Contesting Normal

Wow, I turned 47 years today. 47 trips around the sun on this ole Earth. My body may be 47, it feels like it is anyway, but my mind feels like a child still sometimes. Like the times when I get my feelings hurt.

I HATE those words. The reason I don’t like telling people how I feel if they have hurt me is that I don’t want them to tell me “I’m sorry I hurt your feelings”, like I’m a little child. Although me not telling people when they hurt my feelings is exactly like a child and not an adult thing to do. Not at all.

Sometimes I feel like I revert back to my childhood. This boy said, “Niecy don’t cry” when I was in third grade and my cat had got run over. I’ve always been an emotional person. No matter how “tough” I tried to be. It was especially hard when I was in elementary school, but I got a little better dealing with my emotions as I matured.

Now I SAY this, and I shouldn’t act as if it were true, because the emotions I feel come out of me in ways I don’t like. Mostly by doing something to harm myself. Not a single action. It’s more like, I’m going to go eat like 5 cookies because I’m seething mad at something someone did at work type thing.

So when I post lyrics on Facebook, it is usually to express some sort of feeling I’m having, and often times a rather immature feeling I’m having that I don’t want to be having. Just today in therapy she said, “Why can’t we just allow ourselves to FEEL the emotion and not judge ourselves for feeling bad about something?” Like, I didn’t say, “Because I don’t WANT to feel that way about (insert person) so I try not to feel that way and it just becomes something else then I feel bad for lashing out like a baby”. That’s what I should have said.

Therapy is an awkward thing, isn’t it? You go in there and you just get to talking then “times up!” and you’re just there like, well, we were like knee deep in talking about my Dad and now I’m just getting in the car to go back to work like normal.

Anyway, this Blue October song, Light You UP, I posted the other night like a FUCK YOU because I was feeling hurt. Yes, I was feeling like a little baby. The anger was at myself, though, the song says he is saying this to the part of him inside that doesn’t know how to explain how he feels so he’s like FUCK YOU! You hurt me so I’m lighting you up!

Another thing I relate to that song about is that when I get mad or hurt by someone, I want to “light them up” as if I’m going to burn all my bridges down, because I’m feeling vulnerable and I’m tired of hurting in silence.

Then I act out. That’s my disease, the very essence and core of it right there.

I can’t explain the way I feel inside (I’m too afraid), but you hurt me, so I’m lighting you up! (as if I’m never going to see anyone ever ever again)…..

That’s the little girl who lives inside of me who IS tired of being hurt. It’s true. Except I’m the one who hurts me because I don’t do what mature people do and TELL people when they do something or I think they did something to hurt my feelings.

Then it gets all weird and i just hide away, another part of that song. “You can’t admit you’re poison, go run and hide! FUCK YOU!” (he’s talking to himself on the inside) That feels like me, I’m the poison, I run and hide.

Well, that’s why I love music so much, it brings it out of me.

I’m just a jumble of feelings and sometimes I don’t even know what to say to describe it a lot of times.

What I’ve come here to talk about are those feelings I can’t explain and try to explain them the only way I know how, through music lyrics.

Sometimes I’ll be sitting next to Carlos on the couch and I’ll put my airpods in and start listening to music and all the sudden I’m crying.

Let me tell you a story about when I was in rehab as an example. In November of 2015 I went to rehab. In rehab there are these classes you go to during the day for therapy. One of the classes was music therapy. The therapist told us all to sit on the couches and chairs and close our eyes. Then Whisky Lullaby comes out of the blue tooth speaker:

“She put that bottle to her head and pulled the trigger
And finally drank away his memory
Life is short, but this time it was bigger
Than the strength she had to get up off her knees
We found her with her face down in the pillow
Clinging to his picture for dear life
We laid her next to him beneath the willow
While the angels sang a whiskey lullaby”

Those words really hit home for me.

My dad was in the nursing home for 4 years before his body gave out on him. The truth is, he gave up on life. Everything he loved was gone, I guess. He couldn’t work anymore, his hands wouldn’t work to play his guitar. He stopped eating. He ran me off when I tried to take care of him. He wanted his girlfriend to do it. She did, put him in the nursing home. As much as I pleaded, he would not go home. He would not come to McKinney with me. He just wanted to stay there in Hondo and be left alone.

The amount of grief I went through those 4 years was so bad. We were really close. He was my hero and when he gave up on life like that, it devastated me. He fell down hard from the pedestal I put him on in my mind. We had our down times, we fought about money a lot. He’d give me some, I would spend it all, then he would get mad, then get over it, then give me more money, then get mad and over and over and over. And I was a full grown adult with a kid. My guilt was heavy. Really really heavy.

When he died, I refused to grieve any longer. After everything, I felt angry at him for giving up. So angry for not wanting to live for me or my brother or James. We weren’t enough for him to try for. I didn’t want to feel that way anymore. So I pushed it down. Except the nights I would get messed up, though, there it came back out. Late at night I would sit in the living room playing the slide show I made for his service over and over and over on my laptop. Or I would go out in the garage and look at all the pictures I brought back from the home I grew up in. The one he let his girlfriend sell and didn’t care one bit about how it would affect my brother or me.

Sitting on that chair and hearing those words, I realized what I was doing. My grief was not going anywhere, I wasn’t getting over it. It managed to push its through when it had the chance because I wouldn’t allow myself to feel it when I was sober. It was also causing me to act out and hurt myself with bad behaviors. If I kept on like I was, I was going to lose everything I loved. My husband, my son, maybe even my life. I had already lost so much. My car, my camera, my self respect..

That song helped bring out what I was really feeling so I could get over it. I didn’t want to kill myself mourning for the loss of my dad. Or anyone. This lady in the class had the same reaction, as she was also mad at her dad. We hugged, complete strangers hugging it out in rehab.

I’m grateful for that. For my friends who helped me get into rehab. My family who supported me while I was there and every day since then. I’m so lucky.