i believe this complex to be a strong anchoring component of my own obsessive compulsive addiction to contextualizing everything. everything for me, in order to be recognized as real, has to be understood in terms of how it got there in the first place. in other words, what are the circumstances in which a particular situation arose in the first place?
following the progression of thought and understanding laid out in this journal over the last year and a half, i, in tandem with little ron, the first witness of events, have come to an understanding of the cause and effect of my own deep issues. i believe for me, that this complex is rooted in a sense of inferiority. a sense of feeling that i was not good enough, and that in fact, i would never be. since my most basic need for love and nurture remained unmet in the earliest years of my development due my mom's preoccupation with extenuating factors, i struggled subconsciously with deep feelings of abandonment throughout my entire childhood.
over time, as this desire/need was continually met with frustration, it became natural to learn to live without having the expectations of mother love met. i imagine i came to know life as many other children who have felt left behind in some way, shape, or form. i may not have been aware that the hunger was there, and it may strike some as odd that in these entries i rarely mention my father, but that is only because there is no personal connection, no memory outside the fear state that he elicited in me. i have no memory of my spirit reaching out in desire of him; but my mother on the other hand, i felt the emptiness of that unrequited connection all my life. at some point, i resigned to the fact that she would always be unattainable.
i saw that so clearly as i watched from the crow's nest of my playpen the bond build and strengthen between her and my older brother. then i watched it build and strengthen between her and my sister, born a year after me, the girl she had wanted, and finally got.
something in me that is beyond words, knows these things. the language of clairvoyance, prior to verbalization and semantics, knows these things in the heart.
in the eyes of little ron [LR], his older brother WAS a god. he must have been very special indeed to have been worthy to have the relationship with mother that LR was denied. and so later, LR felt so 'special' to be given the 'special' attention he gave LR. he gave it to LR at a time LR was sorely starving for it, as he had been denied it all his life. when LR was introduced to the attention of his older brother/god, he felt complete. this was before LR's psyche had reached maturity.... actually it was when he was on the brink of adolescence. so LR's primary self-image developed as a concubine to sate the sexual intimacy desires of an older brother. LR grew along those lines emotionally and psychologically for 10 years, in a imagined 'marriage' with the older bro.
just months before the older bro died, the older bro, at the age of 23, abandoned the sexual relationship, stating, 'that was just kids fooling around'. LR was devastated; he felt the pain of rejection. when the olderbroperpgod died, LR felt abandoned.
LR was not able to recover from that rejection. he internalized the rejection, wondering why why why? what did i do wrong? why did this happen??? and so then he took steps to answer that question by making his body the primary importance.
the abandonment led him to overeat, to replace the 'intimacy' that he once had, which was now refused him. he did not know how to stop stuffing himself with food and drink, because he did not understand why this was the case, and there was no one available to confide in, no a shoulder of compassion to lean on. when LR's bro died, he told his family support system about it, and they then too rejected him. LR had no one to love him then, and no one to support him emotionally or psychologically. his entire life became a quest to find value and worth again. and since the only way he knew how to do that was by giving his sex away, he over focused on that and made having a perfect desirable body the chief aim of his existence. he came to believe if he could regain that one thing which made him desirable at one point in his life, everything would be 'OK'.
LR verifies this to be a true and accurate recounting of all that he remembers about the progression of his life.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Sunday, October 25, 2009
The Wounded Critic
scratchpad work in progress
title: the anatomy of a complex situation
after the intensity of working for the last 16 months to get to the root of my depression, i feel exhausted. i literally feel as if i have no strength to type everything i want to say. the new lens has sharpened its focus to such an extent that it captures far more than i am able to comprehend all in the glimpse of one moment.
layer by layer the onion of me has peeled over these months, and now, ultimately, reveals that core issue which has belied all my attempts to understand the genesis of my own personal pain. after years and years of striving to understand 'why' the pieces of the puzzle are now falling into place, revealing the big picture.
like an obsession in its own right, i have spent my entire life asking 'why', question followed by question, day in and day out, leading back thru a labyrinth of feelings, beliefs, assumptions, striving to discern their connection to some past event or situation that would identify their origins. believing that once that was identified, i would reach some promised land of peace and truth where only reality would prevail; not some pretentious world of my own construction.
having resolved the issue of anger with my family of origin, and accepted that situation without rancor and remorse as immutable, and irreconcilable, i reached a point where i came to understand how and why my inner child languished in confusion, feeling his basic needs for love unmet for all these long years.
