Rage, Rage, Rage: Medical Facts and Learning the Truth, Part 1

Asking for help, especially from an authority figure, is one of the hardest things to learn as a child of dysfunctional parents.  But I've been going to the doctor and dentist when I have something wrong with me lately, saying, "Yes," every time I ask myself the question, do I need to get help.  Silencing the voices that say I'm not worth it, it's too much trouble, it's my own fault for taking up space --- these voices are all lies.  I'm learning, making progress, taking small steps.  Ironically, some of those steps involve my literal feet.  (Please forgive the puns that follow.  I can barely, um, stand them.)

About three years ago, I discovered I'd been wearing shoes too small for me for probably twenty years, and about that time, I figured out that I had ingrown toenails as well.  So I'd had consistent pain in my feet for most of my life, so what?  I just thought that's the way things were.  

You can collect similar stories from a lot of people who grew up in dysfunctional households.  You don't know anything's wrong until you start comparing with normal people.  But you can't compare with anyone because you don't know how to connect in a functional way for a long time.  And even once you become functional, you aren't around normal people because they don't feel right to you for even longer.  So it takes a long time to understand what the normal people experience actually is.  If that makes any sense.  

To sum up:  What does a normal foot feel like?  Apparently, not mine.

So I decided to go to a foot doctor to try to get this fixed.  

There were many, ahem, steps to this process.  Each of them took some time and deliberation.  I got a recommendation from my doctor.  I had to calm down from doing that and agree that yes, I was worth the time and money and investment to get this done.  I called to make an appointment.  Again, I had to calm down from that freakout and talk myself into not cancelling; yes, I am worth taking time off work to make this happen.  

I had to go to the doctor and evaluate him as trustworthy and make sure I wasn't overriding my instincts with a fit of classic child-of-narcissists urge-to-please.  (I did not want to get stuck with a horrible doctor and end up getting re-traumatized, which is a real risk for people like me.)  I had questions I had to make sure I asked, with notes on paper so I wouldn't forget.  I had to make an appointment for the minor surgery, take time off work, make sure my husband took time off to drive me home.  

The first appointment was the hardest.  It's tough for me to walk into any unknown situation, to face people I've never met, and wonder what judgement lies beyond the door, what they will think of me.   I had the recommendation of someone I really trusted, and I knew that if I wanted to walk away, I could do that.  During the appointment, Mr. Kind Podiatrist looked at my toes and wiggled them around, confirmed that I have ingrown toenails, and started talking about options.  But amongst his kind and gentle poking and prodding of my big toes, he noticed my weird second toenail on my left foot.

There's a pretty good story to go with this toenail, and believe me, you do not want a picture of that toenail!  My parents used to have these super dangerous lawn chairs from the 70s.  Here, let's see if I can find a picture of the chair at least:  

My siblings and I were making forts with the three lawn chairs, piling them on top of each other, trying to get them to stay upside down, having variable amounts of success.  Per usual, my dad wandered by at one point with a drink in his hand and yelled at us to stop doing that, and we stopped for as long as he was in range, and then started up again as soon as he couldn't see us.  Kid stuff.  

Suddenly, one of the chairs collapsed, and one of the hinges grabbed my second toe and pulled out the toenail.  I screamed and there was blood everywhere.  My dad came running and the first words out of his mouth were, "I told you kids not to do that anymore, goddammit!"  He grabbed me and ran into the bathroom, put me on the counter, and ran cold water over my bleeding toe.  It hurt like hell, and I cried and screamed sitting on the counter.  He held my foot under the water until it stopped bleeding, telling me to knock it off, I should have listened since I was the oldest.  I don't remember the band-aid or anything, but when my toenail grew back, it was a quarter inch thick and cloudy like a goat's hoof.  My dad said that was my toenail's reaction to getting pulled out.  My whole family made fun of it for years, and my parents said it's what I deserved for disobeying.  I couldn't really trim it very well, and it sometimes snagged my tights when I got older.  

