Cora and Ellen

 Cora and Ellen

My grandmother, Ellen, had a sister named Cora.  We fondly referred to her as Corkie.  She had a knack for saying WHATEVER was on her mind no matter the company.  Cork had no filter, no hesitation, no shame about letting her feelings be felt… something I am only now learning in my late 40’s.  This woman had the audacity to strip down to nothing in the middle of our big family Christmas celebration one year because her dear sister, my grandmother, had gifted her a new bra.  It happened. We have photographic evidence.

Corkie used to tell everyone that my grandfather was only home long enough to make the babies.  There were a bunch of them too.  If a few of them hadn’t perished through miscarriage or sickness, there would have been 10 of them, my mother included.  Cora was not fond of my grandfather and his misgivings.  He was a mason and a farmer by trade, with a wondering eye and a loose belt.  My grandmother stuck up for him and his behavior until the end of her life.  But I often wonder if it was because she would have to own up to allowing herself being treated the way he always treated her.  My grandmother was a saint with one of the biggest hearts I have ever known.  She deserved the world… and all the love in it.

My personal perception of my grandfather was much different than anyone else in the family.  They knew him as a tyrant and a cheater.  I was named after my mother’s late sister (only my middle name is different.)  My grandfather would often call me Pamela Lou instead.  I even received a savings bond as a gift one year in her name. He was always soft and kind to me. I never noticed in my younger years, and didn’t understand it at the time.  But I did start putting the pieces together the year I received that savings bond.

I’m stating all of this because I am fully aware that the way in which we live our lives… and the process of living and understanding shape and mold us into the humans we are right now.  The lens we use to comprehend the world around us develops with each encounter.  I’m finally starting to recognize patterns in my life and why I think the way I do.  One thing I am still trying to uncover like a crazed archeologist discovering a lost tomb in the Valley of the Kings, is why I won’t allow myself to truly feel some emotions.  I’m supposed to be the nice girl. The giving girl.  The one that doesn’t expect.  The one that steps up and steps in.  The cleaning lady. Super star mom. The stellar employee.  The best friend.  The pillar of support and acceptance.  I’m supposed to have it together at all times.  I’m supposed to be extremely forgiving.  Extra loving. Palatable. How is this supposed to translate when you allow yourself to be a messy emotional human?

One of those emotions is ANGER.  Of course, I get angry – but then always guilt trip myself for allowing it.  And with the dangerous bit of background knowledge of how the brain and emotions truly work, I am armed knowing that anger is just a secondary emotion.  There is always something resting beneath the surface of it.  How will you ever find the canopic jars, though, if you can’t even break the seal to the tomb?

This last week, I allowed it.  I allowed myself to be angry.  I was so angry.  And when I got to the precious 57 minutes of time with my very brave therapist, I let her know what a hotseat I had made for myself.  She did something I didn’t expect.  She clapped, whooped and hollered.  She told me she was proud of me.  She allowed me to vomit all of the things I was so angry about and then praised me for finally feeling the emotion.  Truly allowing myself to feel it.  She called it righteous anger. 

I am so angry that he drug me through nearly three decades of my life, never fully committed.  He left me the first time at the ripe old age of 21… We were having so much fun and everything seemed to be amazing.  Then one day he stopped calling.  A week or two later when I finally “got a hold of him” she answered the phone to tell me to stop calling and leaving messages.  She was the barista, still in high school, at a place that he frequented and worked at on occasion.  The next time, he physically beat the bejesus out of me.  He choked me so hard that I nearly lost consciousness and wet myself.  And while I was trying to process all that had just happened, he was out partying with a friend and met… her.  A big busted blonde Ukrainian woman… and he was off to the races, leaving me behind to lick my wounds.  Oh, he begged me.  Told me it would never happen again. That he loved me and only me.  The physical abuse part never happened.  Instead, he went sideways by yelling and screaming so hard he frequently spit on me… forcing me to sit and listen to his laundry list of complaints, always telling me how inadequate I was followed by earsplitting loudness about how everything was always “his fault,” even though his words always circled back to how I needed to do better. Anytime I had something to say about the lack of intimacy, generally my only complaint, that happened shortly after my daughter was born, that became all my fault too.  Oh, I’m sorry… You can’t get it up because I am no longer just that girl that does stuff, I’m the mother of your first born child?  Like I haven’t been to that sideshow before… nor any other woman on the face of this planet… but please tell me how it’s all my fault.  Fast forward to two summers ago when he was elected to the position of President of the Home Builders Association… he would sit at our family dinner table talking about this other woman with the “Long natural eyelashes” and how funny and sweet and kind she was.  How she had her sh*t together… and you’ll never guess who he’s been talking to this whole time.  I’m MAD!  How did I fall for this, again and again… and again?

I was sitting at the DMV trying to renew my license plates a while back and was so angry with him.  He took all sense of security when he left, the only thing I was hanging on to by the time we were done.  When it was just us and the world was quiet, he told me I was the only one for him.  That he wanted to grow old and gray together. This bubbled to the surface as I witness this beautiful aging couple on their afternoon outing that just so happened to be the DMV.  I watched as they were so gentle and kind to each other and shared a giggle. It was all lies!  All of it.  Building an empire on the things he knew my heart wanted, only to rip it away whenever he felt the wind blowing. How did I believe his words over his actions? 

I am angry that he uses my children as pawns.  I am angry that he pretends to be this amazing upstanding citizen, when I know all the little dark corners he hides from everyone.  I am angry that he acts like the victim when he causes more pain and damage to those he interacts with than a phlebotomist at Parkland Health Hospital.  I am angry that I allowed this in my life, always giving him grace because the way he was treated when he was a child.  Dude, you’re an adult now.  Grow up and fix yourself. Stop acting like everyone has to put up with your bullsh*t because of your childhood injury… wearing it all like a badge and an identity that he believes allows him the right to harm all others in his path.

SCREW YOU for taking my softness and kindness and empathy… my giving nature and twisting it, wringing out every last drop of it for yourself… then kicking me to the curb more violently than a bag of trash.  How dare you.  You used me.  You abused me.  And I am fricking mad. 

And I sat with it.

And sitting with this anger, I’ve found shame and guilt and sadness.  It was lying just beneath… I could have barely scratched to find it. 

She, my heroin trauma recovery coach, also said something so profound that I never even considered.  That perhaps I had placed myself in situations with angry humans, on a soul level, in order to teach myself exactly what I learned this week.  She said that eventually, I will learn that the weight and gravity of everything I have experienced in my life thus far is not truly all my fault the way I would have myself believe.  And that once I am able to open up fully and live authentically, things would drastically improve in my life, not necessarily because of my circumstances, but in how I view the world and myself within it.

Feeling your feelings is what makes you human.  It’s our radar system.  It allows us to make sense of our space in this place.

So get mad.  Feel it.  Find the root of it.  Give yourself some grace. Move on.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  And if necessary, try on that new bra that your beautiful sister lovingly gave to you in the middle of Jesus’ birthday festivities.  Maybe anger isn’t the opposite of softness.  Maybe it’s part of loving myself, fully, finally.