Sunday, January 15, 2012

Liars

So I'm not really sure what I dreamed about, but I woke-up to a personal revelation.  Recently I was lied to in the most devastating way I could possibly conceive of.  As a matter of fact, I couldn't conceive of it and even now I have difficulty believing that this has happened to me, but here I am caught in a reality where I feel like a mountain has crashed down on top of me and to come back to where I once lived I first have to dig and crawl and climb out from underneath and then begin the perilous climb.  Not to mention the process of mending all that was broken in the devastation.

Anyway, in the aftermath I was repeatedly called, "delusional".  I was informed by multiple people, mostly by The Liar and those close to him, that I was, in fact, delusional during the course of our relationship.  That it wasn't only his fault for lying to me, it was also my fault for not seeing what was obvious to everyone else.

So this morning's revelation deals with this idea.  I woke-up suddenly understanding that I have been lied to my entire life.  When I was a child, and in a position to learn to trust myself and all these intuitions everyone says I should have but that I lack, this is when I learned to trust what other people say and how other people tell me they feel over what this "intuition" tells me.  My parents lied to me.  Not malicious, deceitful, hurtful things.  But they lied to me to "protect" me from unpleasant things.  They never believed I had the strength to deal with hardship, and so I have spent the rest of my life, in essence, proving that I can.  It's funny how their "protection" led me to life of dealing with so many things I never would have had to deal with had they never lied to me.  (Not blaming, I love my parents and understand they did the best they could, the best they knew how.  Just realizing is all.)

What happened was that when bad things would happen, they pretended that they weren't.  So that negative energy, sadness, whatever it was I was feeling from them, my parents, the people I trusted most in the entire world, told me it wasn't there.  Everything was fine, happy, wonderful.  Everything was always okay.  This taught me I can't trust my own instincts.  That what I felt was wrong.  That reality is what other people tell me it is.  There is no other way to reconcile this dilemma at a young age.  Either your parents are right and you are wrong, or your parents are lying and you are right.  Let me tell you there are not many children (any?) strong enough to believe in themselves over their parents at a young age.  

I was taught if I love someone, I should believe in them and that what they say is real because that is more real than the feelings I have inside, than the energy I am receiving.  I have spent the entire rest of my life being deceived by people.  Finally, at 35, I am awake.  Finally I am learning to trust myself, my instincts, what my body and the energy of universe tells me is real and right and true.  

This revelation has filled me with great satisfaction about my maternal instincts.  I have always been very careful not to lie to my children.  If I am sad I admit that I am, if I am tired or angry or sick, I let them know that I am and to the extent it is appropriate, I explain why.  I have always been this way without even realizing how important it is in the development of their psyche and character.  

My method of parenting has always been completely opposite from the way I live my own life.  I parent from the heart and entirely by instinct.  If something feels right to me then I do it.  If something does not, I don't, even if the majority of society tells me I should or shouldn't.  I believe this has served me very well so far.  From the births themselves to these first few years of parenting, I feel that given all the hardship I have done very well.  I am very, very proud of my children.  Of course there are always improvements that I can make and I am always, always seeking to make them.  But parenting is one of the only things in my life I am strong enough to do without confusion or regard for what everyone else tells me to do.  If I feel it is wrong I don't do it.  Period.

This is a mentality that absolutely can and will be applied to the rest of my life.  Realizing that my instincts and my feelings are NOT wrong or less valid than other people's is a GIANT LEAP for me.  In my latest failure of a relationship (but is it really a failure if I learned and ultimately gained so much?), I gave all of my power over to The Liar.  I never should have done that.  I believed that love was about sacrifice.  About compromising oneself and one's own personal happiness to "prove" the sincerity and depth of my love.  Guys have really loved that about me.  The selfish, narcissistic ones really get to have their cake and eat it too.  I'm finished with that mentality.  

I'm not cured of the way I've spent 35 years of my life thinking and feeling.  But realizing that it has been wrong and can be made right has been a huge burden lifted from my psyche.  I have not even started climbing the mountain yet.  I am still struggling underneath, trying to find my way out.  But I can see the light up ahead, and I feel the warmth of the sun which I am excited about and working tirelessly to feel on my face again.


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