i pondered his response to that, the hole in his heart and spirit for longing to be loved and cherished, and i saw what that frustrated need caused him to become: the elder ron, a jaded and cynical critical judge, who would find his worth measured in terms of external feedback. back then, he wondered, am i as lovable as bill [my older brother and perp]? am i as smart? he never needed to be appraised higher in value, just equal. but no, mother's own words "everyone knows the first one's special" stuck like a knife in the gut all these years, as a promise that he would never measure up to his big brother's standard.
so when big brother initiated me into the world of sexual behavior, i was finally worth something. i was worth something to HIM, my supreme demi-god. as long as he 'wanted me' i had value.
i spent my entire adolescence enamored of him, and founded my entire sense of self-worth on his existence. then the day came he died at the age of 23, my ground collapsed beneath me. i didn't realize at first, how all those years, while i loved him, i secretly hated him, and envied him all at once. i secretly wanted to occupy his place in the pecking order of our family system. after all, i was the second in line, born male, though my mother wanted a girl. yes, she used to dress me up in my cousins dresses, then when my sister was born one year after me, well, then....next.... ?
after he died, i had no sense of compass; subconsciously i began to characterize myself a loser. i was left to deal with a set of feelings that i had been out of touch with for so many years and i did not know how or where to begin. that was when my career introduced itself, and i would compensate for being a loser, by exchanging my obsession with him, for an obsession with achievement. i would use this career in music to give me the sense of usefulness and purpose that i had lost in the death of my brother/lover.
yes, i became the black sheep of the family after his death when i outed him by disclosing his predatory behavior of me and 3 others of my sibs. i defamed the golden child. my family has never forgiven me for that.
[insert emoticon for swoon....]
in all that, little child ron got forgotten; lost and buried beneath the suppressed feelings of pain, shame, rejection abandonment and anger that smothered him all these years. the ignorance and denial and the compensatory, overarching, overachieving elder ron, caused him to be forgotten. as a result, little ron became a wounded, anxious, frightened vagabond shuffling the streets carrying that wound to all the people, places and things he encountered along the way. with his cup outstretched, to beg for his 'daily bread' he would do a little dance or sing a little song, and he would be gratified by the sound of the coins clinking in the bottom of the cup.
as the elder ron surface crust is torn away, little ron emerges from the shadows, an emotional feral child trying to find a way to cope with life, while the emotions pour out as the aforementioned knife is removed.
i'm not even sure why i'm still talking at this point...... need to go rest in the emerging feelings
to be continued.....
title: the anatomy of a complex situation
after the intensity of working for the last 16 months to get to the root of my depression, i feel exhausted. i literally feel as if i have no strength to type everything i want to say. the new lens has sharpened its focus to such an extent that it captures far more than i am able to comprehend all in the glimpse of one moment.
layer by layer the onion of me has peeled over these months, and now, ultimately, reveals that core issue which has belied all my attempts to understand the genesis of my own personal pain. after years and years of striving to understand 'why' the pieces of the puzzle are now falling into place, revealing the big picture.
like an obsession in its own right, i have spent my entire life asking 'why', question followed by question, day in and day out, leading back thru a labyrinth of feelings, beliefs, assumptions, striving to discern their connection to some past event or situation that would identify their origins. believing that once that was identified, i would reach some promised land of peace and truth where only reality would prevail; not some pretentious world of my own construction.
having resolved the issue of anger with my family of origin, and accepted that situation without rancor and remorse as immutable, and irreconcilable, i reached a point where i came to understand how and why my inner child languished in confusion, feeling his basic needs for love unmet for all these long years.
i pondered his response to that, the hole in his heart and spirit for longing to be loved and cherished, and i saw what that frustrated need caused him to become: the elder ron, a jaded and cynical critical judge, who would find his worth measured in terms of external feedback. back then, he wondered, am i as lovable as bill [my older brother and perp]? am i as smart? he never needed to be appraised higher in value, just equal. but no, mother's own words "everyone knows the first one's special" stuck like a knife in the gut all these years, as a promise that he would never measure up to his big brother's standard.
so when big brother initiated me into the world of sexual behavior, i was finally worth something. i was worth something to HIM, my supreme demi-god. as long as he 'wanted me' i had value.
i spent my entire adolescence enamored of him, and founded my entire sense of self-worth on his existence. then the day came he died at the age of 23, my ground collapsed beneath me. i didn't realize at first, how all those years, while i loved him, i secretly hated him, and envied him all at once. i secretly wanted to occupy his place in the pecking order of our family system. after all, i was the second in line, born male, though my mother wanted a girl. yes, she used to dress me up in my cousins dresses, then when my sister was born one year after me, well, then....next.... ?
after he died, i had no sense of compass; subconsciously i began to characterize myself a loser. i was left to deal with a set of feelings that i had been out of touch with for so many years and i did not know how or where to begin. that was when my career introduced itself, and i would compensate for being a loser, by exchanging my obsession with him, for an obsession with achievement. i would use this career in music to give me the sense of usefulness and purpose that i had lost in the death of my brother/lover.
yes, i became the black sheep of the family after his death when i outed him by disclosing his predatory behavior of me and 3 others of my sibs. i defamed the golden child. my family has never forgiven me for that.
