thing is the same: I had to let go of the illusion of the perfect childhood in order to grieve, too. And it really sucked. I had those painful conversations with my dad and stepmom, and the fallout was horrible. There were times I did not talk to them for months. My father didn't even hug me when he walked me up the aisle at my wedding--with 350 people watching, I was really hoping he could pull that one off, but it didn't happen.

My ape-shit crazy stepmom told my entire family that I didn't want to have anything to do with them anymore. She gave me wrong information on addresses and telephone numbers for them, so I could not contact them. She told me that they didn't want to contact me. All untrue.

In exchange, I got to trade in the memories I made up about my childhood for the real ones the PTSD took away. There were times that I didn't talk to my parents for months, because I was trying to understand how relationship boundaries work. I made friends and lost friends for the same reason.

But the kaleidoscope can turn in very strange ways. My older brother, who was a hardcore drug user and who I had no contact with for 15 years as a result, cleaned up his life and hunted me down and got me back together with a group of people I thought I would never see again--in fact, I had moved 2000 miles away from them and was happy for the distance between us.

And finally, I had the knock-down, drag-out with my stepmom that had been needing to happen for years. The 3 hour conversation where she tried to cut me off from the entire family permanently, for religious reasons, and I just stood my ground and respectfully kept saying that those weren't the reasons at all. Until she finally came out and said that 'adopted children are different than naturally-born ones. There are terms and conditions that have to be met to earn our love, and not only did you never meet them, you never understood that they were there.'

To which I replied, respectfully even, 'You don't know what it means to be an adoptive parent because you did not adopt me. You came into my life when I was 5 and you are my step parent. So I don't have to accept what you are saying, because it isn't true.'

After that, things gradually started to get better. They are far from perfect now, it still is really hurtful at times to see the difference between how they treat me and my brothers, but the hurt is within acceptable limits. MY limits. My elderly father has even said he is proud of me (something he hadn't since I was 9), and is eager to talk on the phone when I call. Crazy stepmom, still crazy, but she stays within the boundaries that I have established and we are both more comfortable for it. Brother is still clean and an excellent parent to his little girl.

Now I am not for a minute going to say we are a perfect family, or even much of a family. I have arranged my life so my support system is not them, because they just can't give me what I want or need in that area. Nor do they ask me to do anything in that area for them. But I have healthy interactions with them when we interact. This is more than I ever hoped would happen.

The extended family and friends--my relationships with them have uniformly improved beyond belief because of establishing healthy interactions with my immediate adoptive family. And that is really important too.

This has taken 20 YEARS to achieve. And when I started the journey, there were plenty of people saying that I had to maintain a close relationship with my family, and to be grateful for what I had, and there were just as many saying to cut all ties forever. MY therapist said to 'try to keep an open mind.' That was the best piece of advice I ever got on the subject, and I will pass it along.

The kaleidoscope turns, and everything can change. Nothing is permanent. It doesn't have to be. One of the hardest things about fear, and anger, and sadness, is allowing ourselves to feel them, then letting them go to make space for something different to come in. Blessings on your journey, my friend. It will be amazing, whatever it is.