The Story of My Life - Part 2

As I explained in Part 1, my therapist told me that there is another way to look at my life, rather than the powerless, victimized, trauma-ridden way. She talked about it as telling stories about our lives and how we can choose to emphasize different things. I've learned to emphasize the sad and fearful things, but my life has had so much more than that to it.

So here's another way to look at the story of my life. Beware: this is even longer than Part 1. If you want, you can scroll to the end and just read the conclusions.

It's true that I was molested, became afraid of the dark, and was bullied for many years. But I didn't live with my cousin (or my grandfather) and wasn't around either too often for the most part. And I didn't live near my school peers who bullied me. So I had the room to build a stronger self than it first seemed.

Although victimized early, and having parents who were kind of clueless about how to raise me and what was going on in my life, I did some powerful things. There was the time I taught myself to ride a two-wheel bicycle in a day so that my parents would buy me one. Because we didn't live near my school friends and there was seldom anyone for me to play with, I learned to keep myself entertained  --- I was bad at most sports so the boys in the neighborhood didn't usually want to play with me if they were playing football or baseball, and none of the girls were my age. I enjoyed skating around the cul de sac for long periods, I loved to read and write and draw, and I liked pretending to be a detective or something else that required me to sneak around the neighborhood. I didn't retaliate against my bullies, nor did I become cynical and bitter. When things got better for me in 10th grade, I simply enjoyed my good fortune and made more friends.

Then I survived a move away from everything and everyone I'd ever known. I survived the death of my father from a heart attack. And I survived going away to college and even thrived there. I was wary enough and strong enough to take myself out of an uncomfortable situation and move out of my aunt and uncle's house and into on-campus housing. And I did begin the steps toward adulthood, something I didn't realize until I casually brought up the following story to my therapist. 

When I was 20 and home for the summer, I made a very large self-differentiation step. A girlfriend and I wanted to drive up to another city for the day, about 80 or 90 miles away. Her boyfriend lived up there and that's where she went to college. We made our plans and when my mom asked what we were going to do we told her and she said "No." Mom felt she still had the role of telling me what I could and could not do. It would have been one thing if I'd been thinking of having a party in her house, but this was a day trip and I had been taking care of myself for two years. After an argument, I said "Fine. We're going shopping and to a movie and won't be back until late." Which was true, but we were still going to the other city to do it. Her parents gave us the same thing, so we gave them the same story. We drove north. Finally, about 9 pm we were going into a movie and I knew we'd be getting home very late. I didn't want my mom to worry, so I called her collect and told her where I was and why I'd be home much later than expected. We had a few civil words, then she thanked me for calling and I went into the movie. My girlfriend did not call her parents, so they didn't know she wouldn't be home until the wee hours of the morning and she had a huge row with her folks when she got home. I did not. My brother and a friend of his pointed out to my mom that I was 20 and had been living away from home for most of the previous 2 years and why did my mom treat me like a kid. We had a good talk the next day and I promised to tell her where I was going and let her know when I'd be home and she promised to not treat me like a kid still living at home full time. My girlfriend and her father continued to fight WWIII all summer long. My mom and I developed a friendship.

The next summer was more interesting in that I ran into my mom and her date at nightclubs. She was dating seriously and I was old enough to drink, as were most of my friends (and the other had fake ID). It was kind of weird but also cool.

When my brother killed himself the following winter, it was painful beyond words. I got through having to comfort others without comfort for myself. I got through having to travel back to school with my aunt and that cousin as they fought and bickered the whole way over the snowy mountain pass. And I coped with friends and a boyfriend who didn't know what to say to me, and no birthday party, either. I got through it all because I am strong and because I learned to be self-reliant as a child with too few playmates.

I did go a little crazy in the months after my brother died. I needed meds because my stomach hurt all the time. I took Valium. I cheated on a assignment in a class I needed to graduate, using a paper of my boyfriend's, earning an F (luckily only that) for the assignment and the anger of my boyfriend. I got crazier and began breaking up and getting back together with my boyfriend and another guy, alternating between them until my boyfriend couldn't stand it anymore and cut off contact. The other guy, who's been my BFF now for quite a long time, endured my desire to end my own life, my tears and depression and anxiety and sheer despair, all with no tools because who teaches their kids how to deal with this? How many adults know themselves? But I didn't hurt myself because I felt responsible for my mother. I knew she wouldn't be able to handle losing me, too. Especially at my own hand. I held it together enough to live, to eventually find work, and to eventually get therapy.

I worked. I paid my bills. I hung out with friends who weren't always that good for me. I was unemployed for awhile and asked my mother for a loan so I could get training for a better job --- word processor. (I was an English major.) She gave me the loan, I got the training and impressed the teachers so much with what I could do that they let me continue on past the class to learn everything I could that they had. Then I found a better job and paid my mom back.

While working at this better job, I was reminded that I had discovered the career of technical writer during my last year at school, but Mom wasn't going to support me any longer and neither was social security, so I hadn't been able to pursue it. After a couple of years at this job, I had the option of working on a software documentation project because the regular technical writer was too swamped. I jumped on it and, through the contacts I made through that project, and how much I impressed them by my first project and my managing of the two interns we hired from the college, I went back to school and won a small scholarship. I sold my car and bought an older one. I tightened my belt and worked halftime while I went to school full time. And I made some new, and better, friends just before and just after I started school. 