[insert emoticon for swoon....]
in all that, little child ron got forgotten; lost and buried beneath the suppressed feelings of pain, shame, rejection abandonment and anger that smothered him all these years. the ignorance and denial and the compensatory, overarching, overachieving elder ron, caused him to be forgotten. as a result, little ron became a wounded, anxious, frightened vagabond shuffling the streets carrying that wound to all the people, places and things he encountered along the way. with his cup outstretched, to beg for his 'daily bread' he would do a little dance or sing a little song, and he would be gratified by the sound of the coins clinking in the bottom of the cup.
as the elder ron surface crust is torn away, little ron emerges from the shadows, an emotional feral child trying to find a way to cope with life, while the emotions pour out as the aforementioned knife is removed.
i'm not even sure why i'm still talking at this point...... need to go rest in the emerging feelings
to be continued.....
Friday, October 23, 2009
Letting Go the Idealized Family
for today, i have surrendered to the understanding that my family's unwillingness to participate in psychic excavation of the dynamics of our emotional relationship, though unsatisfactorily serving my needs, meets their needs perfectly. done. it's just simply not a requirement for integrative balance in their mental health schematic. i had to accept the futility of expecting blood from a stone. instead i get stone from blood, and it feels like a kidney stone [if you've never had one they hurt like a mofo].
accepting that possibility for me was hard, because in doing so, meant i had to let go my romanticized notions of who my idealized family were, and that was very painful. gratefully, acceptance of their emotional disability reduced for both of us the growing stress of expectation for something that could not be, and doing so released me from that negative energy which had ruled my emotional life and caused me to paint all my relationships with the brush of emotional color dipped in that shallow palette inherited from my family.
so now what do i do? where do i go? how do i, in a healthy way, satisfy this starving need for bonding to those with whom i share psychic DNA? i don't know if i can. but i am believing that i can get the need quenched through other means, even though they will be mere replacements. that sounds daunting and does not have a lot of appeal, because when i hoping for a simple remodel, i am beginning to see that i may need to start from scratch.
i don't know if i have the energy for that. at any rate, i am coming to the point where i am able to accept the terms of their endearment. as crappy as they are, the consequences of choosing to hide in shadows, secrecy, avoidance and denial will be theirs and theirs alone. in the meantime, i have moved on toward other realms where family of choice cherishes me, and honors my need to ask the deeper questions.
in the meantime, i say thank you to those who have shown the true value of friendship and love, especially my friend family with whom i share spiritual community at mcc. you dear people make me feel 'cherished'. wow....... what else is needed?
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Were You Cherished?
i had spent several weeks of grousing with kate over my family's inability to address my need for emotional resolution, and in my cul-de-sac post gained a lot of understanding. but the time has come to move completely out of the head, and start looking at my life through the lens of the heart.
last week was very difficult emotionally. kate asked me point blank: has there ever been a time in your life when you felt 'cherished'? dead silence.....um, let me see...... tick tock tick tock tick tock.....hmmmm....tick tock tick tock tick tock tic tock....., um, no....*sigh*.
so my last post focused more on the acceptance of what my family can't give me due to their emotional incapacity to do so.
the next post unpacks that a little more.
last week was very difficult emotionally. kate asked me point blank: has there ever been a time in your life when you felt 'cherished'? dead silence.....um, let me see...... tick tock tick tock tick tock.....hmmmm....tick tock tick tock tick tock tic tock....., um, no....*sigh*.
so my last post focused more on the acceptance of what my family can't give me due to their emotional incapacity to do so.
the next post unpacks that a little more.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Little Ron: How.Could.You?
it's not easy. i have lost motivation and impetus to propel me forward into the new day. a bit stuck in the molasses of transitional spaces. wrote a poem the other day while spending time away from the interference of visual media:
in the trance of this poem, i was empathizing with my brother in law's dog who loves to yelp and whine when she wants let into the house. my trance made me identify with her feelings of abandonment, and i realized as i was writing the poem that it was being written to several people: my mother, first.
