Excising a Lily-Liver

July 23, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Normal
0
0
1
1007
5741
47
11
7050
11.1287

0
0

As part of my personal work, I am called to amend
relationships in my life that are in need of clarity and repair.

As part of that work, I broke down my list of these people
into three categories: People I fall out of touch with; Men I intrigue with;
and My dad.

I’ve begun the work on those I’ve fallen out of touch with –
it’s usually out of a habitual belief that I’m not good enough to show up for
relationships and I self-prophesize that by allowing relationships that I value
fall away. These are relatively easy to repair, and by doing so, I get to
challenge these false and long-held beliefs by being consistent, responsible, and focused on the truth.

Amending my relationships with the second set of humans is
more … well, I was going to say more difficult, but it’s not more “difficult,”
it’s just harder because I have more invested in those. If you don’t know what
intriguing is, it’s those little flirtations, vaguely flirtatious texts or
conversations, or over-active “likings” of someone else’s Facebook page in a “winking” kinda way. It’s, for
me, engaging in flirtatious behavior with people I don’t want to go any further
with, and sometimes with people I have no interest in, but who I know I can reach out
to when my self-esteem meter is low for a little infusion of “See, I have value:
he wants me,” and a little hit of adrenaline from the oblique exchange.

This is a very old habit. And it’s excruciatingly unfair to
both the men and to myself, especially any of those who think there’s still a
shot. It’s unfair to me, because I continue to feed the delusion that my
self-esteem comes from others, and to crowd the field of actual potential
partners with distractions – albeit often very handsome, talented and
hilarious distractions.

Since the time that I wrote down the half dozen or so names
of those with whom I was actively engaging in this behavior, about half have
simply fallen away through circumstance and lack of my engaging. They’re
intrigues, not relationships usually, so they don’t require some big
conversation like, “Hey, I’m trying to be more clear in my relationships, and I
just want to say that I really appreciate you as a friend, and that I see us just being friends in the future.”

The funny thing about saying this is that, when I’ve given that speech in the past, usually the response is, “Yeah, totally! I don’t even know what
you’re talking about.” Which is fine. I
love you and your egos, and I will help preserve them too; I’m not here to bust
your balls. I’m just here to offer us both some clarity and let us both off the
carousel of “Will we/Won’t we” so that we can get on with our lives.

But. For some of the people on my current list, that
conversation is necessary, and in a truncated, “light” version, I
had that talk with one of these men recently. And the backlash from it was … well,
people don’t like when you change the rules in the middle of the game. And I’m
having to show up for the fall-out of that, even though I just want to avoid
it. I participated in the game, I should participate in the dénouement.—Oh, but
how much easier to Cut & Run!! Oh, old M.O., how I love you! … and miss you.

Because I don’t really do or want to do that anymore. See:
first subset of humans: retracting from relationships because I don’t believe I
can show up.

It’s the same underlying belief in this second category.

More will be revealed, and I have some writing to do and a conversation to have
with some for whom I’ve changed the rules. It’s not comfortable, but neither
is predicating a relationship on false hope.

The final category, I see now, has its foundation in the
self-same belief that I can’t show up for relationships. In this case, with my
dad, I’m being asked to be honest with him in a way that frightens the shit out
of me.

I would LOVE to lie,
avoid, detach, retreat, and retract. But each and every day since the
invitation to his wedding came in over the phone, I’ve been called to take a
different course. Because, I have been using the above mechanisms for how to
manage this relationship. I’ve been
detached and retracted, and avoidant. And, much like with the men, I’ve created a
game that I don’t want to play. One in which my dad thinks I want or can have a
relationship with him.

To tangent:

This morning, I will get an ultrasound of my liver to confirm or disconfirm cirrhosis. About
two months ago, my liver enzymes came up elevated, and although I simply think
it’s my body’s reparation from 6 months of chemo a bit more than a year ago, I
am also very aware that in Chinese medicine, the liver is the seat of anger.
And two months ago, I was very angry. For a long time. And this dad stuff only
serves to aggravate it.

