My body is in its preparation for dropping temps and putting on sweaters and acclimating to autumn. My body became quite confused yesterday, as the outside plummeted toward the freezing mark and snow and sleet pelleted my windshield. It was only October 29th !
I look out my window today and I see the familiar colors of changing leaves AND snow on the rooftop ! Once again, my inside that says it's October 30th and it's Fall cannot seem to make sense of the white coating that does not match.
I had a well-spent hour on the phone yesterday with someone about the very nature of inside-outside confusion. How in our alcoholic thinking, especially those of us who grew up in homes where behavior by family on the outside didn't make sense to our insides (i.e. what we expected those family members to be doing). In my family, the greatest place of confusion was to look outwardly at faces that didn't match mine when I still believed that the tall people around me were my real parents. I would later learn that I was adopted and this was no longer as confusing, but the aspect of believing it for the better part of my 1st decade of Life would turn out to be more disturbing to my system than I'd ever imagined. For the person I was speaking with, brothers are expected to behave in a variety of ways toward their sisters except they are most definitely NOT supposed to have sex with their sisters. Especially when the brother is 15 and the sister is 11. The inside becomes terrified and deeply confused about what is happening on the outside.
These kinds of lasting body-memory experiences are hard to shake loose as adults. For many of us, it fucks us up. We translate this confusion to every scenario in our lives that doesn't make sense in our interior. The woman I spoke with yesterday is not able to trust most men, even as someone in her early 40's, because of the inside-outside confusion created by the experience with her brother. Every action that seems "misleading" on the outside by a man is instantly translated on the inside for her as a potential threat of harm. She is recognizing this and doesn't know how to break the cycle. We spoke about just having the confusion in our awareness is the first step.
The greater aspects of my inside-outside confusion had to do with watching my father arrive home in one way and then once he started putting the amber liquid from those brown bottles down his throat, he was a completely different way ! And this could change from hour to hour, night to night. I thought Daddies were supposed to pick up their little girls and put them on their laps and talk to them or brush their hair like I saw on TV. My inside longed for this kind of daddy but the one I saw on the outside had no interest in being near me. He cuddled those bottles close to him and that was the only thing getting that kind of contact. He never even got within 4 feet of my mother, his wife. The ones on TV would hug and kiss and say "I love you". I never saw this. I believe this is why I clung so tightly to teachers I had because I was desperately trying to find a match on the outside for what I craved on the inside.
My relationship with men, however, didn't result in mistrust later in life. In fact, quite the opposite happened: I trusted them so much that I allowed myself to be used in every way by them -- mostly sexual. Perhaps the confusion got translated like this: my inside longs for closeness to a "Dad" and even though I am not sexually attracted to men (and clearly a lesbian), I'm going to be promiscious with men to try to meet that inside need. My inside longing to be loved did not match my outside actions of surrendering my body to the gender I had no desire for. And didn't even like sex with !
It is good to have clarity today. As a kid, I was powerless to the actions of the outside. As an adult, I'm still powerless to the actions of the outside, yet the difference is that I know what I want on the inside and I seek that for myself in my outside actions. And when these actions aren't aligned, I get the signal: "Houston, we have a problem." It's a pretty cool thing. My healing and recovery work, my connection to God has offered me this gift.
The roof still has snow on top as I look out on this October morning and for now, I tell my inside that sometimes the elements in Nature line up like this. Maybe just to shake things up a bit ! But not to confuse our insides with the outside. We humans do that all on our own.
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