I'm constantly trying to figure out how to tell my story. I've wanted to be a writer since I was five. I mean, I have been a writer since I was five. But I didn't begin to write about the morbidity of my own life until about age 9, when I was watching my mom get pummeled and bloodied by her dick psycho boyfriend (that's the official psychological diagnosis). He was pretty shitty to my brother and sister and me, too, and writing about it was my way of surviving it. But a lot of people don't want you to think about your shitty childhood. They think, "You're grown up now; it's time to move on. Think positive thoughts." Me - I think of all the women and children out there who are still getting beaten and who can relate to a story like mine.
Catharsis.
But even my sponsor in sobriety wants me to be careful when writing about my past. Our program involves taking an inventory of ourselves, and she told me to pretend like I'm in a grocery store throwing away moldy broccoli and putting new broccoli on display. Don't rub the moldy broccoli all over your face and smell it and throw up over and over, just notice it, toss it out, and replace it (and God is in charge of the new broccoli, by the way).
So, I get it. I'm shoving the moldy broccoli in your faces and not even showing you the beautiful, fresh, new broccoli that God has made out of me and continues to grow. Sure, I could tell my story in ways that would show you that I am a triumphant, intelligent, loving, strong woman overcoming all obstacles - but instead I tend to go with the victim-ish, woe-is-me, can't-do-anything-right, guess-I'll-go-eat-worms-in-a-cave-somewhere loathsome-human-being-type voice.
And so, with so many people expressing their concern over the years, I now realize, "Oh. I see. My character is completely one-dimensional."
Before I left my husband on October 10, 2011, I had sought the help of a therapist. I've seen a few more since, but I had hand-picked that first one very carefully about a month prior to that night. I googled "therapists near [zip-code] specializing in love addiction," and found Dr. Blaine Carman (http://blainecarman.com). I wanted to save my marriage even though I felt like I hated my husband and was obsessed with the delivery driver at the pizza restaurant where I was assistant manager.
I only managed to see Dr. Carman twice before I gave up and left Ronnie. But he did give me some advice that I'll never forget (which means a lot; I have something called "dissociative amnesia" as a symptom of my borderline personality disorder). He told me that, in the beginning of a relationship, we tend to wear metaphorical rose-colored glasses that only pick up on the good things about the person with whom we're in love. Near the end of a relationship, it's the opposite; we have melancholy-blue-colored glasses (I made that color up; he didn't give those ones a color) that make us see only the bad things about the person. So, one of the keys to a successful relationship, all the way through, Blaine said, is for us to notice both the "good" and the "bad" in balance, not blinding ourselves to either one dimension.
On this blog, I certainly dramatize and stick to the blue dimension instead of giving you the full, 3D picture, when in real life, after four years of therapy and recovery, I'm much more balanced.
At least, more than I used to be. But I tend to write when I'm feeling either extreme, especially the down-side. That's how I heal it. I always feel immense relief after I write that stuff, even if it's only true in my head for ten minutes.
But I don't know - maybe we should all wear the 3D glasses for awhile instead.
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