Orphan seeks a new home in her heart

[Pippi]

My therapist keeps reminding me that I couldn't leave... at 5 or 10 or even 15. "It's not like you could go and check yourself into a hotel, right?"  Right.  But now, a few weeks shy of 50, I can.  And I'm trying.  Packing and re-packing my bags, trying to figure out how to get out and where to go.  Figuratively, of course.  The escape from the hellscape of my childhood home is one that has to happen in my own heart and mind. 

There are days when I don't know how I can endure this pain, and I see why I've kept so busy all these years:  Perfecting, planning, performing.  All to avoid THIS.  This feeling, right now, of crippling desolation.  A caving in, a collapse of all hope.  Utterly alone.  THIS feeling that I have been running from for decades.  Here it is.  I can finally feel it.  Finally hold it.  Endure it.  My therapist says I never could have survived this feeling as a child.  She says I would have developed a chronic illness, possibly died.  This may be true. 

I have tried, for a while now, to go back and get myself out.  I've always had an active imagination, an alternate fantasy life I dip into when things are too dreary to endure.  Lately, I've used my imagination to time-travel.  Back to that time, when I was 10 or 12 years old, when the really scary things were happening and I had no one to tell.  In my imagination, I try to imagine a way out for myself.  What if I just ran away?  What if I told someone?  I walk through these scenarios in my mind, but they never work.  If I tell, they lie and then berate me, maybe beat me.  I can feel the blows.  If I run away, where do I go? I have no money.  They bring me back, and then maybe they send me away to get me "fixed" like they did with my brother.  I lose the mother I believe I adore.  She turns away from me, cold, like she always is if I complain or get sad or angry.  She's done with me.  And without her, without her love, I would die.  All hope would go out like a candle being extinguished. 

My therapist says that there was no escape, back then.  She says that I managed to survive through the only possibly avenue of escape that was available to me:  To bury all my needs and feelings and pain, and become the golden girl of the family, the caretaker for all of them, the over-achiever whose accomplishments would serve as proof to the world (and to ourselves) that we really were OK after all.  Better than OK, in fact: Special, not like the others. 

The world seemed to agree that I was special.  I made sure that I excelled at everything.  That I looked right and that I won the right awards and knew the right people.  I became the little narcissist that my narcissistic father wanted me to be.  And then, one evening, a few years ago, I was standing in a glittering ballroom, having been nominated for a prestigious award, when the world collapsed.  I was actually walking on a red carpet (yes a red carpet!) when it hit me and and I finally heard my pain.  It was just a little voice that said, "You are garbage. You are nothing. You are loathsome." So I drank myself into a blackout and remembered very little after that.  The glittering night that might have been the pinnacle of my life/career became the night when I started waking up to everything.  And everything has been better/worse/so much harder since then. 

Each day, each week, each month, I uncover new layers, dig deeper, deeper, deeper.  I hear myself.  I actually hear myself.  It's incredibly confusing at times, trying to figure out who I actually am and what I actually feel and think and need, when I've spent a lifetime in a sort of foggy dream that my family spun around all of us.  In that dream-fog, you play your part and you keep quiet about your fears and your feelings.  You play your role.  Mine was golden child.  My brother was the scapegoat/rebel.  Mom was the martyr. Dad was the hero/bully.   And you get so good at playing that role that you no longer realize that it's a role; you forget that it's not actually YOU.  When I first started reading about this, in Alice Miller's book, "The Drama of the Gifted Child," it was like a lightning bolt of truth shearing open my world.  She wrote about a "false self" that is created, because the parents are unable to mirror the true self - the one with needs and feelings.  And we believe that we ARE this false self.  Shedding the false self, for me, is a slow and painstaking process.  Totally uncomfortable and strange (but also wondrous, at times), like learning a strange new skill, a new language, or writing with the wrong hand. 

But I keep going, because I know I can't go back.  I can't un-see what I've seen.  I can't un-hear what I've heard from my deepest, saddest self.  So on I go, on this strange, strange journey, hoping for a break in the clouds here and there, hoping to eventually find a new and safe home in my heart to settle down in.  Hoping to find others who would dwell with me forever in truth, even when truth collapses us in grief, who will hang on with me while the pain runs through us and eventually leaves us, still standing, finally aware of how perfect and beautiful we actually are.

[Not Alone]

Pippi, I read your post and I hear you.

[Pippi]

Thank you, Not Alone.

[sanmagic7]

i related to so much of what you wrote, pippi.  it sounds like a tough spot you're in.  feeling that pain . . . thanks for sharing.  (by the by, the pippi longstocking books were some of my favorites when i was a kid.)  sending love and a hug, if that's ok with you. 

[Armee]

 

[Larry]

hi pipi,   i don't know what to say,  just want you to know i am here to support you.