As I posted earlier this week, I have had a small awakening of how abuse and love can become mixed up in the mind of those of us who have suffered abuse. Abusers do a great job of tieing together the two ideas of love and abuse in our minds.
We become disoriented and we can not separate out what is love and what is abuse. We learn early on that if we are to get “love” at all, the price we must play is to suffer abuse.
The game is rigged in the abuser’s favor. They switch out abuse for love and love for abuse. Below is a poem that expresses what it feels like to experience this bait and switch, and the confusion which results.
Bait And Switch of Love and Abuse
Let us play the game
Of shells,
I bet my life
And the wager lacks
Play known as “Thimblerig”-
Appropriately-
Away to keep one under
Your thumb
We reverse the stakes
I must choose to avoid
The shell which contains
What lurks underneath
My point and
Touch and your flip
Of the shell will unleash
That which I fear
The shell you use
To cover and hide your
Abuse of me-
Now you see it, now you don’t
Look-it, look-it
See right here,
Hand swipes and wipes
The board clean
Now you see it, now you don’t.
I become confused, sweaty,
Startled, my eyes of
Prey have lost sight
Of your subtle signs
Now, I know I am
In trouble.
I should have watched,
Should have waited
With an intensity to save my life.
My guard slips and now
I don’t know under
Which shell hides that god-damn
Abuse.
You are good, you are fast.
Your hands switch, play, and switch
Again. And you will blame
Me for not keeping track.
Breath rate elevates,
The stress response,
Your shills move in,
Pressuring me to choose.
What if I choose wrong?
What if I pick and under
Shell number 3 lays the trigger
that frees your wrath?
All because I chose wrong
And god-damn it,
I did not watch for the
Proper signs!
I do not know what you want
Me to do. I look at you
with desperate eyes. “Help me”
I force into my mind.
You glance up with
Wicked smile on that cold,
Stone face, assured
You will win
You rigged the game
Long ago – and tell
Me I need not fear
to make a choice.
For you see, you
Lean in and whisper
To me, “It’s not abuse,
it’s love. Now choose!”
My Love Prayer for You
As I posted recently, I have been worried about my stepson.
The force of expression, the physicality of creating, is a means of handling all that I want to say. The creation of art has such potential to heal. It gives each of us a place to “hang” all that weighs us down and transform it to something resembling love.
A Prayer for those Suffering
If I can not take away
Your pain despite
my complete desire
to end this suffering-
Then please, please
Let me sit with you
And Let me hold your precious,
Beautiful heart in
my warm, gentle hands with all
the grace I can marshall
And Let me whisper to you
How much I believe
In your innate goodness,
your innate strength,
And your innate sense
Of what is right
For you see,
I witness you as
the clock bides its
Time on the wall
Beside our sink
I see you each
Moment, observing
Your struggles
With such compassion
I want to wrap you in
My own heart
And pray the prayer
Of the believing
That God is just
And God is good
And you deserve
So much more than you are getting
I will utter my prayer
And send my thoughts
to God and Heaven above
Carrying whispers
Of my love for you.
I had an interesting visit with my therapist the other day. (Yes, I have become “that blogger“- writing about therapy…) We were discussing how in abusive situations we are taught that abuse=love and that to receive “love”, we must abuse ourselves. We will continue this abuse of ourselves even when an overt abuser is no longer present, so engrained in our minds is the pattern- abuse = love. Of course, I do not mean “love” in the true sense of the word but rather the use of “love” in the conditioned way we experienced it.
I am beginning to see how this idea has manifested in my own life, and I will continue to work with this energy. In addition, I have my stepchildren’s narcissistic mother to model this behavior for me to witness.
My stepson has always struggled in school. Out of respect for him, I will not give all the details, but suffice to say, he has had difficulties since day one. His route is a challenging one, but we have been blessed along the way. We have had great tutors working with him, and this year, the school received a grant for a 3-day per week afterschool program.
This program meets for 2- hours per session and is FREE! and is created for the sole purpose of getting children to grade-level as well as working on attention and behavior issues, etc.
So, we learned last night that his Mother decided he no longer needed to go to the program while my stepson was at her home. What?! Granted it is the end of the year and my stepson is tired, but what “parent” decides it is o.k. to remove a child from a positive situation that is created to help him?
A narcissistic parent, that’s who. Narcissists often split their children, and my stepson is the “golden child” to his mother. If you think this enables him to escape the devastation of being raised by a narcissist, you would be wrong. She supports him in failing.
