The Darkness

I feel the deepest darkness surrounding me this afternoon.  Yesterday around 3.30 pm which was when my brother wanted me to meet up with him at Mums a severe storm blew through our town, hail fell for about 10 minutes, loads of it.  It shredded the leaves off the trees and tore petals away from the roses and the tulip flowers on my tulip tree which have been shedding over the past week.  Rain came in through my windows.

I was ambivalent about seeing my brother today.  I feel he is an alien to me in some way, I think we live in very different worlds.  I haved loved him but dont feel I fit into his world, I dont really know how to relate to it.  His visits leave me in a very dark place.  I know how dark our past was.  When I had my first DUI charge at 21 he thought it was funny, just a relief he was never picked up by the police himself.  When I told him I was sober in 1993 he was mystified.  He gave me Scotch tumblers for that Christmas.  The writing was on the wall in those early days that I was moving away from them all, my family.  A few years in my husband and I decided to have Christmases apart from my family.  I see now with great sadness over 16 years when my higher power wanted me to make the break.  My sister who was so ill in the home by that stage had no one much to support her only my Mum and my then step Dad.  It all seemed far too hard and so I made the decision to come home from the UK, a decision I now deeply regret, if I am honest.  I can choose to be philosophical about it and say it was all meant to me but I wish I had had less stars in my eyes and not so much of a compassionate heart.  I needed to take care of me first and now its sad to see the wasted years.  I cry about it all the time with Kat in therapy.   If you judge me for not moving on, I dont blame you.  If you are fed up with my blog by now I don’t blame you.  One of my friends said to me 5 years ago it was half a life.  Perhaps she was right.  Perhaps I should have gone into codependency recovery at a facility then but I did not.  I chose the slower option.

I seem to be crying when I return back to my house over the past week or so.  Kat thinks its due to this place representing my deep emotional abandonment.  When I came back and my hand was forced at the auction for this property I should not have stayed silent, just breaking down and crying, I should have stood up and said “No” the auctioneer who kept presuring me.  I had a repeat of that this year.   That time I stood up.

It saddens me most to see how I havent been firm in my self belief.  But maybe I was not strong enough before.  Now this place does not feel it is totally my home, surrounded by all the things that I bought in the absence of having true, deep, intimate relationships with others.  I have to remember though I am growing even if the skin around me doesnt seem to fit.  I will shed it when the time is right.   But so often like today when I go out into society and am in man made places with people rushing about I wonder about the state of humanity.  We seem to be on some kind of wierd trajectory wherein in order to function you have to be go go go and not slow down or even stop and take time to touch base with nature.  One thing I do love about my home is that here I am surrounded by nature and plants.   It is a green space and there is always a stray cat or bird somewhere around.   And even though this afternoon I feel darkness there is light too when I turn within to touch base with my soul.

I connected with the post of a fellow blogger today who lost his brother to cancer a while ago, what came across was the brother’s silent suffering which was being medicated with alcohol, there was great love for his brother in the blog, in the comments we shared our grief over sibling loss.  I lost my sister 3 years ago and it was a lonely sad and painful death occuring after years and years of medication.   The anger that came out with my brother today could be due to the fact I feel he did not know how to help in this situation which was probably beyond his power to do anything about.  In my imagination he had enough to build my sister a home and make sure she had permanent care and therapy so she was not medicated as much.  My brother admitted today he has a very narrow focus on his work and that he doesnt really know what to do with himself if he doesnt spend hours on the computer.   I felt bad for attacking him as I did, if he is emotionally shut down it may be due to his past and the fact that his wife is very much like this herself, not really interested in exploring wounds not wanting much connection with our side of the family ever since my sister’s breakdown.   But I dont want to blame her either as she lost her own mother very young and obviously shut the door on the pain (my only niece, her daughter has told me this).

Its more and more obvious to me that I cannot look to my family for emotional resonance or expression of need.  I got this stream of comments from the After Narcissistic Abuse blog today and one spoke of how those who are shut down in this way never respond to your emotions, when you express any emotion they treat you in such a way that you come away feeling you are going a bit crazy.  Why did that comment stream come through with abotu 30 comments today, none of them were from today but from weeks and months past.  Was higher power or the universe trying to tell me something?

I have huge emotional reactions any time I see my brother, I come away crying.  Its been like this for years.   I dont know if I can see him again.  I love him but I dont think I want him or his family in my life any more.  I want a new spiritual family of choice, one that CAN feel and doesn’t make me feel a little mad when I do.  Am I crazy?  I dont think so.  I just feel a lot.  Its best for me then NOT to be too much around those who dont for too long.  Its becoming more and more apparent to me I can only take them in small doses and I feel a great darkness when I come away.  I want to live in the light.