i wrote it to my mother to express the sense of abandonment felt as a young child ron. ron the infant and ron the toddler. stuck in a playpen, an unengaged and passive watcher. wanting desperately to be let out, to join in the fun and festivities with her and my older brother. but nope, i was just left there to witness the blossoming relationship between my mother and my older brother, my perp. yea, i imagined myself inside the brain of that dog and i could definitely relate.
how. could. you?
how could you leave me
alone at the door
in the cold
with the rain
pelting down my back?
how. could. you?
how could you?
how could you leave me like that
in a nest
of relentless
suffocating
dark devices
wondering
where were you?
i pounded and pawed
scratched and i clawed
for you to come
but my pleas
pregnant with hope
dashed in slow motion
to the ground
as the sinking revelation
overtook me
like an unwitnessed death
this terrible truth
there was no you
i was alone
how could you?
how.
could.
you?
how could you leave me
alone at the door
in the cold
with the rain
pelting down my back?
how. could. you?
how could you?
how could you leave me like that
in a nest
of relentless
suffocating
dark devices
wondering
where were you?
i pounded and pawed
scratched and i clawed
for you to come
but my pleas
pregnant with hope
dashed in slow motion
to the ground
as the sinking revelation
overtook me
like an unwitnessed death
this terrible truth
there was no you
i was alone
how could you?
how.
could.
you?
in the trance of this poem, i was empathizing with my brother in law's dog who loves to yelp and whine when she wants let into the house. my trance made me identify with her feelings of abandonment, and i realized as i was writing the poem that it was being written to several people: my mother, first.
i wrote it to my mother to express the sense of abandonment felt as a young child ron. ron the infant and ron the toddler. stuck in a playpen, an unengaged and passive watcher. wanting desperately to be let out, to join in the fun and festivities with her and my older brother. but nope, i was just left there to witness the blossoming relationship between my mother and my older brother, my perp. yea, i imagined myself inside the brain of that dog and i could definitely relate.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Cul-de-sac
i recently found the understanding i needed in order to move beyond obsessing over my family's incapacity, due to their own state of emotional disability, to give me much needed support all these long years.
however, with that primary addiction now defunct, as i look back over my life with more head space and a different and clearer lens, i now wonder if i have indeed authored my own life's narrative into a cu-de-sac. how much of it was true, and how much it was contrived in terms of the way i blamed my family for failing to give me the resources i needed to make better choices for developing my life. i wonder now, did i just think it up, then take steps to construct and live out the dream or nightmare i concocted in my own head? i allowed their closed mindedness to limit my potential for growth by giving them the power to do so, and wailing and bemoaning that made it a stumbling block for my own personal evolution and development.
as of late, i have pondered the wisdom of disclosure, and wondering did it truly advance my cause, or rather cause me to shoot myself in the foot. did it give me a vision, a plan for escaping the dark thick forest of delusion, or merely cause me to misplace the blame for my own misguided failings. was my upbringing really the source of all my woes? or am i just a grouse dissatisfied with the terms imposed upon me in life, with all its inequity and limitations.
surely, in some strange convoluted way, the SA experiences i had which formed and shaped my life's decisions had both detriments and benefits for myself as well as for the others whose lives were touched by mine. still the sad truth is that i can't know who 'i would have been' without the experiences i had. i can only now continue to uncover and recover my own deep potential that was always present in the essential core of me. i have no choice but to just keep digging the tunnel toward the sunshine of enlightenment, and continue to keep alive the hope that i am not being led on a ruse.
yet underneath it all, there is a restless gnawing feeling that the life i am left with will always be a second best alternative to the one i was intended to have, the one i 'should' have had, without the interruption, the side track of meeting this 'wall'. at one point in the aftermath portion of the recovery process, i admit i did feel like a prisoner walking out into freedom on the first day of release, there was a head full of hope and a heart full of possibility. now.....i just feel 'bleh'. the world and the life it offers was never meant for the likes of survivors....or perhaps it was, and i am merely refusing to accept my allotted portion, my destiny.
regarding achievements found and lost along the way and in spite of encountering 'the wall', those simply are not serving me at the level i need to be served. perhaps, in order to keep moving forward, no matter how 'good' things appear to get for me, the task remains a primary responsibility to keep adjusting my lens as i move from stage to stage.
i can no longer live my life in reaction to the damage wrought in the encounter with 'the wall'. now, more than ever, it is encumbent upon me to write a different reaction and live a different reaction rather than one that tells me i failed. if there is a 'failure' on my part, perhaps it is more a failure to correctly assess the situation in the first place. and now with hindsight and a different level of understanding i must needs readjust the focus, and edit the narrative to more accurately report the memory of the past, and redefine the cul-de-sac as a temporary detour, rather than as a permanent roadblock.
