TheBanyanTree: It's Not All Pain

[Gail Richards]

Love is always better!!  And I haven't told you lately...I love you, 
Monique, and I'm so glad I can tell people I know you!!

-----Original Message----- 
From: Monique Colver
Sent: Sunday, July 27, 2014 12:09 PM
To: Banyan Tree
Subject: TheBanyanTree: It's Not All Pain

*If you're not following my blog, which is highly likely, it's at:
mcolver.wordpress.com <http://mcolver.wordpress.com>*

A couple of years ago remnants of my family sat around a table at a Mexican
restaurant as one last final hurrah for my parents, which is to say my dad
and stepmom, after we threw their ashes to the winds on the side of a
mountain. We drank, because what else is one to do? And we talked, and when
the talk somehow veered to childhood, as it always will, and mention of the
inappropriate behavior of certain male relatives regarding me came around
we howled with laughter.


Inside, I was not howling with laughter, but it’s important to keep up a
good front. It’s important not to let them know how damaged it made me,
because we want everyone to think we’re tougher than that, we’re stronger,
and we overcame it successfully.


A couple of weeks ago a sister-in-law contacted me on FB and asked if
everything was okay, because my posts of late had seemed to be sad. That
was sweet. Apparently there was mention of me when the brothers and wives
got together over Father’s Day.


Well, I had just come out of one of the worst depressive episodes of my
entire life, so I think it could safely be said that I had been sad. I’ve
recovered, mostly, but I’m still finding my way back to the light because
it’s not like an on/off switch, one day I’m in hell and the next I’m not. I
wish it were.


I told her I was fine, that I had been depressed, but I was much better,
and since I wasn’t sure why she was asking I assured her that it’s probably
not a genetic thing on our father’s side, which is the parent I share with
her husband. She has young children, two little boys that I miss seeing
grow up, and I know that as a parent she has to worry about them.


During the past seven months, since my surgery, I’ve been looking for my
way back.


And I’m so much better, but I still can’t be left alone for long periods of
time because then the panic starts to come back, and the anxiety, and I can
quickly spiral away if I’m not careful.


I’m not sure many of us get this far without being damaged in some way.


We howled with laughter two years ago because men behaving inappropriately
with me is funny, at least to everyone else, and while it would have been
nice to have once heard, “I’m sorry that happened to you,” I don’t recall
that happening.


It may have. I don’t remember much of my childhood.


I know people who would say, “At this point, why do you care? I wouldn’t
care.”


Ah, if only we were all like you, with none of the baggage of being
ourselves.


For the past seven months I’ve worked really hard to get back, and I didn’t
involve my family because they wouldn’t know what to say – I have a
sneaking suspicion they regard me as a bit of a loon, an impression I
haven’t done much to dispel. I do the wrong things, say the wrong things.
Around them, I’m still the scared 7 year old, always looking over my
shoulder to see what my older half-brother, now dead, was up to, the
awkward 10 year old everyone made fun of because it was fun, and I was no
one, the 13 year old disgusted with my hands-on stepfather. I’ve spent a
lifetime loving them, mostly from a distance, but I’m not sure they think
of me much. That’s okay. We’re not all the same. I have a rich family of
friends, a wide circle of people scattered around the globe that love me
despite my damage.


We all do, no matter what our damage.


I miss my sisters-in-law, the one who takes me out drinking mostly while
her husband, my brother, looks at us as if we’re misbehaving (which we no
doubt are), and I wish we could do that more often, and the other one, who
is raising two little boys with my brother, and who seems to have her shit
so much together. I miss my nieces, and my niece’s children, and I miss my
brothers.


I even miss my sister. I called her recently because I hadn’t heard from
her in a long time, and after talking to her I missed her even more because
she’s not the same as she used to be. Her world has grown so small and
self-contained, while mine has grown bigger and wider.


They all have their own families, and they’ve all contracted in to their
own worlds, and that’s great for them, if they’re happy and loved. But my
world, by necessity, went outward, and so I feel even farther than two
states away. I had to leave home when I was 18 so I wouldn’t die there, and
I mean that both literally and metaphorically. Each trip back is a reminder
of both how far I’ve come, and how far I haven’t.


I know that they care, in their own way, and their way is not my way, and
I’m reconciling myself with that. I have been for years. Recently a niece
reached out to me, and it gave me such joy, but maybe she heard I was sad
and was checking up on me. I want to tell people that I’m more than what
they remember, but I’m not sure anyone cares.

Here’s the thing about my mental issues: yes, sometimes it sucks to be me,
and sometimes I just want to give up, and sometimes life is hard, but
there’s another side to the darkness, and it’s the joy. I am capable of
feeling such joy, such contentment, such love, and some days I love so much
and so many that I’m overwhelmed with it. More and more days now as I get
farther along in my recovery.


Some days, if I read the news and listen to what’s going on, I can be
disgusted with the human race. But if I look at only what I experience, if
I remember that we’re all born of light, I am filled with such complete
joy. I love people so much, the look of them, the feel of them, their
voices when they’re happy and talking and doing people things. The only
thing I love more than people is animals, and that’s quite a compliment.


I know that they won’t all love me back, and some of them will love me back
in inappropriate ways, and some will despise me for a myriad of reasons,
but I can’t help but love them anyway. I try not to, but it’s too deep
within me to do anything else about it. I know, I’ve tried, because it
hurts not to be loved back.

But it hurts even more to not love them at all. Not the people who hurt me,
I’m not a saint, but everyone else, anyway.


It doesn’t mean I love to be around everyone – we all have people we don’t
want to be around. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love them anyway, does it?

I don’t go around talking like this in public because it’s awkward and
people don’t know what to say back. Or at least I assume that’s what would
happen – I’m certainly not going to try it.


I miss them, the people who were there when I was growing up, and the
people they attached to when they were grown, and the people they gave
birth to. In spite of it all, and whether they care or not.


And for the people I love, I am always here if they need me, and even if
they don’t. I can’t help it.


I meant to write about pain, but pain is sometimes from feeling too much,
and mostly what I feel now is love, and not pain, and so my thoughts go
there. Anyway, isn’t love better?


M