Today as I write this I'm emotionally exhuasted. For the past couple of months I've known that my father would be coming to town. I don't plan on spending more than a couple of hours with him and his wife but ... prepping for this visit is taking a lot out of me. About a week ago I experienced disrupted sleep and I couldn't figure out why. This past weekend as I walked around I started to get my first glimpse of where my anxiety was coming from. It was the impending visit.
They say that time heals all wounds, and whoever they are, are wrong.
I've been working for the better part of three decades to heal all the damage done to me by my mother and father. And here I am, getting to put in even more hours.
I was surprised to find that I'm facing suppressed rage.
A couple of years ago when my girlfriend cheated on us, I flipped out, went totally volcanic. In the days afterward I started to explore the roots of anger and rage. It turned out that my reaction to my girlfriend's actions was based on something that predated her arrival in my life by some 40+ years. This came as something of a shock. At the time I was certain that her actions had caused my rage. Wrong. I was pissed off at her, rightfully so, but the torrent of rage was disproportionate. As I trudged through that I started to notice all kinds of things.
In general I'm hotheaded and opinionated. And in some ways anger has served me well, or at the very least protected me. But as an adult I think there is room for a more sophisticated approach. In my efforts to turn back the aging clock so I can die young I've realized that holding onto old, ugly emotions is a sure-fire way to age prematurely.
With my father's visit a few days away and without medicating it, I don't find the present-tense unbearable but it feels pretty darn heavy. All the things I'd love to turn to: sugar, alcohol, sex. All of those substances have been taken off the table and I spend my morning and evening commute, riding the train, sitting with the rage.
I s'pose you're probably thinking, "Who is this privileged white person to hate her parents?" I'm not going to get into specifics because I'm just not going to but I will tell you this: when I hear of children who have been badly abused I have a lot of compassion for them. I know that if they turn to drugs or alcohol or end up in abusive relationships, they might never travel far in this lifetime. I'm referring to traveling emotional distances, not going to China on a steamer ship.
In general I don't hate my parents, mostly because it won't get me very far. Right now the rage is masking the hurt and I guess I'll just have to sit with the rage a little longer. My sleep has been a f*cking mess and I don't want to confront my father because even if he said, "I'm sorry," it wouldn't take away the pain, it wouldn't heal the wounds. In fact after being abused for 16 years (from 0 to 16 years old) by both my parents, there is no such thing as healing the damage. What I have found is that I have to be able to let it be part of me without letting it disrupt me. And yes I'm over-simplifying things here but I've also never actually written about it in this way. I will give it more thought and see if I can some up with something more coherent.
What I'm trying to say is that for the most-part I'm okay because I earned that experience (or have allowed myself to be okay). For many years I spoke with neither of my parents. And I'm hoping that in the coming years I can get better at letting "it" be a part of who I am. I'm perennially optimistic, by choice. I know that I will "survive" seeing my father. But I want to rise above that. I want to be 100% fine and I don't want all this f*cking anxiety. Until I'm anxiety-free in the face of him, I know that I still have work to do.
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