I am sorry : reflections on coming to terms with a life of trauma

I read a meme somewhere that said that being able to say sorry to someone means you value the relationship more than your ego. Its something I love about my friend Scott he is always quick to apologise and maybe some of us DO apologise too much for things that are not our fault. Never the less a sorry heartfelt and true can soothe the hurt of wrongs or pains others suffer, is an acknowledgement of suffering which validates the pain rather than being told (as narcissists will do) that we need to ‘get over’ the said hurt wound or injury.

Lately as the ongoing review of my life goes on I feel myself wanting more and more to make amends for things. I would like to speak to several of my ex partners and say I am sorry for certain things. I also know I did the best I could at the time and they often abandoned me emotionally too and did not show empathy or wisdom or understanding. I see with the eyes of truth how much I struggled then, with emotional need and blindness and injuries I was not even aware of at the time. I see how I clung on desperately to find a sense of some anchor when for most of my life I had felt like a long lost boat capsizing on high seas which was very much about the way trauma imprint on my emotional development in a family affected by a difficult multi-generational legacy.

Blaming myself now seem so serve no good purpose. Blaming others also seems to not be working as I see how complex life really is. For example with my parents I see how much damage they did to me by omission more than anything actively destructive or deliberate. Their attention was just else where when I got injured by their neglect or compulsions it was their responsibility but just possibly not their fault? That said excusing neglect/abuse doesn’t get us very far either and there is a time we need to take as much responsibility as we can to deal with the aftermath.

For me the buck stops here. I don’t have kids. I do have a dog and know at times he has suffered at my own hands and a while down the track I saw where certain responses came out of. In fact getting a dog in my early 50s was really an attempt to heal earlier childhood wounds….not a great idea but its had its benefits. I have possibly learned a lot more about myself and other people from having Jasper than not.

Anyway to day I am feeling the weight of the past.. I have been spending a lot of time alone so that is probably why I was inside my head so much and just possibly the 5th anniversary of my sister’s death is stirring up a lot about paralysis as she was confined to bed and or a wheelchair so much in her later years and unable to stand without assistance. It was painful to see the grimaces on her face as she struggled to be more comfortable carrying the weight that accumulated in the later years of being medicated for so long on toxic drugs like lithium. I also see lately a lack of movement and vitality in my other living sister who has gone far along the medication pathway and I see my own struggles to make sure I keep moving, eat healthy and don’t get bogged down in depressive or anxious thinking while avoiding every attempt by others to medicate me. I am not saying that choice is strictly correct but I do fear medicines and doctors due to what I have seen family go through in the past.

So in conclusion it is possible to be deeply sad and sorry for things that were so far out of our own hands, things that caused suffering to others, things we witnessed can be so traumatising, terrifying or horrifying that we may try to deaden and avoid all feeling. It is a subject body therapist Alexander Lowen addresses in his book on Narcissism : The Denial of the True Self. For myself denial never really seemed to work that well but was also just possibly a defence mechanism I used unconsciously to try and survive the pain of what at times seemed almost unsurvivable.