Destino / Destiny
Originally uploaded by Shavy
I am deeply grateful to have a trusted confidante in my life to de-brief with after I write. It is much like the power of the meeting-after-the-meeting in AA when you continue to process and uncover what was shared in the meeting.
Today's post-writing conversation about being messy revealed a longing in me, which I would venture to guess is shared by many, to break free from the self-imposed prison I've created, shackled to my history. And, of equal importance, to look at what kept me chained.
I think over the years I've come to find a twisted sort of comfort in knowing that I was bound to something -- my umbilical cord, if you will, to connect me to an identity, a story to explain myself. Especially given my entry into the world and having no biological roots beneath me. Alcoholic anxious daughter is the result of an alcoholic father and anxious housewife. This is what I've been chained to. I know today that I am so much more than this.
It is quite a paradox to be conditioned to maintain a tidy home and a pleasing appearance while the floor is crumbling beneath you. And this is all I knew. It is what I was exposed to day in and day out. If dad raged at one of us after he had a few in him because we were not maintaining order in the house, my mother's answer was to clean the oven. I am reminded of an old quote: "An idle mind is the devil's playground." There was no pausing or stillness in my house. It was like living in a gigantic pinball machine, just bouncing off one thing to another and not wanting to fall into the scary dark hole at the bottom.
My kabbalistic healer shared with me during one of our sessions that my alcoholic years actually enabled me to survive my time "served" in this house. Leaving to go to college was like being released from captivity and set loose into the world without an understanding of how regular folk act and behave.
And getting sober did not equal a return to normal. After 2 years of sporadic AA meetings and therapy, I entered into a relationship in which I would replicate, almost exactly, the conditions of my childhood history. This is the link on the chain that perhaps kept me connected to the only things I knew in terms of what a home was. Did I consciously choose to marry my father and become my mother ? Or were these circumstances re-created so that I could eventually heal my history ? In kabbalistic healing, we learn about poisoned ground that we take in as children from the damaged soil our parents have raised us in. And how generational pain gets passed down. When the mother and father feel their own incompleteness and use the child to fill the void. I was toxic from swallowing so much dirt and the carrier of that pain. And when I was with my former partner, I didn't yet know another way of being in the world. In a sick way, the relationship with her kept my father's memory alive long after he died. There was something oddly comforting about the presence of chaos underground in our home and enduring it like some kind of martyr. A mission I was assigned. That perhaps I would be stronger than my mother and actually change my partner. And create a loving home and live happily ever after. I was living in an illusion. The reality was that I was running with the baton that was passed onto me by my mother and her mother and so on. You find a companion and you settle and you put up with. Til death do us part. And you stay in motion so you don't have to feel or deal. That is, until you've taken in so much of this rotten soil that you begin to choke on the rocks below the surface. And this is the wake-up call that perhaps there's something more nutritious in life for you than this. I had a taste for something sweeter.
When I ended the relationship with my partner and was awaiting a ride at the top of my street after she threw me out of the house, I called my mother and told her what happened. And the only thing that mattered was that she wanted me to be safe and to be happy. And there was this odd kinship in that moment that was one of our very few real, intimate connections. Like we were both survivors of the same prisoner-of-war camp and knew what is was like to finally get a taste of freedom.
And in the 3 years since the ending of this relationship, I am arriving at a place in my life where the need to be linked to my father and mother in this way is no longer an option. I want to experience my individual self while my father's soul rests contented somewhere on the other side and my mother lives out her aging days in the best way she is capable of.
And here is the place where I can meet messiness. In healthy doses. Healed Chesed is water and flow and loving-kindness. I want to be a free floating buoy on the ocean of life.
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