June 7, 2008

• WCFQ 7E: The story of my life

  If you wrote the story of your life, honestly,
  and with no omissions, would you truly be prepared for everyone in your
  life to read it? How might it change their perception of you? How
  might it affect your relationships?
  MManhoff1
  

  
  I have no problem writing the “story of my life” here online. I don’t have a problem sharing things that have happened to me. I consider this a safe forum, and it’s very cathartic to write about things that have hurt me. Kind of catch and release program of pain. Once I actually manage to get it out on “paper,” I don’t have to dwell on it any more. It won’t fester. It helps me work up a tolerance to what has gone before so it can’t hurt me any more.
  
  Of course, that said, no… I wouldn’t be prepared for everyone to read it, mainly because the people who would need to read it wouldn’t benefit from it. My mother in particular gets into a total sulk whenever I bring up my childhood. She starts insisting she was a bad mother and that everything is her fault and how when she came back I was a different, angry little girl. There’s no denying the things that happened to me when I was little were pretty awful, but she’s not ready to forgive herself and so whenever I make the tiniest allusion to it, she starts beating herself up. I end up reassuring her that she was not a bad mother and that I don’t blame her for anything. Which is basically the truth. I don’t blame her. I understand completely why she had to go. I don’t blame her for our father taking us from our grandmother (where she had left us) and dumping us in a foster home either. He only did it to hurt her and to try to lure her back. She doesn’t see it that way. She thinks she was a bad mother because she wasn’t there to protect us, even though she probably wouldn’t even be here today if she hadn’t left. But nothing is accomplished by the discussion. It’s an exercise in misery.

  When I happen to talk to my sister, about anything family related, she becomes determined to become “the biggest victim.” She’s a total drama queen even at the best of times. I can’t have a normal discussion with her about anything. Facts go flying out the window, and she takes over any conversation and makes it about her. If I wrote the story of my life, she’d read it and instead of considering how I feel, she’d start telling me how her childhood was so much worse, even though we both had the same childhood. I don’t want to play that game. I refuse to be a victim. So I end up sitting there and just listening to her explain why she was so much more traumatized than anyone else in the history of child abuse. It’s understandable that she and I don’t talk much. I am not the most talkative person to begin with so, if and when I try to share something I feel, I don’t really appreciate someone, especially family, talking over me and making me feel like I’m a bad person for indulging in a moment of self pity when everyone knows the self-pity crown is hers.
  
  So basically the two people who would be most impacted by my life story would consider my words as either an accusation or a challenge. I post my “life story” here because no one in my family is online and even if they were, they’re not the sort to come looking for me. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve offered to let my mother read some of my more philosophical posts, and while she says okay, she never does check any of it out. Even going so far as to tell me not to print it out for her because she’ll just come over some time and read on my computer, but she never does. My sister also, is not inclined to look me up online, even when she did have the internet. She is too wrapped up in her own world to take a look into mine. She’s just too busy, but really, she’s not interested in anything that doesn’t have something to do with her.
  
  So… it would hardly matter if I posted my entire life story here tomorrow. The only two people who might benefit from my honesty would not be inclined to see my words objectively or at all. To one, I am a burden, and to the other, I am a rival. Neither one of them is ready to heal and nothing I’ve thought or overcome is going to help them until they want to stop wallowing in their misery and self-pity. I’m just an observer in their lives, but what I see is completely different from what they see.
  
  
  

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  June 7th

  
  The Romans honored Vesta, goddess of the hearth, with the Vestalia or the Vesta Aperit. Her shrine, usually forbidden to all but the Vestal virgins, was opened to married women for eight days. Walking the temple bare foot, they would offer food to the goddess who guarded their homes and hearths. Curtained off from the rest of the building was the Penus of the Temple of Vesta. For some days at the Vestalia, it was opened, and the building was cleaned. The penus contained various mysterious sacred objects. No one but the Vestals were allowed entry, so the nature of the items was never known.
  
  
  

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  • 7:49 pm
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