much in the same manner that i had to forgive my family for not being able to give me what i needed when i needed it the most, i now must be careful in the next chapter that i write, to avoid getting trapped as a new character, continually thinking, and living out the idea that my life is a total waste because of my encounter with 'the wall'. if it's true as they say, that water seeks it own level, the challenge will always be mine, to keep authoring a narrative with positive episodes, lest i fall into and remain in the self abrogation trap that characterizes the doleful melancholia of obsessively mourning the past.
true though, the mourning of the past is not an event, but rather a process. and as a person who suffered the inability to control my own SA experiences at one point in life, it makes sense that i would want to engage every power within my ken to regain it by attempting to manage the grieving process itself.
i am confident that i will rediscover the place which exists within from which chapters of achievements previously and successfully had been launched. that place was not killed, but perhaps forgotten. it can and will be rediscovered again and again, as the lens is continuously adjusted and as new perspectives are revealed.
[ more to come on the suject ]
however, with that primary addiction now defunct, as i look back over my life with more head space and a different and clearer lens, i now wonder if i have indeed authored my own life's narrative into a cu-de-sac. how much of it was true, and how much it was contrived in terms of the way i blamed my family for failing to give me the resources i needed to make better choices for developing my life. i wonder now, did i just think it up, then take steps to construct and live out the dream or nightmare i concocted in my own head? i allowed their closed mindedness to limit my potential for growth by giving them the power to do so, and wailing and bemoaning that made it a stumbling block for my own personal evolution and development.
as of late, i have pondered the wisdom of disclosure, and wondering did it truly advance my cause, or rather cause me to shoot myself in the foot. did it give me a vision, a plan for escaping the dark thick forest of delusion, or merely cause me to misplace the blame for my own misguided failings. was my upbringing really the source of all my woes? or am i just a grouse dissatisfied with the terms imposed upon me in life, with all its inequity and limitations.
surely, in some strange convoluted way, the SA experiences i had which formed and shaped my life's decisions had both detriments and benefits for myself as well as for the others whose lives were touched by mine. still the sad truth is that i can't know who 'i would have been' without the experiences i had. i can only now continue to uncover and recover my own deep potential that was always present in the essential core of me. i have no choice but to just keep digging the tunnel toward the sunshine of enlightenment, and continue to keep alive the hope that i am not being led on a ruse.
yet underneath it all, there is a restless gnawing feeling that the life i am left with will always be a second best alternative to the one i was intended to have, the one i 'should' have had, without the interruption, the side track of meeting this 'wall'. at one point in the aftermath portion of the recovery process, i admit i did feel like a prisoner walking out into freedom on the first day of release, there was a head full of hope and a heart full of possibility. now.....i just feel 'bleh'. the world and the life it offers was never meant for the likes of survivors....or perhaps it was, and i am merely refusing to accept my allotted portion, my destiny.
regarding achievements found and lost along the way and in spite of encountering 'the wall', those simply are not serving me at the level i need to be served. perhaps, in order to keep moving forward, no matter how 'good' things appear to get for me, the task remains a primary responsibility to keep adjusting my lens as i move from stage to stage.
i can no longer live my life in reaction to the damage wrought in the encounter with 'the wall'. now, more than ever, it is encumbent upon me to write a different reaction and live a different reaction rather than one that tells me i failed. if there is a 'failure' on my part, perhaps it is more a failure to correctly assess the situation in the first place. and now with hindsight and a different level of understanding i must needs readjust the focus, and edit the narrative to more accurately report the memory of the past, and redefine the cul-de-sac as a temporary detour, rather than as a permanent roadblock.
much in the same manner that i had to forgive my family for not being able to give me what i needed when i needed it the most, i now must be careful in the next chapter that i write, to avoid getting trapped as a new character, continually thinking, and living out the idea that my life is a total waste because of my encounter with 'the wall'. if it's true as they say, that water seeks it own level, the challenge will always be mine, to keep authoring a narrative with positive episodes, lest i fall into and remain in the self abrogation trap that characterizes the doleful melancholia of obsessively mourning the past.
true though, the mourning of the past is not an event, but rather a process. and as a person who suffered the inability to control my own SA experiences at one point in life, it makes sense that i would want to engage every power within my ken to regain it by attempting to manage the grieving process itself.
i am confident that i will rediscover the place which exists within from which chapters of achievements previously and successfully had been launched. that place was not killed, but perhaps forgotten. it can and will be rediscovered again and again, as the lens is continuously adjusted and as new perspectives are revealed.
[ more to come on the suject ]
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