I was at my therapist’s last Wednesday, and I told her that
I would really love to be able to forgive him, but I am not able to do that.
I’m terrified that my lack of forgiveness for him is perpetuating the problems
in my life, and creating holes in the foundation of my life and relationships
and happiness — and my health.

I told her, it’s astonishing to me that I can have
forgiveness for my rapists, but not have any for him. Compassion, I have in
crateloads. I know how this person came to be, and it’s a sad state of affairs.
But, no matter what modes of self repair I try, I can’t find my way to
forgiving him, and I feel that I need to
in order to move on with my life.

She said something critically important: You can’t
manufacture forgiveness.

If I’m not there, then I’m not there.

“But what about that he’s getting older, and what if he dies
and this is unresolved?”

You can’t manufacture forgiveness.

I can’t bully or force myself into a feeling that I don’t
have. She said that I have some word she couldn’t place that indicates deep disappointment. And betrayal. And this is true.

And I would love to “get over it.” But I’m not there yet,
and beating myself up for not being at a place where I’m not doesn’t help me
get there quicker.

I honestly don’t know if I’ll get to this place this
lifetime. The very last time I was vulnerable to him and depended on him, he
used it as a later opportunity to shame me for not being the daughter he wants. This
is a Catch-22 relationship.

But. It’s not.

The catch is that I have to be willing to show up with my
truth, which, like my friends and like those men, is that I don’t like who I’m
being in this relationship, and it’s harming me. I don’t like to show up in a
falsetto range “happy” conversation with him, when that’s not at all true for
me, and so I avoid the conversations. But, he’s pressing now, and there’s a
deadline.

The truth will out, as Shakespeare wrote. The work on my part
will be to get ready to deliver it. To get ready by remembering I’m acting in
an esteemable way by showing up for my part of the relationship. I’m also
working on steadying myself for the fallout, of which I anticipate there will
be much.

Again, people don’t like when you change the rules in the
middle of the game.

But this was a game I started playing when I was a child.
The rules have changed. It’s time for me
to let the other players know.

To let them know I’ve stopped playing.

abundance · adulthood · awareness · father · fear · scarcity · self-compassion · truth

Thou Shalt…

July 15, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Normal
0
0
1
468
2668
22
5
3276
11.1287

0
0

I’m always hesitant to share my meditations. Like listening
to someone report their dream, which to the dreamer is a fascinating pursuit,
and to the listener is … not. But. This morning’s meditation was too
illustrative and too relevant to current musings not to report. So, bear with.

“What is blocking me from making this decision around the
play?” Around quitting or staying in it. I can’t even get to a firm decision either way, get a spiritual “hit”
either way – even after conversation, taking an inventory of my fears around it
both ways, and even after regular old “getting quiet” meditation.

So, this morning, I plugged the headphones into my iPod, scrolled to the drumming meant for this type of meditation and went in on a Shamanic Journey to find out what the
heck is going on since the “normal” pathways to clarity are so gummed up.

Standing, in my mind’s eye, at the edge of the cliff that
overlooks all the land that makes up my self (occasionally I’m reminded of Mufasa
showing Simba all the land in Africa that is his domain), I asked the above
question: What is blocking me from making my decision?

Without warning, the sky turned black, the light sucked out
of the land, and a voice stormed, “You have to do this play.” This was no gentle
cosmic answer. This was violent insistence. This was, I don’t care whether
you want to do it or not; you have to.

This, is not my voice. But, apparently, it’s there inside
me, blocking my decisions. I certainly can’t even know whether I want to do the play or not, if there’s a damning demand to do it regardless of my desire. This wasn’t a request, this was
an order. This wasn’t a suggestion, this was a decree.

And if you’ve read me for any period of time, you know that
voice is probably internalized from a parental source of the masculine
variety.

The fear, no, terror,
I felt when everything turned black was so evocative of how I felt as a child,
I’d forgotten what it feels like to feel so small, so unimportant.
On my couch, in my living room, in 2014, I pulled my blanket tight around me
and cowered into the cushions.

