I am seeing lately how little room or place for soul and heart there is in the lives of those who seek perfection… One of the most interesting books I read in my early sobriety was Marion Woodman’s book Addiction to Perfection it explained a lot of the psychic forces in my childhood that were underground forces… now I just understand the chaos my mother came out of and even my father, though I do know less about his young life in Holland than of Mum’s as he died before I could ask him so many things..
Anyway, growing up we lived on a tightly run ship, there were heaps of boundaries around things, we were not touched lovingly, I just don’t think my parents knew how to cuddle us or treat us softly and we were made to be responsible and clean and ordered from an early age, my mother would go ballistic if there was mess or stains…and I think I learned even to hold my wee in, as a sign that something was making me anxious and needing to let go I became a bed wetter for many year in my youth, luckily around the age of 5 or 6 I lived next to a young boy Alaistair who also used to wet the bed, but his Dad who was a scientist actually rigged up a contraption designed to give him a mild electric shock as soon as the pee hit the mattress..
All of this order and control made me, over time, an anxious, insecure kid and when we moved from next to those neighbours (who were my play buddies) to a very affluent part of the same suburb it was also so so lonely.. I was left alone most of the afternoon, especially after my sister who was 8 years older was taken to Nana’s to live while the huge house Dad was building was under construction..in later years Mum told me she didn’t like the move and we left behind a smaller place.
There was not a lot of soul in our new home.. it was beautiful but not fully lived in.. I think of the deep struggle I had within myself to keep the love for this older style place I am living in now against all the admonishments from my mother and brother that I should sell and get into something more soulless… today looking around at the things that may need fixing or are a bit ramshackled I only saw soul….there is a warmth and cosiness to my place that has taken 9 years of growing through the daily living and collection of things which all carry a portion of my soul, or I acquired when my older sister Judith and mother died. And that is one thing I have to thank my sister for, she encouraged me to stay here and I need to remember that when somethings that she did cause me to feel resentful.. in many ways we were both just victims of the same conditioning and I know the struggle my sister also had with perfectionism.. she was not really allowed to bust out around the time her marriage ended and family tried to put her back in a tight box…
It occurred to me today, too that the soul comes most to life when we accept our flaws, idiosyncrasies and imperfections, those things that may set us apart from the crowd… those things that make us most human, those cracks and breaks and fractures which allow some new life, light or meaning into our lives…
Today listening to the song Drops of Jupiter I was crying for how it must have been for my husband when I embarked upon the self discovery of therapy, it must have felt like I was turning away from him in some way and I understand his sorrow when my grief began to emerge and I struggled with the bi polar pull of wanting to be with family and as far away from them and all of the past trauma as well…I cried today as I realised it was wrong to blame either of us for the break up.. it just was meant to be, all part of the journey for both of us.. I still find it hard to forgive the hardness and ignorance that led my sister to be so mean to me back in 2005, to the point I felt I wanted to get as far away again as I could and ended up sustaining a serious head injury as a result overseas of the pent up anger and pain and grief. I know she did not cause that to happen but one time she tried to imply it was all my fault for going there in the first place.. no one came to be with me…and I was in a really really bad way for a long time afterwards.. she also tried to blame me for the emotional breakdown she had when her husband left because I had sent an email telling her I was angry with her…that was not fair either.. so much as I tell myself ‘to be the bigger person’ there is a reason I keep distance and have panic attacks when I arrange to see her at times…I will say this though, she has been growing and trying to make amends but like many with serious narcissistic defences, the word ‘sorry’ does not slip easily off her tongue…and to bad mouth me over drinks one night following a 90th birthday party for my Mum no one invited me to because I am a sober alcoholic to my nephews was something really toxic and not fair, it also came out of a wrong perception…
Where am I going with this post? Yes, we stuff up… Is there malicious intent (possibly even if it is deeply unconscious). Am I too forgiving? Do I allow too much ‘imperfection’? The imperfections I was talking of earlier in this post more concerned the things in us that bent or fractured or torn out of shape by the world… when we see these things and when others see them they may only see them as our ‘defects’, not as consequences of things that were done or happened to us as the result of others or external circumstances, we can then be sidelined or blame ourselves when really the truth goes deeper… How we weather these things means knowing where the tear in fabric first came from.. Who used the knife to create the wound or scar we later have to carry..
In the midst of stopping to have a break from writing this I came across the previous post I have shared from another blogger…it addresses the issue of bullying… its not easy to be put down, to then e mocked for having an reaction… its not easy to cope abuse full stop… so this post has kind of morphed.. going to leave it here as I have therapy soon…
Emerging From The Dark Night 