On not drowning out the mean voices
in my head and otherwise
I’m sitting at the end of my long barn wood dining table in the low gray light of an autumn morning. It is Tuesday. Candles are burning and their smoldering spiced-maple scent slides through the air all around me.
It is 8:58 a.m. I have nowhere to go, nowhere to be, no appointments or obligations; no one to answer to, except myself.
I feel a little guilt rise in my stomach for admitting my freedom to you. No — not for admitting it; for having it. A little guilt. And then, none.
I’m so much kinder to live inside than I ever was before. Before, not so long ago really, me alone with me could get ugly fast. In a past life, less than three years ago, I’d be cruel as a whip slicing at myself to get things done. To don’t dare sit still. To don’t dare not produce. To don’t dare relax or - horror of horrors — enjoy myself.
Not anymore, though. Since I quit drinking, quit corporate, quit lying to myself, and tossed most of the beauty standards and spending requirements outwardly imposed, those days are over.
But those terrible taunting voices, that jarring imaginary sound of whip cracks against my frightened psyche, they still echo through once in a while. Old habits die hard, yeah? Don’t we know it.
They pass by much quicker now, though. They are nothing but tacky word clouds, water vapor, nothingness. Swaths of see-through cotton mist.
Recovery is a choice, do you see? Every moment, what to believe in.
I think letting the mean voices in my head come and go is brave. It may be the bravest (albeit quietest and most invisible) thing I have learned to let myself do in my almost three years of recovery. Or all forty-five years of my life, even.
Because for a long time, for as long as I can remember, and even longer through the fuzziness of trying to recall what it was like to live inside the mind of someone addicted to worshipping a thing that was never going to save me, I thought those voices were my master.
I thought the thoughts that hurt me were the most important ones.
Hyper-fixating on the meanest, cruelest ones, I think I was hoping to make them go quiet if I could just do as they said.
Fix yourself. What’s wrong with you. Clean up your mess. Look what you did. You don’t get it. You’re embarrassing. Try harder. Be better. Get real. Shut up.
But I could never do as they said. Not fast enough, not good enough, not even enough enough.
I just could never manage to do it.
There were too many things to try to do, too many unrelenting and unending demands; all at odds with being who and what I was which was human. And so I collapsed into drinking. A lot. It obliterated the voices. But it also obliterated me.
Do you see the conundrum there?
If the only way to obliterate the mean voices was to obliterate myself - the voices must be me. Right? And I must be the voices. If they were nasty, I guess I was, too.
That was my old way of seeing this thing called life, called living, called existing inside a human mind and body.
But it was different then. Then, those voices seemed true. Now, they don’t. The voices are still there, I just recognize them as ghosts from a time gone by. I recognize them because they are so obviously not mine.
The mean voices can always be traced back to childhood or society/culture at large. They are voices that grow out of fear and control. And pain. Pain that did not originate with me. But pain nonetheless. And that I can understand, so I can let it go. I can let the fear voices go because I no longer seek a master, someone else to be in charge.
Someone else to tell me what to pay attention to.
I have myself for that now.
My voice is steady, calm, strong, and tender. I know her. She is me, and we are inseparable. I know her deep and solid, grounded in everything that means anything to me.
It is 9:16 a.m. I begin to write.
In spite of everything.
* Just a friendly little note that there will be no Dry Humor Me posts next week, so I will catch you back here the week of October 14-18. :) *
Lovely piece. In a sense, the self criticism that arises from childhood pain was a way of protecting ourselves, I think, from a reality that we needed to survive by depending on our caretakers. We could not afford to object to negative treatment from them at that time so instead, we turned that on ourselves and believed what we were being told which was always false. This is quite a brilliant solution for a child to come up with when you think of it. It no longer serves us, but maybe a way to deal with it when it arises now is to acknowledge it, thank it for its past service, and let it go.
I love this. I still struggle with external voices who are still reinforcing these preconceived notions and societal standards that got me here in the first place. I try to do more good than harm when I shout them down.
But after 3 years of training myself to speak more kindly to myself, it still surprises me when it actually happens by default now, instead of the reverse. Instead of “hey asshole you’re running late again, you’re such a failure!” I surprise myself with “hey sweetie, I think we might be late if we don’t leave soon. It’s not the end of the world but just letting you know.” It shocks me every time it happens.