I’ve officially been in the United Kingdom for 1 month. I’ve been aiming to write weekly, take in as much salty sea air as possible, get into my PhD groove, and explore as far as my legs, public transport, and my friends take me. One month away from home can also put everything in perspective. Space can do your beautiful mind wonders.
Yesterday, after getting paid for the first time in three months (thanks UoE Finance Team), I bought a wet suit. This gear purchase is the first tick checked in my surfing dreams, but also opens up opportunities for cold (and my goodness, is it ever cold) water swimming. My housemate and I hesitantly plunged into the sea this afternoon, after feeling pleasantly suprised about how warm our wetsuits (and little feet wetsuits… or I guess just boots?) are. We were fine until we put our hands in, and then we realized just how effective our wetsuits are. We were in the water for less time than it took us to take our wetsuits off in the end, but we considered it a success. Even after that five minutes in the sea, I felt this instant rush of relief everywhere, but it wasn’t quite enough to jump my current mental hurdle.
In my hurting state, I feel like I’m at a loss. I’ve been thinking a lot about authenticity lately. I have read that usually when you end up in one-sided relationships, you are not showing your authentic self. And, I think that is true for me. I am a people-pleaser to the extreme, especially in romantic relationships. I don’t respond to my anger, or my hurt. I stew on it for a while, logic with myself until I see the other person’s side, and side with them, essentially against myself. This leaves me feeling multiple things at once: anger, hurt, empathy in understanding the other persons’ side before I even talk to them, and hope for validation and continued safety. This does 4 things: 1) does not give myself space to feel rightfully angry and hurt; 2) assumes the positioning of the other person; 3) robs the other person of knowing my true feelings and 4) robs msyelf of having the right and need to feel upset when you’ve been mistreated. I have come to the conclusion that when you love somebody, they deserve to know that you’re upset with them. This includes romantic partners, as well as friends, family, co-workers; actually, this includes everyone you interact with. More importantly, you as your own human being, need space to be angry, hurt, or sad, and to be able to share your feelings. In my case, perhaps my empathy is verging on self-destructive. When you can trick yourself from seeing better from someone else’s side than your own, you may be self-abandoning.
Now, I find myself in this place where I need to cultivate anger. I most definitely do not mean violence, but I do mean to let that silent burn (anger) out in a communicative way to stand up for msyelf. In a loving relationship, you should be given space for these unpleasant emotions.
Growing up in abusive homes often leads to people, and maybe especially women, unable to healthily communicate their anger. And looking back, it is no wonder I have learned to not let my authentic anger show. I spent about 7 years, on and off, without a proper bed, nor proper food or clothes. I was consistenly in unhealthy and abusive environments until I was 16. I remember after winning a poetry contest at 9 years old, my stepmom’s response was ‘I would never write about that topic, it’s embarrassing’. She had my sister and I clean the baseboards and floors with toothbrushes, my sister and I, 7 and 9 respectively, in preparation for our grandma coming to visit. She would pull us aside and coldy tell us to ‘never tell your grandma that you cleaned like this’. When my mom came to visit, she would say that our mom was not allowed past the entrance of the house. She wasn’t allowed to see our bedrooms, or our backyard. She would often coldly ask‘what was wrong’ , and my response would be to blame my sullen mood on my brother’s death, instead of whatever the problem actually was. My sister and I were more-or-less shunned to our rooms, listening to Maria Carey (which was against the rules), and heartbroken. We would come to the house in Oklahoma after the drives back from a summer in Canada, and be greeted with absolutely cold silence from my dad’s exwife, head straight to our rooms, and cry ourselves to sleep. On drives back to Oklahoma from Canada, my dad used to take us to Walmart in secret so we would have clothes that fit, instructing us to lie if confronted by our stepmom. They divorced when I was about 14, which was best for everyone involved, especially the 5 kids.