When Mr. Kind Podiatrist saw my blunt little stubby toenail, I was ready.  I had my story prepared as a pre-emptive strike, isn't this funny, ha-ha! and told him my story about the lawn chairs and how the toenail got ripped out and that's why my toenail is that way and isn't that funny!

"Oh no," he said.  "That's a fungus."

"What."  I said.

"That's a fungus," he said.  "We can clear that right up.  Just takes a little medicine."

"Really."  I said.  

[Let us pause here.  No.  Really.  Let's.]

Reader.  Oh Reader.  It took every ounce of self-control I had to not pick up the entire exam table, crack it in half, and throw it through the wall.  I just kept thinking, forty years.  For almost forty years, I've been living with this toenail, letting my family make fun of me, blaming myself, letting them blame me, filing it down, being ashamed of it, of myself, when all it is is a fungus?  

In that forty years, where were my parents?  Why didn't they ever take me to a doctor to ask the question?  Six words!  "Is there anything we can do?"  Nope, too much work.  Too much effort.  Too much trouble.  It's her fault - never mind that they were the parents, I was the child.  She should have minded - never mind that I was seven years old and just being a kid.  This follows the pattern:  Didn't do your job as a parent and you feel bad about it?  Blame the scapegoat child and never admit you did anything wrong!  Problem solved.  

"It's just a fungus."

I got through the rest of the appointment the way I do everything else in my life.  I shoved my angry, terrified, or difficult feelings into a box and pretended with all of my highly tuned acting skills that everything was perfect.  I worked out all of the details of the upcoming procedure.  I was present, and contained my fury until I got home.  Driving home was tough.  Every once in a while it threatened to swell up around the edges, but I knew I might drive into another car if I started screaming so I didn't think about it.  I got home safely, played computer games, and zoned out with a cat on my lap until my husband got home and started making dinner.  I perched on our table and tried not to rip things apart as I told him what happened.

My friend Karrie Higgins has written extensively on her medical issues and what requesting her medical records has revealed to her.  I've considered doing the same thing just to see what else comes up.  

I keep reminding myself that this will happen over and over.  I wrote about this before in my Law & Order sound effect blog post.  (Jung Jung!)  There will always be something new that strikes me in a different way, or that I'm seeing with new eyes.  Or someone will tell me a story about my parents that I've never heard before, and I'll listen and gain a perspective that sheds light in dark corners.  

Knowing it will happen again doesn't keep it from being infuriating.  The anger is fresh each time.  If there were an Academy Award for Not Hulking Out in a Public Place, I would have twelve of them on my imaginary mantle.  But it's worth the anger.  It's confirmation of what I instinctively believed when I started this journey, and what I now know to be true.  My parents chose to blame me for an accident that could have happened to any child, and when it happened, they sought no medical treatment for the next eleven years.  In addition, they teased me about it, and never thought that I was worth the trouble of mentioning it to a doctor.  That's not good parenting.  That's not parenting.

I may find more surprises around other corners.  Will I take care of them myself?  The answer is YES.

Childhood Trauma: How What We've Experienced Shapes Us

I'm not gonna lie:  None of this is easy to deal with.  I may be able to tell some of these stories with a calm demeanor, but that's hard fought and not easily won.  I've ranted and raved and screamed into a bonfire a few times, mourned the energy wasted and potential lost as I spun my wheels for years and years asking the wrong questions.  "What's wrong with me?  Why am I broken?  Why am I doing all of the wrong things?  Why am I such a horrible person?"  

As a child of crappy parents, these were the questions I was trained to ask.  Every time I did something that my mom didn't like, or made her uncomfortable, she turned it around and asked me, "Why did you do that?  Why are you like that?  What's wrong with you?"  

Even these days, I still flinch if I think someone's going to judge me.  I still anticipate the possible blow.  I instinctively avoid doing or saying something if I can predict what they will say.

Let me pick apart that last sentence for you, and show you how limiting it can be.

