Breathing Emotions

     I don't deal well with emotions.  Not mine, not others.  And especially not external displays.  As a small child, I learned that crying made things worse.  Laughter and happiness also seemed to have the same negative effect with my father.  He considered it all to be "noise".
     When I went into foster care, even as a 5 year old, I felt like I needed to be strong.  I didn't want anyone to be upset with me.  I didn't want to give anyone a reason to hurt me (this was due to my earlier experiences, not because I was being harmed in my new home).  I became silent, invisible.  Emotions attracted attention.  I didn't want that.
     By the time I was in middle school I had learned to stuff my emotions.  I pushed them so far down, all in an attempt to avoid feeling them.  After all, if everything looked ok on the outside, then it must be, right?
     The older I got, the more determined I became to hide my emotions.  All of them, but especially fear, anger, uncertainty.  I grew to associate these with weakness, and I was anything but that.  I became stoic, leading people to think I didn't care, which was so untrue.  But it was my wall, my protective reflex.
     All of this stuffing of my emotions, however, seemed to heighten my ability to read other people's emotions.  This skill allowed me time to read the situation and prepare accordingly, either to physically or psychologically escape before they emoted.
     As I have worked through the maze that is my life's story, I have gradually learned to add emotions back into my life.  Mostly the "safe ones". Happiness.  Joy.  A semblance of peace.  Sadness.  But, rarely, do I cry.  That is my last piece of strength.  I cry so infrequently that it freaks my husband and kids out when I do.  They flip into a mix of discomfort and concern.  See, the problem with not dealing with your emotions means other people don't know how to deal with your emotions.  People want to share the burden, the joy, the emotion.

     Fast-forward to yesterday.  My husband was out working in the garden.  I bathed, then I put a load of laundry in to wash.  I changed the bed.  As I was pulling up the comforter, I felt my chest seize.  I couldn't breathe.  I began to panic!  I leaned on the bed, gasping for breath.  Every inhale seared through my lungs.

     "I have covid", I thought.

     I made my way through the house and across the yard.  By the time I reached the garden, my chest was on fire.  Tears were trickling down my cheeks.  My husband saw my tears and was instantly on alert.  When I said I couldn't breathe, he flew down the hill and got me back into the house.  After a quick call to my doctor, we headed to the emergency room.
     The hospital is less than 10 minutes from my house, but each minute seemed to make it even harder for me to breathe.  I tried all the coping skills I knew, trying to steady my breaths and stop the pain.  Nothing worked.  By the time we pulled in, tears were freely streaming down my cheeks.  I wasn't even going to try to hold them back.
     My husband ran to the make-shift intake station to tell them what was happening.  The lady took one look at me and quickly appeared with a wheelchair.  I heard my husband tell me they weren't going to let him go in with me.  It made me full out cry which made it even harder to breathe, especially with a mask on.
     In that moment of fear, not knowing if I was going to live or die, emotional control went out the window. I sat in that room all alone, crying as I struggled to breathe.

     A flurry of nurses came into my room, each one wearing multiple layers of gloves, plus masks and gowns.  Blood was drawn.  A chest x-ray was taken.  Telling me to "take a deep breath and hold it" seemed like a cruel joke.  Next came the covid test.  The nurse pushed the swab so far up my nose that I kept wondering if it would come out my tear duct.

     Again, they left me alone in my fear.

     As I waited for the next steps, I texted my kids.  I needed them to hear from me, just in case.  I fought to put that out of my mind.  It upset me, making it too hard to catch my breath,  As I sat there in the solitude, I could hear the man in the room next to me.  He was upset because his caregiver hadn't been allowed to come back with him.  He just didn't understand what was happening.  I could also hear the nurses describing certain rooms as "air borne".  It made me sad to think what they were going through, in their rooms all alone.
     Eventually I was given a breathing treatment.  The nurse said it should work in about  minutes.  Well, my body doesn't do anything "typical", so it was an hour til I started feeling relief.  I was released with an inhaler, being treated for viral bronchitis.  I later learned the covid test was negative.
     After a long day, both physically and emotionally, my breathing eased.  The pain remained in my chest, caused by the exertion of my gasping and coughing.  It serves as a metaphor for my emotions.  Working through an incident doesn't take the pain away.  Knowing what caused an emotional response allows me to learn more about myself.  Showing an emotion allows me to learn about both myself and others who care for me.  While it makes me uncomfortable, is it really fair for me to have others shut down their own emotions or not allow them to share in mine? 
   
     I don't think so.
   

