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Lying there in bed I decided that Chapter 2 had to begin with some clarification of the end of Chapter 1:
At this point I only know these few other things:
- I never gave up trying to be a better, happier, more loving person and I never will.
- I have gifts that I believe came from God that are meant to be shared.
- My best days are still in front of me and my best achievements await me.
- I am grateful EVERY day for so very much.
- I LOVE and I am ‘living proof’ that healing and change CAN be achieved.
- There is much more of my story to tell”
Today I have to say there IS, indeed, much more of my story to tell. I suspect you will get most of the life story in bits and pieces as I continue to write and that it will be far from chronological. However, I think I can work in most of the important things as I talk about how I got to this place.
You need to know that I have not realized everything expressed at the end of Chapter 1 only in the last 127 days (now 127, not 123). To be fair, there are years and years of therapy; wisdom of many people I have had the privilege to know; years of reading both novels and self-help books; 12 years of faithful attendance at 12-step meetings; research on the web; “therapy” sessions with friends over cups of tea and coffee; movies that have taught me, inspired me and/or touched me deeply; years of experience with pain and illness and even more years of a wholly negative outlook on life; my mother’s fall resulting in a brain bleed and the effect that had on our relationship and more that have helped bring me to this place too.
The last 127 days have provided the “gel,” more or less, that has pulled all of it together. They have also achieved the removal of bandaids applied to deep wounds that were never going to heal no matter how much I “talked” about them. Removal of the bandaids, a washing of the wounds to clear out the festering infection of resentment, anger, flawed and FALSE thinking and more is what has taken place in the last 127 days. Uncovering it all, flushing it out, HEALING the wounds that were keeping me from seeing my future as hopeful.
The paragraph about love is something I’ve known for a while, though I’ve never quite expressed it in this way. Sometime or another in the last decade of my life I asked myself for the bazillionth time what purpose I served on this earth. Why was I here? Why was I given this life, put on this earth? What was I supposed to achieve? I had asked myself this question so many times in my life and had never come up with a definitive answer that seemed like “enough.”
I wish I could tell you exactly what year it was that I gave up trying to define my purpose beyond “to love.” Loving was all that I knew I COULD do fairly consistently. I finally concluded that teaching, being an example, supporting others….were just incidental things I could do SOME of the time. Loving was something that I could do ANY time and ALL that I could do in many circumstances. So I finally let go of my youthful hopes that I could change the world. I used to fantasize about being able to stop war, hatred, cruelty, crime, all that was evil in the world. Finally I accepted that what I had to give was love and I could give it only to my own circle of influence which was the only and most effective way I had of spreading the love. I began then, to try to be as loving, understanding and compassionate as I could with all of my associates, family, co-workers, friends, customers. I didn’t always succeed, of course, but I slowly became a more and more loving person.
My mother and I had always had a difficult relationship. I was what I call a “contrary” child. I did everything I could to be contrary to my mother’s wishes, especially after around age 7. I understand that before that I was already pretty headstrong and perhaps contrary already, but around age 7 when I began to doubt what I was being taught at school about God, religion and Jesus, things began to go more and more sour for me. It was not just the religious doubt, of course, but Mom had married my stepfather when I was six and my sister was born when I was seven. I liked having my sister, but my stepfather was not a happy addition to our home life and I became pretty angry with my mother for subjecting us to him. The longer she stayed with him (7 years or so), the angrier and more contrary I became. My father had passed away when I was 2 (a few months from being 3) of leukemia. I have no real memory of my father and wouldn’t even know what he looked like were it not for pictures. Mom was 29, John (my older brother) was 6, I was 2 and my younger brother Joe was 6 months old.
When Mom fell at age 86, hit her head and developed a brain bleed that profoundly affected her “executive functioning” and her short-term memory, things changed between us almost immediately. It was as if all the years of angst between us just fell away. Her face lit up whenever she saw me which was something I felt I’d never had with her. In my mind, at least, her face lit up for my older brother and for my sister, but not for me. I don’t remember if I felt it didn’t light up for my younger brother Joe either, but I have always considered the two of us the “black sheep” of the family. We’re the ones who got into mischief and later into more serious trouble. John and MaryJo (my baby sister) were the “good” kids.
Anyway, I was the only one of the four of us who wasn’t working, so I had the privilege of being able to spend a lot of time with my debilitated mother watching her face light up every time I showed up. In lucid moments, even she remarked about how glad she was that we were getting along better. I answered once with “Yeah, Ma…it took 60 years and for you to lose your mind, but it IS nice.” She laughed and we laughed together about that. In fact, we laughed together about a lot of stuff. She made another reference to the change in our relationship just a few weeks before she passed away, so even she was aware of the difference.
John, my older brother noticed the change in me pretty much right away, though he may not have mentioned it until after Mom had passed away. He asked me what accounted for the difference and I told him how profoundly satisfying it was for me to have had that period of time with Mom and how it had lifted something from me. I think that time was God’s gift both to me and to my mother. I think that Joe’s opportunity to spend more time with Mom while she lived in his house and then to care for her when she was in the nursing home was God’s gift to him and my mother too.
The years and years of therapy (at least HALF of my entire adult life) prepared me for the experience of “reprocessing” my traumas. Any resistance I might have had to it had been broken down by years and years of struggling to get real and be honest about my feelings with a number of therapists over the years. In my twenties I had to get drunk in order to cry and there’s no way I would have admitted to being “fear driven,” for example. That’s just ONE of the things I had become adept at hiding both from myself and from the world. It took all those years of therapy to uncover and face all that stuff so that I could finally achieve HEALING in the last 127 days.
It was in Alanon meetings that I learned so much that prepared me for this phase of healing therapy. I learned perspective (that my life wasn’t the very WORST it could have been); acceptance of life on LIFE’S terms (not mine); that I had an EXTREMELY negative outlook; that I was indeed ungrateful (as Mom had always claimed); to accept and reconcile myself with “the God of my understanding;” numerous helpful slogans like “easy does it” and “one day at a time;” that pearls of wisdom often came from unlikely sources (people I may have judged as uneducated or having nothing to offer me); many, many more lessons that prepared me for these last 127 days. My Alanon sponsor for all those years was a huge influence in my growth during that time.
So many friends over the years have sat with me over meals, coffee or tea, or just chatting in their living rooms listening to my stories and woes, providing new perspectives or just validating my feelings and thoughts, that I wouldn’t even attempt to list them all as I know I would forget somebody. Let it suffice to say that most of them already know who they are and when they read this paragraph will know I am speaking of them and the time we spent together. They too, have prepared me for the wondrous place I am in now. There are too many movies and books to list as well, that have also contributed to this wonderful, mysterious, hopeful and unknown future that I now feel I may have before me.
The years of experience with pain and illness, both my own and that of others, has prepared me in other ways to embrace the continuation of a life that holds hope of being healthier physically, emotionally, spiritually….in every way. The pain and illness of others has helped me keep my own in perspective. My own suffering has caused me to be grateful for the times and the parts of me that feel good. Ah yes….gratitude…. initially learned in Alanon meetings has grown and grown over the years as I have slowly purged more and more of the negativity out of my outlook on life. Today, I am grateful EVERY day for so many things I can’t list them here either, but I’m thinking that as this writing grows, you will learn more and more about the things for which I am so very grateful.
So, Chapter 2 is dedicated to acknowledging the power of all that came before these last 127 days, the details of which may unfold as I continue to write. Welcome to my life, past, present and a hopeful future.
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