I started Smashed Potatoes as a book, actually. It was originally called Living with Terminal Cancer. My surviving my mother and her disease. It got me thinking about a lot. This blog, for one.
If you research on how to deal with grief, loneliness, and sadness online, you will find generic self-help. The same tips that just about everyone gives. I know, because, even with my psychology-driven family and years of intensive therapy, I was looking for something “different.”
My faith is, well, mine. It belongs to me. I add to it as I see what makes sense. I can’t say to anyone: Go find God. Pray to an Angel. Take peyote and go on a spirit quest. Read the Koran. It’s up to the person to start that journey, or restart it, and that isn’t for me to make that first step for someone else. It won’t mean the same.
My immediate family is spiritual, of a sort. But not what I would call “religious.” Philosophy, yes. I have had an extensive exposure to it. I can’t say that is any more pleasant or palatable than dealing with my Roman Catholic, Vatican I, Grandmother who was raised in a time and culture to which very few could relate.
She had her own maid as a child. Her Gods, to be blunt, were her faith (which I don’t deny anyone, actually, as long as it isn’t shoved down my throat), Society, and Fashion. And she sacrificed a lot to those gods. Well, the second two more than the first. Acceptance of others was not her wheelhouse and thought that critiquing someone with diabetes on their weight by saying “you would be such a pretty girl if you just lost a hundred pounds” was being charitable.
A lot of people have asked me over the years how I survived what I have.
The answer is: I just did. And it was a lot worse than I will ever describe to anyone. Because the little bit that I did made my own therapist, who had extensive background in my sorts of issues, puke. Literally puke.
There are choices in life that I should never have been put in the position to make, but I am not grieved by making them. Learning how to make those decisions is probably the most important thing I’ve ever accomplished because it’s helped me deal with more grief and loss than I realize. If you see that as a negative, well, it isn’t meant as one. It certainly sounds like a negative.
What I find frustrating is that, when I meet people who have been in a similar situation as myself, the anger expressed is so broad, so vicious, its actually shocking to me. Women who have been raped by men “hate all men.” Men who have been beaten or emotionally emasculated by women “hate all women.”
I can’t live that way. Because hate wins and the disease wins. I can hate specific people. Hate specific actions. But not as a broad category. To me, that’s like saying: I hate all brunettes or I hate all people who eat bagels.
When you look into that abyss in someone else, that yuck that makes a sicko do deplorable things to another, at least when I did, I saw a difference. Between me and the disease. Right as it was happening. Most people can’t and the horror assumes them. I’m not saying I wasn’t horrified. I was. A part, though, as those awful things were happening, stayed silent and observant. That *I* am not those awful things.
I lost a lot of friends when I refused to buy into their hatred of another gender. I can’t. I don’t believe in gangbangs. Sexual or emotional. I don’t believe in humiliation. I don’t have a sense or need to control the world anymore.
I believe in being direct. Good or bad. If I love someone, that love goes directly TO that person. If I have a problem with someone, that discussion goes directly TO that person. I do believe in leveling the playing field, and I haven’t been so kind to myself on that matter. I also have no need to dissect the ways and means of why I like pancakes.
There is no magic pill. I got where I am because of determination and a spine. And telling my psychology-driven family to basically stick it. You can buy into theory, you can read all the self-help books you want. Spend a lifetime in therapy. I’m not actually knocking those things. Those are part of seeking a better place in life. It’s that people forget that the very “thing” that helped you survive “awful” in the first place is the same thing that will keep your disease going or will, eventually, help you become human again.
There will always be things from my past that I see now. There is no pill that will stop that. There is no refuge from when that internal nightmare comes back and bites me.
That’s the point of Smashed Potatoes. There is no “normal.”
I am a very private person. Very. I am an introvert, and these days, that is tantamount to saying “I am a serial killer.” And while I do get the joke that I write murder mysteries and pretend I am a serial killer, I know, from therapy, that I am not.
I decided to put Smashed Potatoes out there so that people who have social anxiety or have been through the horrid things I have can see that someone is willing to break that silence.
Show, on a day-to-day basis, even tho I don’t put out a daily, that there is NO NORMAL. There will be what others call “set backs.” There will be days where getting out of bed is a gigantic effort and days where seeing what’s been accomplished all to the good will send you back to bed. There will be days where the world awes you and days where you feel like you can take on a task list that would knock other people to the ground.
It’s what you choose. I could choose to live my entire life based around the abuse. Some reading these blogs would say I do, and I would, in some cases, agree with that. I don’t hate men or women. What my day to day consists of is remaining human. Not a machine. Not “logic” math. Not placid. Human. I decided that there were aspects of personality I didn’t care for and to steer clear of those. Because we make driving rules for the squirrels in the road. We make driving rules for the deer in the road. But we shouldn’t make driving rules for the elephants in the road, just because they are huge and seemingly unmovable. We shouldn’t make squirrels and deer into elephants.
This is how I cope. How I choose to live. I am seeking the same thing I did years ago. Laughter. Love. A few things I won’t put out in public.
My ex has his own horror stories about me. We wouldn’t be “Ex’s” to each other, otherwise. He did admit, at the end, that he had deliberately chased away my friends, had done some of the things he had because they didn’t reflect well on him, damaged many of my things on purpose for the same reason, and that he had blamed me for many things I had nothing to do with. Including his hatred of women, which was, not surprisingly, generated by his sisters and mother. While I had understood those things throughout our relationship, again, I should never have been put in the place to fix them for him, as though he deserved the magic wand and I, for some reason, didn’t.
My own family, who lived with my ex and I, rarely ever saw what he was doing. I was blamed by my family for most of it. That I should be grateful that someone at least loved me, with all my faults and flaws. It was nearly 11 years before the eyes opened. And when that happened, the understanding that came forth was … almost a slap in the face. A quiet “I see.” Not even an “I’m sorry for treating you so badly when you were trying to talk to me about how to get help or get out.” The rest was slow in coming, but there was support for a while.
Spine. Decision. Acceptance. Acceptance of my Self and hanging on, tooth and nail, to knowing the emotional bruises were, in fact, quite real. And letting go of those, as I can, when I can. To not deny that I have that knowledge. To not judge everyone by that same stick, but not to excuse those who are, either.
Today, I chose to write this out. And to take the grey out of my hair. Just because. For no other reason that I used to put a skunk stripe on one side, years ago, and wore a dog collar and high heels and comfy jeans and leotards. I think I’ll have pancakes for breakfast.