Church Abuse

I escaped from a cult.
Not the kind that kidnaps you, brainwashes you and demands a ransom from your family.  This one was far more sinister.

When my family moved back to Pennsylvania from Tennessee in 1999, we were broken.  Our marriage was in shambles, my husband was struggling at his job and our kids were young and needed a lot of attention.  We were living in his parent's house while we looked for our own, sampling churches along the way.

Once we knew the area we were going to live, we narrowed our church search to those close by.  In one church we went to, no one greeted us, or even acknowledged our presence.  In another, we just happened to be there the same day the pastor announced his resignation.  So, when we happened upon a small, overly-friendly congregation, it seemed like a great fit.  At least to my husband.  He went to the altar for prayer.  He cried and cried.  When we got home, he said being at that church made him "feel like he was home".

I didn't feel the same.
Something just seemed a little too good there.

I sat back and I watched.  That's what I do.  Size people up.  See if their walk matches their talk.  I hang back in the shadows, watching, trying to be unnoticeable.  I began to make friends on the fringe, but never quite considering it *my* church.

After we'd been there for about a year, I began to slowly let my guard down.  I became involved in things.  I attended women's bible studies and outings. I was assigned a mentor.  It seemed like the more I shared with her, the higher I rose in the church.  This brought jealous whispers behind my back and strange accusations.  It didn't make sense to me.  I was just being me, trying to improve myself.

I joined the prayer team.  I became the administrative assistant to the pastor.  I was in the inner circle. The whispers continued.  But I was confident in my position, knowing I was not doing anything wrong.  And as I felt more comfortable, I shared more and more of me.  My past, my hurts, my struggles.  The problem was, I was sharing those details with the wrong people.

The pastor was charismatic.  Fatherly.  Disarming. He seemed safe, maybe even trustworthy.  For me, that was a giant step.  The way he asked questions seemed caring, not probing.  I began to tell him more and more, thinking he was helping me deal with my past, sort out current issues, deal with people.  Instead he was grooming me.  Using my hurts, my quirks, my pasts to manipulate me, to further entrench me in their *system*.

Things were good there for a long time.
We established strong friendships.  Our house was often filled with people and laughter.
We experienced healing in our marriage, even having a ceremony there to renew our marriage vows.
I began to have healing in my life, starting to deal with scary, hurtful things from my past.
To let people *in*.

Then things got strange.  It began to fill uncomfortable.  We began to question things being said and done.  That was the beginning of the end.  I'd seen what happened to people who disagreed: how they were punished, ostracized, talked about, forced to leave.  Suddenly I was that person.  My worst nightmare was coming true.

The next 14 months were basically hell on earth for my family.  I watched my children's friends be torn away from them.  People quit talking to us.  I was forbidden to talk to the "pastor", and was assigned a handler who was supposed to be my liaison.  He took his job very seriously, using every opportunity to remind me of his place of power over me.

Fourteen months of pain and bewilderment.
Fourteen months of watching our friends drift away, choosing to sacrifice their relationships with us in order to maintain their position in the church.
Fourteen months of no one praying for us.
Fourteen months of crying every. single. day.

When we finally left there, I was totally broken.
My physical health deteriorated to the point that I had to stop working.  Some days I couldn't even get out of bed.  I was in constant physical pain.  The emotional pain was immeasurable.
I was diagnosed with complex PTSD.
I lived in constant fear of running into someone from that leadership team.  The few times i did see people at the grocery store, they made eye contact then turned and walked away.
I felt like a pariah.

We've been away from that for seven years now.
In some ways, I feel like I'm back to the broken woman I was when we first started attending there. The guard is so much stronger now, more impenetrable than it was before.
I'm more alert and cautious.
I'm slower to let people in, and quicker to let them out.
It's a lonely place to be.

I'm looking for the ways that I'm stronger now because of that experience.  Those are harder to find. I feel like the areas that I'm stronger in are negatives.
I'm more cynical.
I'm more guarded.
I'm even more untrusting.
But I'm alive.  I got out.
The cult, that man, did not break me.

Make a choice already

I've spent the majority of my life deciding what I didn't want to be.

I didn't want to be a victim.
A victim like my mother, brutalized by someone she loved.  A victim like my grandmother who fought the demons but lost.  A victim like that lost little girl that men touched and kissed and based her worth on her looks.

I didn't want to be dependent on a man for... anything.
I didn't want a man to tell me if I could spend money or not.  Not like my mom.
I didn't want to need a man to fix things, open things, protect me from things.

