Play your family role or ruin everybody's day!
Aug 21, 2014 3:24:29 GMT 10
Post by desire2bme on Aug 21, 2014 3:24:29 GMT 10
What a simple wedding invitation can bring up for me to face and deal with...
My nephew is getting married, someone I have not lived around or had relationship with outside of when he was baptized as a baby and my sister (his mother) asking me to be god parent along with my younger sister. God parent...what does that even mean?, is what my mind thought as I was standing up there as the pastor was baptizing him. This sister and I also have had little relationship growing up outside of me being afraid of her as she was more outward in her expression of anger throwing it at whoever was near by and I tended to hold all mine inside. As adults, we have had a few times of communicating on a more heart to heart level, but the tendency is for me to keep a safe distance from her knowing she has a lot of crap that she doesn't know yet how to deal with inside and I don't want be the person standing around to be unloaded on when what's inside has to spill out being told it's my fault.
Everyone in my family experienced so much very very personal rejection and being I have a sense of how awful that feels, there's been a part of me that has always just went along without checking in to what I feel I really and truly want to do before saying YES to things like this...invitations to family weddings. Living true to how I feel, I am allowing a NO. As I sent in my RSVP yesterday via an email site that the bride has set up, all of this shit started to surface in me.
Why can't you just play along, what's the matter with you, why do you have to ruin the whole wedding for your sister by not being there? You have the time, you have your health, your car can drive the miles you need to go to get there...why are you being SO SELFISH!!! There is no excuse you can come up with as to why you can't make the trip...you have no responsibilities to anyone else around you, nor anything that needs your care and would be missing out should you leave home to go to the wedding. Are you trying to ruin it on purpose...well you sure are acting like you are.
And as I read this garbage, I see what happened to me as a child when I wanted not to do something that the rest of the family or siblings were doing. The belief ingrained was that unless you are sick or taking care of someone who is sick, you get your ass to the event or activity you have been invited to...don't hurt their feelings by not showing up. And as a child I knew what hurt feelings felt like and I did not ever want to be the cause of them for another when I could just suck it up (my own preference) and show up "for them." Putting myself first in my soul work requires that I listen to and allow what I feel I want to do. It isn't until I actually am put into these kind of life experiences to play my real part instead of my family role part that I have to face all of these old very painful places of fears of being rejected if I take care of myself.
In my decision not to go, I am willing to go through these old emotional bones even if it means being told (my worst fear): You're ruining it for EVERYONE by putting your own desires ahead of everyone else's. I do feel somewhat like I am "asking for it" (the rejection) by standing up for me and what I want and don't want. There's this whole thing where with my mother dying about a year ago, that even more so I must be the dutiful daughter being any place the family may gather together in number and if I don't I am thumbing my nose at her, not respecting the family's wishes as I SHOULD. And what do I feel about this? Marion , I will tell you how I feel...
I am sick and tired of blowing air into a fucked up horse called our family. I am done with playing my obedient-never-need-or-want-anything part and if me listening to what I want ruins it for everyone then so be it. Don't you get it? We have no ties that bind us together that are about honesty...only screwed up duty and obligation dictate and I would rather shake the rug here and now and find myself being told I am the cause of ruin than be there in the midst of everyone "playing nice" and swallowing down one more time the right to exercise my own will. I am feeling my fear that comes up with all of this for being the resentful bitter bad girl. It's what I was called when I became stubborn and shut myself down and away from my family even as a child growing up with them. Putting distance between me and them was a power I could exercise as a child, though the fingers would point at me when I did this then saying "What is the matter with her? Why is she so anti-social? Does she think she is better than us? Wonder why she is so depressed." Well, I don't wonder anymore about any of this...I know there's plenty the matter with me and that as I put myself as priority I must be seen as thinking myself "better than them." It's what the family code's logic dictates. So today, I continue to work with these sticky places inside me as I express out of myself all that comes with this false belief about wrecking everyone else's life if I honor my own.
My nephew is getting married, someone I have not lived around or had relationship with outside of when he was baptized as a baby and my sister (his mother) asking me to be god parent along with my younger sister. God parent...what does that even mean?, is what my mind thought as I was standing up there as the pastor was baptizing him. This sister and I also have had little relationship growing up outside of me being afraid of her as she was more outward in her expression of anger throwing it at whoever was near by and I tended to hold all mine inside. As adults, we have had a few times of communicating on a more heart to heart level, but the tendency is for me to keep a safe distance from her knowing she has a lot of crap that she doesn't know yet how to deal with inside and I don't want be the person standing around to be unloaded on when what's inside has to spill out being told it's my fault.
Everyone in my family experienced so much very very personal rejection and being I have a sense of how awful that feels, there's been a part of me that has always just went along without checking in to what I feel I really and truly want to do before saying YES to things like this...invitations to family weddings. Living true to how I feel, I am allowing a NO. As I sent in my RSVP yesterday via an email site that the bride has set up, all of this shit started to surface in me.
Why can't you just play along, what's the matter with you, why do you have to ruin the whole wedding for your sister by not being there? You have the time, you have your health, your car can drive the miles you need to go to get there...why are you being SO SELFISH!!! There is no excuse you can come up with as to why you can't make the trip...you have no responsibilities to anyone else around you, nor anything that needs your care and would be missing out should you leave home to go to the wedding. Are you trying to ruin it on purpose...well you sure are acting like you are.
And as I read this garbage, I see what happened to me as a child when I wanted not to do something that the rest of the family or siblings were doing. The belief ingrained was that unless you are sick or taking care of someone who is sick, you get your ass to the event or activity you have been invited to...don't hurt their feelings by not showing up. And as a child I knew what hurt feelings felt like and I did not ever want to be the cause of them for another when I could just suck it up (my own preference) and show up "for them." Putting myself first in my soul work requires that I listen to and allow what I feel I want to do. It isn't until I actually am put into these kind of life experiences to play my real part instead of my family role part that I have to face all of these old very painful places of fears of being rejected if I take care of myself.
In my decision not to go, I am willing to go through these old emotional bones even if it means being told (my worst fear): You're ruining it for EVERYONE by putting your own desires ahead of everyone else's. I do feel somewhat like I am "asking for it" (the rejection) by standing up for me and what I want and don't want. There's this whole thing where with my mother dying about a year ago, that even more so I must be the dutiful daughter being any place the family may gather together in number and if I don't I am thumbing my nose at her, not respecting the family's wishes as I SHOULD. And what do I feel about this? Marion , I will tell you how I feel...
I am sick and tired of blowing air into a fucked up horse called our family. I am done with playing my obedient-never-need-or-want-anything part and if me listening to what I want ruins it for everyone then so be it. Don't you get it? We have no ties that bind us together that are about honesty...only screwed up duty and obligation dictate and I would rather shake the rug here and now and find myself being told I am the cause of ruin than be there in the midst of everyone "playing nice" and swallowing down one more time the right to exercise my own will. I am feeling my fear that comes up with all of this for being the resentful bitter bad girl. It's what I was called when I became stubborn and shut myself down and away from my family even as a child growing up with them. Putting distance between me and them was a power I could exercise as a child, though the fingers would point at me when I did this then saying "What is the matter with her? Why is she so anti-social? Does she think she is better than us? Wonder why she is so depressed." Well, I don't wonder anymore about any of this...I know there's plenty the matter with me and that as I put myself as priority I must be seen as thinking myself "better than them." It's what the family code's logic dictates. So today, I continue to work with these sticky places inside me as I express out of myself all that comes with this false belief about wrecking everyone else's life if I honor my own.