Many years ago, I woke up one night at 4 am with the realization that I felt an incredible sense of abandonment. I started scanning back and back through my life, trying to figure out when it first manifested itself, and I felt myself going back to being a newborn. I have never had conscious memories of my early life, but right then, I could feel how cold the world was, how bright, how much I longed to be held.
Throughout my childhood, my parents had told me that for the first two weeks of my life, I remained in the hospital. I was taken from my mother soon after I was born and was placed in a special nursery for children with low birth weight and other problems, and my parents were allowed only limited visits to see me.
That sleepless night, I felt that deep loneliness, felt how it was to be left alone in the world, to be unwanted and unloved. And I realized how much that experience had imprinted upon me, how much I’d held onto it all my life. I cried for many hours, silently, trying not to wake my then-husband, not wanting to explain to him that deep hole inside me.
I wouldn’t call myself a shy child; but I was a fearful one. I was afraid of monsters in the closet, people at the door, strangers lurking around the corner. There were times I’d curl up under my bed with a book or pull aside a corner of my curtains and watch the outside world like a spy, feeling like nobody could see me and that in that unseen place I was safe.
I didn’t feel like I could talk to anyone about how I felt, especially not my parents. I felt invisible and unimportant, and more than that, as I continued to grow and my sisters and brother were born, they and my parents made my quirks and insecurities fodder for jokes and laughs at my expense. I would play along, trying to be tough, telling myself they were trying to get me to “lighten up,” because in my parents’ household, quick wit and a snappy retort were highly prized, and I couldn’t afford to look vulnerable. But what I felt was alone, absurd and insignificant.
No matter how I did in school, it was never enough. I was told I wasn’t “living up to my potential,” and there was always someone who was doing better than I was. I wasn’t good at sports, at ballet or at piano, and I could see my flaws and what I was not successful at much more clearly than I could anything I enjoyed or did well. So I felt like this drooping flower, kind of hiding there in plain sight, doing my thing, and only when the sun passed me or someone outside of me noticed me did I feel alive, visible or significant.
It’s funny, because although I have wanted to be seen and to feel like I have a voice for as long as I can remember, I have been afraid to use that voice and that visibility much of my life. I’m realizing that even though writing has been at the heart of my career path, much of what I’ve created professionally has never had my name on it, and some has even been expressly ghostwritten under others’ names. I’ve effectively rendered myself voiceless.
I can see that I’ve allowed myself to fade into the background, all the while telling myself that it was others that gave me voice, gave me light, gave me life. But while I write this, I can see how wrong that is, how it has been an excuse to keep myself in the shadows, where I have been uncomfortably complacent all my life. Here, I can safely watch the world from a distance, telling myself I can understand others’ motivations or see the big picture from my silent vantage point. But really, it has just been lonely.
So, for many years I’ve tried to build my value by reaching out to others, telling them that I see them, that I understand them, that they are not alone. I have told others that what they’re feeling is perfectly normal, that they are not insane or outsiders, but are seeing what is true for them. In short, I have validated their experience.
How novel that in writing this I can now see that I give the people I connect with a “pass” on the world, and I recognize and articulate to them that they are only human and don’t need to be perfect, nor is the world a place where we always experience happy and beautiful things. But somehow, I haven’t internalized all of that. I let myself fall victim to my own harsh judgements, measure myself against an impossible yardstick and feel all the time like I am not living up. In short, I am underscoring to myself time and again that I am small and insignificant and deserve to be alone. What a revelation!
I am starting to be able to see how this approach is playing out in my life–both validating others and playing the “tough guy” and putting on a front about being alone or above it all. I can see where I am weighing only the negatives about myself and failing to live up to impossible standards that are challenging for all of us to meet. And I am slowly starting to realize that I can drop it and let it go. (I think!)
I can also see how my marriage underscored all of these feelings and left me feeling even more isolated and lonely. But in the years since my divorce, I know that I have grown. I know this partially because others have validated that for me–I mean that not only in the sense that they have told me as much, but in the fact that my present partner tells me all the time how much he loves and values me and sees all that I do—but because I am bringing in different experiences and opening the door to saying sayonara to this belief.
There is clearly a deep well inside of me connected to all of this. And I don’t think I’ve ever thought of it as needing “validation.” Mostly, I’ve thought about what I needed to do to change: to cultivate more self-love or awareness, to find ways to be calmer, to slow down and relax and to find peace in the silence. But while all those are pretty things, it’s even more important to me to see that it’s just about releasing my grip on an old, old way of seeing the world and my place in it. That feels so empowering, and it gives me the “juice” to know that making that change will happen. It shows me that these are walls I have constructed. And by gum, it’s time to tear them down.
Author: mprovorny
Honest Spirituality. 