Survival Mechanisms

SURVIVAL MECHANISMS

I just adapted a meme I saw that originally read, “I’ve been single for a while now and so far it’s going very well… I think I might be the one!”

 

After laughing, smiling and nodding with recognition, I tweaked it fit to my own situation. You see the result here.

 

I have never expected anyone else to make me feel happy or complete. Happiness is an inside job (with running shoes on)! I’m perhaps the least codependent person I know.

 

My friends are true friends: they don’t feel any desire to tweak or complete me, nor I them! I feel very fortunate in that way…

 

Even when I’m alone, I’m never lonely. There’s always enough going on in my head to create a joyful noise!

 

But after thinking about this as I woke up this morning, I now realize I came to be this way because of the dismay I felt and the disarray that surrounded me as a child and teenager. I discovered very early on that being by myself and thinking my own thoughts removed me from the situations at home and at school that made me feel inadequate, incomplete and/or ashamed.

 

Like everyone else I’ve ever encountered, my childhood was pock-marked with areas of dysfunction that messed with my ability to feel completely safe and at ease with myself.

 

My father, bless his heart, was an alcoholic whose Tasmanian Devil-type whirlwind presence made  everyone’s head spin and feel off-balance and less safe than we actually were.

 

Dad and his younger brother Gene had been unwanted children (this was before the advent of the birth control pill when men were men and women and sheep were nervous) and never felt loved, so he was dealing with his own heartaches and sense of inadequacy. To top it off, he was never corrected with kindness; his father was brutal, his mother cowed.

 

His big moment to be a hero came when he got old enough to deck his dad for beating his mom. Then he told the miscreant, “If you ever touch her again, I’ll kill you!”

 

It worked. His dad never hurt her again physically.

 

So Dad’s bullying (never physical with us, only mental and emotional) became his salvation, his way to keep  things from spinning out of his control. Feeling in control was very important to him. And with three boisterous kids running around in his home and office, he had his hands full, for sure!

 

Unlike him, I was wanted and deeply loved.

 

Did I ever doubt it?  Oh, yes, I did. Over and over again. Although I felt certain my parents would die for me (I’d seen enough TV shows to understand that parents usually adored and protected their children from harm), I wasn’t sure they were living for me.

 

I distinctly remember feeling unstrung when I came to Mom as a very young child one day needing her immediate attention for a reason now long since forgotten. As needy as I felt at that moment, she responded with, “Not now. I’m too busy.” (She was a partner in my Dad’s construction company and its office was in our home.) I must have been four or five, perhaps older, to remember this as well as I do.

 

I was traumatized by her answer. Too busy?  Too busy for me? For her child?

 

With that, I learned that the world didn’t (and doesn’t) revolve around me. A good lesson…but a terribly hard one for someone as young and needy as I felt at that moment.

 

As I grew, there were other instances of things that took priority over my need for attention and approval. And there was the growing disconnect between my physical presence and my belief that I had come to my parents in the wrong  body (my gender dysphoria).

 

By this time, I had long since realized that I needed to fight my battles alone. The people around me were too busy with their own daily challenges to sit down and try to assess and ameliorate anyone else’s.

 

An avid reader my entire life, and a fledgling wannabe writer since early grade school, I started reading self help books as a teenager: The Armchair Psychiatrist, I’m Okay, You’re Okay, and scores of others. I did my best to educate myself in some other way than watching functional-family TV shows like Leave It To Beaver, The Donna Reed Show, Ozzie and Harriet and Bonanza, whose families seemed so much more in tune with their children’s needs than mine did…

 

My relaxed, noble, questing mind became my fortress and my sanctuary. It allowed me to embrace the apparent concept that I should be seen and not heard and that I should not present problems to similarly beleaguered loved ones.

 

I learned to be as self-sufficient and abiding as possible.

 

But I felt inadequate. My dad had convinced me that I couldn’t make it on my own, so I moved away from home far later in life than was normal back then, with Dad’s parting shot resounding my my ears, “When you fall flat on your ass, you can come back.” (Not if… when!)

 

I was a nervous wreck when I moved out because I thought everyone else in the world would be as preoccupied with their own survival as my family was to take care of me…and my dad seemed convinced they wouldn’t and that I couldn’t.

 

But I had cocooned myself my entire life in my own thoughts and mind to protect myself from what I perceived to be a world of benign neglect. My heroes remained people whose characters and actions contradicted that notion: Jesus, Roy Rogers, Ben Cartwright, Mahatma Gandhi, Robert F. Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mr. Spock, Doctor McCoy, and others.

 

I threw up and was sleepless in Tacoma for weeks after I moved out. I dropped weight like one starving, because I was: I couldn’t keep anything down. My anxiety was at an all-time high.

 

But with every job I took, I got praise and a raise. With every new person I met, I got smiles and encouragement. After about a month, I decided I had been right about the world and that my home life had been an anomaly, as I’d always suspected (and hoped), not the norm.

 

Within a month I was firmly convinced I would be all right. I had what it took to flourish as an adult: brains, skills, emotional intelligence, and determination that just would NOT quit. I wanted to prove my Dad wrong about my ability to make my way in the world.

 

And I did. At the end of his life he told me he was proud of me and happy that I hadn’t caved when he told me I was a dreamer and that going after what I wanted to do in life was a fool’s errand. Thanks to the handful of yay-sayers in my life, I had stubbornly blustered my way forward, achieving every goal I set for myself. No one else did it for me; they just greased my wheels by letting me know I was capable of doing anything I set my mind to doing. That’s all it took: the rock-solid belief that I wasn’t just tilting at windmills.

 

So, after thinking through all this, I’ve come to the conclusion that I didn’t set out to be a Lone Ranger (heck, even the Lone Ranger had someone: Tonto!) I was trained to be self-sufficient by a ham-handed father who had learned the same lesson himself in a far harder way than I had. “The world doesn’t owe you a living or anything else. You have to work hard for everything you get–or find someone else willing to work hard for you (his eventual method).”

 

Perhaps I learned the lesson too well. Perhaps my way forward felt too narrowly defined that I felt I couldn’t rely on others to make things happen, so I had to do them myself if I wanted them to get done. That’s a distinct possibility! But I’m learning, slowly, to rely on other people as needed. I’ve gone from designing DIY websites and graphics and book covers to having  a pro design them for me (Dancing Goat Creative Services).

 

I’ve learned to “trust but verify” the intentions of the people who come into my life. Are they looking for a savior (someone to rescue them) or someone to endorse, encourage and  support them as they make their way toward their goals?

 

All in all, I’m convinced I could have been raised “better” by fully functional parents who’d come from fully functional parents, but couldn’t we all? I’m also convinced I was given the parents I needed to have to reach these conclusions, do this work on myself, and come out the other end feeling just fine about myself, happy to know myself, and endlessly entertained by myself.

 

When you fully embrace the cards you were dealt, without finding fault in the dealers (my parents weren’t dealing marked cards; they weren’t swindlers), you can usually make them work for you. There will always be an ace somewhere that will keep you ahead in the game.

 

Look for the aces (the yay-sayers) in your life. They will always have your back.

 

Thank you to the yay-sayers in my life: teachers, friends, writers, actors, and “fans” I haven’t even met yet–the people who read my books and blogs and know me far better than I know them! When you resonate to hope and possibility, you’re a member of my tribe!