"I instinctively" = the instinct is there, implanted.  I have been trained to immediately react in a certain way, and must train myself to stop, think, and react in a different way.  Anyone who has studied childhood knows how hard it is to retrain learned behaviors.

"avoid doing or saying something" = I'm stopping myself, not being limited by someone else, but by myself.  

"if I can predict what they will say." = Ooo there's a lot there.  "if I can predict"  NO ONE can predict.  I'm assuming a lot here.  "they" is the big one.  I'm taking my experiences with my parents, which were pretty horrendous, and projecting them onto whoever I'm with, and predicting that "they" whoever they are, will treat me in the same way that my parents did.  

And then self-limiting based on that assumption.

That's not good.  You can see that, right?

First of all, the general public will never treat me as poorly as my parents did.  I know that for a fact.  I've experienced it daily since I moved out of my parents house.  Twice.  

Second, even if they do, I know that they shouldn't be treating me that poorly.  No one should ever treat me that poorly and my parents shouldn't have in the first place.  Righteous indignation FTW.  

So what I'm doing in that beautiful sentence is presuming that everyone I meet is going to treat me horribly, and that I should not be myself around them because of how they are going to treat me when I do.

If I speak my truth, people will treat me badly.  Because I'm broken.  There's something wrong with me.  That's the lesson of my childhood.  

But no one can stuff themselves down for their entire lives.  Especially not me.  So I finally reveal myself to someone, and if something goes wrong, I'm left with those questions.  "What's wrong with me?  Why am I broken?  Why can't I ever do the right thing?"

These have never been the right questions to ask.  

When I approach it from this other angle, it makes sense.  What happened to me?  I was raised in a house where no one took care of me.  I was never acknowledged as who I was.  I wasn't supported as a person.  I was fed and clothed, but I was derided and chided and nagged and ignored but praised in public.  I never knew if I was coming home to happy parents or angry parents.  There was no safe haven, just the possibility of danger.  The car in the driveway dictated your fear level.  

I'm not broken.  Someone tried to break me.  

But I'm not broken.  I'm still here.

Deserving Better

I started writing this blog with a purpose.  I wanted to share my story with people just like me, who needed to hear that they weren't the only ones whose parents had tried to break them.  I knew there were others out there who were suffering as I had because they didn't know that their trouble in relationships, with money, jobs, food, friendships, with feeling good enough ---- that all of these things could be linked back to their childhood experiences.  They didn't know that what they went through wasn't normal, and it wasn't their fault.

I was excited when people started reading my blog.  I could see the hits start piling up, and every now and then I could see when someone really dug in and read every single page.  I know those were My People, the people who really needed to hear what I had to say.  That excited me.  But I hit 500 page views, and my excitement started curdling.  I would report my numbers to my husband.  "550 views.  Oh my gosh."  His support never wavered.  "That's great, isn't it!"  "I guess so," I would shake my head.  He never pressed, but I could hear his question.  If my intent was to reach people, why wasn't I happy that I was succeeding?  

This got worse as the numbers grew higher.  The last time I checked about a month ago, I had 900 hits on my blog, and I was so uncomfortable, I stopped writing completely.  I also had foot surgery, so I had another reason to stop and take care of myself (which is another thing that children of narcissists are NOT good at, but more about that later, oh so much more).  

I let it go.  I know enough about myself to know that sometimes if I push on something too hard, I'm going to break it instead of fix it.  I had to let it incubate.  I worked on other things, other personal issues in therapy, books I'd been meaning to read, and let my mind wander.  And it occurred to me as I was falling asleep one night that my problem was exactly the same in my work life as it was in my blog life.

In my childhood, I was given very little love and attention, very little of what I needed overall - school clothes, books that fed my soul, even basic hygiene instruction.  I learned to make do with whatever I was given.  It made me a really good survivor in deprived circumstances.  I am excellent at handling terrible situations.  I can thrive in horrible environments and just get things done regardless of whatever is being handed to me.  

