Never let them see you cry...

I haven't posted anything in a while.  I could say I have been over here kicking ass and taking names, rocking my eating plan, living my truth, and dominating self-care, but that would be a big ass bag of lies.

REALITY CHECK:
1.  I have gained 10 pounds.  Although I realize this is not the most important thing in the grand scheme of things, it is the one that came to mind first, so that should tell me something about my warped sense of self worth.  (GAH)

2.  Reading where I was when I posted the last blog... the nutritionist did not help at all.  After discussing what she told me to do with my therapist, more than one doctor, a trainer friend, and literally anyone who would listen to me, the conclusion was: she cray-cray.  Anybody who recommends margarine in 2018 is cray-cray.

3.  I feel like life has stagnated in a lot of ways.  I am not sure what sort of progress I am really making with therapy since my opinion of my body, my self worth, and my world view in general seems to be kind of stone like in its strength (I guess I need a sharper chisel).  My self care (whatever that looks like) has been floundering since my one constant yoga class was cancelled (as well as my therapy group) and I am kind of flailing about trying to find my footing.  I'm not doing keto, or really anything with my diet other than eating all the foods, as if the holidays were some massive mental excuse for indulging in every food ever.

4.  I am exhausted.  This is probably going to sound really whiny, but I've gotten used to having a house husband.  With him out of commission and healing at the moment, I am literally doing all the things (at work, inside the house, outside the house, in the litter box, everywhere).  In addition, since he has been having trouble sleeping comfortably, I haven't been sleeping either.  It's like life is throwing a Muhammad Ali one-two combo in my face of no rest for the wicked.

5.  This is by far the most important, even if it is at the bottom of this list: my husband almost died on me and I am not coping with it very well.  That pulmonary embolism could have been the end of him and I think we are both still freaking out about it in a lot of ways.  This combined with a lack of sleep, lack of self-care, and garbage diet has created this little shit-storm of bad habits I am struggling to get out of.

But all of that is not why I decided to write today, it's just a blow by blow of how life is punching me in the face at the moment.  Today's blog is about something else I've been thinking a lot about recently.

Nana grew up incredibly poor.  Kids threw insults at her regularly based on all the things that go along with being poor.  I have this mental image of her being this skinny little ferocious thing with fire in her eyes (and holes in her shoes).  She said she had to be "mean as a yard dog" because of how they treated her.  And she created this safe space for herself with the mantra "never let them see you cry".  I guess it worked for her (well in a way it did).  She presented this hard exterior of a girl (and then a woman) who wouldn't be brought down by whatever mean shit other people had to say about her or to her face.

But it was something that carried over into the rest of her internal life as well.  I think granddaddy knew her.  I think I only knew her partly.  But I don't think she allowed anyone else to know her, not really know her.  Not all the squishy bits.  She didn't trust anyone to know her.  Wait, no, it's more than that.  She didn't trust anyone (period).  Not even me.

I know the ins and outs of lots of reasons why she didn't trust people.  She left home at 18 from a strained relationship with her father.  He told her if she left not to come back.  She didn't go back home to even visit for over a decade.  She never let him see her cry.  She was married before granddaddy to a man who cheated on her with her cousin.  He continued to call her throughout her life until she died.  I guess he realized after he messed things up what a woman she was.  She never let him see her cry.  Before she met granddaddy, she jumped off a pier (yeah, literally) and nearly drowned.  Her family (still incredibly poor) told the doctors at the hospital to turn off the machines because they couldn't afford her care.  The waitresses at the restaurant where she worked collected money from her regular customers to keep her in the hospital (and alive).  She never let her family see her cry.  

She always said her life didn't really start until she met granddaddy.  But if your mode of survival for 25 years is a tough exterior to not let anyone know they've hurt you, you can't just turn that off because you found a life partner who loves you.  She told me she didn't really know what love felt like until she met him.  She never got any sort of therapy for all of the shit that happened in her life.  She just never let them see her cry.  And then she cried alone.

She gave me those words of advice as a child.  For the kids who say mean things to you or make you feel like you don't belong... never let them see you cry.  For the family member who makes you feel (whatever way)... never let them see you cry.  I just needed to hold it in, and push it down, and keep my shit together... and then I could cry with Nana.  And so that's what I did.  And then Nana died.

When I say that I feel like a lot of people don't really know me, I think it comes from this place.  If someone upsets you with something they say or do, just "let it slide off of you like water off a duck's back" (her words).  Yes, this does take away their power, or at least their perception of their power over you if they were trying to hurt you on purpose.  Their words or actions appear to go unnoticed and if they were looking for a reaction, they aren't given one.  But really, it doesn't take away the power of your feelings about the situation.  It just stifles them.  And it creates this weird dynamic where this person thinks they can do or say these things all the time because it doesn't seem to bother you anyhow.

I guess that since she didn't really trust anyone, her assumption was that everyone was always trying to hurt you on purpose.  But that really isn't the case.  If anything, it's more so that everyone else is just bumbling through life in the same ways, and sometimes they say or do stuff that is selfish and don't take your feelings into consideration.  The thing is, if you never allow yourself to tell them that, they may not even be aware of it.  Aware that they hurt your feelings, or aware that they were being selfish.  Some people aren't self aware at all, and even for the ones who are... denial is a very comfortable chair to sit in.