My dad was no better, if not worse. He mostly stood aside, and let it all happen. He was rarely around, and continously lost his temper, often taking his anger out on me. He’d yell and berate me until tears were streaming down my cheeks, my little sister stuck in a freeze response, not knowing how to react. When I was 15, I ran away in South Dakota during one of the roadtrips, and attempted to hitch-hike back to Saskatchewan. He had lost his temper in a restaurant, and verbally abused me in front of the dining room of people, without reason. I crawled threw cornfields with my clothes in my pillow case, and hitch-hiked with a semi-driver, who convinced me to call my mom. The police could see I was a nice kid, and let me go without charges, dropping me back off with my dad.
I remember coming to Saskatchewan to live with my mom after 3.5 years of living with my stepmom and dad. I was wracked with pains and unable to breath, stricken with panic attacks at 10 years old; my body expressing my pain in ways my child self was unequipped to understand.
So, to my point, growing up in abusive homes leaves you unequipped with expressing your hurt and anger. Growing up without proper shelter, clothing, and food, let alone love, is damaging. I trained myself to swallow my pain, and eventually to logic my way into seeing the other person’s side so it wouldn’t hurt me so badly.
I was angry at my mom for a long time as well, for allowing us to be in these situations. Over the last ten years, we have spoken a lot, and have had a lot of difficult conversations, which needed to happen for our relationship to be healthy. I love my mom with all my heart, and her patience, and willingness to take ownership, have strengthened our bond. I also think my mom, dad, and even step mom, may have been doing the best they could at the time. Being an adult is hard, and I imagine being a parent is one of the most challenging things you could do.
But I digress. Really, it’s no wonder as an adult I find it hard to show my authentic self. At this point, I’m starting to wonder, do I even know who my authentic self is? Am I covered up in so many layers of people pleasing as a form of self-defence that I’ve completely obscured myself? Who the hell am I?
In response to my current troubles, I’ve written an ‘Authentic Self Check-list’. While I’m in this phase of getting to know myself, essentially re-parenting myself (ugh), I am focused on giving myself space to feel hurt and angry. I am giving myself space to say things that I think that may make people feel uncomfortable. Since my empathy is so pronounced (double-ugh), I will have to verbally explain my entire process to my loved ones or those who are important to me. This is how I imagine it would go: ‘I am mad because of (insert reason), I can maybe see why you would do this because of (insert counter-reason), I now simultaneously feel hurt, mad, sad, (insert completely contradicting emotion such as pity, wonderment, or even joy). I would like to give my ‘mad’ emotion the most attention, as that was the first emotion, and I need to honour it. You’ve hurt me, and something has to change. This is not good enough, and I deserve more.’
Although honouring my anger is my topmost, and probably the most difficult, priority, I have many a few other things on the list. One is to start asking for things, or expressing opinions, that might cause someone else discomfort. After paying attention to my inner desires for a few days, I realized how many I simply batted away. These are usually simple things, such as ‘May I have a glass of water?’, or going to sit with people who I don’t know very well, but I have an urge to do so. It also includes simply speaking whatever thought comes to mind. Most importantly, I aim to express my opinions foremost, instead of seeing the other person’s side first. I automatically see the other person’s side (like a sickness, omg), but I need to start standing by my side first. An example of that is when my friend and I were talking about video games the other day. She said video games are probably really bad for you, and a waste of time. My true thoughts are that video games, especially story-driven video games, are actually not that bad and, to me, have the feeling of a good book (from the one time I was really into Zelda in grade 6). I also think anything in excess is bad. This year I’ve spent a lot of time with my high shool friends playing CIV-6, sometimes for 5 or 6 hours at a time, and I don’t regret one minute of it. Virtually hanging out with my friends who live in different part of the world for that long, even though we didn’t talk much, was therapeutic and time well-spent. I also completely saw her side, where it really does take a lot of time, and can send your adrenal system haywire.
Another aim is to honour my incongruences. I want to do more than honour them, I want to celebrate them. I also want to love myself for my flaws; one of them is my inability to express my anger, disabling my authentic self. The people who love me do love my empathy, but maybe like video games, anything in excess is damaging? I’ve already learned to distrust my ‘niceness’, and now my ‘empathy’ is looking pretty suspect. I do love my kindness and empathy, but when it’s not being kind or empathetic to yourself, then it is neither truly kind nor empathetic.