11/21/2024 - 12:25 a.m.

I always say when things start going well, you still have one problem... It reminds you of how bad everything was before things started going well....

I've been "making progress" tonight -- on things that have been bugging me for... years. I came from a dysfunctional family. (No alcohol, but my dad was just cold and detached. And us kids grew up in the shadow of that.) I think there was one conversation where I'd tried to have some self-esteem, and got shouted down. And then one more conversation, years later, where I'd tried again...

I mean, I should claim victory, I guess. In that I recognized it was a bad situation, and left. I dunno; it just was really hard to actually fully claim that separation. I saw a sitcom once that reminded me of my family a little too much. A guy tells a girl that he's breaking up with her... and she says, "No." (As in, "I don't accept that." And then they argue about whether or not he's allowed to unilaterally break up with her, if she's refusing to accept it...) It was like that.

Some people call it "gaslighting" -- specifically where someone in a dysfunctional family acts like everything is fine. It's the classic denial -- it's really common in most dysfunctional relationships. That there's someone who's clinging to the way things are, so if you try to make a healthy change they not only fight you, but also insist they can't even see the problem you're responding to. It must not even exist, since they don't see it. That's the message they try to send...

It's a sad experience, being on the other side of that. Facing this absolute denial -- of your feelings, of your experiences, of the very thing you're trying to say out loud. This life change you're trying to make -- they're fighting you every inch of the way. Will almost certainly never forgive you. And like the novelist says: You can't go home again.

There's a song I might sing someday at karaoke night. Hits a little too close to home; not sure anyone else wants to hear it. But I heard it in those first few early years, and I remember it meant something to me. Sometimes it still does mean something to me, that this song even existed.

So if you're lost and on your own
You can never surrender.
And if your path won't take you home
You can never surrender.

And when the night is cold and dark and lonely
You can see light.

'Cause no one can take away your right, to fight, and
To never surrender. Never surrender...

I kind of wandered away from my main point here. ("There was one conversation where I'd tried to have some self-esteem...") Now that I look back on my family, I see that it was such a strange place to be starting out. So atypical from the rest of the world. I see that it had an impact on the way I showed up for school, for example -- with all the behaviors I'd learned at home. Of course, school is kind of odd in its own way (if not also a little dysfunctional...)

And it's a big thing, to say "I'm going to walk away from it -- all of it." The 20-plus years of bad family input -- I'm gonna try again, with the real world. No point trying to adapt to this weird little clot of dysfunctional vectors. Not gonna waste another second on it.

See, I say that... I go through the motions of having done it. But it's taking me a while to really recognize that old family circle that I'd used to live in as a.) truly dysfunctional, and b.) over. And of course a big part of the problem is the habits I developed... They hung around, for a while... I don't really know what one is supposed to do about that. (I did try seeing a counselor, but maybe she just wasn't the right one? She kept wanting to not talk about the past but the present. My theory was that my insurance wasn't going to cover more than a few sessions, so she wanted to just cut to the chase.)

So where does that all leave me? Maybe I'll just say this...

I'm getting better at thinking of my family as having been truly dysfunctional. So I don't feel guilty about leaving. I think that means I've broken away from (their) denial, their gaslighting...

And as the months roll by, new behaviors just appear. Behaviors that make sense now; make sense for the world as it is; that don't require believing any things that are untrue. So that's good. That train of progress keeps on rollin'...

But, yeah, it's a big thing to say "I'm going to walk away from it -- all of it." But I think I'm doing it -- and doing it more, more fully and completely, than ever before. It's good; but maybe it's a new way of being, of shining your light in the world -- a newness so bright that you have to sneak up on it.

But, so, I am sneaking up on it. I am in a new day, and I know it, and I see it.

It's not that I'm stepping into the light. It's that I have, already, stepped into a light. Now I just have to accept it.