As I live my
life, I regularly experience situations in which my issues from living with
Maxine are triggered. One of the most stubborn is one in which I’m triggered by
women in positions of power or co-workers who are angry and controlling. This
problem has come up over and over and heavily impacted my employment history. I’m
not going to discuss the specifics of this, because it ends up being about
people I currently need to deal with. My focus will always be on what is true
about me in these situations. I know it has to be this way because I’m
literally the only person I can change. When I lived with Maxine, I was living
my day to day life with a woman who was basically in charge of my mood and
quality of life. Her anger influenced every aspect of my existence. Since I was
a child, she controlled every thought and experience. Her anger frightened and
depressed me. I struggled with believing that I caused her problem. So, Maxine’s behavior was of direct impact in
my life. I realize that at that time, I was a child and unable to change the
adults around me. I’m sure that you understand that too. It is fact. Children
are kind of like little rag dolls who are thrown around and injured by forces
beyond their control. I had no idea how to deal with Maxine at her worst.
Sometimes I used my own anger to try to control her. It didn’t work. That
usually resulted in more anger and name-calling. The result for me was fear and
a feeling of powerlessness.
I also felt
that way when I dealt with the bullying at school. I took it on as somehow being my fault. I
resorted to my own anger and tried to fight it. Or I was totally passive. I
didn’t have any skills to deal with it appropriately. Maybe there really wasn’t
an appropriate way to deal with it. For years, beyond the childhood trauma, I
was consumed with anger about it. As I dealt with the fallout from Maxine’s
behavior, I also had to work on feelings surrounding my schoolmates and their
contribution to my misery. How did I deal with it? Avoidance. I left my high
school and dropped any contact with any high school schoolmates. That was my
effort at taking control and it was somewhat successful. If I’m not in contact
with you, then I can’t be hurt. I ignored any efforts to contact me, which
honestly were not very frequent. I didn’t
attend any reunions.
When I lived
in San Antonio, Texas, I was thrown into a situation in which an old high
school buddy was in a newspaper article concerning her family. I made an effort
to contact her only because she had been such a kind human being during my
childhood. We again established a relationship, which ended when she moved to
Europe with her husband, and I went through my divorce. Years later, I found
out that this woman died of breast cancer. So, I was faced with this realization, at a
time when I’d done much of my work healing from Maxine. The realization was
this: You can’t escape pain through avoidance. My only hope was in healing
myself. I really was grateful for the time that I had in San Antonio with this
friend. I benefitted from the contact with her. And it wouldn’t have happened
had I not taken a risk.
Because of
that, I allowed myself to be contacted again when some high school ‘buddies’
reached out to me on Facebook. I was very selective in terms of who I was going
to let into my life again. I was looking for healing, not further
victimization, and there were some people who I remember as particularly cruel.
I didn’t have any interest in finding out whether they had changed. I know how
to protect myself now. This has been a rewarding decision. I now have friends
who knew me back when. This has added to my life, not detracted from it.
I’ve also
made strides in terms of how to handle situations in which a woman is nasty or
controlling. There are bullies in adulthood also. I still tend towards that
pattern of reacting with anger. But now I have an additional skill. I call it
detachment. When people show me who they are, I respond in a self-protective
way. I will use whatever tools I have available to me to deal with it. At work,
I’ve addressed it with a supervisor. Then, eventually, I’m able to let it go. I
also use my instincts to protect myself. When it happens over and over again, I
recognize that there needs to be a limit. I’ve ended friendships over bullying
behaviors. I don’t fall into the hopelessness that I experienced as a child and
earlier in my adulthood. I simply let go and let God.
How does
this relate to why I choose to recover? Recovery is about me. It is about my safety. It is about making changes in myself. It is
about peace. It isn’t about revenge. It isn’t about living in the past. It isn’t
about being consumed by hatred of people. It is about moving forward. Being
stuck in my past is part and parcel of depression. If I take care of the
biological issue, I still have lots of work to do. Today, I choose to do that
work. One day at a time……
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