The Dreamer Awakes

Reality is but a dream. We keep looking for confirmation that something is true, yet everything is shaped by our own perception. If 10 people watch an event, most will give similar yet distinct accounts of it. Each will focus on what resonates and what triggers their own issues; the main action will be similar, but some will leave parts out, and some will notice different details than others. We get told a story, and because that person said it, we take it as fact, but it is only their account of what happened. It is real to them. They feel emotionally connected to their account, and they worked out the narrative to fit with what they believe in and the version of reality they are comfortable with. It goes even deeper when it comes to memory; the state of mind at the time of the event taking place affects what actually gets stored in our memories. I have anxiety, and that produces cortisol. A little cortisol makes you more alert, and you remember more as your body tries to kick in your survival instincts to get you out of trouble. Too much cortisol and you are stuck in the fight or flight response, and with my freeze response, I dissociate; it feels like I leave my body, and everything is happening to someone else. Put on top of that that some of the memories are repressed as they feel so uncomfortable, and they are so painful to think about. Perception is influenced by the past and my hormones; memories are inconsistent and unreliable. Who can you trust if your own mind is not to be trusted?

I believed that I had a happy childhood. I believed that we would discuss everything in my family. I believed that my parents had a happy marriage, and it was the type of marriage that I should aspire to. I believed it so strongly that whenever someone tried to tell me otherwise, I dismissed it completely, and I pushed away quite strongly. I thought they had no idea about what they were talking about. This really helped me live my life and helped me tell my story to other people in a relatable way. I have then started to do therapy, and it felt more and more like my childhood is where I need to look into deeper and I need to analyse what happened again.

I started reading this book, and from the first page, I started crying my eyes out because it explained word by word everything that I felt as a child, and it made me feel incredibly seen at the same time; it made me feel extremely exposed. This book was called “Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents” by Lyndsay C. Gibson, PsyD. As I kept reading, I got to a test, and I thought, “Oh, goody, goody, gumdrops! This should be fun, like one of those Cosmo quizzes”. There were 15 statements that I had to mark as true or false, and when I finished, I flipped the page to see how I did. The next page had this message: “Since all these items are potential signs of emotional immaturity, checking more than one suggests you well may have been dealing with an emotionally immature parent” Ha, interesting… more than one. Sweet, Lord, Jesus! I had 14, so to me that was a clear indication that I was beyond fucked.

I had spent some hours in therapy talking about my mom and dad, but there were just bits and pieces relating to my past and different issues. It had been just a situational thing, and I told the stories like they didn’t bother me, just a matter of fact, a clue to a mystery, but this book was looking at them directly, and it was so deeply cutting that it started to take up all of my mental space.

The story about my parents and their perfect marriage… My mom met my dad by chance at work. They had gone to the same school, but because of their age difference, they had never met. My mom got a job after high school, and she was visiting a friend at her desk. My dad came in, and they met, and they started dating. Three months later, my dad got a speech from his parents about his intentions, and he got asked what they were since my mom was a great girl. He was told that he should leave her alone if his intentions were not serious. Well, my dad took that to heart, and six months after meeting, they were married. My dad used to say that I should be so lucky to find someone like they found each other, and that he still loves her after so many years and how they walk hand in hand when they go places.

When I started to talk to my sister, she started to bring that myth down piece by piece. She had told me that my mom couldn’t really go anywhere for too long. My dad would start calling and asking where she was and when she was coming home. He would make comments and pout when they would get home, and he would make sure she knew he was not pleased. She has now started to not want to go out as much. It is the same routine every single day. Wake up, cook, go to the supermarket, clean, do dishes, watch TV, rinse and repeat. I had made this idea of a good marriage to answer people’s questions, and I had repeated it so many times that I think I started to believe it. Either that or I romanticised the past so I wouldn’t have to think about it, to deal with it. My ex used to tell me that my parents stay with each other because they don’t know any different. I thought he didn’t know what he was talking about. He didn’t know Romanian, and my parents don’t really speak English, how could he know what he was talking about when he only saw them a week a year? I kept on pushing this thought from my mind until I could see what he saw. Until I was ready to accept the truth of the matter. I could see that as soon as one comes in the house, there is an energy that just makes one be on edge. My dad starts to get attention and talks about what he wants to talk about, even if you want to or not. My mom tries to censure him, and then there is this passive-aggressive tension of things unspoken.

From that book, I found that my mother was the rejecting parent, and my dad was the emotional parent. A few more fun quizzes later. I came to understand how their emotions would affect the way that they behaved, and then came the realisation of how that influenced my life through the healing fantasy and the role-self. The role self was that I need to be understanding and kind, to always be dependable and make people happy and the healing fantasy that is that if I achieve this role and I am this person, then people will accept me and love me the way I need to be loved. I saw that my coping style was that of an internalizer, and that I think that another person’s reactions have everything to do with me and how I am and that if I change, maybe things will get better. Let go of who I really am, of my wants and desires and morph into what my parents want me to be.

