Taking Control

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the people who make me who I am for better and worse. The older I get the more I feel like I look like my momma. However, I am very much my father’s daughter. As someone who essentially lost both of her parents at the age of ten, I try to grasp and honor what I feel is right. I have my memories which fade in and out. I have the things that people have said while filtering through them and the different perspectives people have about them.

A big goal I’ve had and write about often is learning how to detach from people. I tend to be a person who attaches to people completely or not at all. I grew up as an only child so even before my mom died I spent a lot of time alone or with adults. Once she died, I was alone even more or glued to my aunt. As an adult, I spend the majority of my time alone. I go through waves where I am with people, but for the most part, it comes down to me. People come and go. Life happens and at the end of the day, it is me.

Traumatic events will happen. In the moment people will support you. Sooner or later they will go back to their life. That’s the struggle with trying to be there for others. Only you know how you are feeling and handling what life has given you. Grief and trauma and just about anything is felt and handled differently by each person.

I’ve spent much of my life ashamed to be struggling with all the things that have happened and still affect me. I’ve spent a good part of my life ashamed of what I come from, and not even the drug addiction and chaos part. I’ve carried with me feeling like I am less than because I don’t have a family and raised myself. I think the media contributes to that since there are many movies and shows where a character who lost their parents are less than or not good enough as those with parents.

In the recent years especially, I have worked on embracing who I am as a person. A lot of that involves knowing who I am as an individual. As all over the place I may come off, I have come to realize that I am pretty secure in who I am. Again more in recent years. I think some of it comes to me getting close to my thirties, but to heal, I have had to know myself. I’ve started to discover that I know myself better than some of the people in my life know themselves. I have a few people who are at the heart of learning about themselves away from the influence of others. I believe everyone is continuously learning more about themselves. I don’t think that ever ends. Some people only know life when it coincides with another individual. You learn a lot of necessary things when you are alone. I had to learn that when my aunt died. I had to learn it again when I went no contact with my abuser. I’ve been spending the last five-plus years learning who I am without being connected to another person.

As someone who grew up and is still in an environment where the norm is to get married and have babies before your brain is even developed, it can create conflicting feelings. Sometimes I feel behind or I haven’t experienced enough at my age. The thing is I wouldn’t have wanted to be married and have a kid at the typical Christian age range. It most likely would have resulted in another trauma. For one, I was mentally and emotionally younger than my age. At the same time, I was mature because I would see other young people doing things they shouldn’t be concerned about. I’m very much a person who focuses on how actions have consequences. I am trying to be a little less of that and embrace life and the fun it can bring. Getting on a mechanical bull last year shows some of that growth and doing what feels right at the moment. My thumb though loves to remind me of the consequences of riding that bull ha.

It’s been a year of extreme healing for me. A lot of internal issues have been brought to the surface. I have been struggling a lot with things that exist because of my abuser. Dealing with some of these things has made me feel psychotic at times. Even today I was thinking about something that my brain once didn’t struggle with pre abuser. How I handle relationships was completely altered. Some of the struggles coincide with my attachment issues, which is why I’ve been working so hard on detachment.

Where I am now even compared to where I was at the beginning of the year is a big change. The thing that helped me the most was that I do know myself. That can sometimes get buried when the struggles are coming at me strong. It gets easier to dig myself out because I’ve learned how to find myself without the help of someone else. I have my people and they have helped me unbury myself in ways, but ultimately it is up to me to not let myself get buried after all that work of digging me up.

It can be easy to let people’s actions control how you handle life. Especially depending on what happened. I have had to heal from more people than I’d like. I have several people I will have to spend most of my life rewiring my brain from the damage they caused. I also have people who were a part of my life and helped heal me.

I have a very special brain. It connects everything to something. It is very aware of patterns and people. I don’t try to know what kind of vehicle everyone at my office drives but it just happens. I didn’t plan to notice what day and time range a police officer that I “met” during jury duty does his grocery shopping. Or what car and town an employee at the grocery store lives and drives (which now that I’m thinking about it I haven’t seen him in a little bit and now I’m sad). I was able to get my chapel credit in college by describing almost an entire semester’s worth of what people on stage were wearing. I connect things and I rarely forget them and if I do something later on triggers a memory. As you can imagine, this has made it hard to get through the trauma and loss at times.