My mom was not supportive of my going back to school: she thought I was going to ask for money and told me not to expect it. I was so hurt and angry I had to write her a letter explaining how I'd only wanted her to be happy for me and that I was handling my own expenses fine. That led to another step in becoming an independent adult and another step in developing a healthy adult relationship with my mom. (And she still voluntarily gave me some money the next year when I was struggling a bit more and had sold the older car because the school loans weren't quite enough but I didn't want to spend a long time paying off bigger ones.) 

After two years, I graduated with a BS in Scientific and Technical Communications, with a higher GPA than when I'd gone through college the first time. I even had a job waiting for me when I got out. It didn't start out as the job from hell and I had a great year living in a great apartment with a girlfriend, just a short walk from both the lake and the third friend in our trio.

Skipping the three years of great stupidity and pain when I lived with my boyfriend, I made the choice to leave him. I moved back in with my girlfriend, who didn't mind having help paying for her condo for a few months, and finished saving for my own house. Then I bought my own house, the cutest little cottage with hardwood floors and a huge yard with strawberries, raspberries, apples, and pears growing in it. I bought it without any financial help from anyone.

Although I stayed too long at my job and let it diminish me, I also got a lot out of it and I enjoyed many of my coworkers. 

After leaving the job, I worked first at a freelance job, then I began working with a contract agency. I developed a very good rapport with them and they valued the work I did as one of their contractors. They kept me busy at contract jobs and  also managed to sell my services as a headhunter to two separate dot-coms, one right after the other went out of business, and then kept me busy until I found my last dot-com before the tech market crashed and there was no more work to be found.

I made the choice to move to the Oregon Coast to live near my mom, something I'd wanted for a long time. I thought, why wait until I retire before I move to the beach? I figured I'd live on my house earnings as long as I needed to. And while it took me 2 1/2 years to find work, I enjoyed coming down off of 18 months of burnout from working too many hours in the high-tech industry in Seattle. I was able to help my mom when her husband got sick and was in and out of the hospital for about 3 months, sometimes in town, sometimes out of town. In the end, he was in a hospital a couple of hours inland. I divided my time between spending a day with Mom and spending a day making sure her dog was okay staying over with Grandma and that Grandma was okay, too. After Mom's husband died, I was available to be with her and help her adapt to living nearly alone (she still had her dog, thank goodness, for another year and a half).

Eventually, I was found by a recruiter who recruited me for a six-week job at NOAA Fisheries; they had a research group about 30 miles south of where I lived and I loved that gorgeous coastline commute. I did a good enough job that the people I worked for convinced the folks up in Seattle to keep me on as an editor for the Oregon folks. I was with them for almost five years, until the government contract ran out. Then the decision was made to keep the editorial work up in Seattle. At the end of an unemployed summer when I couldn't find work anywhere, my favorite manager from the Oregon group hired me on for a limited project for a few months. Then I spent time figuring out what to do next. 

There was no work in Portland or anywhere else in Oregon or even in the Seattle area. So I sold a lot of my stuff, put the rest in storage, packed up my car, and took it on the road to decide where to settle next and find work. Houston won. I've had several small jobs of varying types: reporter and copy-editor for a small newspaper, tech writing contractor at a couple of different places, article writer for a national organization. All were short and the pay varied widely. But they showed that I can still find work. I may have to look harder now, and I would rather work freelance and contract and from home than at a more traditional job, but I can find work.

I've made a few friends here. They have families, so they don't have much time to get together, but I get the occasional lunch out and email.

And I've made a lot of friends online. Some I've met and many I haven't but there is one thing they all have in common: they are there for me, just as my old friends are.

The biggest bomb in my life in the past almost 30 years was my mom's getting cancer and dying. Yes, things had finally come together for me here: I had a contract job and a freelance job and was doing well. I had a couple of girlfriends I got together with. But I chose to leave here and move back to Oregon. I chose to close up my apartment and, with the help of friends, move everything into storage. I chose to be with my mother, no matter what, and I would make exactly the same choice again in the same circumstances. 

My loss, the extent to which Mom and I kind of re-enmeshed once I moved to the Oregon Coast and Mom's husband was gone, all that brought me to my knees. My family is gone now; I am relying on friends to be family for me. The only strengths I can point to are that a) I am still here, b) I did find some work, and c) I found a good therapist and am working at my therapy. I don't see it as courage that keeps me here instead of up north with my old friends; I choose to stay here because I have an awesome therapist, I think I still have more potential to find work here than up there, and there are still some things I want to do here with a non-profit group I'm involved with. But I am making the choice. (Plus, I'm afraid of driving in snow and ice and Seattle is getting more and more of that each year it seems.)

So this is the other way I can see my life: choices I've made, and power and courage I've shown during difficulties. Even calmness from time to time.

I'm sure there are more and even a few better examples than the ones I've delivered here; I know because I've told them to my therapists in the past. But I cannot remember any others right now and I think these serve to show that I can be strong and courageous. I have made good choices as well as bad; I need to learn how to judge my choices so I consistently make better ones. I need to remember these stories as well and highlight them when I think about my life. Then, so my therapist says, I can be stronger, more powerful and confident, and more courageous because those are the stories I tell myself about myself.