When conversations about you happen without you—and somehow define you. Remember. When you are not at the table, you on the menu.
I hesitate to share when things are going well because if I recap more than a 
single minute, I easily get spun up in the axle –the entire history of it all, IT: being the “dynamic” of my (FOO)family of origin. I was, for a stretch, enjoying the perks of total estrangement from my FOO and all affiliated, with the exception of my ex and our children, when my mother’s sister emailed Wednesday with an invite for breakfast this weekend. Both anxiety and grief were my immediate gut reactions. It is too a complex a relationship for each of us, full disclosure and authenticity are not well tolerated and our connection is not blessed by the others, which creates hardship for her. I believe she and I are similar in unmentionable ways (sensitive and vocal about being sensitive which troublesome to those who are not(the rest of them)) and it is just too elephant in the roomish and eggshelly for me. I am no good at that and forcing it feels more difficult than wise. (more…)
My sister would frequently snap: “Not everything is about you” when I expressed anything difficult or needing. And it made me confused in a sad and shameful way. Like it never addressed anything but the collective need for me to shut up and be different. Under the guidance of my older sister, parents, and extended family I failed to learn about me, myself, in relation to whom I am, only in relation to how pleasing or displeasing they found me to be, mostly the latter. For example, my birthday gifts and foods weren’t about me, weren’t on my list of things I liked or wanted. I was informed that those were expressions of whom they were and what they wanted to share with me and that I should be grateful…yet their raging and diminishing behaviors were purely about me AND I should remain unaffected. I still do not really get it. I have stopped trying–as that made me want to not live. (more…)
Not stoic enough to be silent or aloof, I am practicing saying and doing nothing in response to underhanded invitations to enter into indirect conflict. While I
now set boundaries for only myself, without arguing to be heard, my abstinence from standard entanglement is labelled abandonment—“cutting them off” because that is how silence is used in my family. I just say No. Or Sorry that won’t work until it no longer makes sense to say it again.
So, I have mostly quieted my mouth, but my head still spins with all the things I wish to say or stop feeling and thinking. Silence with a trusted other is golden.
(more…)