I didn't want to be different.
Not the shy girl who couldn't meet your gaze.  Not the adopted girl who didn't look like the rest of the family..  Not the girl who scratched rashes or had non-stop cold sores. Not the girl with the past so scary that she couldn't talk about it.

I didn't want to be used.
Not by any one.  Least of all by a father who treated me like a possession. Or an uncle with disgusting motives. Or any one of the boys who tried to lure me away into dark rooms and wooded trails.

I didn't want to be afraid.
Afraid of an abusive father with a quick temper.  Afraid of turning out like my mother.  Afraid of being less than.  Afraid of not being able to protect myself and the ones I loved. Afraid of the dark.  Afraid of the silence.  Afraid of closed doors and unknown places.  Afraid of people and afraid of myself.  Afraid of making the wrong choice.  Afraid of losing everything... again.

I didn't want to be alone.

The problem is that while I was so focused on not being something, I didn't choose what I did want to be.  I just let my life morph me into someone hard, jaded, solitary, non-trusting, fierce, abrasive and wildly independent.    I built walls greater than the ones Trump has planned.  I learned to disconnect from my body, to not respond to touch.  I learned to free myself from external emotion, to pace my breathing and maintain control.  I learned to hide all emotion and project a blank canvas that didn't belie the turmoil just below the surface.

They say if it doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger.  I'm not sure that's the case.  I think it makes you harder.  People stop trying to get in, stop trying to penetrate the fortress that's been reinforced with fat and sarcasm on the outside, hurt and loneliness on the inside.  People pull away-- or are driven away-- and every fear about people is realized.

People suck.  People leave.  People hurt.  People disappoint.  People are... people.  And supposedly I need them.  Well, that's what I'm told.  I don't totally buy into that.  I'm skeptical.  But maybe I don't want to be.

I'm Strong enough

It's amazing how a person's off-hand, insensitive comment can send me back to childhood and, seemingly, undo years of emotional progress.

I'm an adopted foster child.

The early parts of my life were very traumatic, filled with abuse and suffering.  As a result, I was a shy child, always trying to stay hidden and blend into the background.  It also meant emotions were pushed deep down inside and never expressed.

Eczema also ran in my family, and I had it.  Bad.  Stress caused it to flare up, and I was in a constant state of stress for most of my childhood and young-adult life.  And, of course, it couldn't be somewhere hidden on my body.

It was on my arms the most.  I'd be nice and tan most places, except the white patches where I'd scratched off the skin.

The it moved to my neck.  The skin would peel off, exposing gaping cracks in the flesh.  That really made the guys want to ask me out.

I also developed cold sores, and spent most of high school with perpetual cracks at the  corners of my mouth.  People spread rumors that I had herpes and several mature high school guys called me "crusty".

All this just created more stress, which spun the vicious cycle.

My adoptive parents didn't handle it much better.  I was punished for scratching and for breakouts.  I was forced to memorize countless scripture verses about healing, and told I wasn't healed because I didn't have enough faith.  I was dragged from doctor to doctor, enduring scrutinizing doctors, shots and countless creams and lotions.

I felt judged, and punished, for something that was beyond my control.

I grew up, moved out, got married and had children all the while enduring questions and sneers when people saw my skin.  About this time, the eczema had settled on my hands, making it all but impossible to hide.

Thankfully, as I aged I learned better ways to deal with my stress and also received much counselling to deal with all the emotional turmoil I had been in for so many years. Ever so slowly, my skin healed.

The cracks closed.

The blisters disappeared.

The itching was gone.

I have been symptom free for several years now.

Then we got a new color shampoo at the salon I work in.  Several of us are having a bout of contact dermatitis because we use it so much.

So, I've been nursing my hands, attempting to get them back to normal.  Apparently, I'm not doing it so well.

As I was perming an older ladies hair today, she asked me if anyone had complained about me working on people with how my hands looks.  In that instant, all the pain of my childhood experiences came rushing pain.  I wanted to cry, but I pushed back the tears that were stinging my eyes, and instead asked her about her own cracked knuckles.  "Dry skin" she said.  Well, duh. 

Again, I'm being judged for something I have no control over.  The emotions are high, and my nerves are raw.  I'm a little girl, trying to hide.  Wishing to be invisible.

But that doesn't "fit" anymore.  I've grown, matured, healed.  I don't fit in that mold anymore.

I'm stronger now.  I know who I am.  I know what is my responsibility and what burden I truly bear.

I'm strong enough to let go of all the pain from the  past surrounding my skin and how people have viewed me because of it.  I choose to move forward, out of the pain (both physical and emotional) and just. let. go.