It hurts

I wrote this post quite some months ago.  Fear and the inner critic stopped me posting it.  Now I read it I know how raw and real it is.  I simply must post it.

It hurts to be sent to your room when you are upset as a child.  It hurts that your parents didn’t understand you needed a hug.  You were acting up because you were not getting the attention needed.  You were left alone a lot and so you got up to mischief and learned to eat when bored or lonely.  You really had no where to turn with your feelings when things got tough.

It hurts to have had your feelings so misunderstood or denied that they had to either turn to a tornado inside you or made you feel so numb and confused that you then got trapped in an analysis/paralysis slip replay inner dialogue that revolves and revolves on an endless repetitive negative feedback loop with no way out, like a serpent swallowing its tail :  “there is no real reason you should feel this way, your parents cared didn’t they?  They provided for you didn’t they? What is wrong with you? Other people cope. They just get on.  They don’t get stuck.  Why can’t you do, be, feel better?”  Urrrggggghahha..

But the truth was you were emotionally neglected and until you realise this the silent pain will continue to rattle around in your tissues and the feelings of emptiness and uselessness you have will continue to grow and your moods and depression won’t make much sense.

It hurts to be told that you are not really hurting when in fact you are.  It hurts when you get third degree burns on your foot because your Mum was compulsively cleaning the caravan on holiday close to where you were sitting and drawing and you put your foot in the bucket.  It’s your fault.  You are accident prone.  It hurts when it happens again with fish hook Dad left lying around that gets stuck in the webbing of your big and second toe and you cry a lot.  It hurts when you arm is pulled out of its socket while being swung around.  It hurts when you cut your wrist open trying to open a window because the latch key is not there when you come home. Its your fault, you should have remembered to put it back.  Get it together for God’s sake!

It hurts to be longing to spend time with your Mum cause you aren’t feeling well but she is going to work anyway, you get a stomach ache, they call the doctor, he ends up giving you an enema. You have a horrible icky feeling inside you it makes you feel so ashamed and even more sick, sore and sad and alone.  What hurts most is that no one can sense what you really need and you don’t realise this and that hurts more than anything, more probably than even being hit.

So you learn to turn away from yourself and you learn that its not a good idea to trust others.  You learn to turn away from your family.  And when the shit goes down you learn there is really no time for them to notice how it is for you.  So you silently go to the cask on top of the fridge and fill a mug with wine and drink that.  It is a way to ease the pain.

Later it hurts to go into the fellowship and be told you have defects of character that need to be healed.  You know that drinking is bad for you, it makes you feel sick.  Its good to know others go through the same but sometimes when you hear their stories you feel so sad and you wonder how you can get true help here and if everyone really knows what its all about.  You stay for as long as it takes to get sober but in end it doesn’t feel like its answering the deeper questions.  So again you go away.

You learned a long time ago, very harsh lessons.  In this life you are alone,  its hard to trust others, when you are hurting there really isn’t anywhere to turn, you can never be certain that what you feel or think is true,  you start to feel numb and like you do not fit in.  And in the end you learn it’s really all your fault.  Your mother tells you this later. “Of course, I do admire your sobriety but you know you are the only one in this family with a problem.”.

So you come to believe that if only you tried harder, were a better person, weren’t so sad and angry things would be better but the truth is until you know why you feel this way there is no way you can heal and until you can take your hurt seriously and find others who you can trust and do understand to show you empathy and support you are essentially stuffed.

You have to understand where the feelings of emptiness come from, you have to understand the longing that lies under the anger.  And most especially you need to understand that all your feelings make sense and in order to heal you have to start taking them seriously and contain them and learn what messages they are giving you and the action you need to take instead of acting them out, so that the hurting can end.