My epiphany

I don't know if I have mentioned how very often my drive time in the morning and through out the day, between appointments, is my best prayer time. I have no distractions but the road before me and have all the difficulties and situations I am encountering swirling through my head. No one can hear me and now with the invention of the Blue Tooth...I don't even look all that weird if I am talking out loud...I could be on the phone. And in a sense, I am in communication without wires...to my Creator and Heavenly Father. Very often, these quiet moments are when I am able to tune out the distractions in my life and the Lord is able to speak to me and grab my attention.

Today was one such day. I have been struggling for a very long time. I would venture to guess, about 6 years, since my marriage fell apart and I learned of the child abuse and began to recognize my own abuse. I have, in these past 6 years, repeated a very unhealthy pattern of behavior. The summer seems to be a very critical time for this pattern to erupt but there have been other occurrences at other times during the calendar year. I panic and begin to shut down emotionally. In this state, I grow more disorganized with my checkbook, careless with my affections and I sort of check out of parenting and kind of revert to this very childish set of behaviors. I have landed myself into many precarious positions and each time I repeat the pattern, the consequences have been even more severe.

I am writing about it now because I am trying to break this cycle and confront this pattern and identify the root cause of it all so that I don't have to keep repeating it. I had a very powerful, and painful, epiphany this morning while I drove in to work. I have gotten a lot of mileage out of being a "special victim". Part of me hates being the victim, hates having been traumatized, hates the damage that has been done but then there is this part of me that has also latched on to the attention this special status has given me.

I worked through a lot of layers, slice by slice, to the point that by the time I reached work, I felt raw and very tired. But also, I felt a burden begin to lift because I think I may have figured something out. I am going to try to write it out and see if I can get it out of the nebulous mess in my head in to some sort of cohesive, somewhat logical train of thought that I can continue to munch on and think about and then hopefully begin to put to rest.

My pastor has been talking about forgiveness. I understand the concept. It is something I have determined from the very beginning to bestow upon my ex-husband because I do not want to become bitter and live in a state of hostile anger. My children need a fully functioning, content and even happy parent who is not tied down with all this other negative junk. what I liked about what my pastor has been teaching about is how he has further cemented in my head what I have been thinking about. He says that forgiveness is not for the offender. It is not something that they ask for and then are granted, although they may seek it. It is something that the Offended person grants so that she (me) can move forward with her life and not be tied down with anger and bitterness. Bingo!! My thoughts exactly! But actually, I believe that is the Biblical model of forgiveness. Furthermore, he went on to explain last week, that forgiveness does not mean that the Offender "gets off the hook". It 's not a "get out of jail free" card. By forgiving a person, you are not saying that they are not guilty and thus do not require to serve out some sort of justice. Ultimately, justice belongs to the Lord. He determines what is just. However, we do have a legal system that doles out justice as well. I prayed long and hard over it and decided that I was going to be content with whatever the judge determined was just. I was prepared for my husband to get probation or to go to prison. It does not mean that I was not shocked when he was given a 40 year sentence. I grieved it and then accepted it.

So, that is the background. I have forgiven my ex-husband. I still have to decide to forgive him sometimes because I get reminders of how far his crime and his sin has reached us and is still affecting us today but I do continue to forgive. So, why then do I continue to cycle through this pattern of self-destructive behaviors like financial sabotage, choosing dangerous/abusive men and repeating abusive relationships and why to I continue to spin myself into a depression or depressive state where I just want to jump off this crazy planet because I have made things so hard and difficult and I begin to loathe myself so much and then begin to transfer that self-loathing and project it onto others and feel that they must surely be sick of me as well. Why do they put up with me at all? I am certainly sick of me and can barely stand to be inside my own body or brain so others must feel the same way...and I spin down further, quit caring until I get myself into such a mess that I want to reach out and get bailed out of trouble.

This is that Special Victim status. I create the chaos to re-enact the victim role and begin to look for a savior, a rescuer. Usually, a man. And the two men I have dated since my divorce, both seem to like being rescuers and like having a woman who seems to need them so desperately. But then once I pull myself up and out of trouble and begin to stand strong again, these men realize that I am not passive or pliable and their abusive nature takes over and they begin to try and exert power and control over the relationship and me in order to restore that helplessness and reliance upon them.

It's really kind of sick. It is really scary. But I do see it as a good sign that this time, I have allowed myself to admit that a) there is a problem b) something needs to change c) I need to instigate that change, no matter how painful nor how long it takes and d) I need to seek some professional help in order to do so because I cannot do this alone. So, I have made an appointment with a therapist that I saw 6 years ago. I have contacted a financial counseling ministry. I have tightened my financial belt quite a bit and am going to "pay the piper" even though it hurts and it is scary.

I still haven't gotten to my real Epiphany. As I sorted all of this out, I kept asking myself "Why do you do this, Tulip?" and then "What is your secondary gain?". Dangerous questions. Deep down, I long to be loved but my fear is that I am unlovable and eventually, I will be rejected. At least as a Special Victim, I had an excuse for some bad behavior. I had a reason to exist. I am the Mother of an Abused Child...Don't you know what I have gone through? Don't you see what this has done to me? ...and in a sense, doesn't that then take me off the hook for some things?

But I have some people in my life, my Mom, my sisters and my Grandmother, who do love me on that deep down level, as ugly as I think it is down there and they are not letting me claim that Special Victim status. They love me so much that they are not going to let me continue to throw myself into this pit that I keep digging. But they are not going to send down a ladder. Maybe some rope, to make my own ladder...but I have to do the work.

Even further under this, I kept digging down. I realized that I have freely forgiven my ex-husband. I have freely forgiven these ex-boyfriends for the pain they have caused me, either intentional or otherwise. I have forgiven countless others who have come into my life and have hurt me, whether they meant to or not. I have let it go. But there is one person I have been unable to forgive. Myself. Deep down, I blame myself for what happened to my daughter. I have let myself hold on to this guilt that if I had made a different decision back in 1992, when I found out that my then boyfriend, soon-to-be husband, had molested his sister and attempted to molest her friend...If I had decided to walk away then and there, none of this would have happened. In a sense, I believed that it was all my fault because I had been faced with a choice to continue dating him or to walk away and I chose to continue the relationship, to fall in love with him, to marry him a year later and then to bear 4 children by him.

WHOA. This hit me very hard. Was it entirely my fault? Was it wrong for me to follow my heart, to believe him when he said he was a christian and that this molestation was behind him and because he had Jesus, it was done. He was saved.

So, this morning, I took that guilt and shame and began to turn it around. I did have a choice. And I chose to love him. I chose to give him a chance when several others before me had walked away. I chose to believe him and to trust him and to put faith in him that when we had children, they would be safe in his care. That was my duty, my obligation and my choice. I fulfilled it. But he had a choice in there too. He made choices along the way to hide his temptations regarding our daughter. He led a secret life. He molested her for 3 years and hid it from me. I didn't "miss" any signs because there were no signs. He was very good at hiding it. He never counted on her telling me about it. We both made choices and those choices had consequences. My choice led me to this place where I am now, as painful as things may be in my life may be, how could I possibly want to go back to a day in 1992, when I learned of his secret and then make a different choice because if I had, I would have no Princess...no BB...no PH...no Peanut. For those 4 reasons, I made the best choice. I forgive myself for holding on to the blame, the shame and the guilt, for letting that eat away at me for so long that I have developed a pattern of self-destruction and sabotage in order to make myself into the monster that I believed I was deep down. I am letting go of that. It's time to break free from that pain and guilt. I am forgiven. I am free.