{"id":67,"date":"2021-06-05T03:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-05T03:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/insidemylockdown.com\/?p=67"},"modified":"2021-06-04T20:52:30","modified_gmt":"2021-06-04T20:52:30","slug":"a-key-to-my-escape-room","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/insidemylockdown.com\/?p=67","title":{"rendered":"A Key to My Escape Room"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The topic of this post has been a long time coming. Just about my entire conscious life, in fact. And the events of the post took place nearly two weeks ago, but I needed some time and space to think it through. I know that this is not \u201cThe Answer\u201d to all my problems, the solution to the puzzle, but it is one important key to help me escape my lockdown and start to heal. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So here is my attempt to capture what happened:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had a revelation, a very significant one. In retrospect, it should have been obvious to me all along, but it wasn\u2019t, and it almost seems silly that it wasn\u2019t. I\u2019ve heard it said many times, but never internalized it and believed it applied to me. I was at the park, pushing my daughter on a swing, staring out across the cloudy valley, berating myself for not being able to cope like other people seem to, why couldn\u2019t I handle life as well as other people, when four words interrupted and rang out over and over again in my mind, louder and louder, like the tolling of some massive bell: \u201cIt\u2019s not my fault.\u201d Over and over again until it was all I could hear, all I could think. And then I started to cry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not my fault. I did nothing wrong. It happened to me. I didn\u2019t cause it or deserve it. Things happened to me that were outside my control. I am not defective. I learned maladaptive ways of coping in order to survive because I did not know any better. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It. Is. Not. My. Fault. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was manipulated and neglected, expected to behave like an adult at a young age, berated, insulted, ignored, yelled at, threatened, pushed away, and forced to witness things I should never have seen or heard. I was steeped in dysfunction from an early age. Both of my parents had maladaptive ways of functioning, and my mother was traumatized in so many ways, it\u2019s amazing she was as sane and functional as she was.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I keep wondering why this never occurred to me before, but then it also makes perfect sense. I have long felt that I was responsible for pretty much everything, even to the level of magical thinking. The car broke down? They must have been driving me around too much. They were broke? I cost too much money or spent too much at the grocery store. The washing machine wasn’t working? I must have used the wrong setting and broken it. Good mood or bad mood? My fault. If my father was angry, I did something to cause it. If my mother was upset, it was my responsibility to make it better for her. If something around the house needed to be done, I believed it was my job to do it. Even things that could not possibly have been my responsibility, it was always my fault. So of course, since I was so powerful, I deserved whatever happened in my childhood.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I didn\u2019t. I didn\u2019t deserve to have my father yell at me for making the slightest noise or movement. I didn\u2019t deserve to be pushed away when I tried to hug either one of them. I didn\u2019t deserve to have the household responsibility of the entire family placed on me. I didn\u2019t deserve to hear my father tell my mother that no man would ever want me. I didn\u2019t cause them to struggle financially at times. I didn\u2019t make my father an angry person. It was not my fault that my mother was an unhappy, and it was certainly not my fault that she was traumatized throughout her childhood and was never able to safely deal with it.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My mother was forced to be ultra responsible from a young age, and even if she didn\u2019t intend for that to be my life as well, it happened. I wonder if she ever recognized that. She had to parent her three siblings and even her own parents. I had to take on the caretaker role for my family as well, on and off for over a decade. Hell, my screen name for so many things has contained some form of \u201cCaretaker\u201d for at least 15 years now (and my nickname during my first college degree was \u201cGrandma.\u201d That should tell you a lot right there). It\u2019s what I do. I earned value for it, so I continued. I found my value in doing. That\u2019s dysfunctional, but that\u2019s not my fault. That was how I got my needs met, how I survived.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I do going forward is more my responsibility, though just realizing it isn\u2019t my fault doesn\u2019t automatically fix everything and make all the dysfunction go away. But at the same time, it is a huge relief. When I think those words, \u201cIt\u2019s not my fault,\u201d I am flooded with an indescribable relief, a delicious lightness of being that makes me feel that anything is possible, a veritable souffl\u00e9 of emotion (it\u2019s a ridiculous image, I know, but also the closest I will ever come to actually making a souffl\u00e9, so please forgive its absurdity). I hope it won\u2019t collapse as easily as a real souffl\u00e9, but will become a sustaining truth in my life, a hope for my future free of lockdowns and dysfunction, a hope for breaking the cycle for my daughter. I am certain that is what my mother would have done for me, if she could have. I owe it to my mother to do it now, to honour her memory, her pain, her beauty and glory and wonder.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And to honour myself. I deserve this, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The topic of this post has been a long time coming. Just about my entire conscious life, in fact. And the events of the post took place nearly two weeks ago, but I needed some time and space to think it through. I know that this is not \u201cThe Answer\u201d to all my problems, the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,12],"tags":[60,59,61,52,55,57,6,64,58,62,40,63,65],"class_list":["post-67","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-escape","category-my-mother","tag-abuse","tag-blame","tag-caretaker","tag-childhood-trauma","tag-cycle-breaker","tag-dysfunction","tag-generational-trauma","tag-growth","tag-guilt","tag-healing","tag-personal-growth","tag-recovery","tag-responsibility","entry entry-center"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insidemylockdown.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insidemylockdown.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insidemylockdown.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insidemylockdown.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insidemylockdown.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insidemylockdown.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68,"href":"https:\/\/insidemylockdown.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions\/68"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insidemylockdown.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insidemylockdown.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insidemylockdown.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}