Me thinking about all of this comes from something that happened over the holidays.  I have spent a LOT of hours for the last year (probably closer to two years) working on my family tree on ancestry.com.  There were two women who were DNA matched to me on there who didn't know their birth family.  I made it my mission to try to figure out how they were related to me, and who their parents are.  It was a long road.  It was slow and frustrating, and sometimes seemed like I was just spinning my wheels.  I came up with some pretty inventive ways to figure it out.  And I actually did.  I danced around my living room that day.  It was like putting together the most complex puzzle I have ever done.

And I wanted to tell one of my family members about it over one of the family dinners.  It was interesting and something I was really proud of doing.  I wanted to tell them about the ingenuity I had to come up with to even get to the answer.  Figuring out these missing pieces for these women made me happy.  One of them literally got to call her birth mother the second week of December.  She is 61 years old and only now knows who her mom is and only because of the research I did.  I was so excited that I was the one that figured it out for her.  I wanted to toot my own horn.  

So, at dinner that day, I started my story and I got as far to say that I had tested my DNA through ancestry and there were two women who were related to us that didn't know who their families were.  I paused slightly before continuing when I was interrupted with the following, "I have a cousin on my other side of the family who researched their family tree and she found a N*GG*R in the family."  The emphasis on that word was verbal and not mine.

So, there I am, sitting there in my Colin Kaepernick jersey (like I was literally wearing it at that moment), and this is what was so important to interrupt me to say.  I just sat there with my jaw gaping.  This relative finished a pretty extensive story and then looked back at me.  So I started back into what I was trying to say, when I was interrupted again (almost immediately) with some additional information about how this black woman's family had money.  I guess it makes it ok for her to be in the family tree if she has money?  After this additional information, they then looked back at me.  "I spent over a year researching it and I figured out how they were related to us," I said.  The excitement I had for telling the story was gone, and it was clear that what I had to say didn't matter anyhow.  All of the wind was sucked out of me, and out of the room.

When I told my therapist about this situation, she asked me, "how did it make you feel?"  I know this sounds very stereotypical of an interaction with a therapist, but she has been doing this on purpose over the past several sessions because we have discovered that I have a really hard time verbalizing how things make me feel.  I can tell you all day long what I *think* about something.  But I can't tell you how I *feel* about it.  Never let them see you cry makes feelings a virtual minefield.  I seem unable to identify what the feeling is (first of all) not less express it.

I am angry at myself that I didn't address the fact that I was interrupted.  I am angry at myself that I didn't address the fact that it was completely unacceptable to use that word that I (and most of the free world) find highly offensive.  But how do I feel?  I mean really feel at the core of it?  

Unheard.
Unimportant.
Invisible.
Ignored.

And stuffed back into that little box where my emotions are allowed to reside (and not escape or be shown to anyone else).  From everyone else's reaction who were sitting at the table with me, it was reinforced (again) that my words are not important.  Or at least not as important as the other person who interrupted me.  That my feelings about using a word like n*gg*r are unimportant and it's more important to keep the peace and not cause problems or confrontations with family.  That my opinions and feelings are (in general) to be kept to myself.

I realized, after thinking about this particular interaction for a few weeks, that I quite frequently do not express how I feel.  I also frequently do not finish stories that I start to tell.  I have, over the course of a lot of reinforcing interactions, given other people permission to interrupt me and never return to what I was trying to tell them.  I realize that in the course of a conversation with a group of people, it ebbs and flows in unpredictable ways.  I am not suggesting that I should be monopolizing every conversation.  What I am saying is that quite often, I don't even finish a thought before people feel free to ignore what I am saying and start talking over me.

This does not make it any easier for a person who is not used to allowing herself to express emotions outwardly to start doing so.  If anything, this particular situation was another example of why I do this.  I've heard lots of people say to me that I don't have to say how I feel because it's usually written all over my face.  But, honestly, I think they aren't actually seeing how I feel about anything.  I think they are seeing what my face looks like when I am actively stifling emotions and putting them into little boxes to be dealt with later.

I am sure that the interaction noted above will be put into the reel of memories of "situations I wish I had handled differently" to replay (incessantly) when I can't fall asleep.  I will kick myself over and over again for not saying something and just sitting there like a deer in headlights.  I will say to myself that next time, I will say something.  Next time, I will allow myself permission to express that I feel disrespected (in a myriad of ways).

The thing is, we all know there won't be a next time for this interaction.  This particular thing won't happen in this particular way again.  This other person has already been reinforced that their words are more important than mine and that nothing notable happened at the dinner table that day.  They probably don't even remember the story I was trying to tell them.

In addition, my perception that my feelings need to be boxed up and kept to myself have been reinforced.  If anything, it means that the next time I am placed in a similar situation, I will probably do the same thing.  Sit there frozen while I put all of my screaming rage into a neat little box and in my back pocket.

And then later, cry alone.



Post Script: If I am really, truly honest with myself, this blog is supposed to be a piece of my self care.  Writing something in this tiny little box of an internet blog is supposed to help me first of all feel, and second of all express how I feel.  It is supposed to be a safe place for me to do that.  But even here, it really isn't.  I don't write what I really feel because I censor myself on the off chance that particular people may be reading this.  I am working really hard to hold up a mirror to myself and figure out changes I need to make for my own sanity.  But holding up the mirror to someone else gets really uncomfortable really fast (for both parties).  Other people don't like it when someone else reflects their bullshit back at them.  I am on this path because I choose to be and I want to try to do better.  The words that I would put here uncensored would be more like a nuclear bomb going off and end relationships pretty swiftly.  All of this to say, at the end of the day, even in this little corner of the world that is supposed to be my self-care blog... other people's feelings are more important (even to me) than my own.