So I'm accustomed to those situations, in work, in relationships, everywhere.  I'm built to handle whatever.  I know what I'm doing in those worlds.  They're my jam.  I get it.  I buckle down, I manage, I make it great.  But that doesn't mean that I don't deserve better.  That doesn't mean I should stay in a crappy situation.

As my blog started gaining a readership, I became increasingly uncomfortable.  Yes, my intent was to reach people, but my old feelings about not deserving any attention came flooding back.  I was doing what I do best - writing well, communicating the things I know best, and helping people along the way.  But it still made me massively twitchy to be seen doing it, to know that others were acknowledging my skills and enjoying my work.  

I've been lucky enough to have friends who are supportive of my work here; they've given me positive feedback on this blog, and I've received other feedback as well, saying it seems like I know what I'm doing, I've come so far from where I was, handled so many issues so well, and I seem so together.  I always smile graciously and try to tell them basically:

LOL FOREVER.

You never really get away from being in a dysfunctional home.  You work on it as long as you breathe.  You make HUGE progress, and the first step is knowing where you really came from.  Once you realize your true origins, you can start moving away from home, literally and figuratively.  You can rebuild yourself from scratch.  But you will always find another piece, or the same piece, of shame, or guilt, or weird feelings hiding within you somewhere.  The good news is that it's smaller every time.  And you know how to deal with it this time.  You've been here before.  

I had to share this.  I've been here before.  You can get through this.  I promise.  

A Love Letter to My Inner Critic

Dear Inner Critic,

I wanted to write you a letter and let you know how much you've meant to me for all these years.  For so long I've treated you like a burden, like a horrible secret that needed to be hidden away.  I've realized lately how much you've done for me, and I wanted to thank you for helping me get through the toughest times in my life. 

In my earliest childhood years, I really didn't need you, and whether you knew that or I was just too young to criticize myself properly, you hung back and let me soak in all of the adulation that came from being the newest baby in a large extended family that had suffered terrible losses.  You let me believe what they said --- that I was cute and smart and funny --- and you knew that I would need the memory of that pride and approval and love to sustain me through the next long, lonely decades. 

When my mother's pride turned into anger and her smile turned to stone, you emerged from behind me with a shushing sound.  You taught me to hold my tongue quietly in my mouth, to watch the language of the bodies around me, to be wary of feeling comfortable enough to speak freely.  You showed me the traps laid for me to fall into, the pits in my path, the slipperly slides down the hill that would capture me if I strayed.  You covered my mouth before I spoke and showed me how she would see my words --- as daggers aimed at her, not the innocent musings they were.

Sometimes I ignored your warnings.  I couldn't help but break through and try to be myself.  When I was punished for it, you repeated your warnings, and showed me that hiding was the only way to live through my childhood.

Your reprimands kept me safe at school as well.  You held me back from always having the answer, or at least volunteering it, and from thinking that my intelligence meant anything to the world.  You instilled in me a sense that I would never be enough, and that kept me striving for more, more knowledge, love, and skills, for a very long time.  Any time I started feeling complacent, your relentless nagging kept me from standing still.  My thirst for knowledge was born from your dissatisfaction with my achievements, whatever those happened to be.  Thanks to you, I have learned and experienced so much that I might have otherwise missed.

Did I mention that you saved my actual life?  I have no doubt that without your constant warnings, I might have been killed, physically or spiritually, by either one of my birth parents.  Their volatile personalities, addictions, and sheer bottled rage could have exploded on me at any time, without your constant criticism to remind me that I was not measuring up to their impossible standards, and they might lose their temper at any moment.

I carried you with me to college and beyond, hearing your voice, the voice of fear, in my head any time I showed my true personality.  You said my parents wouldn't like that, they wouldn't stand for it, they might slap or threaten or punish me for who I am, for who I was showing to the world. 

I hated you for a long time.  But I needed you in order to get here, to where I am today.  I have a new life, and a new name, and no one has ever said hateful things about this new name, this new person that I am today.  I'm stepping out into the light as my true self, and I don't need you to protect me anymore.  Thank you for saving my life, for keeping me safe, but I'm okay by myself now.

