Revelations

First of all, let me just say I'm in a better mood today.  A good night's sleep and a new day are always good motivators.  I didn't do a LOT today but enough that I felt like I got something done, which is so much.

I realized later last night that a lot of what I was feeling had to do with my lack of purpose.  I spent the past two years educating myself and trying to build a life and a career centred around reiki, massage and holistic wellness.  For the first time in a long time, I was doing something I loved to do.  I was beginning to feel like Me.  I was beginning to make a difference in other people's lives.  I was finally headed in the right direction and it felt really good.  And then it was all taken away from me and I have been left with NOTHING.  Not only did I lose my fledgling practice but I am no longer in a position in which I can afford to commit all my time to building up another one. I think now that I've been away from it for so long, I am finally starting to realize how much I miss what I had.  I am angry, sad and empty.

Today I had a bit of a revelation.  It's something that has been bugging me for a while.  In everything I've read on emotional abuse, it suggests that the recipient of the abuse (ie. me) generally learns this model of behaviour earlier in life and is therefore more accepting of it in later relationships.  I have been trying to figure out where I would have learned to accept such behaviour and have always come up with nothing.  I know my family has flaws but nothing that fits the pattern.  Then, after talking with my husband about his visit with the family I used to nanny for, it hit me: it was them.  I lived with them for 2.5 years after graduating from University.  They were friends, mentors and parents all rolled into one.  While they praised me for being a super nanny and a great cook, I always felt that I could never do anything good or worthy enough in my personal life to please them.  None of my goals or career plans or dreams ever seemed to meet their lofty standards.  I met my husband while I was living with them so the fact that he has the same high, exacting standards likely felt comfortable to me because that is what I had grown used to.

Even now - 15 years later - it's the same story.  My husband relayed a conversation they had had about me in which it seems that I still have not chosen the right field in which to excel.  The difference now is that, despite his credentials and his success, it's Me who gets to decide what I'm good at.  And if he doesn't approve he can go fuck himself! 

I'm taking this anger as a good sign: good that I'm feeling it and good that I'm expressing it (indirectly, but still...).  It at least gives me some glimmer of hope that I'm making progress, not only in owning my anger but in standing up for myself and who I am, even if I'm the only one who knows I'm doing it.