TheBanyanTree: Finding Our Own Way

[Pam Lawley]

perfect.  Those are exactly the words I was trying to find to say...

On Sun, Oct 3, 2010 at 11:08 AM, Jena Norton <eudora45 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:

> As always, Monique, you write from the heart, the soul, and the mind, with
> honesty and courage.
>
> Jena Norton
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: thebanyantree-bounces at lists.remsset.com
> [mailto:thebanyantree-bounces at lists.remsset.com] On Behalf Of Monique
> Colver
> Sent: Saturday, October 02, 2010 11:05 AM
> To: Banyan Tree
> Subject: TheBanyanTree: Finding Our Own Way
>
> I wrote this today after hearing that my sister had to admit her adopted
> daughter to an inpatient psychiatric care unit for children. Long story.
> _______________________________________________________________
> I'm reminded today that we're all in this alone, that our pain is our own
> and that no one else can help us by taking part of our pain for us.
> Don't panic. It's not as if there's no hope at all. And this isn't even a
> "woe is me, the pain is unbearable" sort of post. Me, I'm fine. I've gone
> through the darkness and came out the other side. Then I went back in and
> came out the other side again. And on and on. No one said this would be a
> one-shot deal, did they? I've managed to create a pretty happy psyche, all
> things considered.
> But it wasn't always so. And I'm only going to tell this as a reminder that
> emotional pain is rarely terminal in itself, and that it can be overcome.
> It
> can be dispersed. It can be clobbered to smithereens.
> I'm not sure what a smithereen is, but I've long thought I should use the
> term, and it seems fitting for this.
> When I was at the impressionable age of maybe 12 I thought life was
> hopeless. There was no place in it for me. My existence had been an
> accident, and the people I now found myself surrounded with did not care
> for
> me much. It was nothing personal. I didn't know that of course. At that age
> everything's about the self. Or maybe I'm thinking of the age of five.
> Whatever. I was desperate for attention, any attention, even just to prove
> that I existed.
> Oh sure, I existed. I had household chores, so I'm pretty sure everyone
> knew
> I was there. But internally, I felt unloved, unwanted, unliked, unnoticed,
> and I wanted people to notice me.
> I was not a particularly bright child. Oh, I was, most certainly, in
> matters
> of learning and intellectualism and knowing things and the ability to
> impress my teachers. But I mean emotionally. Emotionally I was a bit dull.
> One can't have everything, can one?
> One day I took a bottle of my Dad's Excedrin, and I downed the contents. It
> was at least half a bottle, maybe more, maybe three-fourths. This is, for
> those of you who are wondering, an exceptionally stupid thing to do at any
> age. Stick with the recommended dosage please.
> Did I receive any attention for my stupidity? Did my attempt elicit any
> sort
> of reaction from anyone?
> Well, of course not. If you take a bottle of Excedrin and don't tell
> anyone,
> it's not going to have the slightest affect on anyone. It will, I'll have
> you know, make your stomach bleed.
> And bleed.
> But it's internal, so it's not like anyone knows. And there I was, having
> done something monumentally stupid, and I couldn't tell anyone. They
> already
> thought of me as the family idiot, or so I believed, and any confession
> would just further reinforce that opinion.
> I'm pretty sure some of them still consider me the family idiot, but the
> biggest believer, my stepmom, is no longer with us on earth, so yay, I win.
> How pathetic was that last sentence?
> Anyway, to return to my story, my stomach bled, and I was afraid to tell
> anyone what I'd done. For two weeks I walked around like the Hunchback of
> Notre Dame, shielding my pained stomach from any sort of additional tragedy
> that might befall it, letting it do whatever one's stomach does when it's
> been assaulted with Excedrin. And no one noticed that I was in constant
> pain, which rather reinforced my idea that no one noticed me at all. It was
> a sharp pain, but it was also soothing because it reassured me that I at
> least had control over my own body. I could hurt it if I wanted and I could
> make it pay.
> And it paid. And paid.
> A couple of weeks after my Excedrin experiment I was in the garage, folding
> clothes that had just come out of the laundry. Our garage was behind the
> house, on a straight line from the back door, and suddenly my stepmother
> stormed out of the back door and stomped toward me, and the ground shook
> beneath her as she walked, and her anger was obvious for all to see. She
> stomped up to me and said, "Stop acting like you're in pain all the time!
> You walk around here like there's something wrong with you! Start acting
> normal!"
> Then she turned and stomped back into the house.
> Normal? Suddenly she wanted me to start acting normal?
> Mothers.
> I straightened up, gingerly, testing my stomach, and told my stomach, "This
> is what we've got to do. You may be in pain, but we have to start acting
> normal."
> (Note: If you start talking to your stomach as if it's separate from you,
> you may have issues.)
> I straightened up and I started acting normal. Unfortunately, normal for me
> was still annoying to her, but I did the best I could with what I had. She
> would have found fault with me no matter what, and that was just something
> I
> had to learn to live with, at least until I turned 18 and could leave home.
> I had to learn that no one else could give me the sort of attention I
> needed, and that it was up to me to find my own way out of the emotional
> pain. There's help available - therapy, meds, people who love us and
> support
> us, but in the end, it's up to us to use those tools and find our way out.
> No one else can do the really hard work for us, the work of finding out who
> we are and how we can best take care of ourselves. That's only inside of
> us,
> where all the best stuff is anyway.
> Same thing if you know someone who's struggling. You can empathize, and you
> can offer them options, but you can't take their pain away by taking it in
> to yourself, and it won't help either of you if you do. In order to help
> them, you have to keep their pain from infecting you. Think of it as a
> communicable illness, like the flu. If you both get it, who's going to take
> care of the sick one? Keep yourself healthy first.
> We're all in this alone. But we're not. Clear?
>
> --
> Monique Colver
>
>