You can rest now.  I'll always remember you.  Goodbye.

Movies I Watch on Repeat II: Recovery Edition

This one needs a little more 'splaining, Lucy, because it took me a while to understand exactly why I was so drawn to these movies.  I've never been in rehab.  I don't think I've ever been addicted to anything illegal.  But I've longed for escape, escape from the pain and fear that were instilled by my family from childhood, and I get it.  I understand what it's like to never want to feel like that again, to not care what you have to do to avoid it.  I've chosen to stay in relationships just so I would feel loved --- even though I was being abused on a daily basis, I would have done anything to avoid being alone, to avoid hearing that voice in my head:  No one will ever love you.  Where does that fall on the irony meter:  A women's studies major in an abusive relationship?  You have to laugh!  You have to laugh or it swallows you whole.  So I smile now, because it's ridiculous, and it's been decades now.  I know now that I'm not unlovable.  I know that because I love myself.  I don't need anyone else to do it for me.

All that to say, I know what that feels like, to do anything at all not to feel.  Before I pinned that down (through a whole lot of self-reflection and counseling and work, yes I say that a lot, WORK), I just knew that I loved these movies.  They spoke to me on a cellular level.  So here's the list, and again, I'll keep the spoilers as light as I can.

Drunks
This movie is split into two separate plotlines, centering around an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.  The main character Jim, played by Richard Lewis, is a recovering addict, who is setting up for the meeting.  He's something of an example for the rest of the attendees, but halfway through the meeting he bolts, and immediately starts drinking his way through the night, moving through progressively harder drugs.  This is intercut with footage of the stories told at the meeting by the attendees about their lives and how they got to this point in their lives. 

I watch this one about once every six months.  Jim's descent into complete horrifying drugged stupor is pretty intense.  The other stories are pretty awful, but I get a lot from their self-reflection and how they realized or were forced to realize how far they had fallen over the edge.

I have a Demotivational postcard someone gave me as a joke at work that says, "It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others."  In some ways, that's how I feel about these movies.  If I don't do the work, if I don't watch my motivations and make sure that I'm not lying to myself about why I do the things I do, I could easily slip down that rabbit hole and disappear.  I know it could happen.  If I want to be who I'm meant to be, I have to be careful.  I have to be vigilant.  That's part of the attraction.

It's also what I always hoped my mother would do.  I can see her in these stories.  I know what her home life was like growing up.  I know how she was treated.  I can see it in how she treated me, in how she acted, in her behavior every moment I was growing up.  And she knew I could see it, and she hated me for it.  Nobody likes the truthtellers.  (That's another blog post altogether.)  And I always hoped she would realize how her background affected her, and try to do better than that.

But she didn't.  She chose as her mother did.  Wall it up, and move on.  She never dealt with the past, left it in a huge mess in a room in her mind, to fester and leak out into her dealings with her family every day.  She didn't realize it, but it poisoned everything around her.  Including me.  As William Faulkner said, "The past isn't dead; it isn't even past."

Rating:  20 viewings, but a big impact.

28 Days
Not to be confused with 28 Days Later (an excellent zombie film), this film centers around Gwen, played by Sandra Bullock, a trainwreck of a woman.  In the first few minutes, she shows up wasted and an hour late to her sister Lily's wedding, stumbles through the ceremony, at the reception dances directly into the wedding cake, then steals a limo to go find another cake, crashing the car into a house. 

Like I said, trainwreck.

After being placed into rehab for 28 Days (hence the title) in lieu of jail time, she proceeds to judge everyone and everything around her, correcting pronunciation, rolling her eyes at the chanting of the serenity prayer, refusing to participate in anything, and trying to find drugs immediately.  Her boyfriend visits and slips her some drugs, she uses, and her counselor sets up a transfer to jail.  Still in denial, she insists that she could stop using if she wanted to, saying she's a writer and they all drink, she likes to have a good time, she's not an addict, that's for those other people.  Out of stubbornness, she throws the drugs out the window, then tries to shimmy down a tree to get to them.  After injuring herself, she realizes the extent of her addiction and breaks down. 