She never addresses any of the concerns expressed by others- teachers, tutors, summer camp counselors, drama coaches, etc. She labeled the drama coach as being “dramatic” when the coach called after the FIRST day of drama camp about my stepson’s behavior. When my stepson landed in the principal’s office, his Mom was out of state and could not bother to call him, as it seemed he was “not directly involved”- at least in her convoluted mind.
She once prevented learning specialists, the tutors, and teachers from talking about my stepson without her presence, because she wanted to control everything about him. (Steps 6 and 7 from the Narcissistic Playbook- control and triangulate).
The purpose of this post is NOT make my stepson look bad. He is an awesome, loving kid who is being abused through “love”. In his Mom’s mind- all these things show how much she loves her son. To her, she is protecting him and making him the ultimate reflection of her- perfect.
In the meantime, he suffers. The world does not respond to him as his Mother does. The world wants him to succeed, to believe in himself and to not give up. Too bad, Mommy supports him in exactly the opposite way.
I love this child, and he will be the one who suffers when he returns to school and … well, I don’t know… did his Mother call and remove him from the program? Talk to anyone?
And as further display of her grasp of the Narcissistic Playbook – she of course kept her “decision” to remove him from the program a secret from my husband. She did not call to discuss this “parenting” decision nor her concerns or reasoning to keep him out of the program. No, that would require accountability and awareness- not exactly the forte of a narcissist.
If she truly had a sound reason for her action and discussed this with my husband, I would understand this. Or, if by removing him from the program, she then spent that time working with him at home. Do you think that happened? Do you really think narcissistic Mommy would actually spend the time tutoring and helping her son? No way. He got to come home in the afternoon and play, while Mommy played with her fantasy of “love”.
All art is autobiographical in one form or another. Sometimes, I wonder though, must I always create so overtly autobiographically? I, of course, read poets who tackle such topics as Hurricane Katrina, Nazi concentration camps, and George W. Bush- in one book! And here I sit listing and stanza-ing stepparenting, naracissism, and the like.
My self displayed on page, and still I miss things. Huge things- until some one reads between the lines.
Perhaps our art is as individual as we. Perhaps some artists are meant to tackle Katrina and Bush, while other sit quietly and contemplate the closest spheres.
Must art be removed from the artist for the art to count? Who knows. But I want to thank everyone who can read between the lines. You have been such a blessing (more so than you likely know.)
Art in the Autobiography
I am unveiled before
“you”- the nebulous
“you” every poet should avoid
Perhaps the naming
Device gives us some distance
and chance to hide
As “you” become
Seeker and I become
Sought and found
I tap out at the limit of
Autobiography and converse
With the sensibility of art
Is the shame greater
To hide and pretend
Or
To place pieces out
On canvas bit by storied bit?
Until even I, normally
So blind, must
Acquiesce to vision
I will finally use your
Eyes are read between the
Lines and the pain
Breathing between the
Words will almost knock
Me senseless
To those who read
Between lines and
Insist with mirror
That I may come to see
The gift of leaving
Trails of me across the page -
thank you
she gave up her only begotten Son.
I don’t think this sacrifice is mentioned nearly enough.
She Loves the World
Women, too, have loved the world with all their hearts, and have sacrificed accordingly.
The image is just a little play on a woman, her heart, infinity, and all the love she feels for the world.
Woman and the World
This is written from a woman’s perspective- carrying the world in her womb. Of course, this is not meant to be sexist. Men, too, carry the world within themselves. Sometimes I wonder if the life-carrying and life-forming power of men is too often ignored. Anyway, the blog is more about the dissolution of isolation and the embracement of love in the world. (Perhaps I should not write before coffee on a Friday morning 
).
World in My Womb
I sat with my
womb full-
of the world, today
Rounded and substantial,
the world weighted me
Made escape impossible
In the act of transporting
the globe, the work
we women do
Boundaries were lost,
identities coalesced
and I forgot my story
I could not tell
where the world
outside began
And by corollary,
I could not tell
where I was to end
Energy of boundaries,
lost, upsurged to heart
and made me dizzy
Tides shifted in me
Pulsing in my pelvis
the symbiosis of all woman-born
I exhale and the world
follows my trail of
love
the world tugs and pulls
and I tumble into its
embrace
For this is how God
would have it.
We live in His world
and His world lives in us,
in identical pulse
A gift of the
world to each of us
so we no longer feel so alone.
Amen.
Sometimes I am confronted with the idea of how do I write about something and not sound whiny or like a martyr? Writing can sometimes just be the expression of an experience as one tries to find a point of reference within it. I feel that way with this posting.