There are cases and circumstances when, certainly, we don’t want to do things. As you also know, I hate doing my
dishes. But, I do them. I know I “have to.” I know that as a child, we’re
required to do things that we don’t want to do, because it’s for the good of
the family, the good of your education, the good of your health (who wants to get a teeth cleaning?). But, this isn’t that.

As I recorded in my journal what occurred during meditation, I wrote what came to mind after it – the counter, the compassionate
response to this demonic, demanding voice: “Molly, You don’t have to do the
play if you don’t want to. There is no wrong decision here: If you do it,
you’ll have more opportunities to do things you love; if you don’t do it,
you’ll have more opportunities to do things you love. This is an abundant
world. Just keep honing your vision and asking for help.”

Because there is no
right or wrong here. But I haven’t been able to get anywhere on this choice because there’s been this internal override preventing me from making it. I can’t know what I want if I don’t think I’m allowed to figure that
out.

This still doesn’t make my decision one way or the other … yet. But, I suspect that identifying, addressing, and removing the block to making
one will help.

acceptance · boundaries · disappointment · family · father · recovery · sadness · self-love · truth · vulnerability

My Own Private Fan Club.

July 9, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Normal
0
0
1
810
4621
38
9
5674
11.1287

0
0

“I’m a fan of you, Molly Daniels, in your entirety,” he
wrote.

Granted we later slept together. But I digress.

I had the good fortune to spend time last night with several
women I admire. I shared with them what’s going on with my father and my
having to make the decision to attend his wedding in lieu of performing in the
play in which I’m cast.

One of them reflected: “I’m sorry your dad is not able to
see you.”

And when I listen to this more deeply and clearly, it is a
bell of truth.

The fantasy and illusion I’ve abided by for years has been
that if I am a good daughter, a good girl, a devoted and doting woman, then I
will be seen. The delusion is that my people-pleasing will make him see me. But. This is false.

I have tried many times, this path of behaving. And I’ve
tried its opposite, being a wanton, crazed, rebellious teen and young adult, in
order to be seen.

But what struck me this morning was this image: You know
when someone has a lazy eye, and you’re not really sure where to look, so
sometimes you just look at their forehead? Or if you’re trying to avoid
someone’s eye for another reason, you focus somewhere else that sort of looks like you’re looking at them, but you’re not?

That’s how I feel with my dad. That he never actually looks
directly at me, which is why I’ve tried to make the trappings around me so much
larger or different or “approvable” or “disapprovable.” If you can’t see me,
maybe you’ll see the life I’ve built that meets with your military/engineer’s strict
sense of correct.

If I have the job you can brag about, … but that’s not me. I
am not my job.

If I have the relationship with you you can brag about, …
but that’s not me. We don’t know each other.

If I have the life you can brag about, … but I’ve tried
that. You threw my own failings in my face.

I have tried to make the external parts of me approvable
enough for you. But even those periphery trappings (and they are “trappings”)
have not been enough to hone your focus onto the all of me. Me in my entirety.

I didn’t know that was what I’ve been seeking until my
friend told me he saw me. I didn’t know that was what I’ve been missing,
and making a pretzel out of my life and myself in order to make happen.

If I want to please my father so he sees me, what do I think
will happen if he sees me, “in my entirety?” … I don’t think I can answer that.
Except to say he’d love me, in a way that I could feel.

Because here’s the thing: If he’s looking around me, and not at me, he’ll never love me in a way that
I feel. He may “love” or approve
of the things around me, the life I meticulously and back-bendingly try to
arrange around myself. But that’s still not me.

This is a system, a relationship in which I am not seen. The
one thing I want to glean from it is the one thing I cannot have.

In reading Brene Brown so voraciously right now, I can know
this: He’s not able to be vulnerable enough to do that.

To see me, is to expose himself, is to open himself to being
vulnerable, and for him, that is not an
option. His whole life has been built on a foundation, a faulty one (well, in
my own estimation), that precludes true connection, because he is unable to
look at and love himself. I know how this formed, and I can only presume the
pain that’s caused, because he’s never shown it. (Except in these indirect ways.)

