The punishment of being me - What is wrong with me

I have always been a person that needed to know how things work and more importantly why. I have spent most of my life lost in this search for answers and a general understanding of my world. Feeling like an alien in this world an wondering what is wrong with me.

I didn't ask for the brain I got but it is the one that I have to live with. I have spent most of my life asking myself  daily  "what's wrong with you?" This began early when I just wasn't interested in the mundane routine of our household. My mother in frustration ended up just banishing me to the basement to entertain myself and I happily did.

When I got to school it got much worse.  I remember standing in the hall the first week of school without a clue of what I had done wrong. My teacher was a college friend of my mothers so this was going to be ugly when I got home. 

I didn't try to fix myself until after my mother died. Until then I had learned to accept the punishment for being me and took it all in stride. When my dad remarried there was psychological  punishment for being me. Before being physically punished just seemed like part of my routine and I didn't really see the connection between my behavior and the punishment.

This is where the self loathing began. In my logical mind I did everything everyone told me to do as perfectly as I could and still it was not good enough. I was not good enough was and without my mother I was isolated with people who did not love me an made sure that I understood that every day.

I did leave which was the best thing still but I knew something wasn't right about me. All of my relationships were with guys that had a lot of their own issues of not belonging. They drank they had anger problems and I understood this and I knew could help them. 

I started my road to recovery through the 12 steps and it helped me discover the me in my head that would never be happy. I thought this was spiritual and could be fixed with prayer and meditation and it definitely helped. I stopped taking myself so seriously and I became "my brothers keeper" I stayed so busy I didn't have time to listen to the voice in my head.

This works until it doesn't and I burned out. I was at the bottom thinking again "what is wrong with me?"  I have come back from this but my life is empty of the people that I supported who could not support me. It is okay I did this to myself the caretakers and those that need to be taken care of are two different personalities. 

I have learned through all the years that it is just the brain I was given.  There isn't anything wrong with me because I am not like other people.  I could pretend but that takes too much effort. I do realize that I can do things that change my brain that is based on pure science. I can also take care of my body knowing that what I eat affects my emotions more than I ever imagined it could.  I don't like it but it is not worth trading in happiness for sugar. 

I guess my point is you have control over 80% of what goes on in your head. The brain is bent towards fear naturally more for some than others. The primal fear of being someone's meal. We create a path in our brain early in our childhood and our brain chooses this path over and over again because it is easy.  We have to make new paths with daily out loud proclamations to over write these old paths. This really works. 

Writing here helps me to see where I have been and how far I have come. I do get lonely sometimes for the distraction of chaos but there is still enough to show me that it isn't what I want. I am re-inventing myself or just returning to who I was as a child. I have pulled out all of my art supplies and doing something ever day. Even when I would prefer to binge watch something.  The path of my child hood a well worn path. 

Denial - "We can't handle the truth"

When I got into the program I didn't really understand what I was doing there. When my counselor ask me if my husband drank a lot I couldn't honestly say what was a lot. He was never drunk at least the way I had seen drinking growing up.  My uncle the family drunk drank until he passed out on the floor. Not my husband he had great job and he was smart and the world was in love with him and so was I.

He had become a stranger to me as the drinking had increased but I couldn't see it. I was in complete denial with the evidence right in front of me. This is the number one coping mechanism for all humans if you don't acknowledge it then it isn't happening. We live in the pretend world in our head. La La La - I can't hear you! 

It takes something horrible to break through a well dug in persons fantasy especially if they have a strong personality.  From my own perspective I had tackled some major stuff and I was too strong to admit that this was happening to me.  

I am sad to say we have had a lot of deaths here close to home of those who chose not to get vaccinated. One family hit especially hard and now everyone is devastated. There is no going back and a lot of lives will be affected forever and there is nothing to say. 

Maybe it is denial.  I understand that it is easier to just pretend that everything is fine then to face something we have no control over. If we find other people to join our own fantasy it makes the story in our head even more legitimate.  

That first meeting someone told my story and I felt the first crack in my denial.  At that moment I saw the truth but the damage had been done and my marriage was over.  How could I have deceived myself all those years?  I had to eventually forgive myself for being human. I couldn't handle the truth because it meant that I wasn't in control and I was about to lose everything. 

The pandemic has put us all into a position of feeling helpless and some have chosen to just pretend it isn't happening.  I get it but in the end is costing lives and there is no going back. Just because it hasn't happened to me doesn't mean it isn't happening. 

These days I still don't completely trust the story I tell myself. I know that my view of the world and my life is only real from my perspective. I question everything knowing that I am capable creating a world that only exist in my head.