The rest of the movie involves her journey as she throws herself into treatment, participating in everything, trying to gain back everyone's trust, and reaching out to Lily for help in talking about family issues.  One of the scenes that will always, always bring me to tears is when Lily talks about wishing she had helped Gwen when they were younger.  Using her newly found knowledge from the program, Gwen says, "Well, I never asked for help, so."  Lily replies, "But you needed it, didn't you?" 

Everyone needs help in this world, at one time or another.  Of course I was raised to believe that I didn't deserve help, and so I couldn't ask for any because no one would help me.  You're reading this; you've probably already read something earlier so that's already a given.  But even if I did get the courage to actually ask for help, I faced a huge wall of resistance.  My mother would flip out, giving me all of the reasons that there WAS no help to give.  No money available, no time to do what I was asking for, no way that it could be done.  If it was something I valued, but it didn't line up with presenting to the world the image of her as a perfect mother, it just couldn't happen.  Impossible.

So I learned.  I learned not to ask, that help didn't exist.  And I worked around that void for decades. 

I had to start small, and ask for little things before I could believe that it would work.  Any setback was a huge setback, and I had to start from zero many times.  But eventually I was able to ask for help without feeling like a huge imposition, like I was asking too much, taking up too much space, being greedy when I should be giving instead of taking. 

One of my friends said something a long time ago that reframed the situation for me.  She asked me if I liked helping people, and how it made me feel.  I said I loved helping people, and it made me feel good, and useful, and like I was needed.  She said, why would you want to keep someone else from feeling that way?  Wouldn't you want to allow someone else the pleasure of feeling that way if you had the chance? 

Digression again.  That's just one of the pieces of this movie that meant so much to me.  Watching these characters deal with their past, and learn from their mistakes helped me figure out how to do that myself.

Rating:  300 viewings, at least.  I could probably recite this one, easily. 

I don't know that I'll ever fully recover from the childhood I had.  I'll probably always be in recovery.  But these movies gave me hope that I wouldn't have to use food or books or other people to hide from my feelings about my past forever.  Instead, I could move through my feelings and step up into a new life, one where I could acknowledge where I came from, but live as myself without letting my past dictate who I would become.

Movies I Watch on Repeat: Dysfunctional Family Edition

Stories have always helped me survive:  books, comics, music, TV and movies.  When I became financially stable, I immediately invested in a VCR and cable, and started recording movies at a prodigious pace.  Back then I knew something was wrong with either me or my family, but I didn't know what, and I didn't know what to do about it.  But even then, I was drawn to certain kinds of stories, and I'd watch these movies over and over.  


I'll be posting about Truth Tellers and Recovery movies in upcoming posts, but for now, here are my favorite Dysfunctional Family movies.  (There may be some spoilers, but I'll try to keep them light.)

Drop Dead Fred
This looks like a light-hearted comedy at first, and it's chock full of slapstick cartoonish humor.  Phoebe Cates plays a young woman whose childhood imaginary friend shows up in the flesh and starts causing havoc in her life.  Rik Mayall is hilarious as the imaginary friend, and it's easy to get caught up in the humor of it all.  But the more we learn about her relationships with her mother, her husband, and herself, the more we understand how much she needs her friend and the gorgeous mess Fred makes of everything around her.  It's probably a stretch to characterize him as destructive as the Indian goddess Kali, but he's at least on the same family tree.  Sometimes the only way to grow something new is to burn it all down.  That's something I've needed to use more than once in my life, and I've watched this movie dozens of times to help me relearn it. 

The movie's accurate depiction of a narcissistic mother's relationship with their daughter is really accurate, creepily so.  Of course your mileage may vary and all that, but obsession with appearances?  Check.  Use of guilt as a lever?  Check.  Threaten with loss of only valued possession?  Check.  Passive aggressive blaming?  Check and mate!  So many red flags you could build a factory around them.  Showing these so clearly was massively illuminating to me.  Life is never this clear, but it always helps to have an example to draw from. 