The book did give me hope as it said that it takes an emotional crisis for the healing process to start. That anger is fine, and it helps propel me towards finding my truth and my voice. That crying is fine, and it is a process of letting go and accepting the things that happened in my childhood. I have read these chapters, and I felt the comfort that I was already on my way on this path. I felt that while this book had brought so much pain as it woke me from my fantasy of happiness, it spoke of healing; it also meant that I would have a happy ending.

I realised that I didn’t owe anybody else happiness. That I didn’t owe my parents happiness and that I am not responsible for them. They had made their decisions in life, and they have to live with them, and I need to be strong and make mine. I need to live life for myself and find my own happiness. I need to accept that whatever I need to be happy might not be part of my parents' plan, but that true acceptance has to come from me and not them. I learned that I need to stay strong within myself and show myself kindness at every turn.

I struggled so much with this issue, and as I was going through everything in my head, it was truly the only thing that I could think about. It consumed my every thought, my every waking hour. I had made so many assumptions about life, friends, emotions, and relationships based on what my parents said or did. I used those dreams of happiness to create a path in life, and now I had discovered that I had been so wrong in my assumptions. If those assumptions were wrong, what else was wrong? I started to analyse everything, and anger about the way things went down came mixed in with incredible sadness that I had deluded myself for so many years. My relationship could have been so much better if only I had had a better start with them. I have become so wrapped up in this that I inflicted it upon other people, and I didn’t think about their emotions because I couldn’t really see beyond what was happening to me. People told me to let it go and get over it, but how could I do that in the blink of an eye when I had only become aware of it recently? I felt that I needed to isolate and continue to go through this. I took responsibility for my energy, which was toxic for people at that time, and I wasn’t being fair. This is the one thing that I really needed to hang on to. I couldn’t hide it anymore, I couldn’t lie to myself anymore, I had to put my energy into it.

In trying to understand, I also started to read about transgenerational trauma and see how issues that had not been resolved had been passed down from one generation to the next and that their poor relationships with their parents bore the poor relationship that I had with them. I tried to understand them, I tried to forgive them, I tried to accept that this is who they are, and since they are not willing to deal with their emotions and they don’t see their actions as an issue, I will never get a different response. My mom and dad will never love me the way that I need to. They will never understand me beyond their desires and what they expect of me.

My mom told me that she had always thought that I was most like her, and my sister is like her mother-in-law. I thought if I never felt good enough in her eyes, how could she see me as she sees herself? My dad sees himself as like my sister, that she is like him, and they always had it a bit easier in life because of it. My sister feels so far removed from my dad and unloved by him. My therapist’s answer was simple: projection. They identify with us, and they see their own weaknesses in us. They reject the part of us that they don’t like in themselves. They reject the emotions that we have that they don’t want to deal with.

I had gone through all of this, and I had to face my real test. I actually had to go home and visit my family. I had this anger in me for them, and I had to just accept it and try to have a good relationship with my family for nine days. The biggest fear was not that I would not be able to hold it in, but that once I am there, I will lose myself again, and all my hard work will be lost. I stayed as calm as I could. I saw how they would try to pull me into the vortex of their emotions, and I resisted getting caught in it.  I could see the cloud of negative energy they surround themselves with, I could see how my sister is pulled into it, and I could feel my anxiety growing. I could feel myself on the verge of a panic attack because of it. I focused on keeping control of my emotions. I separated myself from them when it got too much by either going to a different room or saying I needed to go home. I told them what I needed, and I was very clear about what I accepted in their presence.

After I got back home, I was depressed for a week. I had been drained by the experience, and my body needed time to recharge and let go of all the tension I had stored. I realised that it is easier to manage them when I am far away, but it is incredibly triggering whenever I am close to them. My mind goes into attack mode, and I don’t have my full capacity to actually think things through. While I have realised how far I have come, I know that my journey is long and changing patterns that have been in place for so long will take a lot of work. My dad told me that I used to be so calm and peaceful before, but now he finds me so nervous. The truth is that I wasn’t calm, I wasn’t peaceful, I was checked out, I was paralysed, I was telling myself the lies that I needed to tell myself to continue living. I apologised to my ex. He was the one who tipped me off to the truth of the matter, and I felt that he needed to know that he was right, and I was grateful to him for telling me the truth, no matter how hurtful it was.

No longer a dreamer. No longer a pretender. I see the truth, and I accept the truth. I struggle with it from time to time. I get pulled back from time to time. I am kind to myself, as much as I can be. I understand that I need to change my view of myself to reflect all the work that I have done and all the progress that I have made. I am not the scared little girl who wanted to be loved desperately because I love myself now. Seeing them for who they are is not a betrayal but a necessity so that I can free myself of their preconceptions of me and release my true self. A part of me wants to confront them. Tell them how everything felt for me, and despite the fact that I know that nothing will change, and they will not take responsibility for anything, I feel that I need to do this for myself. That nothing will ever be the same, and I don’t want it to be the same. Another part knows that I need to let the anger go and that I need to choose the path of forgiveness. Be kind to them even when they try to be mean. I need to stay strong within myself and not waver in my resolve. I don’t know what dreams may come, but I do know that my eyes are now wide open.