Lies, lies, lies

I am often crying on my commute to and from work, because I use that time to progress in my self-directed therapy.

I wonder what people think, if they catch a look at me in the mirror: my lips half-open in an aching sigh, my eyes fixed on the brake-lights before me, tears streaming down my face. My eyebrows are relaxed, softened by curiosity, rather than tense in anger, giving my sadness an attractive, childlike innocence.

The song changes. The light changes. I focus on my grumbling hunger and my tightening shoulders, a byproduct of somatisation. Relax. Let go. Be sad.

Today's car-therapy session was simple (and utterly coincidental to the current #ididnotreport trend on twitter). I didn't protest. I didn't disagree. I didn't fight. I didn't complain. The damage was already done. Every moment of rejection, every humiliating act, every last word.. I believed I deserved it all.

And today, I hovered at the brink of Me and the me that believes I deserved it all: the Bullymonster.

I let all of those lies in. And oh, the grief pours out today.

I grieved: my silence, my tacit acceptance of the ugliness they saw in me, my identification with their pain, being unable to contain the grief, projecting it onto my parents, pushing away my friends, punishing myself then. Isolating myself today.

I feel a 'basic shame.' That was my father's gift to me.

My mother's gift was much more complex but no less painful. She taught me how to look at the world through the side of my eyes.

To see things as they were, to look plainly at them, moreover, to see we were being seen: that was far too painful for them. And so I was born to a family blinded by shame. They clothed me in fantasy and fed me unrealistic expectations. I could only be seen if I stepped into that light. I could only be seen in that light. Their light.

It transformed me. It burnt pathways in my brain that doggedly persist today. For example, I am only just learning how to see people when I look at them. See THEM rather than the fantasy of them I've built in my mind. See THEM seeing ME, an unbearable thought. Even today. Especially today.

I am everything my parents wanted me to be. In truth, I outgrew their fantasies the moment I was born. I am more than the girl captured by their tiny light, and I am sad that they may never know. They may never open their eyes. They may never see me.

I will, though. I may not have the plasticity of an infant, but I am not made of stone. I am only one woman, somewhere between childhood and adulthood, and I did the best I could. I am doing the best I can, even if there is no one in my life capable of seeing it. I am capable of seeing it.

I am capable of seeing me.

I leave my car, walk to my door, keys in hand. My confidence falters as my foot hits the concrete. I think of that girl in the home movies, barely seven years old, painting eggs. She is calm, focused on her task, as her brother falls into chaos next to her. She isn't ignoring him, but she isn't responding either, as his frustration escalates to blame. I wonder whether she was dissociated, even then.

In the next scene, she turns towards the camera. It's Easter morning, and they are searching for eggs. She takes two in hand and gives them to her mother. For her brother, she said, because he can't reach the high ones. She isn't smug or attention-seeking. She is cheerful, matter-of-fact, kind. She doesn't wait for her mother's response (a bewildered Thank You). I wonder where she learned this sense of fairness, this unremarkable display of generosity. I wonder when she stopped paying attention to her Mother.

It is the same girl at her eighth birthday party, fixated on constructing her ice cream sundae, as the girls beside her chattered. It was obvious then how different, how delightfully autistic, she was, surrounded by a gaggle of giggling girls. There were shy ones, loud ones, silly ones, serious ones, and they danced a merry dance for her. I wonder whether they were in her mind at all.

This wasn't the girl I remembered being. But I recognise her, nevertheless.