IMPERFECT Lady

Without the truths.

I used to believe that we all knew what truth was and that some of us just chose to not live by it.

 

I now believe it is rare to be raised with truth as the core component in the relationship between parent and child. That many parents feel they can spare the child by leaving them in the dark about some truths.

 

Often these truths are life shaping ones.  Ones that would feel like holes you intuitively feel; but can't put a finger on its content.

 

I just assumed everyone knew their own truths - and the generational truths of their families.

 

Yet, I was 46 before I was hit in the face by truths that shaped my life - or more how my life was crippled by their concealment.

 

It was hard for me to speak truthfully about my feelings or stand up to truths that appeared when abuse was exposed.  

 

And it seems a backwards way to live, where lies are easier to speak.

 

I am not sure if you can know the truth - when it is normal to have relationships built upon pretend and cowardly steering away from truths. 

 

Truths that would color a person differently.

 

Often others will speak of my truths - but not their truths.

I find this interesting.  I have bravely sat with ugly truths. Learning how they feel shocking and horrid and yet so comforting and regulating.

They allow me to see the world without holes where lies live.

 

Some may find it confusing to think of lies as holes. But, if you keep important things away from a child, you are creating a world that crucial pieces are missing.

 

Folks don't typically lie about mundane things, they will often lie about things that matter and are character defining.

 

Giving a child a false picture of their world. They live in this make-believe space calling it real.  Calling it even truth.

 

When truth is really fake, they don't know what truth is - if that makes sense.

 

Just because you call it a truth, it doesn't make it so. Or just because you leave out the truths, it doesn't make them disappear.

 

Again, while abuse and being raised in a cult like religion had a great impact on forming who I was, how I saw myself and the world.  The bigger missing piece was simple hard truth.

 

Just becoming familiar with truth - in all its facets.

 

Folks pretending to be someone they are not is far more normal than we'd like to believe.

 

Sometimes we hide small things. Seemingly inconsequential things. But more often than not what is hidden are ugly truths.  Sick behaviors and/or bad things that happened to us. Or moments of poor choices and things we wish we hadn't done.

 

There are folks who do bad things and then there are those who refuse to see them in the truth of who they are.

 

My truthful feeling about my father, Fear - was not reflected in how my mother engaged with him. She acted and treated him like he didn't have this predilection to abuse children.

Living in her house, you would not be able to tell by her actions anything was amiss. Her truth was missing in her actions.

 

There were odd events that now make sense; but life didn't change.

It was like the truth made a brief appearance - and then false narration covered it back up.

 

Even when my father was in the Houghton County Jail. My mother stated in a letter to the family, that He was on trial by the state of Michigan; but not by our family.  

 

Like the state pursued the truth - but we would not judge him by these sexual abuse truths. It felt to me, like we would continue to call him dad and treat him as such.

 

This truth fearing way of living, makes for crazy making.

But it assures that family is family - no matter what truth appears - that could tear it apart.

 

I am sure there are many examples in many dysfunctional homes who will water down and make nice things that need to be exposed.

 

I believe when the truth is kept away, we keep away from our own truths.

When you keep a distance from your self - you can't be you.

 

You don't know who you are.

 

I recall feeling this huge sense of relief when the worst of the worst was exposed about my family. I made sense.  I didn't make sense with the truth hidden. Or worse I felt something was wrong with me.  

 

Bottom line, when we keep truths from our children - we raise them in a world where they don't know what truth is - they never met it.

 

I wonder what it does to our minds and the files in our heads - when we label things incorrectly.

 

Labeling each incident and experience as it is - is not common place.

For some reason we fear the truth and it being exposed.

We learn to live in the complicated space of holes and false information.

 

Like having a map that leads to nowhere - but believing it has a real destination.

Or a map of fake towns and destinations.

 

I am very skeptical that there can be love amidst the lies.

Or can love even co-exist with lies.

Does love need the truth in order to grow and evolve and love yourself?

And, in the end do you just love the lies.

 

What is life if truth is left out?