My rating:  About 60 viewings

Ordinary People 
Ah, the gold standard for That Movie about a Narcissistic Mother, or, Isn't She Mean and a Horrible Mom.  I love this movie, I really do.  There's not too much to say that hasn't been said, but I love the accurate picture of therapy - the frustration, the annoyance, the focus on self, the desire for a quick fix that will make everything better.  Conrad's eventual acceptance of himself and his mother for who they are, not who he wishes they could be, is hopeful, and his dad's acknowledgement at the end is so powerful for those of us who never had that privilege.  

My rating:  Probably 30 viewings

Bed of Roses 
My goodness, this was a surprise for me (and please ignore the inaccurate framing - This is not a romantic comedy, end of story).  I think I picked up this dvd because it was a double-set with Pump Up the Volume, and watched it when I had nothing else to watch.  Mary Stuart Masterson plays Lisa, a successful businesswoman with exactly one friend, a no-strings boyfriend, and no life except for work.  She receives a present out of the blue and meets a wonderful guy who sweeps her off of her feet, except she doesn't understand how that could happen to her.  We learn through her reactions how damaged she is, and it doesn't help that her new guy is moving too quickly.  So many children of narcissists don't understand what it's like to be in a normal relationship; we flinch at every loud noise, we apologize every time there's a misunderstanding, we leave the room at the whisper of a conflict.  

At the same time, we don't understand niceness.  If someone's nice to us, it's a trick, they must want something from us.  If we're not being trapped or used in some way - for money, or sex, or something - we don't know how to handle it.  If there isn't a blow-up or a passive aggressive manipulation happening, we're suspicious.  Lisa's reaction to a normal family Christmas says it all; everyone's so nice and welcoming, the house is so full of people she doesn't know, they're all hugging and talking and laughing, and you can see her flinching at every noise and getting more tense with every moment that passes.  People think that when you step out of an abusive situation, you're cured.  You'll suddenly feel better, like the fever has broken, and you're ready to act like everybody else.  It's not that easy.  You have to relearn basic human interactions, or, if you were raised wrong, learn them for the very first time.  This takes a lot of hard, frustrating work, and this movie gets it right.  

My rating:  40 viewings, at least

Ulee's Gold
I caught this in our independent theater when it came out in 1997, and I went back that same week twice more.  Peter Fonda plays Ulee, a beekeeper whose son is in prison for a robbery.  When Ulee gets a phone call from his son's partners in crime, he has to jump through hoops to rescue his daughter-in-law and keep them at bay, all while taking care of his two granddaughters and tending his bees.  At the same time, he's coming face to face with his failings as a father and grandfather, and trying to change how he approaches his family to close the gaps he's created between them.  

I can't tell you how amazing it is for me to watch someone look deeply at their life, acknowledge the mistakes they've made, and attempt to change their behavior based on that knowledge.  It's something that children of narcissists rarely get to see, nigh onto a unicorn.  

My rating:  This is becoming meaningless, because I have watched them all SO MANY TIMES.  But probably 40.  

Oh my gosh I'm looking at my handwritten list and I didn't even include

MURIEL'S WEDDING
I guess it was just too obvious.  I'll do the rating first.  This one's not meaningless.

My rating:  500 viewings.  And I'm not kidding.  

Where do I begin?  There's so many scenes I could dissect.  Just a few:

• Muriel tries to gain her father's respect by getting a job interview.  Her father completely negates her accomplishment.  (The first time I brought poetry home that I had written, I was completely excited.  Writing was something I could do!  I showed my mom, and she frowned at me, and said, I guess that's okay, but you need to clean up your room.)
• Muriel escapes into her room and her music and her mirror, dreaming of a time when she'll be the chosen one.  (I've been there, completely dissociating from the real world by dreaming of a new boy walking onto the school bus and sitting with me, choosing me, not anyone else.) . 
• Muriel's "friends" make fun of her clothes and her music, and tell her flat-out that they don't want her to hang out with them anymore.  (My best friend one summer was suddenly my second-best bully in school that fall.)
• And that's just the first fifteen minutes or so.  Whew!