Brene writes that men deal with vulnerability in one of two
ways: Rage or shut-down. (She also writes about those who find ways
out of that dichotomy, but those are the go-to’s without the tools to do
anything differently. And surely, those aren’t the only means to deal, but it’s her
research, not mine!)

I know that when I told my dad that I might not be able to
come to his wedding because I’ll be in a play that weekend, when he put on his “I insist” voice, that was his way of hiding his vulnerability, his
disappointment and hurt. I know that this was rage to mask actual feelings. I
know that this rage was to protect and prevent of moment of true connection, in
which something different might have been said like, “I’d really love for you
to be here. It would mean a lot to me.”

That directness is too vulnerable.

To look me in the eye and say that is too vulnerable.

To see us both as humans doing a dance of having a
relationship, instead of as a master and a servant, a “father” and a “daughter,”
is too vulnerable.

If I can’t squash it or approve of it, I can’t deal with it.

I “get” this. I get and have compassion for and understand
this dilemma for him. Also, this is a dilemma that I’ve prescribed for him; true or
not, it’s only my interpretation.

But, like I said before, it’s my choice how I want to engage
in this “relationship.” Because for as long as I can remember, I’ve been waving
my arms in an effort to start one. An effort in vain. And my arms are tired.

Brene writes that shame is countered by self-love, and that
shame resilience is a practice, not a diploma.

“I’m a fan of you, Molly Daniels, in your entirety.”

I’m going to have to say this phrase to myself, repeatedly.
To truth-test the thoughts of “not good enough” – especially “not good enough daughter” – as this future unfolds.

I’m going to have to truth-test my fantasies around this
relationship versus the reality, and I’m going to have to accept, even for a
minute at a time, that this relationship is the way it is, and that my father
is the way he is.

I’ve heard many times that “acceptance is not the same as
approval.” No, this isn’t ideal. But turning my life into a pretzel to garner a
connection I will never (or not today) have, is the worse fate.

avoidance · compassion · connection · family · father · forgiveness · isolation · love · relationships · resentment · self-preservation

Well, Shoot.

July 1, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Normal
0
0
1
418
2386
19
4
2930
11.1539

0
0

There has been all this heartache in me about wanting my
father to change. To be loving, available, vulnerable and open. I have wanted
this to happen for as long as I can remember, and I’ve held out a resentment
toward him for his inability to do this for that long, too.

I have tried many ways around and through this resentment:
loving kindness, acceptance, letters to god, letters to him I didn’t send,
letters to him I did. Individuation meditations, praying daily for his peace
and happiness, envisioning him as a child… But nothing has moved this boulder of a need.

And I finally realized what the need really is. It is not
that I need my father to change. At this point, it’s that I need him not to.
Because if he did, then I would have to look at being loving, available,
vulnerable and open to him. And this causes trouble, because this is not safe.

So, keeping my resentment toward him has been a circuitous
way to protect myself from my being
vulnerable to him.

It’s all well and good to want someone to change – but when
faced with the actuality of their transformation, how do we deal with that?

I wish I could tell you that I have overblown the situation,
and he’s kinder than he appears, and being vulnerable to him could maybe, possibly, just-give-it-one-more-try, be a good idea.

But it’s not. Unfortunately, I have enough evidence to support this. Not ancient, you yelled I was a liar during a game of Clue when I was 5. Like,
recent, appallingly turning my vulnerability against me evidence.

So, here’s the thing. I can forgive all of that. I can be willing to forgive it all, anyway. But do I want to change my behavior? Not really.

I’ve spent all this time trying to find my way around the
rock of resentment to get toward connection, but when I look instead at what
the rock is doing for me, not to me, I get to see that maybe it’s been doing the
right thing all along. And this realization is hard for a person like me.

