Something happened to you
Something happened to you..that wasnt your fault
Something happened to you…that wasnt your fault….and you had to do something as a result that you cannot talk about.
Something happened to you..that wasnt your fault…and you coped in life with self soothing strategies…that you cannot talk about either.
Something happened to you….that wasnt your fault….and everything since has been about staying silent about it…silent….and hiding all traces….protecting it….protecting yourself…from what happened to you.
Something happened to you, by someone who is dominant, powerful and sometimes insane, and bewilders you from any kind of action, and you can’t share it, for recrimination.
Something happened to you…..that you dont think anyone will believe.
That wasnt your fault.
That wasnt your fault.
(even if their insanity causes you to take the blame)
It was something done to you, when you..when I.. was a child, when I was powerless, when I was dependent…
That set so many patterns of life in motion….
And a story that had to remain silent.
We live by stories.
We all have a personal narrative, a myth, a sacred story to believe, a story to live by.
David Macadam says in ‘Stories we live by’ that by having this personal story we then accept, reject information to fit it, or expand our story to fit the new information.
That was one of the things I learned when I was doing my Masters in Theology and Ministry at Durham, the psychology elective that I did with Dr Jocelyn Bryan.
In 2017, doing my Masters, I didn’t have a story I lived by, not one I wanted to talk about, it was far easier, a defence mechanism, to use my brain to disect and critique the process of story making, story telling and consider how theology, story and drama all fit together, whilst I was feeling, well, I wasnt feeling anything, just dying inside. Even the Christian story that I believed , I had critiqued and was full of doubt of it.
Yet.
That sacred myth that I doubted had to do a lot of work, to hold me somehow when my psychological self was a scared, wounded, abused little boy.
The story that I was actually living by, twas a story of shame, a story of abuse, for fear, a story that I didn’t want to acknowledge.
That was the story I was actually living by…
Because it haunted my every step.
It was the story that had power over me.
It was the story that consumed.
It broke me into a thousand pieces every day, causing…
One trip to eat extra food every day
One more hour watching TV news
Three more glasses of wine
One more hour on twitter staying distracted.
One more week watching Friday night soothing comedy.
One more piece of bread, then another, and another, and another
One more football match to overlay drama with drama
One more piece to write to stay busy
Another long bike ride.
More work to do, fill the diary.
One more anything
To run…
Filling an ache.
Because I was so not actually ok, that I could barely say the words, let alone say I had needs, because, that would mean being in a safe enough place where my needs were validated, even if I could articulate them.
One more coping mechanism
One more denial of my self
One more day to mask and pretend.
One more day when I couldn’t share, just keep going.
Survival isnt a story, its fragmented existence.
One more self soothe
One more ‘fix others, im not important’ moment
One more hope of change, living a story of ‘conditional okayness’
Fear, alone, isolation.
The story I lived by, for too long, was a story of shame, fear, anxiety and survival, and masking this so that no one could ever know.
Shame.
Ends.
When stories
are told
in
safe places. (Brene Brown)
Yet.
Shame stories
Held
me
for too
long.
It was a story I couldn’t tell.
It was a story I held in silence.
It was a story that I had no control over.
It was a story that wasnt mine.
It was a story of what someone had done to me.
It was a story of my coping mechanisms because of that childhood abuse and the follow up behaviour, including relationships.
My life, was someone else story.
My lifeless life was someone else’s story.
How I had adjusted to be for someone else.
How I had given away myself.
Actually thats so not true. Because I had never had a self. Self was broken from birth.
When real
stories
of us
being alive.
get hidden.
There was a story I was living by. But it wasnt a story about me. It was a story about how my life was orientated around the fear of someone else, and that I was a bit part player in my own life.
It takes so long for someone to feel the main player in their own story
Spiralling into an anxiety I couldn’t never acknowledge. Tears hidden, as breakdowns occurred in car journeys all alone to Coldplay songs, and reduced priced Tescos wraps scoffed.
In avoiding the negative, we only encourage it to recur (John O Donohue Anam Cara)
I look back and realise how barely I even existed.
To do self care, to have needs, to accept love, to do quiet, to give myself any permission, to feel power…all deemed unimportant, selfish or impossible, so invalidated all of them.
So that story began to change.
Or, my relationship to my story did.
As i began to realise what was done to me, wasnt my fault.
As I began to realise how I had been trapped in emotional contagion.
As I realised that change on the inside brought a sense of worth, and change on the outside…
As I began to realise how I hadn’t been loved, just stolen from.
As I began to realise, how I had survived
As I began to realise the damage, yet also the inner strength and resolve I had to get myself to where I have got to.
As I began to work through every brave step, and own the bravery of it all.
As I began to realise who I am, and who I am not
As I began to connect with my story, to dig deep into it all, and realise myself in it all. I had ran from a past I had to connect with, to face, to love for my self strength in it all.
As I took loving myself seriously, and self compassion, and self care, and just undoing the critical voice of inner torment. I had to love myself in a way that I had only been able to love others.
As I began to realise my own…sense of worth….sense of love…sense of being me, wounded in many parts, but not entirely broken, and capable of love.
As I started to be my own story. I started to be able to own the story, to make this story about me, to connect the dots, and also now, to be able to be excited about the blank pages ahead, waiting for their colours to emerge.
As I started to write it down, and realise I wasnt alone.
As I realised that there was life beyond it, beyond it all.
But at the time, the story I wasn’t able to tell was the story that I was living by.
What if the story we live by is one of abuse and the shame of what we do to cope, and the silence of both of these things?
For, It’s not what happened to us often…it’s the silence and hiding for so long. It’s navigating a life around the shame. Thats draining and energy sapping.
Yet, it doesn’t have to be this way, not forever.
Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is to stop living the story that others wrote for you.
James Ballantyne 