So…no one in my family recognized me on Mother’s day – this includes my husband and stepchildren. I wonder why, as I am the maternal influence/example ( I know I am not my stepkids Mother) for half of the children’s lives. The children certainly, in my experience, hold a very significant attachment to me in the regards to the “mother-ing” I do for them. I realize Mother’s day is a contrived holiday, but I think this recent experience helped show me again how invisible we stepparents can be.
I do not know why this occurs. I have always thought perhaps there is so much pain and grief surrounding divorce (frequently unexpressed and usually, overtly, denied) that the space does not exist within this context to love and care for another. I don’t know. But below is how I sometimes feel and I don’t think my experience is that different than many stepparents.
Stepparent Lost
If a photo were taken
Of this “family” of
Mine, would my form
Appear?
Indelible image
On the surface of posterity
Posed into position
To mark my space
Or would nothing but
space show, with
nary a shadow, leaving a
trace of something dear?
Perhaps a mist-
Fine and dispersed-
may hover like porcelain
grains trapped in light
Enough to cause eyes to
squint and lips to parse
“Was someone there?”
as fingers leave prints
Upon these surfaces,
Seeking me
Vampire-born must I be
Incapable of capture
upon film, the connection
to blood does not elude me
I am not in the picture
for no blood ties hold me there
No blood, no tie, no vision,
I am vampire-esque
Seeking blood, but for a very
Different reason
Image-less, even in the mirror,
Which alights the wall
in the Great hall,
The one that hangs above
the picture of “us”.
Narcissists submit to no one. They are all about control, control, control.
Narcissists are always caught up in their reflections. As we know, reflections are not the “real thing”. But because narcissist’s live in a world of reflection and projection, they never understand the difference. We see this especially when narcissists try to “create”. Their creation of a life is not how you and I would go about it- authentically and highly-engaged.
No, narcissists are always acting. They see what is valued and then they try to copy these values. You will note this all the time with narcissists as they constantly have to reassure you that that are “open” “honest” ” a good person” “a really good person” “so loving”, etc. How many of us walk around overtly describing ourselves as such? I know one person who even said the narcissist in her life was “proud” that he was “so humble”. Ugh!!
Here is my take on a narcissist trying to weave or create a life:
A Narcissistic Weaving
A narcissist bows
Before only one-
The image of self-
As for the rest, never
Others of a more
reputable mental health
submit- to love, to hope,
to God, to others
And in the submissive act,
weave a web of such
support and beauty
tears trail as companions
The narcissist-forever mirroring,
Never engaging- will model
Such weaving, and attempt his
Own web of “creation”
Lacking core from which
to spin, the intricacy of
balance, the golden strand of life
is lost upon the narcissist
The narcissist’s weaving becomes
a web of delusional craftsmanship
if all the world is separated
by six degrees
The narcissist reduces
six to one, with
all roads leading
back to him
The narcissist, of course,
sees none of this;
in his imagination, patterns
of gold unfurl
While the rest of us
see knots of contention
from which one may
never untangle
To be caught in the narcissist’s
web is to live in death-for the
narcissist weaves
only for one.
God’s Whisper
I sit in the midst
of my life-
silent, weeping
of such ecstasy
as I behold
when did the trees
bud, under my
less than dutiful watch?
God, God, God-
I whisper
Or is it He
who whispers
within me?
As I live the
reverberations
I am but
the echo
of His Love.
Amen.
Divine Power Touching Me
God, The Prayer for Myself
God, if you would-
grant me one wish
The wish I may wish-
Would be of such little faith,
I am afraid
Faith- by which I do not mean-
assurance
success
victory
safety or
health until death parts us
Oh, my Lord, this I know-
failure, defeat, risk
And illness are but
part of the living
For these, faith of which
I seek is not necessary
What I need, dear Lord,
is Belief-
If I may, if I might
make a wish to Thee
tonight, it would be
“Let me Believe.
Let me Believe in
the Glory. Let me Believe
in the Peace.
Let me Believe
in the Love and Power of simply
Be-ing a Spirit upon the Earthly
Plane-
Culled and Crafted in the Image
of All that is Divine.”
For you see, God,
I stand at the ocean’s side and this,
I do not Believe.
I see tide, returning,
returning, to me each moment.
And, still I doubt.
I am the frightened tourist
on life’s shore too afraid
of getting lost.
Then, I speak, You hear, and
My heart soars
The slightest tugs of grace,
Like the ocean’s tide, send
Me cascading to the horizon.
God, I pray, the momentum
Of belief in Me, the Glory
of Creation
Take hold
And with centrifugal force
Fling me beyond the
Limited borders of my
Most fearful self.