The littlest thing can remind me of a person. Sometimes that isn’t a big deal. Sometimes it’s a little harder when you’re trying not to constantly think about someone or something. One way I have tried to not let some of the little things affect me is by embracing it all. Exposure therapy in a way. I grew up in a die-hard Pepsi family. I loved Pepsi. I now solely drink Coke Zero because of my abuser. That part of him is now a part of who I am. The only reason I have a North Face backpack is because of him. It’s a nice backpack and I have no regrets about buying it. Both of these things more than not are a part of my life but then I will have an occasional “Oh I drink this or own this because of so and so.” I still wake up at 4 am quite often because of him but that’s a story for another day. I still struggle with things that were my fixations when my aunt got sick and died. To this day I struggle watching Grey’s Anatomy because I was watching it with her when she got sick. Even some of her last texts and memories were Grey’s Anatomy related. Though some may think is crazy, I sometimes still have a hard time with Jennifer Lopez. I will forever love JLo more than air itself (if you are a hater please don’t do it around me). I was in one of my extreme fixations on her when my aunt got sick. I was dancing every day to all of her music videos and she was one of the main sources of my happiness. Well, Jennifer Lopez will always be a main source of my happiness. There is one song that I discovered around the time my aunt got sick that can sometimes come on and I am instantly put in a not-so-happy place. I try to expose myself and push through things that sometimes put me in a bad place. I knew I didn’t want to lose the happiness that Jennifer Lopez brought me. My love has never been as strong, but it will never be gone and I will forever be known for my love for JLo <3.

There’s a balance to my “exposure therapy.” I have seen ways that it does help. It is essentially me trying to make things a part of my norm compared to attaching it to a person or event. Some of it is time passing which can be frustrating, especially since there isn’t a time range to healing. When I force myself to deal with these things, I have to make sure I’m not dwelling on the emotions I am feeling.

There is something special about carrying parts of people (even the ones who weren’t so great) with me. I get to carry parts of them and maybe end up passing them on to other people in life. It’s just a continuous sharing. As important as it is to know yourself as an individual it is also beneficial and necessary to be with people. Living in such an individualistic society it is sometimes forgotten how humans are communal beings. We need community. We need love. We need all the things we try to grasp in unhealthy ways.

More people than not aren’t taught healthy ways. That is how generational cycles are created. I am grateful to have been as aware as I was and as young as I was. I don’t fully know how it happened. Yes, the Gen Psych class helped a little. I always knew that I didn’t want to go through life and relationships like my aunt did. Maybe that saved me a little. I’ve always been one who wants to know why something is like it is. I knew how my aunt acted wasn’t her fault but how she was taught and knew. Most of my family has had little to no chance of a normal and healthy life.

Maybe it’s delusion but I had a picture of what I wanted life to look like. I’m realistic and know some might not be attainable in this life. I can be sad about that. I’ve always kept going and tried to fight for the chance of a good and happy life. Again, I focus on how actions have consequences. So, as much as I might look like I don’t have a plan, I am looking at all the options and ways to an end goal. There are things I still have to discover and figure out what I want or how it coincides with what I want from life. Most of what I do is calculated (which brings its hindrance).

I’ve been watching My 600lb Life again. I watched it for the first time in 2020 so the episodes I’ve been watching are the episodes that have aired since then. This show can open your eyes. Not the weight aspect. It’s what has caused the people to go to food and let themselves get to this life-threatening place. There’s a reason most of them are sent to therapy to help with essentially a food addiction. Some of them I see how dysfunctional their home dynamics are or were. How easily a life event can create a whirlwind of destruction. It also shows how it is ultimately up to you to change your life. So many of them wait for those around them to fix them. It shows how important it is to take control of what has happened.

Yes, feel what has happened to you, but you can only let it control you for so long. I will most likely never be free or okay from what has happened to me. I can’t let it control me, especially in ways I am capable of controlling. I know healthy habits and coping techniques. I know if I am sticking to X, Y, and Z while avoiding A, B, and C I am setting myself up for a better chance of success. Also, I am going to have days, weeks, and sometimes months where I am not doing so well. That doesn’t mean all of my progress is gone. I need to keep feeling and pushing through it because that is how I gain more control over whatever is causing these hard times. No one is ever going to have a life with all perfect days, as frustrating as it can be. I know I can sometimes feel defeated knowing that I will get past one of my hard times for another one to eventually come back after I’ve been doing good. But, knowing and accepting this allows me to take control of what controls me.