It was my younger daughter who pointed this out to me a few years back. She told me I was changing: ie. I'd become tense, jumpy, over-reactive etc. I was under lots of stress at the time, having been unexpectedly saddled with almost full-time care of my then 7-year-old grand-daughter. Suddenly, my world, my retirement plans, my free time was snatched away from me. For the second time in my life, someone other than me had taken control of my life ... and I didn't like it. But for the second time, I also felt powerless to do anything about it. My father had controlled my childhood, my adolescence and even a bit of my early 20's. Now, my own children and their needs were controlling and dictating how I would spend the last few years of my life. I felt like I'd been hit by a brick in the face. Not again!!
Over the past 3 years, I've come to grips with becoming an unwilling mother in my 60's. I've settled into the routine. My cheery disposition and optimism have returned as I've adjusted to my new loss of control. But then, in the past few weeks, I see it disappearing again. What is happening here? I put it down to getting old, the horrible feeling that time is running out and there's so much I want to do and no longer have the energy nor time for. Every morning I've been waking up lately, hoping today would be a better day, that my mood would improve, that something wonderful might happen, but instead, I'm starting each day flat! I HATE this feeling!
Then, this morning, I read this latest post by a fellow victim/survivor of incest, Patricia Singleton. In her post titled
Are The Effects Of Incest A Life Sentence For A Survivor?
Patricia sounds a lot like me: someone who has come to grips with her past and moved on to live a good, productive life. But while her father, like mine, is long dead and buried, and she can even understand to some degree his own horrid behaviour with her, she still finds herself being sucked back under from time to time by something that triggers her deep inside. It seems these days, for me, this is happening too often. Have I been that good at ignoring my own needs and emotions all these years? Have I been so busy, hell-bent on helping everyone else in my family that I've ignored myself, put myself second most of the time. I think I have. And now, when I want the freedom to pursue who I am and do what I want, I'm getting too old, too achy (physically), too overloaded mentally as I try to do it all. It's overwhelming.
Of course, those around me will say "Slow down Viga. Take time for yourself. Take a break. You can't be everything to everyone etc etc." ... all advice I give others constantly but can't follow myself. What an irony! But there's more to this: it comes back to the issue of CONTROL. I'm feeling out of control again and I'm not comfortable with it at all.
Now here we come to the crux and whole point of my blog post this morning: what I realized about myself most after reading Patricia's post is that like my father, but in a different way, I too have been controlling my own children, even my husband to some degree, for years now. My older daughter took till she was in her 20's to alert me to this. It had taken her all that time to drum up the courage to tell me how she really felt about her controlling mama. Just like me, she didn't want to upset the parent she probably loved and hated simultaneously. She was "scared" to tell me how she felt, just as I was scared to oppose my dad. How could I be so blind?
My younger daughter, an enormously talented performer, welcomed my control when she was in her teens, even demanded it because she wanted her career so badly that mom was good for pulling out all stops to help and promote her. Now, just turned 30, she is sending me signals daily that it's time for me to butt out and let her take control of her own life. And she is right. But it's so hard for me to do, to give up doing something I've been involved in and loved doing for over 15 years. It's like telling me to quit smoking cold turkey LOL!
And then there's my husband, now quite deaf, often irritable and impatient as he sees his own mortality staring him in the face, and sick to death of my telling him to take this pill or that, eat this, don't eat that, do this or do that! He too is telling me to leave him alone and let him make his own decisions. Yikes, what kind of monster have I become when I thought I was being terrific?
No wonder I'm waking up feeling depressed: suddenly I'm realizing all the things that have given me a reason to live, to stay strong, to feel good about myself since getting away from my father are upsetting those I love most. I'm facing the fact that I need to back off, butt out ... give up that control that has kept me upbeat and positive for so long ... and maybe kept me from facing the demons I buried a long time back.
Patricia concludes her blog post with a few sentences that really hit home to me and prompted everything I've shared with you above. She wrote:
"You have to have awareness of behaviors before you can change them."
"I have learned that control hides fear - lots of fear."
She is so right. Deep within this 66-year-old woman who shows the world such a happy face, who is full of positive advice and encouragement for everyone, lives a very frightened child who lost control and has spent the rest of her life trying to regain it or keep it, sometimes at the risk of alienating those I love most: my husband and children. This is difficult. Will they understand what I'm trying to tell them now? Will they even read this? Probably not. Should I tell them about this post? Well if I do, aren't I really controlling them again, telling them to do something I want and need them to do but they may not want to do. Vicious cycle. How do I stop it? How do I stop controlling others when I obviously can't control myself?
I want to publicly thank Patricia for forcing me to think about myself in this light. I don't like what I found out but it was necessary. Maybe I can begin now to stop butting in, telling others what to do, live and let live, give advice when it's sought and remember that advice, unasked for, is not appreciated. Neither is control. To think it's taken this long to wake up! Ugh! And where do I go from here?
Let me finish this by again quoting Patricia:
When you face your fear, you can give up the need to control. Letting go of fear makes room for you to start to heal.