 

In my experience the absence of truth is directly correlated with the absence of the sense of self.

 

I was 46 when the truth crashed in and I didn't know who I was - for I had never lived with truth before.  To live with it, to speak of it, to view your world without holes and no silence - changes your life completely.

 

There was no part of me that hadn't been created with this false narrative.

I was a pretend person. Built in a land that feared what the truth would do to our family.

 

What I find so shocking - is the truth came in, it sat in the Houghton County Jail - and so many didn't see it.

 

I believe when you are raised to look around and over truths, it becomes a way of life.

 

It has to be denial.

 

Denial must feel like a kinder place to be - where nothing is required of you - are there even consequences in the land of denial?

 

It feels like it is a happy family - when I look at them from here.

 

They get a family - without the truths.

 

Watered Down Relationships

I just finished Kerry Washington's Memoir "Thicker than Water".  The main theme of the book is honesty - or perhaps the lack of it growing up.

 

In listening to her story, there were moments that helped explain me to - Me.

 

In families, and particularly in the relationships between parent and child - a child feels the space where the lies live.  We may not be able to articulate what is missing - but we more feel - what is not there.

Truth has a solid spaceless feeling.

 

In truth our body relaxes.

 

Lies leave us without anything to hold on to or feel secure with.

 

It explains so much about my lack of connection. It was like I was adrift - before I actually became estranged.

 

I wasn't able to love the space where lies lived.

And I blamed myself for not loving - for not feeling the closeness and warm feelings.

 

She wrote about how her mother, once the truths were spoken, was able to look deeply into her eyes.   

 

This.

 

I remember how hard it was to keep eye contact with my mother.  Both on her end and mine. I am sure this was normal in our home, the not looking looking.

 

Don't they say that eyes are windows into our souls.

 

I am aware of how my denial of my own truths, had effects on my relationships.  And more, how when I allowed myself to be with my truths, how it changed me.

 

The secrets, the abuse and even the denial - all left me in a very untethered unknowing place. Both about the secrets and yet mostly about me.

 

You can't know who you are - without truth.

(I understand these quilts more now.)

 

When I try to go back to who I was back then I don't have a clear picture.  But I was living without knowing the secrets or that even I kept secrets.

 

Oh, and one thing that Kerry talked about is - when her parents kept secrets, it also made her keep secrets.  Like the truth wasn't welcome there.

 

Interesting to be raised learning how to keep your truth quiet.

 

Her mother protected her with lies and she protected her mother with lies.

But lies do not build relationships.

Folks often keep secrets, thinking they will save the relationship, and what they are actually are doing is destroying it or not giving it a chance to grow.

 

I am thinking it isn't even the lies themselves, they are huge - but what matters more is empty space or hole it creates. And the weird way we learn to leave the truth out of relationships.

 

The effect this has on children who try to grow and love among lies - is immeasurable. 

 

When I look at the environment I was raised in and how truth was scarce between myself and my parents, I see its costs.

 

The one two punch of abuse and lies - left me in a very precarious place to grow.

 

Her book also explains to me how truth means so much now.

Why I feel so strongly.

 

It isn't the secrets themselves that are so damaging, which they are. But how it is impossible to have a good relationship while they are hidden.

 

This may not make sense to anyone - but it sure has put in another puzzle piece for me.

In how I was built so awkwardly in the land of secrets.

 

I love when I find another puzzle piece - which helps me understand why I was the way I was - and how I grew that way.

 

We grow like the environment we live in.

 

I could weep for my child self.

And how she tried so hard - how the world was set against her from the very beginning.

There was no way I could have come out normal and natural - from whence I came.

 

Yet, I am so humbled at where we landed.

 

I am okay living with the need for truth and authenticity.  I love folks who hold no secrets.

Those with secrets will feel my distance - and I am okay with that.

 

I love her title, "Thicker than Water" for we all know the common phrase blood is thicker than water.  What I know is that families who harbor secrets are families with watered down relationships.

 

 

The mask we often wear is to keep the secret from being known.