*Previously published via The Sober Knights Chronicles Substack
Refreshing my understanding of the how things, concepts, and/or people (including my self) are connected to me (and I to them) as of late has taken me into the past, since this is where a significant amount of inquiry and understanding of such was born.
My first memory and question about the world’s workings and my subsequent place in it takes me to the home I lived in where I was around 4 years old and I was moving through the rooms with my father looking at the scattered mess of our belongings dismissively tossed about after burglars had made their way through, searching for items of value. The large ceramic Big Bird piggy bank I had was broken and the pennies within his great yellow body were strewn around the floor beside him.
I did not understand or relate to what had happened, I just know that I felt a whole mess of feelings that come to the surface of my being even now recounting this experience – thank goodness I’m gonna be working with this memory later this morning in an EMDR session!
As many more experiences took place throughout my youth and into young adulthood, the most present sense I felt in relationship to the world (of people, including my self) in general was one of confusion.
I grew up with my father and while he was a source for some clarification about how to move about in the world and what the world was even about, I often felt that he too had few answers to the ways in which his life, let alone mine, were unfolding. He wanted nothing but peace and after all the experiences he had in his life up to when I was born (and that he shared with me), I could relate to why that was.
I can always relate to why anyone wants nothing but peace. I don’t know about you but I’m OVER fighting with my self.
And so, we do whatever we can, or at least, my father and I and most folks I know, to have that. Alcohol’s mask of peacefulness is just that and I wore that mask well for a long time to not only lull my confusion about the world and relationships and my place in it and them, but also to feel connected to those who were consuming (and sometimes just to myself) the substance that in part, does open us to being able to see that which our protectors (or Managers & Firefighters in IFS theory) may not always let us see – and that is what we’ve exiled to being able to survive.
What we do at that point, how we relate to seeing those parts of us is what makes the difference between loving or abandoning ourselves – and continuing to drink unfortunately does not improve upon loving ourselves, as I finally came to realize, thankfully, almost one year ago (in a few days!)
Working through the tangled network of what all happened throughout the first 12 years of my life has been the center of my focus for the last 36 years and I’m able to say now that I’m less confused, more forgiving, and (think) I understand a lot better how I relate to what’s around me….and the road still stretches out before me, to continue the journey that the last 30 years of masking behind not only alcohol but (unknowingly until just a few years ago) also Autism and most likely Personality Disorder – inviting further revelations, connections, and peace…if I want it.
And I do.
The rest, as the sweet Natasha Bedingfield and her friends sing, is still Unwritten, but I’m the author of my life, nobody else, and certainly not alcohol!
I love me and you, until next time –
Grace
TimeSpaceOne 