The patterns I still carry, the ways old experiences can show up in the present, and my effort to sort out what I am remembering from what is actually happening now. Recovery, pattern recognition, regulation, and slowly gathering new evidence.
"You are either in agreement with (like) us or against us." That mentality is the ancestral curse I am working to crush, one day at a time. Before recovery, my intense, short-lived relationships were built on perceived sameness: shared urges, shared enemies, shared certainty. I had learned this was proof of belonging. It wasn’t sustainable. These fast entanglements, rooted in glimpses of sameness, consistently fizzled or died swift and confusing deaths. We are the same and belong together, or we are…
My grandmother visited my childhood home a few times a year and I alllllwaaaays looked forward to her arrival. She was radiant, popular, and very important. On rare occasions in which I appeared calm and not needing- she would reward me with a glimmer of her light and a smile. In that moment, I felt warm, seen, wanted, and a teeny bit less unsafe. I. had. earned. her. affection. Yaaay. I would say I spent 90% of my time with her, feeling…
Though I am intimately familiar with the energy and attitudes I’ve always identified in the “serves you right” types, I only just discovered the term Schadenfreude. I find it fascinating there is no English equivalent for pleasure derived from another person’s misfortune. I will not lie, I have had Schadenfreude-y moments of my own, and am not yet equipped to use the word comfortably in a sentence. But I feel incredible relief each time I learn language for something that previously…
Like a lightning bolt, it struck me again—how extremists cannot tolerate peaceful protest or resistance. To them, nonconformity is hostility. Resistance is war. “You are either with me or against me. I will take you down if you get in my way.” EW. In my family and marriage, resistance was not tolerated. Objection to the status quo was treated as provocation. Over time, I became increasingly hostile and reactive, living in a state of brittle agitation, knowing that expressing my…
