We're Not the People Who Raised Us

Hiding is a habit.

I thought I'd be unpacked in a week. It's been two months. I've been unpacking in waves. The first two weeks after my move, my home office was filled with boxes, my computer set up on one of them. Then I got my desk set up, with my dad's help, and I moved the boxes into the closet (out of my sight); I didn't need their contents right away, if at all. A month (or so) later, I started to tackle the boxes in my closet. The final six are in a corner of my office (and the closet is now clean and organized).

I wondered whether or not I was unpacking at a reasonable (i.e., normal) rate, or not. I wondered if a more industrious person would have unpacked all these boxes in their first week in a new home. A better person. A more perfect person. Then I reminded myself that a neighbor told me they still have unpacked boxes...a year after their move. Then, I thought, hey, hey, wait: I'm unpacking the way I am, at the rate I am, and that's fine. I unpack in waves. That's all, that's me. And that's fine.

Continued...

Maybe...I'm uneasy about what's in those boxes. When I started to unpack the photographs...I saw my mom. It was a framed photo of us, me sitting by her side in a shallow river. The rapidity of the rushing water, and the chill of it, remind me of my childhood anxiety perfectly.

I set the picture on a shelf in the closet. I can see it when I slide the door across to grab a stapler or scissors or tape. "Hidden," I realized. "Why don't I place it on my desk out here? Why hide it away?"

But the fact is, I've long had a habit of hiding my mom. She died six years ago in March, and the last time I lived with her was when I was four or five. There were the ten years when I was in my late teens/twenties when I didn't see her. There were the summer visits (one or two weeks) when I saw her and whichever of the four husbands she was married to at that time. There were her presents...she used to send me birthday and Christmas presents, that embarrassed me--presents wrapped in newspaper, without tape, without ribbons, and with twisted ends to keep things concealed.

I never opened presents from my mom with others; I would not add them to the pile under the Christmas tree. I opened them in my bedroom with the door closed, in secret. Hiding. The wrapping embarrassed me. The gifts themselves embarrassed me. They were healing crystals or tree ornaments (for my birthday, in August) or ninety-nine cent barrettes or hair combs with the price sticker still on. The gifts always had cigarette smoke odor, so the gifts had a way of getting under my skin...literally.

Keeping her photograph hidden is such an old habit, and catching myself doing it again, in a new house, reminds me of those years long ago when the weight of my mixed-up feelings about her and our relationship, such as it was, bore down on me painfully hard. It's not now, but the habit, clearly, lives on.

Just before she died, I'd started 'going public' about my mom--that is, making a point to mention her existence to people, and opening letters or gifts from her in open rooms and around other people. By integrating her, even if in an awkward way, into my life, I began to get how much I'd hidden her, repressed her, because...I feared becoming her. I was afraid she'd rub off on me, her addiction, her mental illness, her beyond-alternative lifestyle. I'd handled her gifts and letters like a highly-contagious virus, holding the things briefly, then hiding them away.

Somewhere along the way I saw that she hadn't rubbed off on me in the ways I'd feared. And, the ways in which I am like her have become meaningful; they became meaningful to me as soon as she died.

Hiding things, ourselves, our personal stories...I suspect it just feels safer to hide. It's an old instinct.

But, as we heal, we see we're okay, we get better and better, when unveiled. You're not the people who raised you.

Peace.
AE

Comments

[Sheila]

"But, as we heal, we see we're okay, we get better and better, when unveiled." - Very well put. I really appreciate your blog and all of the information in it. Thank you.

[lieben]

Interessante Informationen.

[amy eden]

Without a doubt we all worry about being our parents to our own kids. It's a worry. A fear. But no more than than. The only guarantee that you WILL be like your own parents to your children is if you go through life unconsciously, angrily, and hopelessly. And you're not -- you're doing much, much better than than. You're a vastly improved version of the child your parents "raised." We have every reason to trust ourselves to be good parents (to ourselves and to our kids, both). And, anyway, we're not trying to be perfect, just thoughtful, self-reflective, and kind. That's plenty!

[AngrySar]

This one almost made me cry... great post, great blog :-)
This really rings true for me, in that I am sometimes OBSESSED with not being like my dad... in the past, I've even hated the good ways I'm like him, just to sort of disassociate myself from him more. But like you've said, I can see where I can sort of "use those powers for good" that I got from him... my creativity, musical & artistic talents, my intelligence, sarcasm, dry wit, good work ethic (without being a perfectionist workaholic), and so forth. I tell my bf I'm terrified of putting my own kids through what I did. And I agree with what he's told me many times: if you actively strive to be something, you will become that. And I am working on becoming the culmination of the good parts of my parents... not the codependency of my mom or the abusiveness of my dad. I am working to find, and hold onto me, the one who survived and can do anything because of it.

[CJ's Mommy]

that's why i sought out, found & read the ACOA syndrome, i was pregnant and petrified that i would be like him... or rather, make the mistakes they made w/us becuase what else could i know? as scared as i was, it's nothing compared to how relieved i am, knowing to my core that i'm not him... and i wont ever BE like him... i'm me, faults and all!

Wow. A recent parallel in my life was a choice to return to my original career as a builder/developer. On filing for divorce 18 years ago, I packed away pictures, licenses, phone numbers, moved away, and never mentioned the X, my family, my home town for all those years - all hidden away. I was ashamed of the shambles my life with her had become.

All because I could not separate one group of unhappy circumstances from all the others in my life.

First day of Spring of this year (March 20th), I made a commitment to reawaken my own personal dream, and had that one box with the most important things in it brought to me out of storage.

Opening it was perhaps the most painful adult experience in my life. It literally had me so terrified I had the same effects as stomach flu(and this by someone who can make the brawniest concrete worker tremble).

But I did open the box. Out came the old license, the old college degree, the old pictures, the old love letters, the old vacation pics, the old awards and newspaper clippings.

But the bad people from my past did NOT come out.

It may seem a little long to some, but for me it only took 18 years to gain a respectable perspective of myself.

I am not my alcoholic, violently abusive father, I do not have a sign over my head, declaring I was once married to a untreated ACoA with drug, money, and morality issues. I am not like my siblings who took advantage of their drunken father and picked his estate clean, and became alcoholic or drug abusers themselves.

I am me. And I declare I am me, knowing I have spent all these years deciding who ME is, and I find myself - finally, proud of ME.

Thanks Amy, it is good to know that the inside of my head is not unique.

[Molly]

Thanks for sharing this, Amy.