Muriel gets what she wants.  She gains the notoriety and respect from the popular crowd.  But then she suffers a real loss, and she learns what that notoriety and respect cost her.  She grows.  She changes.  She becomes more herself, and stands up to her father, who is forced to realize what he's done.  

Again, I saw this three times in the theater.  I wore out the videotape.  I have the dvd.  This movie has sustained me in some really dark times.  She did it; she got out, she built a new life, she changed who she was and apologized for what she'd done wrong.  She figured out what really mattered to her and became stronger for her experiences.

I watched all of these movies over and over, just hoping that I could, too.

"Why Do You Want to Rehash the Past?" Three Reactions to My Process

I've done a lot of work to get to where I am today.  I'm not done.  I'm not done.  I'm not done, and I don't expect to ever be done.  I'm still angry sometimes.  I'm still sad sometimes.  I'm still working and working and working on building myself back into the person I was always meant to be.  I'll never have that happy childhood that others had; I'll never have that secure base John Bowlby talks about, and I've got a lock on a lot of the horrible stuff Alice Miller talks about in her books.  I've accepted that, and I go to counseling twice a month, and I write and I read and I process and clearly I've hashed a lot of it out because I can write about some of these experiences without devolving into white hot rage the way I used to all the time.

And I can talk about them with other people, people who have had similar experiences.  Talking is how I process, so this is really helpful to me.  I also process through writing, which is one reason this blog is so helpful to me.  I'm also writing to tell the truth to other people, and help in any way I can.  If someone else reads these words and feels less alone, I've done my job and served my purpose in this plane of existence as I see it.  But it also helps me to make sense of what I've been through.

I've had varying reactions when I talk about my family with people I know, and it's interesting to me how they play out.  Most of these people have had issues with their parents, but I also noticed it when I've talked about difficult interactions with almost anyone.  Let me be clear, I am not judging here.  I know everyone has different ways of handling these issues.  But I do find it fascinating how different people handle these difficult subjects.  Here are the main reactions I've seen:

Type A:  This person does not want to talk about it.  Period, full stop, end of conversation.  I get the feeling that these folks are just unwilling or unable to self-reflect at all.  Sometimes they've been damaged by others and refuse to think about themselves at all, sometimes they are self-medicating to the point of self-abuse, sometimes they don't want to feel anything ever again.  It's tough to get deeper than the next five minutes, and easy to see that you'll never make any headway with them.  Glossing over is probably a really good summary, because they don't seem to have heard anything you've said.  

Type B:  This person is okay with you talking about it at first, but they get progressively uncomfortable the more you talk about it, or as they talk about their history.  "Isn't this just dredging up old memories?"  "Doesn't this hurt when you think about all the old feelings of the past?"  When I asked one of these folks about what was making them uncomfortable, she said that she felt like she was back in the situation, and she was feeling the emotions that she felt back then.  She was getting angrier and angrier every moment that she talked about it.  I'm not a counselor, but I asked her if she could separate herself from that moment in time, and see her parent's ridiculous motivations through today's perspective, with the knowledge she has now.  That seemed to help her and she's been easier about talking with me since then.  But another woman has stuck in this same stage and unless she initiates the conversation, I steer clear of the topic out of respect for her.  

Type C:  This is my style, where delving in and really processing with someone else helps immensely.  It makes things clearer for me, it defines terms, it makes things go deeper and opens them up to the fresh air.  Talking to someone and exchanging ideas is a creative process, and you learn so much from the other person's perspective.  

Everyone has their own way of processing, and far be it from me to prescribe the One True Way of dealing with stress and trauma.  I'm always interested in how different people process things, and it'll be interesting to see if there are more categories as time goes on.