I have fear that keeping myself separate from him will cause
bile in my soul and in my body, and corrode other relationships. I have fear that by not being vulnerable to
him, I’m going to call down some cosmic retribution and be serially alone. I have fear that I’m not “spiritual”
enough, or evolved enough or recovered enough, or else I’d be able to have him
in my life as a loving and caring adult, both ways ’round.

I have shame that I can’t allow this relationship to flourish.
That I refuse to be the asshole who riles on the ground before him and begs him
to love me. I have been doing that for as long as I can remember, too.

But the thing I always thought I wanted was for him to do
that too. To acknowledge his faults, to claim ownership of his behavior, and to
beg my forgiveness.

What I see now, is that if he actually did, I don’t want to give it – that
forgiveness is a door to love. And with him, love is a door to hurt.

The boulder has been there doing this job all along.

Until I learn a “healthier” way of screening those doors,
they’ll just have to remain shut.

change · childhood · despair · empathy · family · father · fear · forgiveness · loneliness · love · recovery · sorrow

1 + 1 = Forgiveness?

June 17, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Normal
0
0
1
504
2875
23
5
3530
11.1287

0
0

Because he was an electrical engineer and adept with numbers, it was always my father I went to with math homework.

This near-nightly escapade always took the same tired route:
My dad trying to explain to me a concept that was assumed, understood, and so
ingrained for him by now that he couldn’t
explain it properly, and his getting frustrated when I couldn’t understand what
for him was plain and evident.

I would get frustrated at his impatience, and the fact that
I had to do this homework so I had to sit with him. And eventually, we’d become locked
in a battle of wills so contentious, we’d end up screaming at each other.
We call this 4th grade.

My brother told me a little more than a year ago, when I was
going through chemo treatment and my dad was unable to show up for me, that
what I was asking my dad to do (show up emotionally) was like asking a crippled
person to walk: It’s impossible. It’s unfair, and it’s presumptive.

The same assumption that my dad had about teaching me math
concepts, the ease and obviousness and facility he had with numbers, I have about emotional matters. I simply assume that because this is something so damned simple and easy for me, even
when it’s painful, that everyone
should be able to do this.

I am making the exact same mistake he did with me: I am
shaming someone for something they are not able to do.

So, when I contemplate following up my dad’s return
voicemail from Father’s Day, I have found that I want to do what I always want
to do: Hash it out. EXPLAIN to him what
is so obvious to me: I needed you to show up for me, and you didn’t. In fact,
you blamed me for not being attentive to your needs. And you threw in my face every time
I’ve failed in my life as if that would manipulate me into realizing, once
again, you’re the savior and I’m the fuck-up.

I want to tell him this, of course, in a gentle, loving way,
because then, of course, he’ll be able to hear it and understand it.

If I explain it really s l o w l y as if to a child, my dad can’t possibly not
understand that his behavior across the years has been abominable at many times,
and that I don’t like to be in touch with him because of it. That I don’t trust
him because of it.

However. I’m simply expecting what he expected of me back
then: Comprehension.

No Comprende, Mamasita. He don’t get it. He won’t get it. And you can sit with as many graphing
calculators and pie charts of his behavior and your feelings of hurt and
betrayal as you choose. You can even make a PowerPoint presentation about how
his increased anger and violence was inversely proportionate to your trust of
him.

However. I’d be wasting my breath. And do people even use
Powerpoint anymore?

I still remember concepts my dad taught me about math. I
used the one to figure out a percentage this morning. Somewhere between the
yelling and the tears and the slammed books and doors, I did learn something.
But what was the price of that education?

My dad was not a teacher. And my dad is not an empathetic
person. It just is. Just as a paraplegic, my asking him to do what he is
mentally, emotionally, and spiritually unable to do is unfair of me. My expectations on him won’t make him walk.

I hate relearning this lesson. It too ends in tears most
times. But, today, I do have a choice between struggling to opening his mind, or to simply let him be a cripple and relate to him as such. Because it seems like the person who
needs to learn something is not my dad (someone I have no control over). The
person who needs to learn empathy here, soy yo.