I closed my week in Jamaica with a shot of steroids in my ass. I had fluid in my ears and was told by the doctor post intimacy that I needed to extend my trip by a day to let my ears heal before getting on a plane.
I've been struggling for a week on a very, very sad song about my childhood and how it has dominated my relationships with men. The shot in my ass gave me the necessary comedic perspective to finish this piece and let it go.
On the plane, 8 days ago, flying towards Montego Bay, I was struck by an image of my face over the past couple of decades, scanning various crowds for a man to love me. It's been an intensely driven search. I have been grasping (gasping even sometimes) for sustenance without being able to identify what will fulfill me.
The article I was reading on the plane by Martha Beck encouraged me to examinine my motivations. I did so and came to the sickening certainty that I've been looking for men who have some or all of the characteristics of my father so I can beg them to love me the way I should have been loved as a child.
My father was cruel and elusive for all the years I lived close to him. He was inconsistent, unreliable, dishonest, and stingy with his approval. I have taken any one of these qualities as necessary evils from every man for whom I've had feelings. Not so shockingly, I have not convinced these metaphorical fathers to embrace role play and help me change my past. Instead, I am divorced from a sweet man, single, and fabulous at attracting cruel men.
I am 37 years old and I want to stop this aching search and just breathe a little. Bill Cunningham requoted in his great documentary, "he who seeks beauty will find it". I have been blessed with a rainbow of intoxicating experiences: my kids, friends, business, travel... Sadly, these blessings have been met by this painful need to fill the black hole of my childhood neglect. I'm capable of giving so much love, but I've not been able to receive it in return because it isn't what I've been looking for.
I recognize, now, that I didn't even want these men to be real partners and lovers, I just wanted to feel like an adored child. I wanted doses of adoration with a nasty desperation that pushed aside any real experiences as they were happening to me.
This single-minded pursuit has limited my life.
Can I stop? Can I seek beauty instead? Can I let go of my childhood and accept that although it was bereft of healthy love from my parents, I am no longer a child and there are other things I can experience to nourish and heal me? Can I let go of the pain of growing up with the parents I had and accept that neither has any power in my life anymore except in how I choose to live?
I pray that I have the resolve to seek beauty, in myself, and rejoice in how stunning I am. I pray for this realization to make it impossible for me to remain in the presence of men who will not bring me joy. I pray to understand what it means to be protective of my beauty and shield it from the dark things attracted to its light. I pray to see myself as my true admirers do, and have flashes of how God sees me.
I pray also to receive the gifts of love and beauty that God has been giving me to fill in the hole of being neglected by my parents. The biggest gift I've been given, of course, is my kids. They came to me broken, also neglected, in need of so much love and stability. I thank God for creating this new crazy family within which we all can heal.
This is my last day in Jamaica, I leave this gorgeous hotel in just a few hours. I believe that I can break the pattern of trying to change my past. I'm going to put myself in the water now and let the ocean do what it always has, hold and surround me with its infinite love and wisdom.
No comments:
Post a Comment