Familiarity is its own Comfort
A huge thing made it very difficult for me to go from what I was to what I am: familiarity. Even though I was sick, I knew what to expect and how to deal with it: headaches, upset stomach, not eating much, anxiety, depression and my two favorite quilts under which I spent so much time. This was my routine and I had control of it (so I thought). This routine became my friend. My friend protected me from the world outside and the world inside my head. The mere suggestion of letting any part of it (or all of it) go was just like saying, “Stop breathing now, you’ll be fine.”
Who I was before this all started was irrelevant to me. I equate it to having become a mother. Who I was before I was a mother (slept in, ate just about whatever I wanted to) had no bearing on my life once I became a mother. It was the same with recovery. Abuse defined my childhood, so abuse was familiar. I knew the rules of it – what to expect, how to cope. I had no idea what the rules were for being normal – in life, in a relationship, etc.
The only comfort I could have was with that which was familiar to me: abuse, pain, anxiety, etc. Yes it was a sick familiarity and a sick comfort, but it was all I had. I wasn’t going to let anyone take what little comfort I had away from me, and I certainly wasn’t going to trade anxiety for “peace” or pain for “warmth” when I had no idea what those things were. They sounded iffy. I’d read about “peace”; it could be shattered. Who wants that? At least if you’re already anxious, there’s nothing to shatter.
Then we got to the crux of the issue: trust. Well how in the Sam Hill are you supposed to trust anything or anyone when all you’ve ever known is a profound lack of it? Here’s how I did it: excruciatingly small and terrifying leaps of faith – in myself. Could I trust myself to make an appointment and keep it? Could I trust myself to make sure there were enough clean washcloths so I could soothe my overheated face with a cool bath when anxiety hit? Over time I found I could trust myself to do these things. That’s when I realized my husband wasn’t doing laundry to show me what an unclean person I was (paranoid me thought this). He was doing laundry so I’d have clean washcloths at the ready. He wasn’t showing me up; he was showing me love. I learned to trust this. It was a long, difficult road, but I did do it – starting with myself and eventually extending this to him.
My husband tells me that after he got back from combat he wanted nothing more than to return to what and who he was before. I had a very hard time relating to him on this point. We conflicted often because it seemed like his goal was to go back and my goal had always been to go forward. I thought the only “right” was to go forward.
As an artistic person I find it very helpful to draw what I’m feeling. I applied this to how he was feeling, hoping I could come to some understanding of it.
I drew a dot on a piece of paper and wrote next to it, “feeling dark.” Then I drew a half circle going up that curved left. At the top of this half circle I wrote the words “feeling light.” I told him I started at “dark” and moved up to “light.” I asked him to draw a line representing how he felt.
He drew a dot next to “light” and then drew a curved line down alongside my half circle that ended at “dark.” When I asked him where he’d like to go from there, he drew a half circle from the “dark” dot that went up the right side of the page and ended at “light.” My line was pink; his was blue.
His pain had him traveling the same route as I had, but from a different direction. Our recoveries, however, were not along the same route. We thought we couldn’t understand each other even though he was experiencing the same things I had, but it was only because we went at it from two different places – he started at “light” and I from “dark.” Also, I was pretty much born at “dark,” and he ended up there as an adult.
His path back to “light” would be different from mine, but he would still end up at there. I had come to “light” from the left. He wanted/needed to get to it from the right. All I had to do was call out to him from a different direction. I had been calling to him from the left, where I’d come from, but he couldn't hear me. Once I started calling to him from the right he could hear me.
Until then I had not realized he might travel a different road to recovery. I was sure my way was the right way, and that deviating from that could only bring trouble. And because I thought that way, I was the one causing so much trouble – mostly for him.
I felt pretty stupid once I realized the error of my way because we have a special needs daughter, and I often explained her learning process to her teachers who said, “she just isn’t trying.” I would tell them that knowledge is like a park, and that everyone gets to the park a different way. Most people walk or run to the park, but there are those who skip, somersault, bicycle, use a pogo stick and even swing from tree to tree to get there. The teachers were only teaching to the walkers and runners. They were ignoring the equally capable skippers and bicyclists, writing them off as stupid or not trying. Who was really stupid? The teachers. (To be fair, she had lots of good teachers who even taught kids whole new ways to get to the park.)
When it came to my husband, I was the stupid teacher. I realized I was treating him like a runner when he was really a bicyclist. This is what I had to do for myself when I started recovery: accepting my faults as integral parts of who I was instead of damning myself for them and trusting myself to take care of who I was going to be the next day or week. I was someone who took a pogo stick to the park, but instead of accepting this, I punished myself for not being a runner or a walker like everyone else – which is to say I thought I wasn’t “normal.”
Every person on this board gets to the park (recovery and healing) a different way. The majority of people get there by walking or running – and the mental health community treats everyone like a runner or walker. But a lot of people take a different way – on a big wheel or in a wagon. When the person who is supposed to be helping you won’t acknowledge the best way for you to get there, they block you from getting there. The worst part is that we often block ourselves. So the most important thing to do is find out who you are: if you’re a walker or runner then fine, but if you’re a gymnast who loves back flips or a line dancer, then treat (and train) yourself accordingly else you’ll never get there.
