BULLY PART 15 (END BULLY PART 3)
After leaping out of the van, dashing quick as a flash from the curb to my front stoop, unlocking the door and slamming it behind me, I can lean against my strong shield of family life, which shelters me from the outside world, right? I can sigh with relief and run to my parents and unburden myself, right? Or, I can shut my eyes and lock that door to all sense of trauma ... as had become my pattern, creating this mind set: I am fine. I am strong. I am invincible. I have no need to roar ... Positive focus is my might steed. A sparkling smile serves as my shield. (In order for this child to dismiss loneliness, her mind is immersed in books. Disappearing into books where character development is key to meeting life head on and achieving long range goals, successfully, one step at a time, Annie develops into a voracious reader. Under Jennie's influence, the women in the family visited the library eagerly, frequently.)
If you're wondering whether, upon banishing trauma from my conscious mind, I sang out in testimony to denial: Hi Mom! I'm home! What's for dinner? I'm starved? I'm betting ... yep ...
In hindsight, I could not force my ego to get naked with my parents or with fully clothed strangers until the self assured side of my brain matured enough to accept both sides of me as a whole. And having worked, day by day, to peel layer after layer of defensive armor away, I've garnered the strength to bare a wound, which proved too raw to bear ... until now.
Whew! Peeling denial's layers away is tough work, but worth the effort because:
The only person who can strip my defensive layers away, one by one, in hopes of coaxing my subconscious to reveal raw fears, secreted from me, is me.
What I can say for certain is this: Upon awakening each day, every fiber within me is drawn to the computer—so hot am I to explore whatever spills readily out of my mind. And as each train of thought must be compressed into a post rather than a chapter, it's no wonder that patience is considered a virtue. In truth, the path of virtue is often a trial to walk. And anyone who knows me will tell you that editing is not my forte. :)
As for now ... BULLY FOR ME is not quite finis ... I mean, having no clue I've been traumatized, my parents expect me to return to that bus ...
POST 48 END BULLY PART 4
Yesterday’s traumas
Reflect back from our mirrors
As today’s insecurities
Throughout the years
No matter what others said they saw
I felt fat
Today, personal growth relies upon
The self assured SIDE of my brain
Which works to replace fear, born of insecurity, with self trust
Each time I work at peeling away defensive blinders
My eyes open wide enough take a leap of faith
From towering fears into safety nets buoyed with hope
When we return
To yesteryear
Can you guess
What I'd said to my parents
To ensure that
I'd NEVER ride that bus again ...
POST 57 END BULLY PART 5
Once my ego had been thoroughly trounced, I knew nothing could ever get me to ride that bus, again. However along with this decision came a dilemma. In addition to repression, pleasers deal with suppression, meaning that I could not reveal my humiliation to my parents, who saw me as bright, cheerful, and popular. So instead of ‘fessing up’ to the truth of having transformed into a social pariah—I threw the baby out with the bath water and drummed up a reason to drop out of Hebrew School—thus holding fast to my self-image by clinging to denial.
If you know anything about being raised in a conservative Jewish home, you know that I could not have pulled this next scene off had I been my parents' son. However I was a girl. And in 1956, it was uncommon for girls to study Hebrew, which is why I was the Lone Rangerette on that bus—mask in place—lots of piercing arrows—no faithful friend, Tonto, in sight.
At this time, it's important to note that this decision to learn the language of my religious heritage had been my own. So upon telling my parents that the little I was learning was not worth their expense, my dad arranged a meeting with my teacher. Upon hearing that his daughter was at the top of the class, Dad asked me to reconsider.
With a resounding ‘No!’, I reiterated that the class was unruly—my teacher spent most of his time yelling in futile attempts to regain control—and I was done wasting my time and my parent's hard earned money—all of which made sense to Mom and Dad.
So there you have it. In order to ‘save face’, my brain maneuvered around the whole truth by slicing it in half. Since THE GIVEN REASON was truthful, THE REAL REASON remained ‘safely’ undisclosed. This goes to show that ...
If you think to know any person, through and through—think again.
In fact, think deeper than ever before, because what each of us tells or shows is not all there is to know ...
When Dad asked what happened to my desire to study Hebrew, I said: I don’t care, anymore. And that was true, too, because once misery sucks eagerness dry, desire shrivels up and dies. (As you shall see, eventually, insecurity, unnamed and denied, will lead me toward swimming through swirling pools of misery so deep that the strength of my spirit will need to save my smile from drowning, again and again.)
In short, every word I’d said to my parents was true. And since my descent into that black hole had come to an end without telling a lie, I figured I’d escaped from hell; all was well, and life would go on just like before. *But I couldn’t have been more wrong—because the bully on the bus now threatened me from within. And evidently, that's still true ...
At this point several questions arise, you know, like questions asked of readers in book groups:
- In addition to my parents, to whom had I 'denied' the truth—the whole truth—and nothing but the truth?
- Which early experience may have caused this self-defeating pattern of suppressing shame into tight knots of tongue-tied tension to develop in the first place?
- Why was a child, who had been sunny, bright, popular and self confident, unable to stand up for herself, open her mouth and shout:
NEVER AGAIN!
WHAT SECRET TRAUMA MIGHT MOTHER NATURE HAVE TUCKED AWAY SO DEEPLY WITHIN A POCKET OF MY SUBCONSCIOUS THAT I CAN FEEL ITS PRESENCE, BUT HAVE NO CONSCIOUS MEMORY OF IT, AT ALL?
By the way, if you think telling half-truths to ‘save face’ hurts no one as much as one self, well think again, because I'm about to show you what took place a few month later when another vulnerable heart reached out courageously to engage with mine. And now that this train of thought is pulling into the station where FIRST KISS awaits, I’ll show you how trauma, left unresolved, creates a pattern of dis-ease, which interferes with the development of LOVE's good health.
Story by story, you'll see how self defeating patterns persist, until such time as I'll hunker down to muster the patience and courage to do the work of exorcising traumatic static, which haunts my mind until each abscess is lanced, one at a time. Whew! Hard work, but someone has to do it, and when traumatic healing needs to take place inside of adult Annie, no one can do that work except for me! What others can do is this: Forestall leaping to misconceived judgments, which block us from picking up on those times when offering emotional support, positive strokes and extending the benefit of the doubt to another create a protective haven where layers of defensive denial feel safe enough to soften and slough, thus freeing both sides of the brain to seek solutions to problems as a peaceful, healthy whole ... At last ...
Story by story, you'll see how self defeating patterns persist, until such time as I'll hunker down to muster the patience and courage to do the work of exorcising traumatic static, which haunts my mind until each abscess is lanced, one at a time. Whew! Hard work, but someone has to do it, and when traumatic healing needs to take place inside of adult Annie, no one can do that work except for me! What others can do is this: Forestall leaping to misconceived judgments, which block us from picking up on those times when offering emotional support, positive strokes and extending the benefit of the doubt to another create a protective haven where layers of defensive denial feel safe enough to soften and slough, thus freeing both sides of the brain to seek solutions to problems as a peaceful, healthy whole ... At last ...
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