A traitor to the clan

 

I’m in pain , I’m enraged. Hurt by the very people that I share blood with. Mentally and physically worn down by the scars of abandonment. Maybe I sabotage myself on purpose because I’m not feeling worthy of being loved. It's instilled from childhood,  you learn from the people that raised you. I’ve been sitting in my own head struggling with these demons. It’s all so  complicated but you don’t fucking know me.

 
All the self-help books, Tony Robbins’ speeches, and ice cream in the world can't heal the Betrayal, abandonment, deceit and manipulation.
Damaged, broken and scared . But so are shooting stars and comets.
Just one big dysfunctional family

Anybody who grew up in a dysfunctional family knows one of the cardinal rules: The person who mentions a problem is the person who caused the problem.
Let some low-on-the-family-totem-pole person raise a destructive issue that’s hidden in plain sight and all hell breaks loose.
No, the family doesn’t suddenly wake up and say, “OMG, you’re right. We have to do something about that!” Instead, everyone within earshot rounds on the poor sap who dared mention the family secret and the bullying begins:
“Why are you always such a troublemaker?”
“If you’d just learn to keep your mouth shut, everything would be fine.”
“If you were a better person, your mother wouldn’t drink so much!” (Or your uncle wouldn’t come on to you or your parents wouldn’t argue so much or your father wouldn’t have deserted the family or whatever.)
And so on and so on. It’s absolutely depressing how alike dysfunctional families are. Worse, let said this poor sap, in desperation, take his complaint outside the family in an attempt to get help and … well, you ain’t seen hell until you’ve seen that.
Because then this sap is not only a liar, a troublemaker, a tramp, a weakling, or whatever else s/he’s being scapegoated for. Then the sap is disloyal. A traitor to the clan. A violator of the code of silence.

And you are loved

I have seen your forgiving heart.

I have seen your grace.

I have seen you be selfless so many times, giving all your love to the ones closest to you, and even to strangers. I have seen you smile on your worst days, and find the strength to keep on giving, even when you can barely lift your head.

You are incredibly beautiful, inside and out, never giving up on the ones you love, even when you’re exhausted by the world.

I watch you, day after day, pick up the chipped pieces of yourself and stick them together with a tape that’s barely strong enough to get you through the next night.

Yet you continue.

You give your heart to people who don’t see your beauty through the brokenness. You console and comfort friends who do not understand the power of your care, your forgiveness.

You surround yourself with people that you need to fix, with people that you must work to love. But even when you fall into your bed at the end of each night, you don’t see what an incredible difference you’ve made.

You think that you deserve the cold words, the turned faces. You think you deserve friends that pull away and men who don’t love you back.

You somehow turn everything back to yourself, and wonder if you’ll ever be good enough.

Well you are good enough.

You’re more than enough.

I wish I could tell you that you are noticed. That the wonderful, little ways you brighten people’s lives are important. Are valued. I wish I could tell you that your eyes sparkle and bring life to ones’ whose days feel dull and empty. That your smile lifts people from their anger. That your laugh makes those around you want to close their eyes and lean their heads back to bask in the sweet sound.

I wish I could tell you that God has made you perfect, just as you are—a fighter, a sinner, a flawed and broken and beautiful warrior of love.

I wish I could tell you to keep loving, even when the world looks the other way.

I wish I could tell you that sometimes you give your heart to people who don’t deserve it, in love or in friendship, and it becomes a hard lesson learned.

I wish I could tell you that you must never accept a half-love, a love that is nowhere near the amount you give.

I wish I could tell you that you are a blessing to so many people.

And that you need to bless yourself sometimes.

I wish I could tell you that life will be so hard, but you must keep on living. That you must find reasons to celebrate, to pull strength, to stay pure, even when people hurt you.

I wish I could tell you that you will face so much pain, but you cannot let it break you. You must find a way to see yourself, your worth, and know that you are an important part of this world.

I wish I could tell you that you matter.

And you are loved

 

Reflection

 

My tears streamed down my face, desperately grasping at narratives to try and justify her absence from my entire life. Forgetting that I am now grown, I think for a moment that I can start again and give her everything she never gave me. Sometimes I wish that impossibility could be true. Then again, is it naïve to assume just because someone grew you in your womb that your presence would have a positive impact on your life? It started with a physically absent biological mother and ended with an emotionally absent soul. Both are broken in different ways, they are full of anger and sadness that flow from their neglected inner worlds, and in turn, they can only see their external world through half-empty glasses. Sometimes people can do bad things for good reasons and good things for bad reasons, and sometimes it’s both. But mostly, they are just lost in a kaleidoscope of emotion, unknowingly casting people around them under the same spell. The only way this can be lifted is by looking deep into the anger and pain while catching your own reflection. I like to think I can break this legacy of trauma by trying to understand my own demons so equally I can try and understand yours. The most healing thing is to try and see the mirror image in our emotional experiences because this allows room for empathy and forgiveness. I wish I could have seen myself reflected in the mirror of my mother’s sadness, but I didn’t.